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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

Clinical trials do still work, but need to evolve

As I write this, I’m winging my way home from TAM, crammed uncomfortably—very uncomfortably—in a window seat in steerage—I mean, coach). I had thought of simply recounting the adventures of the contingent of skeptics with whom I’m associated who did make it out to TAM to give talks at workshops and the main stage and […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Quackery

Quackery of a different kind than I usually write about, part 2

About a week and a half ago, I wrote about a local oncologist who was arrested by the FBI for massive Medicare fraud in which physician involved diagnosed cancers that weren’t there, gave chemotherapy to patients who either didn’t have cancer or were in remission and thus didn’t need it, and had developed a self-referral […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Sharyn Ainscough dies tragically because she followed the example of her daughter, The Wellness Warrior

This being Breast Cancer Awareness Month and all, stories about breast cancer are frequently sent my way. This one is depressing and sad, mainly because it’s the story of death from breast cancer. From what I can gather, it is the story of a death from quackery, a death that didn’t have to occur. Even […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“I don’t make assumptions” about vaccines and people’s motives

Every so often, I like to try to get into the mind of an antivaccine crank, a quack, or crank of another variety, because understanding what makes cranks tick (at least, as much as I can given that I’m not one) can be potentially very useful in my work trying to counter them. On the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Antivaccinationists against the HPV vaccine, Round 5,000

Whenever I take a day off from blogging, as I did yesterday because I was too busy going out with my wife on Wednesday night to celebrate my birthday, I not infrequently find an embarrassment of riches to blog about the next day. Sometimes it’s downright difficult to decide what to write about. So it […]