Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

Chris beat cancer? He did indeed, but it wasn’t quackery that cured him

Chris Wark is a young man who was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2003 at age 26. He underwent appropriate surgery for his cancer but declined adjuvant chemotherapy in favor of quackery. Now promotes his testimonial, in which he tries to convince people that it was the quackery, rather than the surgery, that cured him. He even claims that surgery alone can’t cure stage 3 colon cancer, which is just plain wrong. Yes, Chris beat cancer, but it was the surgery, not the quackery, that did it.

Categories
Cancer Medicine Surgery

A spectacular failure of a state medical board

One of the greatest mysteries I’ve encountered since I started following the case of Stanislaw Burzynski is how he’s managed to keep practicing for 36 years after he first began treating patients with his concoction of peptides purportedly isolated from blood and urine that he dubbed “antineoplastons” (ANPs) because of their alleged ability to inhibit […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine

The sad saga of Fabio Lanzoni’s sister Christina’s battle with ovarian cancer, partially revealed

Let me begin this post by offering my sincere condolences to Fabio Lanzoni. His sister died about a month ago. As you might recall, she had ovarian cancer She was unfortunate, and she suffered and ultimately, apparently, died of her disease at far too young an age. If that were all there were to the […]

Categories
Announcements Antivaccine nonsense Autism Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

An anonymous critic complains to Orac’s employers over his post on the murder of Alex Spourdalakis

Antivaccinationists, quacks, and apologists for antivaccinationists and quacks (but I repeat myself) seem to have an illusion that I’m just swimming in pharma lucre, that I sit in my underwear grinding out magnum opus-worthy after magnum opus-worthy blog posts, all so that I can rake in the cash hand over fist, lead a life of […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials

In clinical research, the road to hell is paved with good intentions

I’ve written a lot about Stanislaw Burzynski and what I consider to be his unethical use and abuse of institutional review boards and clinical trials. Before that, I used to regularly write about Mark and David Geier and their unethical use and abuse of IRBs and clinical trials. In both cases, I lamented how they […]