oracknows | March 28, 2007It's been a week since I last wrote about dichloroacetate (DCA), the chemotherapeutic agent that targets tumor cells by an interesting new mechanism based on the Warburg effect, as I've described in the past. After a very interesting article in Cancer Cell in January by investigators at the University of Alberta, the blogosphere erupted with wild speculation that this was a "cure" for cancer, based only on animal studies that were fairly impressive. Because DCA is a small molecule that is supposedly "unpatentable," pharmaceutical companies have been rather cool in their interest, and it is…
oracknows | March 28, 2007It's been a bad few days.
A mere four days after Elizabeth Edwards announced that her breast cancer had recurred in her rib, with an update the other day saying that the apparently was also another lesion in in her hip, I learn from a commenter and multiple other sources that White House Press Secretary Tony Snow has suffered a recurrence of his colon cancer. Apparently, it has spread to the liver:
CBS/AP) Presidential spokesman Tony Snow's cancer has returned and spread to his liver and elsewhere in his body, shaken White House colleagues announced Tuesday. They said he told them he planned…
oracknows | March 27, 2007I've lamented time and time again how woo has been infiltrating American medical schools, even going so far as to find its way into being totally integrated into mandatory curriculum from the very first term of the first year of medical school at Georgetown. I realize I'm a bit late on this one, but sadly it's not just the U.S. where pseudoscience, anti-science, and woo are infiltrating universities. In the U.K., it's starting too:
Over the past decade, several British universities have started offering bachelor of science (BSc) degrees in alternative medicine, including six that offer BSc…
oracknows | March 27, 2007Really, this guy is making that very argument with a straight face!
My brain hurts after seeing such unbelievable stupidity presented as a viable argument by Chuck Missler, the minister who founded the Koinonia House. This makes Dr. Egnor's blather seem intelligent by comparison. It's even more idiotic than the now-infamous video that claimed that the banana disproves atheism and evolution:
(Hat tip to: Stupid Evil Bastard.)
oracknows | March 27, 2007I realize that being in academic medicine at a tertiary care center often produces the "ivory tower" syndrome, but occasionally it is brought home to me that the way we practice surgery here often differs considerably from how surgery is practiced "in the trenches." This time around, it was a study about how often surgeons referred women whose breast cancers are large enough to require a mastectomy to treat to plastic surgeons for a discussion of reconstruction options prior to the mastectomy. The answer was: Not nearly often enough. See for yourself:
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Forty-four percent of…
oracknows | March 26, 2007The latest Pediatric Grand Rounds has been posted at Musings of a Distractible Mind, delivered in Tom and Jerry style.
Gee, obviously, Dr. Rob isn't aware that Tom and Jerry are a nefarious Jewish plot to corrupt Muslim youth. After all, an Iranian "expert" tells us this is so.
oracknows | March 26, 2007Ever since arch Holocaust denier David Irving was released from prison in Austria after being convicted of denying the Holocaust, I've been wondering how long it would take for him to reveal his true stripes and be up to his old tricks again.
The answer, not surprisingly, was: Not long. Witness this story:
ROME -- British historian David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for questioning the Holocaust, visited the Auschwitz death camp and renewed his claim that there was no proof it had gas chambers during an Italian TV program aired Friday.
In the Sky TG24 documentary program "Controcorrente…
oracknows | March 26, 2007There hasn't been much news in the last two or three months about Abraham Cherrix, the 16-year-old with Hodgkin's lymphoma who rejected conventional chemotherapy, first in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy and then for the ministrations of a radiation oncologist in Mississippi named Dr. Arnold Smith, who combines non-woo (low dose radiation therapy) with woo (a form of "immunotherapy" involving "belly plaques" that has no evidence showing efficacy, not "more innovative techniques, such as immunotherapy, which uses medications and supplements to boost the immune system," as the…
oracknows | March 25, 2007In case you wondered, yes, ScienceBlogs is just a big cabal, and, as evidence, I present the following photo from a week and a half ago, when I managed to meet, drink, and conspire to take over the science blogosphere at the Toledo Lounge in Washington, D.C. with Tara Smith of Aetiology, Evil Monkey of Neurotopia, and Chris Mooney of The Intersection. The locale was appropriate enough, given Tara's and my Toledo connection, and a good time was had by all.
Does Orac normally look like that? Well, remember, around this time, Dr. Egnor was at the height of his foray into making still more…
oracknows | March 25, 2007Worst visual pun ever below the fold?
You be the judge:
I pity the fool who doesn't think that's funny!
(Hat tip: The Daily Weird)
oracknows | March 25, 2007Having been born in Detroit and raised both in the city and one of its suburbs, news like this distresses me:
DETROIT (Reuters) - With bidding stalled on some of the least desirable residences in Detroit's collapsing housing market, even the fast-talking auctioneer was feeling the stress.
"Folks, the ground underneath the house goes with it. You do know that, right?" he offered.
After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: "The lumber in the house is worth more than that!"
As Detroit reels…
oracknows | March 25, 2007You be the judge...
Personally, I don't know if I could trust anyone that much.
(Hat tip: Attuworld.)
oracknows | March 24, 2007Time flies, and it flies really fast. Once again, that blog carnival of lucid critical thinking, the Skeptics' Circle, is almost upon us. It's scheduled to appear on Thursday, March 29 at the blog of fellow ScienceBlogger Martin at Aardvarchaelogy. Martin hosted the Circle a while back, before he joined the ScienceBlogs collective, and did a fine job. So, if you're a blogger with an interest in skepticism and critical thinking, send Martin your best work by Wednesday, and then come back here on Thursday to enjoy the fruit of his (and your) labors!
Finally, as always, if you think you have…
oracknows | March 24, 2007Here's wishing a belated blogiversary to Holocaust Controversies! On its first blogiversary, Nick has posted a cautiously optimistic analysis on the reason why Holocaust denial is losing its potency and increasingly being abandoned, even by the far right, as the completely ludicrous lie that it is.
I have no illusions that Holocaust denial is going away any time soon, but it does seem to have lost some of its influence, and here's hoping that, as long as deniers spew their lies, Sergey, Nick, and Andrew over at Holocaust Controversies and organizations like The Holocaust History Project will…
oracknows | March 24, 2007Regular readers will know my opinion of Reiki or "energy healing." No need to rehash it here, at least not at the moment. But if you're a believer and looking for a Reiki practitioner, Reiki Blogger has some suggestions for you of things that "are NOT OK" in a first Reiki session:
I recently read what I can only say was a very disturbing account of a persons first ever reiki session. The person went along to a "friends" husband who was, as well as a reiki person, a medical doctor.
Now, you would expect to be reasonably confident to follow this persons instructions. Well, think again. He asked…
oracknows | March 23, 2007It's been another eventful week on the ol' blog, staring out with a post on despereate cancer patients self-experimenting with dichloroacetate, continuing on to do another fisking of the anti-evolution neurosurgeon and discussing real individualization of treatments, provided a little basic cancer biology, and ended up with some of the first straight medblogging that I've done in a long time. And then things finished up with the depressing news that Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer has recurred in her rib and possibly in her lung. Things have somehow gotten a bit too serious around here, even…
oracknows | March 22, 2007As odd as it seems, my timing in posting about removing chemotherapy ports yesterday was eerily coincidental.
I've alluded to this before, but I'm most definitely not a big fan of John Edwards and would never vote for him for President. That being said, I can't help but feel for him and, even more so, his wife Elizabeth, given their announcement today that Elizabeth's breast cancer has recurred (see here as well), with a biopsy proving that it has metastasized to a rib. Neither she nor he nor their family deserve this, nor does any patient with cancer. I've gotten a few e-mails asking what…
oracknows | March 22, 2007I've been remiss about this (mainly because I've been aware of it for a few days now), but it turns out that Mark and Chris Hoofnagle have started a rather promising-looking blog, Denialism.com. It's a blog dedicated to discussing six main areas:
HIV/AIDS Denialism
Global Warming denialism
Creationism/Intelligent Design Denialism
Holocaust Denial
Anti-Vaccination denialists
Animal testing denialists
Hmmm. Looks like they're muscling in on my territory a bit, although I seldom write about global warming for the simple reason that I don't know as much about it as I know about other topics.
Oh,…
oracknows | March 22, 2007I just heard on the radio last night while driving home what has to be one of the worst analogy about global warming that I've ever heard, and, at the risk of annoying fellow SB'ers who frequently write about these topics, like Chris Mooney or Tim Lambert, I felt like commenting.
Oddly enough, the soundbite came from Al Gore, of all people, the last person I would expect to make such a flawed analogy:
The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told…