Medicine
oracknows | June 20, 2013We skeptical bloggers try our best to educate our readers about science and critical thinking, in the process explaining why various forms of pseudoscience, quackery, and cranker are, well, pseudoscience, quackery, and crankery. Unfortunately, even the most heavy duty, high traffic skeptical blogs don't have anywhere near the reach of the mass media, in particular television. Unfortunately, we are awash in credulity in the mass media, compared to which it sometimes feels as though the forces of reason and science are but a rowboat buffeted about by a tsunami of unreason. I saw just such an…
oracknows | June 17, 2013It's been a while since I've written about MMS. You remember MMS, don't you? It's an abbreviation for "miracle mineral solution," a solution first promoted by a man who is inaptly named Jim Humble. Basically, as I've described in multiple blog posts, MMS is bleach, specifically chlorine dioxide (ClO2). I first became acutely aware of it a little more than a year ago, when I noticed that the antivaccine autism biomed quackfest known as Autism One featured a talk by a woman named Kerri Rivera, who advocated using MMS to "bleach autism away," as I put it at the time. Of course, Jim Humble doesn'…
oracknows | June 13, 2013For a long time, going back almost to the beginning of this blog eight and a half years ago, I've referred to the "bait and switch" of alternative medicine. What I mean by that is the manner in which advocates of alternative medicine—or, as they like to call it these days, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, more recently still, "integrative medicine"—co-opt perfectly science-based modalities like diet, nutrition, and exercise as being somehow "alternative." Alternatively, they woo-ify such science-based modalities and then claim them as CAM. Either way, they deceptively give…
denialism | June 12, 2013Why do food writers think they are competent to evaluate the scientific literature? I know of at least two who, based on their tweets, clearly are not. One is Mark Bittman, who we have previously chastised, and now also Michael Pollan who has been a bit more coy about promoting anti-science related to GMO. Now they've both been broadcasting the flimsy results of this paper - A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet - published in the "Journal of Organic Systems". Why do I feel like I'm reading headlines from Climate Depot or…
oracknows | June 7, 2013[NOTE ADDENDUM.]
It's been a (mostly) all Stanislaw Burzynski week. I had been thinking of finishing up with a post about something completely unrelated; that is, until people started sending me a link. Also, because I was out last night with my wife in celebration of our wedding anniversary, I didn't have time for anything that wasn't relatively brief. (Yes, I do realize that "brief" by my standards usually means "under 2,000 words." OK, maybe under 1,500.) So, what the heck? I'll finish the week with one more post and then try to start fresh next week. I need a a break from all things…
oracknows | June 6, 2013It was a busy day yesterday, and I had less time than usual to attend to the blog, but that's OK. This random thought popped into my head after spending the last three days writing about Stanislaw Burzynski, first reviewing Eric Merola's hagiography and infomercial about him, then seeing how well the BBC did in its news series Panorama in covering the patient-endangering phenomenon that is the Burzynski Clinic, and, finally, noting that what Burzynski said about his clinical trials doesn't necessarily jibe with what his SEC filings about his research institute say about them. Looking to move…
oracknows | June 3, 2013After yesterday's epic deconstruction of the latest propaganda-fest from everybody's favorite Leni Riefenstahl without the talent, Eric Merola, on his most admired subject, "brave maverick doctor" Stanislaw Burzynski, I needed something science-based to cleanse the rancid taste of intelligence-insulting nonsense from my mind. Through a quirk of fate that couldn't have worked out better if I had planned it myself, a long-expected investigation of the Burzynski Clinic by the BBC, presented on its venerable news program Panorama. It was entitled, appropriately enough, Cancer: Hope for Sale? Ever…
oracknows | June 2, 2013Well, I've finally seen it, and it was even worse than I had feared. One might even say that watching it was like repeatedly smacking my head into a brick wall. It felt so good when it finally stopped.
I'm referring, of course, to Eric Merola's latest cinematic "effort. Ever since it was revealed that ric Merola's planned to make a sequel to his 2010 propaganda "documentary" about Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski The Movie: Cancer Is Serious Business, whose rank stupidity provided me with copious blogging material, I've finally actually seen the finished product, such as it is. Of course,…
oracknows | May 21, 2013Actions have consequences. No matter how much the person might want to try to hide from the consequences of one's actions, they frequently have a way of coming back, grabbing you by the neck, and letting you know they're there. We see it happening now in the U.K.
Fifteen years ago, British doctor Andrew Wakefield published a case series in The Lancet in which he described gastrointestinal symptoms in 12 autistic children who were treated at the Royal Free Hospital. His conclusion was that he had identified associated gastrointestinal disease and developmental regression in a group of…
oracknows | May 20, 2013Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
OK, I know I use that line entirely too much, but I also don't really care. When something fits, wear it. And if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Sorry, I'll stop. I'm in a weird mood as I write this. But it's really hard not to get into a weird mood after reading the lastest bit by that crank to rule all cranks, that quack who tries to rule all quacks, Mike Adams, founder of NaturalNews.com. Last week, he laid down the vile stupid fast and furious to attack Angelina Jolie's decision to undergo bilateral prophylactic mastectomy. It was hard…
oracknows | May 10, 2013I hate to end the week on a bit of a downer, but sometimes I just have to. At least, it's depressing to anyone who is a proponent of science-based cancer care as the strategy most likely to decrease the death rate from cancer and improve quality of life for cancer patients. Unfortunately, in enough ways to disturb me, oncology is actually going in the exact opposite direction. I'm referring, of course, to the phenomenon of "integrative oncology," a form of quackademic medicine that is proliferating and insinuating itself in academic medical programs like so much kudzu. The concept behind "…
lborkowski | May 6, 2013This week is Public Service Recognition Week, when we celebrate and thank the many public servants who work to make life better for all of us. Here’s more on this year’s Week from the Partnership for Public Service:
Celebrated the first week of May since 1985, Public Service Recognition Week (PSRW) is time set aside to honor the men and women who serve our nation as federal, state, county and local government employees and ensure that our government is the best in the world.
… Our theme for PSRW 2013 is “Why I Serve.” Throughout the week, we will invite agency leaders and elected officials to…
oracknows | May 6, 2013Stem cells are magical, mystical things that can't be explained.
At least, if you listen to what docs and "practitioners" who run stem cell clinics in various parts of the world, usually where regulation is lax and money from First World clientele is much sought after, that's what you could easily come to believe. Unfortunately, it's not just Third World countries in which "stem cell clinics" have proliferated. For instance, they are not nearly uncommon enough in Europe. The example that is most troubling right now is Italy, and the reason is that there is currently a law being considered…
oracknows | April 22, 2013I've written a lot about a doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who claims to have much better outcomes in treating deadly brainstem tumors than conventional oncology does. Although the way he claims to do it is through the use of substances he calls "antineoplastons," which he claimed to have isolate from the urine of patients. Over 35 years after having formed his own clinic and "research institute" to use these compounds to treat cancer and after having had over 60 phase I and phase II clinical trials registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, with none of these completed trials having been published…
lborkowski | April 18, 2013The New Yorker's News Desk blog features an excellent piece by Atul Gawande called "Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready." It's a riveting read about how emergency medical teams, the city's emergency command center, and hospital staff all responded immediately and with admirable coordination to the needs of those injured in the bomb blast at the Boston Marathon:
The explosions took place at 2:50 P.M., twelve seconds apart. Medical personnel manning the runners’ first-aid tent swiftly converted it into a mass-casualty triage unit. Emergency medical teams mobilized en masse from around the city,…
denialism | April 1, 2013Crazy ranting about impending socialism/fascism aside, there are legitimate critiques to be made of Obamacare. One policy in particular that raises my ire is penalizing hospitals over performance metrics and penalizing readmissions in particular. The way it works is, patients are admitted to the hospital, treated, and eventually discharged, but a indicator of failure of adequate care is if that patient then bounces back, and is readmitted shortly after their hospitalization:
Under the new federal regulations, hospitals face hefty penalties for readmitting patients they have already treated…
oracknows | April 1, 2013I got a bit behind on my work yesterday, so I'll be brief. Yesterday, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) announced its annual Pigasus Awards. Sadly, each and every year, there are far more "deserving" candidates than there are awards to give. However, this year marks something awesome, namely the first time the prize has been awarded to someone who has become such a major focus of this blog over the last year and a half. We're talking Stanislaw Burzynski, who's for the first time won an award that he actually richly deserves:
The Pigasus Award in the Scientist Category goes to…
oracknows | March 27, 2013When I wrote about the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) trial last week, little did I suspect that I would be revisiting the topic again so soon. For those of you not familiar with TACT, it was a trial designed to test a favorite quack treatment for cardiovascular disease, chelation therapy. It is, as I have described many times in the past, an incredibly implausible therapy based on a hugely simplistic concept that because calcium accumulates in atherosclerotic lesions, then using chelation therapy could remove the calcium and reduce the lesions. Chelation therapy is a favorite…
oracknows | March 27, 2013It's been a while since I've written about Brian Berman. We first met him when he somehow managed to insinuate a "case report" of chronic low back pain into The New England Journal of Medicine in which he recommended acupuncture for this patient. Dr. Berman also happens to be a founder of quackademic medicine on par with Andrew Weil. True, he's not as famous to a lay audience as Weil is, but his influence on quackademic medicine over the last couple of decades has been enormous. It's not for nothing that David Freedman picked Berman as the main subject of his pro-"integrative medicine"…
oracknows | March 26, 2013Here we go again.
Every time I think I can get away from this topic for a while, I get sucked back in. Indeed, it seems that hardly a week can go by when I don't find myself pulled inexorably back to this horrible, horrible clinic and what I consider to be the abuses of science and clinical trials that go on there on a daily basis. Whether it be the patients who are offered false hope at the cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of a chemotherapeutic drug known as antineoplastons that, contrary to what it is claimed, is not "non-toxic," "natural," or even particularly…