Categories
Cancer Medicine

Cancer and “fate”

Last week, our Seed overlords published on the flagship an Agence France-Presse article about a survey in Britain whose results showed that large numbers of people believe that cancer is due to “fate” rather than risk factors that can be modified to decrease one’s risk of developing the disease: LONDON (AFP)–More than a quarter of […]

Categories
Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Oh, no, not again! Another relapse on alternative cancer therapy

It was just last week that I was made aware of the sad news that Katie Wernecke, the 14-year-old girl with Hodgkin’s lymphoma whose parents’ battle to reject radiation therapy and additional chemotherapy made national news in 2005 and who ultimately went for high dose vitamin C therapy at an altie clinic in Kansas, had […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bioethics Medicine Quackery

Surprise, surprise! Andrew Wakefield was paid by lawyers to undermine the MMR vaccine

This should come as no surprise. Thanks to Brian Deer, the journalist who uncovered so much of Dr. Andew Wakefield’s shady research and dealings, we now know that Wakefield was paid by lawyers before his infamous MMR study and that he failed to disclose this clear conflict of interest: ANDREW WAKEFIELD, the former surgeon whose […]

Categories
Entertainment/culture Music

Orac’s favorite tunes from 2006

One of the great things about blogging is that I can do things that I always wanted to do but would never get hired in a million years to do, for example, to be a rock critic. Prior to blogging, the only time I ever got to indulge my critic wannabe side was in high […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

An HIV/AIDS “skeptic” questions my honesty and decency…

While I am on vacation, I’m reprinting a number of “Classic Insolence” posts to keep the blog active while I’m gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I’m guessing that quite a few of my […]