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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

CAM use, but not all CAM use, is correlated with skipping chemotherapy

So-called “alternative” medicine is made up of a hodge-podge of health care practices and treatments based on beliefs that are unscientific, pre-scientific, and pseudoscientific. These modalities include practices as diverse as homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, reflexology, reiki and other forms of “energy medicine” based on vitalism, chiropractic, and naturopathy, and that’s a short list of […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Yet another in a long line of inadvertent integrative medicine propaganda articles

Over the last two decades, quackery has been slowly but steadily infiltrating conventional scientific medicine. It began in earnest back in the 1990s, but the groundwork had been laid for at least a couple of decades before, going back to when traditional Chinese medicine made its first foray into the “West.” Unfortunately, over the last […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

No, cancer is not the “best death,” and curing cancer would be anything but a waste of resources

Medical research is a scientific enterprise, but, like most areas of science, nonscientific considerations have a great deal of influence over what sorts of research are funded. This is true regardless of who is funding the research. When it’s the government, obviously it’s impossible to avoid some degree of politics. (Indeed, politics is largely responsible […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Politics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: Embracing “integrative medicine” quackery?

One of the most frequent claims of supporters of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), which goes by the Orwellian name “integrative medicine,” is that it represents “integrating” alternative medicine with science-based medicine to produce the “best of both worlds.” Of course, when I think of the best of both worlds, I usually think of […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Respect my authoritah on “integrative medicine”!

David Katz doesn’t much like skeptics, particularly those of us who question the value of “integrative medicine.” In fairness, I can’t say that I much blame him. We have been very critical of his writings and talks over the years to my criticism of his statement advocating a “more fluid concept of evidence” more than […]