In rapid succession after the last pontificating and bloviating article claiming that there will never be a cure for cancer because it would be too financially disastrous to the medical economy, I've been made aware of another pontificating and bloviating article decrying the state of cancer research today, entitled Curing Cancer: Running on Vapor, Remedy: More Brainpower, Less Hype, by George L. Gabor Miklos, Ph.D. and Phillip J. Baird, M.D., Ph.D. On first glance, it looks like a bold proposal for a necessary change of direction in our cancer research effort. Sadly, it doesn't deliver on…

This one's been going around the medical blogosphere. It's pretty hilarious, based as it is on perhaps the funniest Saturday Night Live Digital Short from the entire 2006-2007 season (warning: may not be work-safe, depending on how uptight your workplace is): Kids these days. I tell you. I don't think we could have gotten away with this in our medical school's end-of-the-year play back in the 1980s.

It's a simple question that we as medical professionals often have to ask, but one that is a minefield when it comes to answers. To take a cue from our former President, I suppose it depends on what the meaning of the word "active" is.

Readers who don't like me might think that the title of this post refers to what I am about to write. I know, the title perfectly encapsulates the verbose style that is my stock and trade. In reality, though, it's referring to a couple of articles floating around the blogosphere of which I've become aware and about which I've been meaning discuss because of their similarities. One is a pretty worthless piece of conspiracy-mongering; the other, although it makes some appropriate criticisms of how we go about cancer research, comes to a wildly incorrect conclusion about what we should be doing…

I know this one's been circulating around the Internet for a while now, but it's so perfect that I can't resist posting it here. Pure genius, particularly the paper upon which the above talk was based!

You know our tort system is messed up when stuff like this can happen: (AP) The Chungs, immigrants from South Korea, realized their American dream when they opened their dry-cleaning business seven years ago in the nation's capital. For the past two years, however, they've been dealing with the nightmare of litigation: a $65 million lawsuit over a pair of missing pants. Jin Nam Chung, Ki Chung and their son, Soo Chung, are so disheartened that they're considering moving back to Seoul, said their attorney, Chris Manning, who spoke on their behalf. "They're out a lot of money, but more…

Our intrepid mascot has been revealing sides of himself this year of which I had previously been unaware. After all, who knew he was so into art that he'd pose nude without embarrassment? Or that he was a Shakespearean actor? Or that he has a way with the ladies? Maybe it's because he's so suave and debonair, as we see this month: I ask again: What's he got that I haven't got? Is it the tux? Is it--gasp!--the appliance on top of his head. Best not to go there.

If you ever wonder about the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in separating church and state in the Constitution and banning the imposition of a state religion, just look to this story from Malaysia for the sorts of things that can happen when a nation is governed according to religious law: A Muslim woman forcibly separated from her Hindu husband by Malaysia's Islamic authorities after 21 years of happy marriage wept inconsolably yesterday after a judge endorsed her decision to hand custody of six of her seven children to her former spouse. In an unprecedented move for Malaysia - where Islamic…

This one will probably not mean much to those who don't have a Detroit connection (such as, like me, having been born there and spent the first 26 years of my life in southeast Michigan), and it will probably mean nothing at all to my cadre of international readers, but it saddens me nonetheless to have discovered this bit of news via my sister. Lawson Deming, the man who played Sir Graves Ghastly for so many years, died on April 24, just one day after his 94th birthday. For Detroiters of a certain age, who grew up from the 1960's to the early 1980's, Saturday at 1 PM was the time that the…

One day at a time...Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii Tasmanian devils are suddenly on the verge of total extinction, due to a mysterious facial cancer that is spreading rapidly through their population. Since the first sick animal's discovery, eleven years ago, the cancer has swept through Tasmania like a plague, sometimes killing every single Tasmanian devil in an area within 18 months of its arrival. "Once they've got a lump, it's a one way trip," says Menna Jones, an expert on Tasmanian Devils at the University of Tasmania. Not only does the cancer cause the host to die, but it also…

Unite, that is, behind the Infophile, who's scheduled to host the 60th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle next Thursday, May 10. You have until Wednesday night to enter examples of your best skeptical blogging to the carnival. Don't let the side down! And, as usual, I'm always looking for hosts. If you--yes, you!--think you have what it takes to host, or at least are a Randi wannabe, check out the Skeptics' Circle guidelines and schedule, as well as the guidelines for hosting, and then drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.com, and I'll work you into the schedule.

Everybody (well, mostly everybody) learns in science and physics class the Three Laws of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, meaning that the increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done by the system on the surroundings. The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant. These three laws pretty much describe the…

You may remember how, almost in passing as part of a longer post, I mentioned how much cranks can't stand critics of theirs who write under a pseudonym and try to out them at every opportunity. Indeed, one of the biggest cranks of all, J.B. Handley, the man whose mantra used to be that autism is nothing more than a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning but who is now backpedaling furiously to blame "live viruses" and "toxic loads," tried to do just that the other day in the comments of this post (as if I'd let that happen on my own blog). Not all outing is always bad. Kevin Leitch, in fact, has…

It figures. What does a guy like Jim McGreevey, former Governor of New Jersey who resigned in disgrace nearly three years ago when it was revealed that he had cheated on his wife with a man and that he had tried to appoint his boy-toy to a government position for which he was utterly unqualified (Homeland Security Advisor) and for which he couldn't get the necessary security clearance because he is not a U.S. citizen, do next? Well, if it's New Jersey, he could teach ethics. But if that's unsatisfying, there's always one other thing he could do. He could enter the seminary and become an…

If there's one undeniable aspect of "intelligent design" creationism advocates, it is their ability to twist and misrepresent science and any discussions of evolution to their own ends. Be it Dr. Michael Egnor's twisting of history to claim that eugenics is based on Darwinism, rather than the artificial selection (or, as we snarky ones like to call it, intelligent design), claims that "Darwinism" is a tautology and irrelevant to the question of antimicrobial resistance, or blaming evolution for atheism, the decline of Western mores, and, if you believe the ID advocates, bad breath, key to the…

Dr. Steven Novella, an academic neurologist, President of the New England Skeptical Society, and organizer of what's become my favorite skeptical podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, took the time to weigh in on the Nature Neuroscience article that I discussed the other day and that engendered dozens of comments, as posts about antivaccination irrationality tend to do around here. Besides my being interested in what a neurologist has to say about these issues, the reason that I want to bring your attention to his article is because he issues a clarion call to arms for those who…

It's time once again for Change of Shift, the nursing blog carnival. This time, it's being hosted at Emergiblog. Check it out.

Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea have begun to cannibalize one another according to a recent study in the online publication Polar Biology. The polar bears' main food source in the area, ringed seals, are accessible only across ice shelves. Global climate change has melted these shelves, cutting off the bears from their food and forcing them to turn on one another.What would you do for a Klondike Bar? Polar bears often kill their own kind as a form of population control, territorial dominance and reproductive advantages, but killing each other for food had rarely been witnessed…

One amusing little tidbit that came out of my recent post about how the mercury militia tries to intimidate scientists who are willing to speak out against the antivaccination wingnuttery is that the Generation Rescue website, home of J. B. Handley and his merry band of mercury militia chelation junkies, has undergone a makeover. Gone is the dogmatic site that proclaimed that autism and autism spectrum disorders are all "misdiagnoses" for mercury poisoning. Here now is a kinder, gentler Generation Rescue site, although it's still chock full of the same looniness that you've come to expect…

I had come across a rather amusing mea culpa by GruntDoc in which, while discussing an amazingly inappropriate notice regarding guidelines for emergency room chiropractic reimbursement, he admits to having in the past referred our best and bravest to chiropractors. I can understand why he did it, given the circumstances he described. However, what bothered me was this statement: In my six-plus years of being on-call in the hospital emergency department (ED), I have seen numerous ED physicians gain familiarity with the indications for chiropractic consultation. I have enjoyed seeing the…