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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Lee Woodard on the Chad Jessop melanoma story: “Why would I promote a hoax?”

Ever since I started blogging about a story about a youth named Chad Jessop who, it was claimed, developed melanoma and cured himself of it with “natural” remedies, with the result that his mother was supposedly brought before the Orange County Superior Court and his mother thrown in maximum security prison and denied the right […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Physics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: A dead physicist rolls over in his grave–again

Pity poor Nikola Tesla. Again. It looks as though the woomeisters have found a way to abuse him yet again. I don’t know what it is about Tesla, but he seems to be a magnet for such woo. Well, actually, I sort of do. Tesla was definitely a character and was known for a variety […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

“I have seen the light! The Chad Jessop melanoma story happened. Really.”

Yesterday’s mega-post left me a bit drained; consequently I’ve throttled my ambitions back a notch today in order to leave some energy to put together the weekly installation of Your Friday Dose of Woo tomorrow. Fortunately, just the topic presented itself: A story that’s interesting and instructive (hopefully) but that won’t take as much of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

I fought the woo, and the woo won? Or: Gotta have more woo in my medical school, revisited

Over the last couple of days, I’ve discussed “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) in terms of a meme upon which evolutionary forces are acting to select certain forms of woo over others in academia. Although, in my usual inimitable fashion, I probably carried the concept one step too far, in the end I concluded that […]

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Cancer Medicine Politics

Medicare to lymphoma patients: Go screw yourselves

Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata has the full story. In brief, Medicare has slashed reimbursement for two radioimmunotherapy drugs Bexxar (131I-tositumomab) and Zevalin (90Y-ibritumomab) to below acquisition cost. This is not some experimental therapy that’s being denied, but rather a therapy with a established clinical efficacy. Naturally, this is likely to lead to most centers […]