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Cancer Popular culture Surgery

Not exactly “sensible medicine” for Elle Macpherson’s breast cancer

Adam Cifu and Vinay Prasad at Sensible Medicine defend Elle Macpherson’s decision not to undergo chemotherpay for her breast cancer. Too bad they shortchange the quackery in doing so.

Categories
Cancer Medicine Quackery

Google reviews for “alternative cancer clinics”: A marketing tool?

I’ve long been writing about “alternative cancer clinics” (i.e., quack clinics) that sell false hope in the form of very expensive but ineffective treatments to desperate cancer patients. A recent study demonstrates how they use Google to do this.

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Cancer Medicine Quackery

FitScriptâ„¢: Yet more “functional” cancer quackery

Perusing the hellscape that is what Twitter has degenerated into as X, I found an alternative cancer cure testimonial, which led me into “functional health” nonsense that I hadn’t encountered before. Introducing FitScriptâ„¢, “functional” cancer quackery.

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Selling an alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial as an “N-of-1” trial: Integrative medicine’s new propaganda technique?

If there’s one thing that proponents of “integrative medicine” (or, as it’s been called in the past, “complementary and alternative medicine,” or CAM) take great pains to emphasize whenever defending their integration of prescientific and pseudoscientific medicine into medicine, it’s that they do not recommend using “alternative medicine” instead of real medicine but in addition […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Did the experimental cancer drug 3-Bromopyruvate (3-BP) cause the deaths of cancer patients at a German alternative medicine clinic?

I’ve frequently written about various dubious and outright quack clinics in different parts of the word with—shall we say?—somewhat less rigorous laws and regulations than the US. Most commonly, given the proximity to the US, the clinics that have drawn my attention are located in Mexico, most commonly right across the border from San Diego […]