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Medicine Politics Quackery Religion

Oregon: On the verge of stripping legal protection based on religion from parents who choose prayer instead of medicine

Over the years, I’ve said it many times. Competent adults have the right (or should have the right) to choose or refuse any medical treatment they wish for any reason. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the reason might be. If a competent adult believes that magic water (i.e., homeopathy) can cure him of cancer, we […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer?

Why haven’t we cured cancer yet? If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer? If we can harness the atom, why can’t we cure cancer? How many times have you heard these questions, or variants thereof? How many times have you asked this question yourself? Sometimes, I even ask […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Dr. Jay Gordon’s profound misunderstanding of science

I was originally going to write about Dr. Oz’s show yesterday, entitled What Causes Autism? But then I started watching and realized that I just didn’t have the constitutional fortitude to sit through the whole thing. Sorry to let you down, but there are some blogging tasks that I just can’t handle, at least on […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine at UCSF: The Osher Center for Integrative Medicine gets a new $37 million building

$37 million. If you were a medical school dean or a hospital administrator and had $37 million for a project, how woud you use it? What would you build? What would you renovate? What research projects would you fund? What infrastructure improvements would you make? Yes, $37 million is a lot of green. Back at […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

The resurrection of David Kirby as an anti-vaccine propagandist

Four days later, I still can’t figure it out. I really can’t. Remember the other day when I said I was debating whether or not to respond to the latest excretion from one of the first hangers-on of the anti-vaccine movement I ever encountered after I started blogging. I’m referring, of course, to freelance journalist […]