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Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The health freedom fighters attack

If there’s one thing shared in common among nearly all advocates of pseudoscience, it is the belief that they know The Truth. More importantly, they know The Truth, and The Powers That Be don’t want you to know The Truth and will do almost anything to makes sure that The Truth stays secret. Think about […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Science

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Homeopathic gene therapy?

It’s been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Besides indulging my taste for shamelessly working lyrics from Led Zeppelin and other classic bands into my post, what am I talking about? Simple. Things have been way too serious lately. I mean, just look at yesterday’s post. […]

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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Movies Quackery

Burzynski The Movie: Is Stanislaw Burzynski a pioneering cancer researcher or a quack?

I’ve been thinking about the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. You remember the Holy Hand Grenade, don’t you? It was in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where a cleric goes on and on about how “three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

On leaping to conclusions about a neurosurgeon and Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski

Another Christmas is over, and we’re settling in to that strange week between Christmas and New Years when, or so it would seem, most of the world isn’t working except for retail. I’m half taking the week off from work in that I don’t plan on going into the office if I can possibly avoid […]

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Autism Clinical trials

Is a trial of stem cell therapy in autism scientifically and ethically justified?

Houston, we have a problem. Oh, wait. I’m not talking about Stanislaw Burzynski this time. But we do still have a problem, and it’s a problem that resembles the Burzynski problem I recently discussed. Specifically, it’s a problem of unethical clinical trials somehow winning approval from institutional review boards (IRBs). In academia, IRBs are basically […]