cancer
oracknows | August 26, 2008Yesterday, I was annoyed by a particularly vile article by quackery promoter supreme Mike Adams claiming that Christina Applegate didn't need a bilateral mastectomy and could have "cured" herself of cancer with "natural" methods. Indeed, my contempt for Mike Adams knows no bounds, given that he is the purveyor of a seemingly never-ending stream of antiscience and quackery, much of it directed at cancer patients, who if they follow Adams' "advice" could very well miss their best chance at treating their cancer and thereby wind up dead. Indeed, so great is the amount of quackery emanating from…
Suzanne Somers versus Christina Applegate in a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy fantasy cage match!
oracknows | August 25, 2008Earlier today, I did a rather extensive post about a particularly ghoulish attempt to exploit the story of a woman with cancer, in this case Christina Applegate. It turns out that Mike Adams isn't the only woo-meister looking to capitalize on Ms. Applegate's misfortune, You just knew it had to happen, but Thighmaster, Bioidentical Stem Cell Huckster Suzanne Somers has gotten in on the act. Apparently she's penned an open letter to Applegate that was published in People:
Dear Christina,
Cancer is scary, and lonely. You can't ask anyone to make decisions for you because it's just too heavy.…
oracknows | August 25, 2008This is getting to be nauseatingly frequent.
As my blog bud Mark Hoofnagle pointed out, the hard-core "alternative medicine" mavens, in particular that despicable promoter of quackery and distrust of scientific medicine who runs one of the two or three largest repositories of antiscience and quackery in existence, Mike Adams, seem to have decided that a lovely new tactic would be to descend upon every celebrity death or battle with serious disease, ghoul-like, and blame their deaths or suffering on conventional medicine rather than disease. Both PalMD and I noted this particularly vile tactic…
angrytoxicologist | August 25, 2008There's a story in the WashPost today about how spicy marinades decrease the heterocyclic amine (HCA) content in grilled meat. They think you should care because HCAs are likely carcinogens. There are many things about this that get my back up so lets make a list:
1) Nobody knows how much cancer HCAs may be causing. As far as I can tell (I'd be glad to be e-mailed some reasearch that disputes this), there isn't any study that directly links HCAs to human cancer, qualitatively or quantitatively. I'm not saying they're not carcinogens, I'm pretty certian they are, but the only studies that I…
oracknows | August 24, 2008You may recall that on Friday afternoon, I posted a bit of a rant about how a certain liberal blogger named Matt Stoller had disparagingly and contemptuously referred to Presidential Candidate John McCain as a "crazy, cancer-ridden dishonest madman." It turns out that Mr. Stoller was displeased by my much-justified rebuke. His response is an example of the most studiously, intentionally obtuse avoidance of answering what my real criticism was, including an elaborately constructed straw man, some quote mining, and one really dumb additional statement that reveals Mr. Stoller to be far more…
oracknows | August 22, 2008I was disappointed to find an approving link from a fellow ScienceBlogger to this sort of rant by Matt Stoller:
We all know that winning this election is not enough. It's just not. It's not even close. This is the most unpopular President we've ever had and our opponent is a crazy cancer-ridden dishonest madman. Our nominee should crush this guy.
"Crazy cancer-ridden dishonest madman"? Nice. I wonder if Matt spit out the term "cancer-ridden" with the same amount of contempt and venom while typing as he did when he spit out the terms "crazy," "dishonest," and "madman." I wonder if he…
oracknows | August 14, 2008It's been quite a while since I wrote about this topic, but, quite frankly, I didn't think anything new was likely to come up that would interest me sufficiently to take it on again. I was almost right; it's been well over two years since the last time I discussed the issue of whether or not vitamin C has any role in treating cancer.
When last I left the topic, two studies had been released that were being widely cited as a "vindication" of Linus Pauling. As you may recall, Pauling was the Nobel Laureate who succumbed to what's sometimes called the "Nobel disease" in that he turned into a…
terrasig | August 13, 2008Most people know of methadone as a long-term substitution therapy for people addicted to heroin, morphine, or other similar drugs called opiates or opioids. A good, free full-text description of methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) can be found in the 15 June 2001 issue of American Family Physician.
Now, in the 1 August 2008 issue of Cancer Research, Claudia Friesen and colleagues at the University of Ulm report that methadone can kill leukemia cells in culture and reverse acquired resistance to other drugs like doxorubicin (Adriamycin). Press reports to this effect appeared at the beginning…
oracknows | August 12, 2008It's been a long time, been a long time,
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
- Led Zeppelin
Not nearly long enough.
- Orac
Some rats never die, it would appear.
You may recall last year, when I spend a considerable amount of verbiage writing about a promising cancer drug called dichloroacetate (DCA). There were many reasons. One reason was that the drug was being represented as a "cure" for cancer that big pharma wouldn't fund because it was outside of its patent. There was also plenty of fascinating cancer biology there to…
oracknows | August 7, 2008...to ask über-quack Hulda Clark, the woman who disagrees with Dr. Simoncini in that she thinks that all cancer is caused by an intestinal fluke and that she can cure it by "zapping" it with a chintzy device she calls a "Zapper" that looks a lot like a Scientology E-meter, any question you want. She's going to be broadcasting her quackery all over the intertubes tonight on Patrick Timpone's One Radio Network at 7 PM CDT:
Thursday, August 7, 7-8 PM Talk to the Legendary Dr. Hulda Clark
Dr. Clark has a clinic in Mexico and claims a high success rate with Cancer patients and uses the word "…
oracknows | August 7, 2008I don't much like Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com (formerly NewsTarget.com). Indeed, I haven't yet been able to find a more blatant purveyor of the worst kind of quackery and paranoid anti-physician and anti-medicine conspiracy theories anywhere on the Internet, with the possible exception of Whale.to. However, Whale.to is so utterly, outrageously, incoherently full of not just quackery but paranoid New World Order conspiracy theories and other paranormal silliness that any but the most deluded can easily see it for what it is with just a cursory reading of a few of its many, many pages. It's…
angrytoxicologist | August 5, 2008Read some background on PFOA and Teflon here.
A couple of years ago DuPont and other perfluorochemical industries were dismissing evidence of PFOA-caused cancer in rats, saying it was due to peroxisome proliferation in rats, which some argue isn't relevant to humans. However, PFOA may have other mechanisms of action (disrupting thyroid hormones, gap junctions, and estradiol among them). You can read more about the evidence in this EWG submission to the EPA. Well, EPA must not have payed too much attention to those other mechanisms because they basically ignored them and wanted to discount the…
terrasig | August 1, 2008This morning our dear friend and colleague whose wine escapades often fill this spot awoke to the rewards of retirement. My senior cancer research colleague, Erleichda, has just closed the book on 30 years with a single pharmaceutical company, unheard of in today's climate of layoffs and jumping from one company to the next.
My friend began in this industry when it was still considered a noble pursuit and continued to be an ambassador for all that is good about pharmaceutical research & development, with his primary concern the welfare of those stricken with cancer and the cultivation…
oracknows | July 30, 2008I've been a bit remiss in my duty toward a fellow ScienceBlogger.
No doubt a few were wondering (or maybe not), why I, as the resident breast cancer expert here, didn't point out that my fellow ScienceBlogger Janet live-blogged her very first screening mammogram last week. Truth be told, I had meant to mention it a day or two after she first posted it, but it plumb slipped my mind. Maybe it's early stage Alzheimer's disease. Whatever the case, I had meant to use her post to point out that, as a breast cancer surgeon, I sometimes forget just how annoying and cumbersome getting a mammogram can…
terrasig | July 26, 2008Jake Young, the MD/PhD student blogging at Pure Pedantry, has a great post this week on the detection of a novel formulation of the erythropoiesis stimulating agent (ESA) erythropoietin in Riccardo Riccó, the Italian cyclist who was thrown out of the Tour de France. Jake's post is a superb primer on the use of this peptide hormone as a therapeutic agent (in the anemia caused by kidney failure and in cancer chemotherapy).
His essay also reminds me that I commented on this issue at DrugMonkey's a post exactly a week ago (and from this same couch at my local coffee shop while waiting for…
oracknows | July 25, 2008I'm very puzzled.
Now, I know that my being puzzled isn't particularly unusual. I'm frequently puzzled. I can't figure out how, for example, anyone with the slightest bit of reasoning ability can do anything other than laugh when informed what homeopathy is and how it supposedly "works." I can't figure out why American Idol or Survivor is so amazingly popular.
And I can't figure out why the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center released this warning about cell phones:
PITTSBURGH July 24, 2008, 07:13 am ET · The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to…
oracknows | July 24, 2008
Regular readers of this blog know that I'm an Apple geek. The Macintosh is my preferred axe and has been, with few interruptions, since the late 1980s. Indeed, the only time I've used anything other than a Mac is when I've had no choice. The first time I saw one was in 1984, not long after the original Mac was released. My roommate somehow managed to come up with the money to buy one through the University of Michigan towards the end of my senior year. I really liked it right from the start but only got to play with it occasionally for a few months. After I graduated, I didn't even own a…
terrasig | July 21, 2008Go on over and offer your best wishes to Dr. Ventii.
She was just awarded her Ph.D. in cancer biochemistry from Emory University in Atlanta.
Karen writes the blog, Science to Life.
Congratulations, Karen!
oracknows | July 16, 2008I was contemplating how to get back into the swing of things as far as getting the blogging juices flowing again after the unfortunate events of the last few days, given how much my last post drained me. I suppose I could have dived into the infamous PZ versus the cracker incident, but, quite frankly, the utter ridiculousness and childishness of the whole affair bored and disgusted me too much, although I don't rule out a brief post about it later today or tomorrow (that is, if anyone even still cares). If I do, I guarantee that my take on the whole kerfluffle will make no one happy, but it…
revere | July 15, 2008What's a little sodium dichromate, anyway? So it's a known human carcinogen and can do a lot of other nasty things. No big deal. Not for Iraq war contractor, KBR, anyway. At the time KBR was a subsidiary of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton. So when they were given a lucrative contract to clean up and safeguard Iraqi oilfields after the Bush Mission was Accomplished in 2003, they told the soldiers and workers that the chemical, used as an antirust agent and then strewn all over the oil facilities, was a "mild irritant." Later they admitted…