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Cancer Medicine Politics Quackery

Quackery of a different kind than I usually write about

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog discussing failures of the medical system. Usually, such discussions occur in the context of how unscientific practices and even outright quackery have managed to infiltrate what should be science=based medicine (SBM) in the form of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine,” in which […]

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Medicine Politics Science

On advanced practice nurses and scope of practice

One aspect of science-based medicine (SBM) that I perhaps don’t spend enough time and effort on is the intersection of law and medicine for areas in medicine other than the infiltration of pseudomedicine like “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) into academia and the never-ending quest of quacks like naturopaths to gain state licensure in states […]

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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 Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Claiming to be able to cure cancer with magic water

I’ve written about naturopathy many times before. The reasons that it interests me are several. First, it amazes me how anyone “discipline” (if you want to call it that) can encompass so many forms of quackery, some of which are mutually contradictory. (For instance, how can homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine both be true?) Also, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy

“Believe in facts”? You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Vaccine scientist and advocate Dr. Paul Offit recently published a book on the pseudoscience of alternative medicine. Not surprisingly, the antivaccine cranks at Age of Autism, led by Anne Rachel, don’t like that.