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Antivaccine nonsense Bioethics Clinical trials

An antivaxxer is creating his own bogus institutional review board (IRB)

James Lyons-Weiler recently announced that his antivax org, Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK), is creating his own IRB. Its real purpose? Most likely to provide cover for unethical antivax studies.

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Retracted papers never die in the age of COVID-19

Last month, a study showed that papers about COVID-19 that are retracted tend to be cited far more than average and continue to be heavily cited after retraction. Clearly, scientific publishing and the scientific community need to do better.

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Clinical trials Medicine Politics Popular culture

The cruel sham that is “right-to-try” will be up for a vote in the House tomorrow

It’s finally happened. A “right-to-try” bill is coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives. It’s been slightly modified from the version that passed the Senate last year to make it less patient-hostile, but it’s still the same cruel sham that right-to-try has always been.

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

A naturopathic cancer quack tries to silence criticism with legal thuggery

Britt Hermes is an ex-naturopath who realized that she had become a quack and had the bravery to quit and study to become a real scientist. Because she is an apostate, the church of naturopathy has a special antipathy reserved for her, which is why a “naturopathic oncologist” named Colleen Huber has engaged in legal thuggery to silence her. Not-a-Dr. Huber has apparently never heard of the Streisand Effect, because a look at her website and her incredibly badly done and incompetent clinical study claiming that her treatments plus eliminating processed sugar results in much better cancer survival would be very embarrassing…to her.

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Bioethics Biology Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Shame! Another front in the libertarian war on the FDA: Rational Vaccines’ unethical offshore herpes vaccine clinical trial

I’ve discussed so-called “right-to-try” laws, which promise to speed experimental drugs to terminally ill patients, but which in reality are about weakening and bypassing the FDA. Now über-Libertarian Peter Thiel is trying a new tactic to bypass the FDA by organizing an offshore clinical trial of a new herpes vaccine based on dubious science and not overseen by an IRB to protect patients. Both right-to-try and this trial are different fronts in the same fundamentalist free market war on FDA regulation.