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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

A “homeopathic physician” in Arizona versus science

I’m a cancer surgeon and have been since I finished my fellowship nearly 13 years ago. That is, of course, one big reason that, after I found myself drifting towards becoming a skeptic, it didn’t take long for me to take an interest in “alternative medicine,” in particular alternative medicine for cancer. Perhaps that’s why […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Dr. Francis Collins and “integrative oncology”

I was disturbed several months ago when I learned that the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, had agreed to be the keynote speaker at the Eight International Society for Integrative Oncology Conference in Cleveland, OH. I say “doubly” disturbed because it disturbed me that Francis Collins would agree to speak at […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Harnessing the generosity of kind-hearted strangers to pay for woo

Thanks to the number of people without medical insurance, desperate patients are holding fundraisers to pay for their medical care. Increasingly, they are also increasingly turning to the Internet to raise money through crowdfunding. Unfortunately, there is a dark side to crowdfunding. Patients are also turning to it to raise money to pay for quackery.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Now I’ve seen it all: An anti-vaccine children’s book

I’ve been so busy writing about things like Dr. Stanislaw Burzysnki’s highly exaggerated cancer claims, which have become a new favorite topic of mine despite the fact that Dr. Burzynski himself has been plying his “alternative” cancer treatments for over three decades, and one of my long time topics, the National Center for Complementary and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Bad science and bad arguments for “integrative pediatrics”

There’s a website out there that calls itself Opposing Views. I haven’t visited it in a while, but its very reason for existence and philosophy seems to be built on the “tell both sides” fallacy that so irritates me. In other words, Opposing Views appears to be built from the ground up to provide “balance” […]