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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Farrah Fawcett turns to alternative medicine for anal cancer

I’ve had this story sent to me by a few readers over the weekend, and I think it’s worth a brief comment. I’m basically a child of the 1970s. Although I didn’t watch it much, if ever, I remember Charlie’s Angels when I was in junior high and high school. Like any adolescent who came […]

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Humor Medicine Science

The IgNobels winners have been announced

Ah, yes, it’s that time of year again. The winners of the 2007 IgNobel Prize have been announced. There have been several “worthy” winners, for example: Mayu Yamamoto from Japan won the Ig Nobel prize in chemistry for her development of a novel way to extract vanillin, the main component in vanilla bean extract, from […]

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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 […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Religion

Jesus is growing her a new leg! Or is he?

One of the best retorts to the claims of faith healers is the simple question: If faith healing works such miracles, why has there never been a documented case of faith healing regrowing an amputated limb? Now that would be truly miraculous. That would make even a curmudgeonly old skeptic like me sit up an […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

A bad day for antivaccinationists: Yet another study fails to support an association between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders

I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for the mercury militia. Think about it. They’ve been claiming for the past several years that the mercury in the thimerosal used as a preservative in childhood vaccines is a cause of autism. If you believe Generation Rescue, A-CHAMP, SAFEMINDS, and various other activist groups, vaccines are the root […]