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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Movies Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The quack view of preventing breast cancer versus reality and Angelina Jolie, part 2

After yesterday, I really hadn’t planned on writing about Angelina Jolie and her decision to undergo bilateral mastectomies again, except perhaps as a more serious piece next week on my not-so-super-secret other blog where The Name of the Doctor is revealed on a weekly basis. As I mentioned yesterday, there are a number of issues […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Movies Popular culture

The quack view of preventing breast cancer versus reality and Angelina Jolie

I should have known it. I should have known that the reaction wouldn’t take very long. I should have known it based on prior history. The news story to which I am referring is, of course, the revelation yesterday in the New York Times editorial page by Angelina Jolie that she had decided to undergo […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Alternative cancer “cures”: Nothing’s changed in 34 years

Sometimes blogging topics arise from the strangest places. It’s true. For instance, although references to how tobacco causes cancer and the decades long denialist campaign by tobacco companies are not infrequently referenced in my blogging (particularly from supporters of highly dubious studies alleging a link between cell phone radiation and cancer and the ham-handed misuse […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Deconstructing another Stanislaw Burzynski cancer “success story”

A key pillar of the Stanislaw Burzynski antineoplaston marketing machine, a component of the marketing strategy without which his clinic would not be able to attract nearly as many desperate cancer patients to Houston for either his antineoplaston therapy (now under a temporary shutdown by the FDA that, if science were to reign, will become […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Claiming to be able to cure cancer with magic water

I’ve written about naturopathy many times before. The reasons that it interests me are several. First, it amazes me how anyone “discipline” (if you want to call it that) can encompass so many forms of quackery, some of which are mutually contradictory. (For instance, how can homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine both be true?) Also, […]