cancer
oracknows | May 6, 2013Stem cells are magical, mystical things that can't be explained.
At least, if you listen to what docs and "practitioners" who run stem cell clinics in various parts of the world, usually where regulation is lax and money from First World clientele is much sought after, that's what you could easily come to believe. Unfortunately, it's not just Third World countries in which "stem cell clinics" have proliferated. For instance, they are not nearly uncommon enough in Europe. The example that is most troubling right now is Italy, and the reason is that there is currently a law being considered…
oracknows | April 29, 2013So now we know.
Back when it was announced that the second Burzynski movie by Eric Merola would be screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival on April 27, Merola announced that there would be a "special celebrity guest." Those of us who have been following Burzynski for a while scratched our heads, not knowing who it could likely be. We considered and rejected multiple possibilities: Suzanne Somers, Ralph Moss, and many others. Well, now we know who would be giving the celebrity endorsement for the Burzynski Clinic, and, no, it's not Josh Duhamel.
It's Fabio Lanzoni:
Yes, that Fabio. The…
tsmith | April 26, 2013It's time for this year's second installment of student guest posts for my class on infectious causes of chronic disease. Fourth one this round is by Kristen Coleman.
If you are anything like me, you have been told countless reasons over the years why we must watch what we eat, keep our cholesterol intake down, and try to work out. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise then that I, since I am a public health student after all, aim to convince you of yet another reason why a healthy diet and exercise are valuable. What is this huge reason to avoid Big Macs and think about taking the stairs…
lborkowski | April 26, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Another day, another study that shows investing in public health interventions can make a serious dent in health care spending.
A new study recently published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that banning smoking in all U.S. subsidized housing could yield cost savings of about $521 million every year. That total includes $341 million in secondhand smoke-related health care expenditures, $108 million in renovation expenses and $72 million in smoking-attributable fire losses. In fact, just prohibiting smoking in public housing alone would result in a savings…
oracknows | April 26, 2013A long, long time ago in a ScienceBlogs far, far away (well, it seems that way anyway, given the halcyon times back then before Pepsigate), Mark Hoofnagle coined the term "crank magnetism." It was a fantastic term used to describe how susceptibility to one form of quackery, pseudoscience, or just plain crankery tended to be associated with other forms of quackery, pseudoscience, or crankery. It explains why so many creationists tend to be into quackery and/or antivaccinationism, why so many 9/11 Truthers also tend to flirt with Holocaust denial or anthropogenic global warming denialists go…
milhayser | April 25, 2013On ERV, Abbie Smith reports on the phenomenal success of the HPV vaccine in Australia. The vaccine, designed to protect against several types of sexually-transmitted papillomavirus, was first administered to Aussie girls in 2007. Since then, total prevalence of the virus among young women has dropped from 11.5% to less than 1%—and to 0% among girls who actually got the vaccine. These girls are also protecting their partners and reducing overall circulation of HPV; infections among young men, who were not even vaccinated, dropped from 12.1 to 2.2 percent. Abbie calls this a "blatant,…
oracknows | April 24, 2013I've written about naturopathy many times before. The reasons that it interests me are several. First, it amazes me how anyone "discipline" (if you want to call it that) can encompass so many forms of quackery, some of which are mutually contradictory. (For instance, how can homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine both be true?) Also, it's amazing how deeply steeped in prescientific vitalism naturopathy is. Then, of course, there's its tight embrace of The One Quackery To Rule Them All, homeopathy. There are times when I feel as though it's just too easy, as homeopathy is nothing more…
oracknows | April 22, 2013I've written a lot about a doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who claims to have much better outcomes in treating deadly brainstem tumors than conventional oncology does. Although the way he claims to do it is through the use of substances he calls "antineoplastons," which he claimed to have isolate from the urine of patients. Over 35 years after having formed his own clinic and "research institute" to use these compounds to treat cancer and after having had over 60 phase I and phase II clinical trials registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, with none of these completed trials having been published…
oracknows | April 19, 2013If there is one aspect of cranks that is almost universal (besides the aforementioned tendency to want to prove themselves through things like "live televised debates"), it's a tendency to want to shut down the criticism of its opposition. True, such a tendency is a human trait as well and used far too often by, say, corporations, but it's one that seems to be cranked up to 11 and beyond, as they say, in cranks.
We've seen it time and time again. Most often, it takes the form of some sort of legal bullying, such as when the British Chiropractic Association bit off more than it could chew by…
oracknows | April 15, 2013It's been a while since I've done this, but somehow now seems to be the right time, particularly after doing such a long post yesterday on the intellectually dishonest promotion of "brave maverick" cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. Unfortunately, dubious clinics like the Burzynski Clinic are not the only place where I find highly questionable medicine. Sadly, as I've discussed many times, there is a phenomenon known as "quackademic medicine," in which quackery is administered and studied in actual academic medical centers. Indeed, it's hard for me to believe that it was nearly years ago that…
oracknows | April 14, 2013About a month ago, Eric Merola screened his second movie about "brave maverick doctor" Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as "Burzynski II"), a screening that Brian Thompson and an unnamed colleague from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) attended, took notes, and even managed to ask a question. At the time, I took advantage of Brian's awesome commentary about his experience on the JREF Swift Blog, his copious notes, and my read on Eric Merola's trailers for the movie, what he said in the first movie, and his own promotional…
oracknows | April 8, 2013One of the more depressing things about getting much more interested in the debate over how we should screen for common cancers, particularly breast and prostate cancer, is my increasing realization of just how little physicians themselves understand about the complexities involved in weighing the value of such tests. It's become increasingly apparent to me that most physicians believe that early detection is always good and that it always saves lives, having little or no conception of lead time or length bias. A couple of weeks ago, I saw another example of just this phenomenon in the form…
oracknows | April 5, 2013Over the years this blog's been in existence, I've fallen into a habit in which I tend to like to finish off the week taking on a bit of science (well, usually pseudoscience) that is either really out there, really funny, or in general not as heavy as, for example, writing about someone like Stanislaw Burzysnki. Indeed, for nearly two years, I even turned into a feature, Your Friday Dose of Woo. Eventually, I got a bit tired of being straitjacketed into having to find something kooky or wacky every Friday, and I let the feature lapse. That doesn't mean that I don't still deliver an occasional…
oracknows | April 1, 2013I got a bit behind on my work yesterday, so I'll be brief. Yesterday, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) announced its annual Pigasus Awards. Sadly, each and every year, there are far more "deserving" candidates than there are awards to give. However, this year marks something awesome, namely the first time the prize has been awarded to someone who has become such a major focus of this blog over the last year and a half. We're talking Stanislaw Burzynski, who's for the first time won an award that he actually richly deserves:
The Pigasus Award in the Scientist Category goes to…
oracknows | March 31, 2013It's been less than a week since I wrote about Stanislaw Burzynski. In fact, as hard as it is to believe, I've been trying not to. Obviously, I'm failing, but what can I say? Things keep happening.
In particular, there's Eric Merola. You remember Eric Merola? He's the producer of a propaganda film extolling the virtues of Stanislaw Burzynski who decided that one movie was not enough. He needed to make another, in which skeptics are painted as the enemy, a shadowy cabal. Well, apparently he saw a certain video I posted last Friday, and he was displeased. Whether it was because the speaker…
lborkowski | March 26, 2013by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
Can we really consider "end game strategies" for tobacco? An Op-Ed in the New York Times makes a strong case for ending tobacco use. Let me begin with some history.
The World Health Organization's (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, adopted in 2003, was developed in response to globalization of the tobacco epidemic. The Framework's objective is to protect present and future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. Unlike previous drug control…
oracknows | March 26, 2013Here we go again.
Every time I think I can get away from this topic for a while, I get sucked back in. Indeed, it seems that hardly a week can go by when I don't find myself pulled inexorably back to this horrible, horrible clinic and what I consider to be the abuses of science and clinical trials that go on there on a daily basis. Whether it be the patients who are offered false hope at the cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of a chemotherapeutic drug known as antineoplastons that, contrary to what it is claimed, is not "non-toxic," "natural," or even particularly…
sa smith | March 25, 2013Using a genetically modified HIV-1 to genetically modify leukemia patients T-cells to teach them how to kill the cancer?
YAWN!
Thats childs play, at this point.
Lets give those GMO viruses a real challenge.
Lets get them to fight a real bastard form of leukemia-- B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL) in adults.
In kids, B-ALL has high cure rates (>80% cured).
In adults, things are more difficult (38% are alive 5 years post-diagnosis). Things get much more difficult if the adult has relapsed (7% alive 5 years post-diagnosis).
Can a GMO HIV-1 do better than 7% in relapsed adult B-ALL…
oracknows | March 20, 2013Heidi Stevenson amuses me.
The reasons are legion. Be it the time when Heidi lectured scientists on anecdotal evidence (which she values far more highly than scientists, of course, declaring it the "basis of all knowledge"); launched a vile and nonsensical attack on Stephen Barrett; argued against prior plausibility with using a straw man argument so massive that if it were set on fire (which she did) it could be seen from space; or made an even more idiotic argument to try to "prove" that wi-fi signals and EMF cause autism, Heidi never fails to deliver the stupid in mass quantities of black…
cmonforton | March 20, 2013A funny thing happened when representatives of U.S. foundries met on March 12 with White House officials to complain about a not-yet-proposed worker safety regulation. The industry group seemed to forget that the targets of their complaints are contained in their own best practices publication.
The American Foundry Society (AFS) requested the meeting with the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to discuss a draft proposed rule by the Labor Department's OSHA to protect workers exposed to respirable crystalline silica. AFS argued that…