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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Cancer quack Robert O. Young is arrested and arraigned, but will he be convicted?

Being a cancer surgeon and researcher, naturally I tend to write about cancer a lot more than other areas of medicine and science. It’s what I know best. Also, cancer is a very common area for unscientific practices to insinuate themselves, something that’s been true for a very long time. The ideas don’t change very […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Stanislaw Burzynski’s counteroffensive against the FDA and Texas Medical Board continues

The year 2013 finished with serious setbacks for Stanislaw Burzynski and his unproven cancer treatment that he dubbed “antineoplastons” (ANPs) way back in the early 1970s. As you might recall, in November, two things happened. First, the FDA released its initial reports on its inspection of the Burzynski Clinic and Burzynski Research Institute (BRI) carried […]

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Cancer Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Life is a fatal disease

Believe it or not, even your ever-lovin’ box of colored blinking lights can malfunction, and it happened to me over the weekend. Actually, sometime around New Years, I caught some sort of crud, and have been battling it since. There’s nothing like hacking up a lung and not being able to sleep well for days […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

A fungus among us in oncology? (2014 edition)

One of the more bizarre bits of cancer quackery that I’ve come across is that of an Italian doctor (who, like many cancer quacks, appears not to be a board-certified oncologist) named Tullio Simoncini, who claims that cancer is really a fungus and has even written a book about it, entitled, appropriately enough for this […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

As 2013 draws to a close in the skeptical world…

As I write this, 2013 is drawing to a close, with only a little more than 12 hours to go before the crowds now gathering at Times Square and elsewhere ring in 2014. For some of you, 2014 has already arrived or will arrive many hours before it does for me. I’m not normally one […]