oracknows | December 8, 2010Two women died of breast cancer yesterday. One was named Kim Tinkham. One was named Elizabeth Edwards.
In some ways, these women were similar. True, one was older than the other, but both of them died far sooner than they should have, one at age 53, the other at age 61. Both engaged in activism about breast cancer. Both were ambitious, driven women. Both died in the presence of their friends and family. Both died within hours of each other. Both demonstrated the implacable killer that breast cancer can be.
There the similarities end. One of these women (Kim Tinkham), for example, died…
oracknows | December 7, 2010It's been pointed out to me that it was announced three hours ago on the Caring for Kim Facebook page that Kim Tinkham has passed away. A woman named Dana Ponder announced:
Kim just passed. I was there by her side and it was peaceful. Thank you for all the kind words. I tried to read all the post to her, hoping she heard them all. She was (is) so loved.
From all indications I've been able to find, Kim died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer. And so a quack claims another victim.
And so Oprah Winfrey contributed.
And so a family mourns the loss of a mother, a spouse, a…
oracknows | December 7, 2010I'm still perturbed about yesterday.
I'm still perturbed that a cancer quack was able to convince a woman who had everything to live for that he could cure her of her breast cancer without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. I'm still perturbed at this particular cancer quack's attitude, where he tried to claim that he didn't know the woman who is dying, Kim Tinkham, and imply that her cancer recurred because didn't follow his regimen carefully enough, that she had stopped living the quack's "alkaline diet." I thought of my mother-in-law, who died in 2009 of metastatic breast cancer, and…
oracknows | December 6, 2010In the wake of the revelation that Kim Tinkham is dying of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer to bones, lungs, and liver after having rejected conventional therapy for her disease in favor of Robert O. Young's acid-base woo, Young's response is now (possibly) known. In the comments after part 6 of Young's interview with Kim Tinkham (discussed by me here), a commenter by the 'nym of inhisgrace7 reports:
I wanted to find out for myself the truth so I wrote to Dr. Young and here is his response. Kim has always made her own decisions about cancer. Before I met her she had…
oracknows | December 6, 2010(NOTE: The videos of Robert O. Young's interview with Kim Tinkham have been removed, as I predicted in this post that they would be. Fortunately, I downloaded copies before he managed to do that. Part 6 appears to be still there--for now.)
(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.)
I hate stories like this. I really do. I hate them with a burning passion that makes it hard for me to see straight when I first find out about them. They make me want to grab a shotgun and go looking for the quack responsible. It's a good thing I've never by…
oracknows | December 5, 2010Remember Elyse? She's one of the Skepchicks, and a couple of weeks ago she did a most excellent skeptical thing. She organized a campaign to complain to the theaters that had, according to the anti-vaccine propaganda group SafeMinds and the anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism, accepted the advertisements, which SafeMinds were "framing" to be public service announcements. Her campaign met with considerable success. AMC Theaters, in particular, put the kibosh on the anti-vaccine "PSA." This is not the only time Elyse has been a thorn in the side of the anti-vaccine movement. Back in May…
oracknows | December 3, 2010As a part of a longer post where I was, for the most part, serious albeit sarcastic, I asked one question that I considered a bit of a throwaway joke. Oddly enough, the more I think about it, the more I think that it wasn't such a joke. Here was my question:
Perhaps we could have a contest: Which cranks are most persistent, tobacco/smoking denialists, AGW denialists, anti-vaccine loons, or anti-fluoridation activists?
To which jre responded in the comments:
Fairness requires that we try to round out Orac's list. At a minimum, this must include:
Tobacky / 2nd-hand smoke denialists
Climate…
oracknows | December 2, 2010Every so often I come across something so bizarre that it gives me pause. Yes, even me. Sometimes it takes the form of "research" proposed by various woo-meisters. Chiropractors are notorious for this sort of thing, veterinary chiropractors even more so. Veterinary chiropractors, you ask? Yes, veterinary chiropractors. We're talking chirorpactors who are looking for 400 wiener dogs for a research study:
Wanted
Go to AVCAdoctors.com to find an AVCA certified chiropractor near you to find out if your height challenged companion qualifies.
Predominately Dachshund.
No chiropractic care for the…
oracknows | December 1, 2010No, no, no, no, no!
I hate it when a fellow ScienceBlogger goes astray!
Fortunately, it's been a long time indeed since I felt obligated to administer a dose of Insolence, Respectful or otherwise, to a fellow ScienceBlogger. It's been even longer (as in, I think, never) that I've ever seen one whose resource I use regularly screw up so amazingly. I'm talking about Coby of A Few Things Ill-Considered, whose How To Talk To A Climate Skeptic (also found here) is a resource I turn to again and again and again when faced with denialist arguments about anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, I've…
oracknows | December 1, 2010I don't recall if I ever mentioned this before, but back when I was in college I had quite the interest in a couple of sciences that you might not have expected or guessed at, namely anthropology and archaelogy. Indeed, an archeology class that I took as a senior was one of the most memorable and fascinating classes I took during my entire four years in college. If I have one regret about my college years, it was my laser-like focus on getting into medical school. It was that intense focus that kept me taking far more classes related to chemistry, biology, and other sciences that I thought…
oracknows | November 30, 2010Homeopathy is among the most ridiculous of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine therapies." I realize that I've made this point over and over and over again, but it bears repeating because, no matter how often homeopathy is shown to be utter and complete woo, homeopaths always seem to bounce right back, Gish galloping between the bullets of science in order to repeat the same unsupportable claims, nonsense about the "memory of water," and comparisons of homepathy to vaccines. Another reason that homeopathy is an excellent example to discuss is because--well, let's face it--it's…
oracknows | November 29, 2010Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 begins right here, in the comments of (where else?) the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism, courtesy of commenter Kathy Blanco:
Jeff, believe it or not riply, I think taking mercury out of vaccines, doesn't magically make them safer. It is proven that vaccines can cause the immune system to "trip" into autoimmnity against your own tissues if you have predispositions such as complement pathway problems, glutathione block, methylation quirks, autoimmunity in mothers or infections like XMRV/Lyme etc etc. Case in point, numerous vet manuals which warn of…
oracknows | November 28, 2010Given that I've dedicated my life to treating cancer and researching the biology of cancer, the ultimate goal being to use that knowledge of cancer biology to develop ever more effective treatments directed at the specific molecular derangements that lead to cancer, it's not surprising that I'm very much anti-tobacco. After all, arguably there is no known behavior that causes more cancer-related deaths than smoking tobacco. It's not just lung cancer, either. Smoking causes a wide variety of cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cardiovascular disease, all of which result…
Holiday weekend reader mailbag: In which Orac is chastised for "condemning someone who helps people"
oracknows | November 26, 2010The Thanksgiving holiday weekend continues here in the U.S., and, believe it or not, I plan on taking it fairly easy, hanging out with my wife and (hopefully) going to see the new Harry Potter movie later today or tonight. However, even so, I can't resist doing a bit of holiday mailbag fun, first because it's easy, but more importantly because this time around it's instructive. A new reader, who obviously found this blog through a Google search on something or other writes:
Hello Orac, I stumbled across one of your blog pages and I felt compelled to share my story with you.
Seven years ago I…
oracknows | November 25, 2010It's Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., and, despite the crappy economy, there are still things to be thankful for. For instance, skeptical activism can still be effective. Remember how on Sunday Skepchick Elyse put out the call to Skepchic readers to complain to movie theaters that were reportedly going to be airing a public service announcement from the anti-vaccine group SafeMinds? (Actually, "public service announcement" is a misnomer; it should be called a public disservice announcement.) This was a truly disgusting and deceptive bit of misinformation that I discussed as part of the anti…
oracknows | November 24, 2010If there's one characteristic of denialists of all stripes, it's that they have a strong tendency to personalize their dislike of their particular bete noir science. For instance, anti-vaccine activists tend to attack Paul Offit as though he were the Dark Lord of Vaccination. Creationists tend to attack Charles Darwin (who, being conveniently dead, can't defend himself) and Richard Dawkins (who, being one of the most vocal atheists in the world, makes a convenient target because creationists are almost invariably motivated by religious objections to evolution). Climate change denialists tend…
oracknows | November 24, 2010This just in...
One of my regular readers pointed me to a most excellent comment that appeared on everybody's favorite anti-vaccine propaganda crank blog Age of Autism. After a post discussing a testimonial that allegedly demonstrates that the Gardasil vaccine is dangerous, A commenter named Sarah wrote:
I just want to add another major event that got sidelined last year (I think due to a volcano eruption in Iceland) during the H1N1 fiasco. The airplane crash in Poland that killed the President of Poland, his wife and the entire governing body. The crash was the 70th anniversary of the…
oracknows | November 23, 2010They call it the Nobel disease.
Linus Pauling is the prototypical example. A brilliant chemist who won two Nobel Prizes, one for chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize, in his later years Pauling became convinced that high dose vitamin C was a highly effective treatment for cancer and the common cold and, expanding upon that, came to believe in the quackery that is orthomolecular medicine. As a result, Pauling's reputation was tainted for all time, and he became known more for his crankery than his successes. Since his death, Pauling's successors have continued to chase his dream with minimal…
oracknows | November 22, 2010It figures.
I'm gone for a couple of days, paying little attention to the blogosphere or the Internet, and something big has to happen.
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when in the context of asking how we should respond to the anti-vaccine movement I discussed a recent campaign by the anti-vaccine group SafeMinds to infiltrate theaters with its deceptive anti-vaccine public service announcement (PSA) over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend? Well, it turns out that two of the three biggest American anti-vaccine groups, SafeMinds and Generation Rescue, teamed up to try to raise money to get these…
oracknows | November 22, 2010You may have noticed that there wasn't the usual 3,000 word heapin' helpin' of Insolence this morning. That's because I happened to be away visiting family in Chicago over the weekend and I just didn't have time to come up with anything--and I enjoyed myself too thoroughly to worry overmuch about it. In case you're wondering, the posts that went up over the weekend were either written before I left or so short that they took me five or ten minutes to do.
Sort of like this post.
Unfortunately, this morning I did see something of interest that disappointed me enough that I took a bit of time…