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Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine Politics Science

The cruel sham that is “right to try” continues to spread

Last year, I did several posts on what I consider to be a profoundly misguided and potentially harmful type of law known as “right-to-try.” Beginning about a year and a half ago, promoted by the libertarian think tank known as the Goldwater Institute, right-to-try laws began popping up in state legislatures. I wrote about how […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery Science

R.I.P., McKenzie Lowe. Stanislaw Burzynski failed you.

R.I.P., McKenzie Lowe. Unfortunately, Stanislaw Burzynski was no more able to save you than anyone else, his claims of great success treating pediatric brain tumors notwithstanding: HUDSON — Thirteen-year-old Hudson resident McKenzie Lowe died Friday evening after a 2-year-battle against an aggressive and inoperable brain stem tumor. McKenzie died at 10:27 p.m. in her own […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Ebola, "right-to-try," and placebo legislation

One of the biggest medical conspiracy theories for a long time has been that there exist out there all sorts of fantastic cures for cancer and other deadly diseases but you can’t have them because (1) “they” don’t want you to know about them (as I like to call it, the Kevin Trudeau approach) and/or […]

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Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Do negative clinical trials change practice?

One of the central themes of this blog from the very beginning is that all medicine, regardless of where it comes from or how it was developed, should be held to a single science-based standard with regards to efficacy, effectiveness, and safety. I tend to focus primarily on “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Clinical trials of magic

I’ll partially apologize here. The reason is that I said I’d be back to business dishing out the Insolence as usual, be it in the form of my usual 2,000 word gems, or slightly shorter, or a lot longer. However, fate intervened. First, there were new developments in the Frank Arguello threat machine. Go back […]