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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Naturopathy, functional medicine, and other quackademic medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but somehow now seems to be the right time, particularly after doing such a long post yesterday on the intellectually dishonest promotion of “brave maverick” cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. Unfortunately, dubious clinics like the Burzynski Clinic are not the only place where I find highly questionable medicine. […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Naturopathy Quackery

Do you believe in magic in medicine?

Sometimes, between blogging, a demanding day (and night) job doing surgery and science, and everything else, I embarrass myself. Sure, sometimes I embarrass myself by saying something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. More often, I embarrass myself by letting things slide that I shouldn’t. For instance, when friends send me a prepublication copy […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Naturopathy Quackery

The director of NCCAM wants a "nuanced conversation" about "complementary and alternative medicine"

To say that I haven’t been much of a fan of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) throughout the years is a gross understatement. If you want to see the depths of my—shall we say?—lack of enthusiasm for NCCAM, feel free to type “NCCAM” in the search box of this blog and […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

Chris beat cancer? He did indeed, but it wasn’t quackery that cured him

Chris Wark is a young man who was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2003 at age 26. He underwent appropriate surgery for his cancer but declined adjuvant chemotherapy in favor of quackery. Now promotes his testimonial, in which he tries to convince people that it was the quackery, rather than the surgery, that cured him. He even claims that surgery alone can’t cure stage 3 colon cancer, which is just plain wrong. Yes, Chris beat cancer, but it was the surgery, not the quackery, that did it.

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

So chemotherapy does work, after all (revisited)

If there’s one medical treatment that proponents of “alternative medicine” love to hate, it’s chemotherapy. Rants against “poisoning” are a regular staple on “alternative health” websites, usually coupled with insinuations or outright accusations that the only reason oncologists administer chemotherapy is because of the “cancer industrial complex” in which big pharma profits massively from selling […]