Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Did cannabis oil save Deryn Blackwell’s life?

In a forthcoming book The Boy in 7 Billion, Callie Blackwell claims that cannabis oil, which she had started giving her son Deryn to relieve his symptoms during a bone marrow transplant for two cancers, actually saved his life when the bone marrow transplant appeared to be failing. Unfortunately, her story appears to be another testimonial that confuses correlation with causation.

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The foremost defender of quacks is concerned that doctors won’t be able to get CME credit for studying quackery any more

The legal world’s foremost defender of quacks issues a warning that the ACCME will stop accrediting continuing medical education courses that teach quackery credulously. Gee, he says that as though it would be a bad thing.

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

An as yet unidentified “holistic” practitioner negligently kills a young woman with IV turmeric (yes, intravenous)

Out of southern California, comes a lesson that something as seemingly benign as turmeric can kill when weaponized in the hands of a quack.

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy News of the Weird Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Naturopaths cynically use the murder of a quack to promote naturopathic licensure

The grieving widower killed the naturopath who treated his wife with cancer after telling her that “chemo is for losers.” Where I see a tragedy, naturopaths see an opportunity to argue for naturopathic licensure.

Categories
Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The Galileo Gambit: Just because your quackery is rejected by the establishment does not make you Galileo or Semmelweis

Quacks love to invoke experts who made predictions that turned out to be wrong or point to Galileo or Semmelweis as examples of scientists whose findings were rejected by the scientific or medical establishment of the time, as though poor prediction or rejection by the establishment means there must be something to their science. Guess what? As Michael Shermer put it, heresy does not equal correctness.