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Cancer Medicine Quackery

Natural Cancer Treatments That Work: A wretched hive of scum and quackery

Back in the 1990s when I first dipped my toe into the pool that was Usenet, that massive, wild, and untamed frontier where most online discussion occurred before the rise of the web and later the blogosphere, I was truly a naif. I had no idea–no inkling–of the depths of quackery to which people would […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Making legal threats against a blogging cancer patient? Stay classy, Shayla McCallum and Dr. Thomas Lodi. Stay classy.

I’ve said it before, and I’ve said it more times than I can remember. Purveyors of unscientific medicine don’t have the goods. If they had the goods, then their nostrums wouldn’t be called “alternative” medicine anymore; they’d just be medicine. Because they don’t have the goods in the form of science and clinical evidence, all […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

When testimonials are used in medical advertising

(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.) If there’s been one theme running through this blog every since the very beginning, it’s the unreliability of testimonials as “evidence” for the success of a cancer treatment. Indeed, if you go back to one of the very first “Orac-length” […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Desiree Jennings “cured” of her “vaccine-induced dystonia”?

Remember how I promised that I’d do my next installment of my blogging Suzanne Somers’ pile of idiocy, namely her own book, before the end of the week? Plans change, and neurons melt, which they did in response to reading the first several chapters of Suzanne Somers’ book. Don’t worry, though. I’ll definitely try to […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Blogging Suzanne Somers Knockout, part 1: How cancer testimonials mislead

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. After a prolonged wait, it’s finally here: Yes, my promotional copy of Suzanne Somers new book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer–And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place. (The Dalek was included because, well, I was just feeling perverse when I took this picture.) […]