November 6, 2013
People who follow the antivaccine movement might remember that around this time last year, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), a particularly antiscience legislator who appears to be trying to take up the antivaccine mantle left behind when Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) retired at the end of the last…
November 6, 2013
Like many cases of children with cancer whose parents tried to deny them curative therapy in the past that I've written about, I've become intensely interested in the case of 10-year-old Amish girl with lymphoblastic lymphoma. Her name is Sarah Hershberg, and, in a rare instance of the state…
November 5, 2013
This one's too brief to be worth a full Orac-ian deconstruction, but it's so juicy that I can't resist mentioning. Regular readers know that Mike Adams, the all-purpose crank who founded NaturalNews.com, is a frequent target topic on this blog. The reason is obvious. Whether it be his support of…
November 4, 2013
It occurs to me that things have been perhaps overly serious here at the ol' blog for the last couple of weeks. Don't get me wrong. I think I done good lately, if I do say so myself. However, the constant drumbeat of quackery and depressing stories takes its toll after a while. I need a break.
And…
November 3, 2013
Here we go again.
Over the last month or so, I've been intermittently writing about a very sad case, a case that reminds me of too many cases that have come before, such as Abraham Cherrix, Kate Wernecke, Daniel Hauser, and Jacob Stieler. All of these are stories of children who were diagnosed with…
November 1, 2013
There's been a post over at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism that I had meant to address when it first broke its head through the surface of the stupid to spew more stupid. Fortunately, nothing much was going on in the blogosphere that compelled me; so this was a good time to revisit the…
October 30, 2013
Having just discussed yesterday the demonization of chemotherapy and how bad its side effects can be, I was thinking last night that it was time to move on, that I had gotten stuck in rut writing too many cancer-related posts in a row. Then, as so often happens, I came across something that so…
October 30, 2013
If there's one medical treatment that proponents of "alternative medicine" love to hate, it's chemotherapy. Rants against "poisoning" are a regular staple on "alternative health" websites, usually coupled with insinuations or outright accusations that the only reason oncologists administer…
October 28, 2013
Yesterday's post about Sarah Hershberger, the Amish girl from northeast Ohio with lymphoblastic lymphoma who refused chemotherapy, prompting a court battle that led to the appointment of a medical guardian for her to make sure she receives treatment, got me to thinking (always a dangerous thing).…
October 27, 2013
A couple of weeks ago, I commented on the story of 10 year old Amish girl in northeast Ohio with cancer whose parents, alarmed by the side effects of chemotherapy, had decided to stop the chemotherapy and treat their daughter with folk medicine instead. As a result, alarmed at the likelihood that…
October 26, 2013
The other day, I wrote about how the George Washington University School of Public Health screwed up big time (there's really no other way to put it that doesn't involve liberal use of the f-bomb) by allowing vaccine-autism quack Mark Geier to assist a graduate student in epidemiology (who shall…
October 25, 2013
Most, if not virtually all, of what is now referred to as "traditional Chinese medicine" is quackery. I realize that it's considered "intolerant" and not politically correct to say that in these days of "integrative medicine" departments infiltrating academic medical centers like so much kudzu…
October 24, 2013
NOTE: There is a followup to this post here.
Last night, I had a function related to my department to attend, which means that I didn't get home until after 9 PM. However, two blog posts have come to my attention that demand a response from me because they involve an old "friend" of the blog. This…
October 23, 2013
One of the things that I've noticed over the last (nearly) nine years blogging about pseudocience, quackery, and conspiracy theories is that a person who believes in one form of woo has a tendency to believe in other forms of woo. You've probably noticed it too. I've lost count of the examples that…
October 21, 2013
I was doing my usual browsing of the web yesterday in search of topics for today's post when I came across an excellent article by a colleague and friend of mine, Dr. Rachael Dunlop, who nailed it in a post entitled Anti-vaccination activists should not be given a say in the media. In the article,…
October 20, 2013
Blogging is a rather immediate endeavor. Over the last nine years (nearly), I've lost track of how many times I saw something that I wanted to blog about but but by the time I got around to it was no longer topical. Usually what happens is that my Dug the Dog tendencies take over, as I'm distracted…
October 17, 2013
Over the years, I've not infrequently noted that there is a serious disconnect between what most people would think of as "natural" and what is considered "natural" in the world of "complementary and alternative medicine," or, as I like to call it, CAMworld. I started thinking about this again…
October 16, 2013
This being Breast Cancer Awareness Month and all, stories about breast cancer are frequently sent my way. This one is depressing and sad, mainly because it's the story of death from breast cancer. From what I can gather, it is the story of a death from quackery, a death that didn't have to occur.…
October 15, 2013
As I mentioned yesterday, one of the things I do on this blog that I consider to be a public service is to analyze cancer cure testimonials that are used to sell alternative medicine. Indeed, I did just that yesterday for a testimonial by someone Chris Wark, who will probably feature again one more…
October 14, 2013
I like to think that one of the more important public services I provide is my deconstructions of alternative cancer cure testimonials. After all, one of the most powerful marketing tools cancer quacks have in their arsenal is a collection of stories of "real patients" with cancer who used their…
October 13, 2013
If there's one thing that the antivaccine fringe wants above all else, it's legitimacy. They crave it almost above all else. They want to be taken seriously from a scientific standpoint. Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is that to be taken seriously from a scientific standpoint you really…
October 11, 2013
One type of story that I've fairly frequently commented upon since the very beginning of this blog is the story of children or teens with cancer whose parents decide to pursue quackery instead of effective therapy or children with other serious diseases whose parents reject effective therapy for…
October 9, 2013
Here we go with another one.
Three weeks ago, I mentioned in a post that the week of October 7 to 14 was declared by our very own United States Senate to be Naturopathic Medicine Week, which I declared unilaterally through my power as managing editor of Science-Based Medicine (for what that's worth…
October 8, 2013
I realize I've been remiss. After all, three or four weeks ago, I pointed out that the week of October 7 to 14, this very week, was going to be Quackery Week. Well, it wasn't actually I who first declared this week quackery week. It was actually our very own U.s. Senate, which, as I pointed out,…
October 7, 2013
When it comes to Twitter, I run hot and cold. I'll frequently go weeks when I barely touch my Twitter account, and nothing gets posted there except automatic Tweets linking to my new posts. Then something will happen, and suddenly I'll post 20 Tweets in a day. Rinse, lather, repeat. I guess I'm…
October 6, 2013
For some reason, I can't seem to escape Chicken McNuggets. About a month ago, I expressed my complete amusement over an "investigation" of Chicken McNuggets done by everyone's favorite crank and quackery promoter, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com. I'm tellin' ya, it…
October 4, 2013
No matter how much I try, it seems that I can't escape blogging about Stanislaw Burzynski. Regular readers here are familiar with Dr. Burzynski, the "maverick" cancer doctor (he's not an oncologist) who claims that peptides he's isolated from urine and now synthesizes in his lab and manufacturing…
October 3, 2013
Ever since I first started writing about antivaccine conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself) back in 2005, it's always been assumed by many who combat this particularly pernicious and dangerous form of quackery that antivaccine views tend to be more predominant on the political left compared to…
October 2, 2013
Things have been a bit too serious around here lately. After all, yesterday I wrote about obesity and chemotherapy, while the day before that I did an even lengthier than usual deconstruction of some claims by anti-Obamacare activists, which seemed particularly appropriate to me given that a group…
October 1, 2013
In medicine, particularly oncology, it's often the little things that matter. Sometimes, however, the "little things" aren't actually little; they just seem that way. I was reminded of this by a story that was circulating a couple of weeks ago in the national media, often under titles like “Obese…