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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The largest “randomized” acupuncture study ever done: Why did they even bother?

Believe it or not, there was one area of so-called “alternative” medicine that I used to be a lot less skeptical about than I am now. Homeopathy, I always realized to be a load of pseudoscientific magical thinking. Ditto reiki, therapeutic touch, and other forms of “energy healing.” It didn’t take an extensive review of […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

“To kill and cure cancer, you must first understand it”

Yesterday, I was annoyed by a particularly vile article by quackery promoter supreme Mike Adams claiming that Christina Applegate didn’t need a bilateral mastectomy and could have “cured” herself of cancer with “natural” methods. Indeed, my contempt for Mike Adams knows no bounds, given that he is the purveyor of a seemingly never-ending stream of […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Maybe we should use therapeutic touch instead of growth factors to culture cells

In complaining about the infiltration of pseudoscience in the form of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) into academic medicine, as I have many times, I’ve made the observation that three common modalities appear to function as “gateway woo, if you will, in that they are the tip of the wedge (not unlike the wedge strategy […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Searing stupidity about “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) in Slate

I don’t know who Kent Sepkowitz is other than that he he’s an infectious disease specialist in New York and that he writes for Slate. I also know he’s written about penis enlargement, his dislike of magazines’ “best doctor” lists (a sentiment with which I can agree, actually), and that he has suggested that Americans […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Vitamin C and cancer revisited

It’s been quite a while since I wrote about this topic, but, quite frankly, I didn’t think anything new was likely to come up that would interest me sufficiently to take it on again. I was almost right; it’s been well over two years since the last time I discussed the issue of whether or […]