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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Schadenfreude

Sorry, but I can’t help but feel a bit of schadenfreude over this. Chelationist extraordinaire Dr. Rashid Buttar is, it would appear, in a bit of trouble: A Huntersville doctor is facing charges of unprofessional conduct. Dr. Rashid Buttar’s alternative medicine clinic treats autism patients from the around the country, but tonight there are questions […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Bouncing away the toxins

After last week’s Your Friday Dose of Woo, which featured an amazingly extravagant bit of woo that took up 10,000 webpages of some of most densely-packed woo language that I’ve ever seen, I feel the need for a change of pace. It’s time to simplify this week. After all, if I were to do nothing […]

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Bioethics Medicine Religion

One last comment on the Dennis Lindberg case

I’ve been spending a bit of time discussing the sad case of Dennis Lindberg, a 14-year-old youth with leukemia who died because of his refusal to accept a blood transfusion when his hematocrit fell to life-threateningly low levels apparently during chemotherapy. My position is that, while competent adults have the right to refuse transfusion for […]

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Bioethics Cancer Medicine Quackery Religion

Would you die for your religion? part 2: What about the children?

It looks as though the Jehovah’s Witnesses have claimed another life. This time, though, it wasn’t an adult, as it was recently. This time, though, through the indoctrination inherent in the Jehovah’s Witness religion and, incredibly and inexcusably, the acquiescence of our legal system to their irrational and dubious interpretation of a text written thousands […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

Preventing injuries during surgery due to technical mistakes

You’ve probably heard the oft-repeated charge of “alternative” medicine advocates. If you get into a debate or conversation with one, you can almost count on seeing or hearing it before too long. Indeed, we heard a variant of this very claim yesterday coming from über-woomeister supreme Deepak Chopra. I’m referring, of course, to the rant […]