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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

With a little help from its friends, NCCIH funds Son of TACT to study chelation quackery again

One of the things that first led me to understand the dangers of quackademic medicine was a trial known as the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy, or TACT. Chelation therapy, as you might recall, is the infusion of a chelating agent, or a chemical that binds heavy metals and makes it easier for the kidney […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A misguided paean to a “brave maverick” chelation researcher on STAT News.

Quackademic medicine. I didn’t invent the term. (Dr. R. W. Donnell did—nearly nine years ago.) However, I sure use it a lot, because it perfectly describes a phenomenon that has proliferated and metastasized throughout the body of academic medicine like the cancer it is. I like to think that, in my own way, I’ve popularized […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

NCCIH research: Nothing much there behind the curtain

It’s an understatement to say that I’m not exactly a fan of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), the institute formerly known as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and, even a year after its name change, probably still better known by its old moniker. Just type “NCCAM” or […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

In which the NCCIH is questioned…

Orac’s vacation continues apace. Well, not quite. The main reason I’m in London right now is because I was invited to give an actual scientific (as opposed to skeptical) talk at a conference about—of all things—ion channels in cancer. That’s where I am right now, at the Sir Alexander Fleming Building at Imperial College London, […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Your tax dollars at work: New clinical trial of chelation therapy, new and old quacks enrolling patients

Whenever I refer to quackademic medicine and how the infiltration of quackery into medical academia has led to unethical clinical that are not only pseudoscientific wastes of money but potentially downright harmful to patients, two always come to mind. The first is the trial that tested the late Nicholas Gonzalez’s protocol for advanced pancreatic cancer, […]