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Evolution Medicine

Medicine and Evolution, part 4a: Physicians seduced by “intelligent design” creationism (revisited briefly)

Wow. There was quite a response to yesterday’s piece about why doctors are seduced by the pseudoscience of “intelligent design” creationism, more so than I expected from what I thought might be a dry topic. A couple of the comments provoked by the post are worth discussing briefly in a separate post, rather than my […]

Categories
Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine

Medicine and Evolution, Part 4: Physicians seduced by “intelligent design” creationism

I’ve been meaning to write about this topic for a long time. In fact, ever since our illustrious Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who also happens to be a Harvard-educated cardiac surgeon, came out in favor of teaching “intelligent design” creationism alongside evolution in public school science classes back in August, I’ve been meaning to […]

Categories
Anti-Semitism History Holocaust World War II

Mrs. Hitler and her doctor

In 1907, Adolf Hitler’s mother Klara died of breast cancer at age 47, when Hitler was only 18. The young Hitler was devastated by her death. Indeed, in Mein Kampf, Hitler described her death thusly: These were the happiest days of my life and seemed to me almost a dream; and a mere dream it […]

Categories
Autism Medicine Quackery Religion

More Scientology madness

With all the nuttiness coming out of Tom Cruise in the name of Scientology, it’s often forgotten that there are a lot of other Scientologists out there in Hollywood. One of the other most prominent ones is John Travolta. Compared to Tom Cruise, John Travolta seems, superficially at least, the height of reason. Certainly he’s […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine

By Seed prodded, or there’s less to these studies than meets the eye

OK, I’ve been prodded enough! Yes, I’ve been aware of the study purporting to present good anecdotal case reports showing that there might be something to the hypothesis that megadoses of vitamin C can cure cancer where other therapies fail. I’ve also been aware of an in vitro study that suggested selective toxicity of vitamin […]