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Cancer Evolution Medicine Science

Medicine and evolution, part 13: The fly in the ointment of personalized cancer therapy

About a year ago, I addressed what might seem to the average reader to be a very simple, albeit clichéd question: If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer? As I pointed out at the time, it’s a question that I sometimes even ask myself, particularly given that cancer […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Opposing views”: Cancer quackery versus…HIV/AIDS denialism

Since when did Opposing Views become NaturalNews.com? Anyone who’s read this blog for a while knows that NaturalNews.com is one of the wretchedest hives of scum and quackery anywhere on the Internet, surpassing even The Huffington Post. Indeed, so full of misinformation, pseudoscience, quackery, and outright lies, all spiced up with a heapin’ helpin’ of […]

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Cancer Medicine Religion

Another case of chemotherapy refusal for pediatric cancer

As sometimes happens, last week I let myself get tied up writing multiple posts about a single topic, namely the promotion of an antivaccine movie by a school board president in California, apparently as part of an attempt to influence California legislators who are considering a law that will make philosophical exemptions for school vaccine […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Dr. Burzynski and the cult of personality of the “brave maverick cancer doctor”

I thought I’d be leaving the topic of Dr. Stanislaw Burzysnki and his combination of Personalized Cancer Therapy for Dummies-level “personalized, gene-targeted cancer therapy” coupled with his “cancer-curing” antineoplastons, which have morphed into an orphan HDAC inhibitor used off-label as part of his pricey everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” combination of targeted therapies and old-fashioned chemotherapy. After all I […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

When “personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy” really means “making it up as you go along”

Last week, I applied a little not-so-Respectful Insolence to a movie about a physician and “researcher” named Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD, founder of the Burzynski Clinic and Burzynski Research Institute in Houston. I refer you to my original smackdown for details, but in brief Dr. Burzynski claimed in the 1970s to have made a major […]