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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Wands imploding, sort of

Now this is unexpected. Normally, I find my victims/targets/subjects for my usual end-of-the-workweek bit of fun and skepticism from one of two sources. Either a reader sends a link to some woo or other that desperately deserves a little bit of Orac’s loving attention, or in my wanderings across blogosphere I find some little (or […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

One last update (for now) on the youth who “cured himself” of melanoma, Chad Jessop

I hadn’t intended to write about this again, at least not for a while, but curiosity got the better of me. About a month and a half ago, I discussed a highly dubious story that was going around by e-mail about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whose mother supposedly “cured” him with “natural” treatments. As […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

An update on the youth who “cured himself” of melanoma, Chad Jessop

About a month and a half ago, I discussed an e-mail that was being propagated far and wide that described the case of the mother of a 17 year old male who, or so the e-mail claimed, cured her son of stage IV melanoma using “natural means” and was supposedly thrown in maximum security prison […]

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

Why don’t you rant about what I think you should rant about?

I’ve written before about how one of the favorite tactics of those who do not like my insistence on applying skepticism, science, and critical thinking to the claims of alternative medicine or my refusal to accept a dichotomy between “alternative” and “conventional” medicine is to try so smear me as some sort of “pharma shill.” […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A Kevin Trudeau wannabe revealed?

I’ve made no secret how much contempt I have for Kevin Trudeau, whom I have likened to David Irving, at least with respect to his respect for the truth. He has made many, many millions of dollars selling books with titles like Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About and its followups, in […]