Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine

Steve Jobs, neuroendocrine tumors, and alternative medicine

It’s been a mere two days since Steve Jobs died. Although it hasn’t yet been revealed what his specific cause of death was, it’s a good bet that Jobs’ death was due to a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer, first diagnosed in 2003, for which he underwent surgery in 2004 and ultimately a liver transplant […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine

Cancer overdiagnosis and overtreatment revisited

I think the message may finally getting through. That message is that it’s not always the best strategy to treat cancer aggressively. Don’t get me wrong. If I have acute leukemia, I know I’ll need the big guns, every bit of chemotherapy appropriate to the disease that modern oncology can throw at it up to […]

Categories
Biology Cancer Clinical trials Evolution Medicine Science

The Human Genome Project: Hype meets reality

I’ve had the immense good fortune to have trained and ultimately become a physician-scientist during a time when the pace of discovery and the paradigm changes in science have occurred just over the course of my career in medicine and science has been staggering. microRNA, the shift from single gene studies to genomics, the development […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

Another Hauser goes for “natural” medicine against a deadly disease

Around this time last year, the major topic of this blog was the case of a young teen named Daniel Hauser. In fact, right around this time last year, this particular case was approaching its climax. Hauser, as you may recall, was the 13-year-old Minnesota boy diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who refused chemotherapy. His stated […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Déjà vu all over again

Late last week, a crank I hadn’t heard from in a while showed up in my comments. I’m referring to DaveScot, who normally was known for promoting anti-evolution rhetoric in the service of the pseudoscience known as “intelligent design” creationism. This is what he said: Hi Orac, terrasig suggested you do a followup article on […]

%d