BRCA1
oracknows | April 3, 2015Why, oh why, did I look at GreenMedInfo again?
You remember GreenMedInfo? It's yet another wretched hive of scum and quackery, but with a twist. Its proprietor, Sayer Ji, thinks he's an expert at interpreting the biomedical literature. Unfortunately, as he demonstrates time and time again with depressing regularity, he is nothing of the sort. In reality, what Ji is an expert at is cherry picking medical studies and torturing them until they confess agreement with whatever quack idea he's currently espousing. In the wake of the news coverage of Angelina Jolie's decision to have her ovaries…
oracknows | March 26, 2015I happen to be in Houston right now attending the Society of Surgical Oncology annual meeting. Sadly, I'm only about 12 miles away from the lair of everybody's favorite faux clinical researcher and purveyor of a cancer cure that isn't, Stanislaw Burzynski. Such is life. In any case, this conference is all about cancer and how we treat it surgically. That includes prophylactic surgery designed to prevent cancer in people at very high risk. Prophylactic surgery to prevent cancer is never a decision that should be undertaken lightly and almost never is, rants from quacks notwithstanding that…
oracknows | May 15, 2013After yesterday, I really hadn't planned on writing about Angelina Jolie and her decision to undergo bilateral mastectomies again, except perhaps as a more serious piece next week on my not-so-super-secret other blog where The Name of the Doctor is revealed on a weekly basis. As I mentioned yesterday, there are a number of issues about the decision that could use my professional attention, from the process, to the evidence, to the issue of how the surgery was handled. Oh, and if I do decide to do that I'm sure I won't be able to resist a mention of some of the quackery that oozed out from…
rskloot | November 2, 2009
Some interesting news about the breast cancer patent lawsuit I wrote about for Slate's Double X Magazine a few months ago: A federal district court has just agreed to hear the case. When the lawsuit was first filed, many legal experts I talked to said they were sure the case would get thrown out of court for it's unusual approach, namely that it claims that the practice of patenting genes is unconstitutional See my story about the case here. Filings and other documents related to the case available here. And see below for the full press release about today's news:
Court Upholds Right…
rskloot | May 15, 2009
Earlier this week, the American Civil Liberties Union and several other groups filed suit against Myriad Genetics -- the company that holds the patent on the breast cancer gene. They're hoping to get the breast cancer gene patent revoked, but more than that, they're aiming to stop gene patenting all together.
Today, in my new column in Slate's Double X Magazine, I go into the story of the breast cancer gene and the impact the ACLU claims it's had on science and patient care (a hint: it's not good). I also look at the suit itself, the cases that have come before this one, and what they say…