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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Marc Stephens issues more threats on behalf of the Burzynski Clinic

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I was simultaneously alarmed and amused at how someone named Marc Stephens, who claims (although presents no evidence for his claim) that he represents the rogue physician and “researcher” Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, had taken to threatening skeptical bloggers who criticize Dr. Burzynski’s highly dubious cancer therapy, a therapy Burzynski dubbed […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The Burzynski Clinic disavows Marc Stephens but not the legal intimidation of bloggers who criticize its therapy

Remember yesterday how I said I would be following the “rule of three” in blogging about the Burzynski Clinic, its questionable practices in charging patients huge sums of money for dubious therapies, the even more dubious science behind his “antineoplaston therapy,” and his shill Marc Stephens threatening bloggers with legal action in hilariously crude ways? […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A P.R. flack from the Burzynski Clinic threatens a skeptical blogger

A common thread that runs through the activities of various antiscience cranks, quacks, charlatans, and denialists is an extreme aversion to criticism. In fact, in many cases their aversion to criticism is so extreme that a common reaction of cranks to even legitimate criticism is to try to shut that criticism down any way possible. […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

When “personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy” really means “making it up as you go along”

Last week, I applied a little not-so-Respectful Insolence to a movie about a physician and “researcher” named Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD, founder of the Burzynski Clinic and Burzynski Research Institute in Houston. I refer you to my original smackdown for details, but in brief Dr. Burzynski claimed in the 1970s to have made a major […]

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Cancer Clinical trials

Are mouse "avatars" useful for predicting human response to chemotherapy and targeted agents in cancer?

From time to time, I tussle with various animal rights activists online. Over the summer, unfortunately the radical animal rights types, those who think that, at the very least, vandalism is perfectly acceptable in the name of their cause, some of whom think that action up to and including murder of scientists could potentially be […]