cancer
Respectful Insolence
Tag archives for cancer
Are mouse “avatars” useful for predicting human response to chemotherapy and targeted agents in cancer?
Posted by Orac on September 28, 2012 From time to time, I tussle with various animal rights activists online. Over the summer, unfortunately the radical animal rights types, those who think that, at the very least, vandalism is perfectly acceptable in the name of their cause, some of whom think that action up to and including murder of scientists could potentially be…
The real way to prevent cancer
Posted by Orac on September 6, 2012 Long, long ago, seemingly in a galaxy far, far away, I first encountered quackery on the Internet. Because I am a cancer surgeon, naturally I gravitated towards cancer quackery at first. Believe it or not, it was quite some time after that before I started to take an interest in what has become a major…
Quackademic medicine versus cancer quackery: The central dogma of alternative medicine is questioned by an advocate of “integrative medicine”
Posted by Orac on August 22, 2012 Since I seem to be on a roll the last few days discussing cancer quackery, I thought I’d just go with it at least one more day. Frequently, when I get on these rolls laying down the Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, over antivaccine quackery I start whining about how I need to change topics,…
Stanislaw Burzynski versus regulations protecting human research subjects
Posted by Orac on August 16, 2012 It’s been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Well, not really, although it has been a while since I’ve discussed Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. Specifically, I last dedicated a post to him following the death of one of his famous patients, Billie Bainbridge, who incidentally had become…
Alternative medicine as religion
Posted by Orac on August 15, 2012 Over the years, I’ve often likened non-science-based medical belief systems to religion. It’s not a hard argument to make. Religion involves believing in things that can’t be proven scientifically; indeed, religion makes a virtue out of ignoring the evidence and accepting various beliefs on faith alone. Similarly, alternative medicine frequently tells you that you have…
Naturopathic cancer treatments versus reality
Posted by Orac on August 14, 2012 Well, I’m back. It’s always a bit weird to try to get back into the swing of things after even just a week off and even when during that week I didn’t actually stop blogging but merely slowed down a lot and succeeded (mostly) in restricting what little blogging I did to brief posts. (Yes,…
Joe Mercola: 15 years of promoting quackery
Posted by Orac on August 3, 2012 Let’s travel back in time fifteen years. It’s a time that, for me, at times seems as though it were just yesterday while at other times it seems like truly ancient history. Back then, certainly, I wasn’t the blogging powerhouse that I am today. I didn’t even know what blogging was because it was so…
New cancer drugs: Fitter, happier, more productive? Or not?
Posted by Orac on July 27, 2012 It’s known as “targeted” therapy, and it’s the holy grail of cancer research these days. If you listen to its most vocal proponents, it’s the path towards “personalized medicine” that improves survival with much lower toxicity, in which, instead of using the hammer that is chemotherapy, precisely targets specific molecular abnormalities that drive cancer growth.…
First it was sheep, and now it’s sharks: A progression of pseudoscience in medicine
Posted by Orac on July 25, 2012 At least half the time, it seems that when I take on a relatively new topic with every intention of just doing one post about it I somehow end up doing more than one post. I don’t know why that is. It just seems to happen. Sometimes, I find something related to but sufficiently different…
Simplistic criticisms of cancer therapy by Dr. Margaret Cuomo
Posted by Orac on June 25, 2012 I wondered how long it would take for someone critical of current cancer care to capitalize on the recently reported health misfortune of a celebrity. The answer, unfortunately, is “not long at all.” I will admit, however, that the source of that use and abuse of the misfortune of a celebrity was not the usual…
Entelev, CanCell, and Cantron: Not curing cancer since the 1930s
Posted by Orac on June 19, 2012 A couple of months ago, a reader sent me an article that really disturbed me. In fact, I had originally been planning to write about it not long after I received it. However, as I’ve mentioned before, when it comes to blogging, I’m a bit like Dug the Talking Dog from the movie Up in…
Steve Jobs, neuroendocrine tumors, and alternative medicine
Posted by Orac on October 7, 2011 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…
Cancer overdiagnosis and overtreatment revisited
Posted by Orac on June 16, 2010 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…
The Human Genome Project: Hype meets reality
Posted by Orac on June 14, 2010 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…
Another Hauser goes for “natural” medicine against a deadly disease
Posted by Orac on May 20, 2010 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…
Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Déjà vu all over again
Posted by Orac on May 17, 2010 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…
Disingenuous responses to straightforward questions
Posted by Orac on May 11, 2010 In yesterday’s post, in which I discussed the President’s Cancer Panel report on environmental toxins and cancer, I criticized one of the reactions to it, specifically that of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), even referencing a truly hilarious Daily Show clip in which Jeff Stier, Associate Director of ACSH didn’t exactly come…
The President’s Cancer Panel steps into it
Posted by Orac on May 10, 2010 I’m a bit of an odd bird in the world of cancer. No, it’s not because I run a snarky skeptical blog that routinely deconstructs the nonsense that alt-med practitioners sprew far and wide, nor is it because I’ve developed a middling level of popularity that shocks me from time to time. Nor is it…
The deadly power of denial
Posted by Orac on May 4, 2010 As I pointed out yesterday before stirring things up a bit, I was up most of the night Sunday night working on a grant (two, actually), and I went full tilt all day yesterday to get it done. Consequently, last night I was in no shape to blog. I chilled. I copied. I picked a…
Compared to Robert O. Young, Andrew Weil looks reasonable
Posted by Orac on April 27, 2010 I never would have thought it possible, but it’s happened. I’m sure most of you have heard of Dr. Andrew Weil, that champion of quackademic medicine who has made it his life’s mission to bring the woo into academia in the form of training programs to “integrate” quackery with science-based medicine. From his home base…
Cancer research: Is now our time?
Posted by Orac on April 21, 2010 The following is a rather curious promotional video that was shown at the plenary sessions of the AACR 2010 meeting. I first saw it yesterday, and thought my readers might be interested in it while I’m winding my way home: It’s basically a compendium of various facts about cancer and cancer research with a rather…
Eat your fruit and veggies?
Posted by Orac on April 8, 2010 Eat your fruits and vegetables. Hasn’t that been a constant refrain over the years from public health authorities? Certainly, I have. The benefits of eating fruits and vegetables have been widely touted, and seemingly with good reason. A diet high in fruits and vegetables, it is said, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.…
Beware, North Carolina. Beware. Dr. Rashid Buttar is free to practice medicine.
Posted by Orac on April 7, 2010 Beware, North Carolina. Beware. Your law has become quack-friendly to the point where doctors can do almost anything. Why, you may reasonably wonder, am I saying this? The answer is what appears to be the end of a long and painful story of cancer quackery and anti-vaccine celebrity that has tainted North Carolina for years…
Mobile phone companies = tobacco companies? More conspiracy mongering over cell phones and cancer
Posted by Orac on March 22, 2010 Here we go again. Every so often, it seems, the media has to recycle certain scare stories based on little or no science. Be it vaccines and whether they cause autism or not (the don’t) or various environmental exposures supposedly linked to various cancers or other diseases in which the science is far more complex…
Andreas Moritz and trying to shut down valid scientific criticism: A sine qua non of a quack
Posted by Orac on February 19, 2010 What is it with cranks and trying to shut down criticism? I know, I know. I’ve written about this before, but this week has been a banner week for a phenomenon that I consider a sine qua non of a crank or a quack, namely an intolerance of criticism. Seemingly, whenever a quack or a…