Categories
Biology Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

Teaching overenthusiastic CAM advocates a little bit about gene expression profiling

Yesterday, I was depressed. Today I’m a little irritated. I’m irritated because I came across a study from a couple of weeks ago that’s actually a really cool study that applies actual science to the question of how diet and lifestyle changes might alter biology to improve health. It’s exactly the sort of study that […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Science is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.

“I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us.” – Locutus of Borg. “Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile…Your culture will adapt to service ours.” — The Borg. I’m a bit depressed these days. Maybe a better term for it […]

Categories
Cancer Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Time to get out the paper bag or Doctor Doom mask again…

Sigh. He’s baaack. Yes, that dualism-loving Energizer Bunny of antievolution nonsense, that “intelligent design” apologist neurosurgeon whose nonsense has driven me time and time again to contemplate hiding my head in a paper bag or even a Doctor Doom mask because of the shame of knowing that he is also a surgeon, that physician who […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The boneyard of forgotten woo

I know I like to say that woo is eternal, and it is. That doesn’t, however, mean that individual examples of woo are necessarily eternal. Some, it seems, are. Does anyone doubt, for example, that homeopathy, which has been around for over two hundred years now, will still be around 200 years from now? I’d […]

Categories
Bioethics Cancer Medicine

Doctors avoiding their duty to terminally ill patients

She was thin, white skin stretched over bones like worn parchment over old sticks being rhythmically blown in the wind as her chest rose and fell, each time with what seemed like a major effort. Incongruous with the rest of her body, her abdomen was distended, a balloon that looked dangerously close to popping, also […]