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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Thomas Cowles twisting in the wind defending the “cancer boy” urban legend

I’m rather amused. No, I’m very amused. Yesterday, as you may recall, I discussed a seemingly alarming e-mail that’s going around about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whom the State of California had allegedly removed from the custody of his mother because she and he had wanted to use “advanced natural medicine” to treat his […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

On the “individualization” of treatments in alternative medicine

One of the claims most frequently made by “alternative medicine” advocates regarding why alt-med is supposedly superior (or at least equal) to “conventional” medicine and should not be dismissed, regardless of how scientifically improbably any individual alt-med modality may be, is that the treatments are highly “individualized.” In other words, the “entire patient” is taken […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Alternative medical income” (a.k.a. “woo pays the bills”)

I’ve written a lot about alternative medicine, much of which I consider to be woo; i.e., treatments for which there is no medical efficacy and the belief in which often requires magical thinking. I’ve expressed my disappointment in medical physicians who fall prey to and become purveyors or woo, doctors such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

A different kind of alternative medicine “testimonial”

I’ve written before about how frequently alties like to point to testimonials as “evidence” that their treatments work. Indeed, from the very beginning, in one of the earliest posts I ever wrote, I explained just why breast cancer testimonials for alternative medicine should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Of course, most of […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A little too much credulity from a Chicago Tribune reporter towards alternative medicine

I had been planning on finally getting around to writing that review of Richard Dawkins‘ The God Delusion that I’ve been meaning to write since I finally finished the book two weeks ago. Then a Google Alert hit my mailbox last night for a preset search that I keep active on “Abraham Cherrix,” and the […]