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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Medicine Quackery

Jennifer Margulis: The intersection between antivaccine beliefs and cancer quackery

Antivaccine activist Jennifer Margulis announced last week that she likely has ocular melanoma. She is also seeking “alternative healing,” thus demonstrating how tightly antivax views are intertwined with anti-medicine views.

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Cancer Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

The “Cancer Truther” movement

Denial of the benefits of chemotherapy is very prevalent in “natural health” movements. This denial is based on fear mongering, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories and thus shares many similarities with the antivaccine movement. How can the “chemo truth” spread by “cancer truthers”?

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Cancer Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

NORI protocol: The fruit diet that doesn’t cure cancer

Mark Simon is the founder of the Nutritional Oncology Research Institute. He has neither an MD, DO, nor PhD. (He doesn’t even have an ND!) Yet he claims to have discovered a dietary protocol that can cure cancer. Can it? (I think you know the answer to this question.)

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Biology Cancer Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Does chemotherapy work? Chemotherapy vs. “spreading” cancer.

Earlier this month, cancer quacks everywhere were touting a study that suggests that chemotherapy administered before breast cancer treatment can stimulate the spread of cancer, pointing to it as evidence that chemotherapy doesn’t work and even makes cancer worse. In reality, the study was far more nuanced. It didn’t show that chemotherapy doesn’t work (quite the contrary) but does point to ways we can make chemotherapy more effective.

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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

Chris Wark spins the story of the Amish girl with cancer whose family refuses her chemotherapy

Here we go again. Over the last month or so, I’ve been intermittently writing about a very sad case, a case that reminds me of too many cases that have come before, such as Abraham Cherrix, Kate Wernecke, Daniel Hauser, and Jacob Stieler. All of these are stories of children who were diagnosed with highly […]

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