cancer

I 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…

It's been a while since I discussed medical marijuana, even though it's a topic I've been meaning to come back to since I first dubbed medical marijuana to be the equivalent of herbalism and discussed how the potential of cannabinoids to treat cancer has been, thus far, unimpressive, with relatively modest antitumor effects. The reason I refer to medical marijuana as the "new herbalism" is because the arguments made in favor of medical marijuana are very much like arguments for herbalism, including arguments that using the natural plant is superior to using specific purified cannabinoids,…

Two things have reminded me that it's been a while since I've written about Stanislaw Burzynski, nearly five months, to be precise. First, on Wednesday evening I'll be heading to the city where Burzynski preys on unsuspecting cancer patients, Houston, TX, to attend this year's Society of Surgical Oncology meeting to imbibe the latest research on—of course!—surgical oncology. (If you'll be attending the meeting, look me up. If you're in Houston and want to have a meetup, I might be able to pull it off.) Second, you, my readers, have been telling me there's something I need to blog about. This…

Yesterday, I laid a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence on a hapless—not to mention clueless—tech writer who for some reason wrote an article for the New York Times Styles section. The writer, Nick Bilton, surely deserved it. His article served up a massive pile of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about radiation from cell phones as a cause of cancer. His twist was to take advantage of the current hype over the recently announced Apple Watch to turn that FUD onto the Apple Watch and other gadgets that fall under the title of "wearable tech" using misinterpretations of studies…

The New York Times Styles Section giveth. The New York Times Styles Section taketh away. Last week, The NYT Styles Section published an excellent deconstruction of the pseudoscientific activities of Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe, by Courtney Rubin. Although skeptics might think that it was a tad too "balanced" (as did I), by and large we understand that this was the NYT Style section, and seeing a full-throated skeptical deconstruction of The Food Babe's antics in such a venue is just not in the cards. That's what I'm there for (not to mention other skeptics like Steve Novella), such as…

"I don't want knowledge. I want certainty!" --David Bowie, from Law (Earthlings on Fire) I know I've already said this once, but I have to say it again, but it's been a rather stressful week on the old blog, but I hadn't planned on writing about this particular topic again (although I will say that this will likely be the last time I do write about it for a while, perhaps forever, unless we learn something new). A little more than one week ago, a young Australian woman named Jess Ainscough, better known as "The Wellness Warrior," died a potentially preventable death due to a rare form of…

I hadn't planned on discussing the death of Jess Ainscough again, figuring two posts in a row were enough for now, barring new information. Besides, I was getting a little tired of the seemingly unending stream of her fans castigating me for being "insensitive" and saying it was "too soon" to discuss her death and wasn't sure I wanted to reawaken that discussion, which is only now finally dying down. This was a young Australian woman who was unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma at age 22 for which the only known treatment with a reasonable chance of providing her…

It's been a rather...interesting...weekend. Friday, I noted the death of Jess Ainscough, a.k.a. "The Wellness Warrior," a young Australian woman who was unfortunate enough to develop epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer, at the age of 22. I've been blogging about her because after her doctors tried isolated limb perfusion with chemotherapy in an attempt to avoid an amputation of her left arm at the shoulder, her tumor recurred, after which she chose not to undergo amputation and instead to embrace the quackery known as Gerson therapy, which she did for over two years. By the time she finished…

Two months ago, I took note of a somewhat cryptic blog post by a young woman named Jess Ainscough. In Australia and much of the world, Ainscough was known as the Wellness Warrior. She was a young woman who developed an epithelioid sarcoma in 2008 and ended up choosing "natural healing" to treat her cancer. Among the "natural healing" modalities touted by the Wellness Warrior included that quackery of quackeries, the Gerson protocol, complete with coffee enemas and everything. She even did videos explaining how to administer coffee enemas and posted them on YouTube, although that video is now…

Every so often, it's good to post some heartening news regarding quackery. After all, after a decade of blogging about this, preceded by five years in the trenches of Usenet battling quackery and Holocaust denial, sometimes it's hard for me not to become depressed. After all, there are times when it really does feel as though we're fighting a hopeless battle for rationality and science against unreason and harmful quackery. It's a battle worth fighting, but I'm not laboring under any delusions that it will be won in my life time or even in the lifetimes of anyone currently alive. The various…

While silicosis-related deaths have declined, it remains a serious occupational health risk and one that requires continued public health attention, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the Feb. 13 issue of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), researchers noted that while annual silicosis deaths have dropped from 164 in 2001 to 101 in 2010, dangerous silica exposure has been newly documented in occupations related to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and the installation of engineered stone countertops. Overall during the 2001-2010 time…

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first vaccine to protect against cancers caused by certain strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, public health advocates cheered its arrival and life-saving potential. Unfortunately, the new vaccine quickly became embroiled in a debate over whether immunizing young girls against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease, would lead to risky sexual behavior. A new study, however, finds that the vaccine is not associated with an uptick in STDs — an indicator that HPV immunization does not promote unsafe sex. To conduct the study, which…

Last month, my circa 1980 hand-held hair dryer finally gave out. It was a Christmas present during my first year in college. The motor on the cream-colored Conair didn’t exactly fail, but I had to jiggle the electrical cord in just the right way or it wouldn’t turn on. I bought a new one, and my old one went into the garbage can. But after reading a paper in the latest issue of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health (IJOEH), I sort of wish I’d kept it. I knew I had an appliance relic on my hands, but now I’m curious to know whether it contained asbestos. James…

What's in a picture? Prof. Benny Shilo knows the value of a good picture. We recently mentioned his book: Life’s Blueprint, which uses photographs of things like bread dough and yeast cells to illustrate the process of biological development. Here is the image from the most recent piece we have uploaded on his research: This is an individual Islet of Langerhans, as you’ve never seen it before. The white dots are the insulin-containing vesicles inside the beta cells, which both sense glucose levels and secrete insulin. Shilo and his team managed to get “close-up shots” of the individual cell…

I think we've spent enough time on Bill Maher's antivaccine posturing for now. There really isn't much more to say for now. I'm sure he'll probably dump some pseudoscientific nonsense about medicine on his show to provide me with more blogging material. Today, I'm moved to revisit a certain cancer quack whose offenses are threatening to suck me into devoting as much attention to him in the coming days as I have over the last three years to Stanislaw Burzynski. I'm referring, of couse, to Brian Clement, the proprietor of the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida. I first encountered Clement…

If there's one aspect of 2014 that I enjoyed, it's that it was a very bad year for our old friend, America's quack, a.k.a. Dr. Mehmet Oz. It seemed that, finally, some of the chickens were coming home to roost and Dr. Oz was starting to suffer a bit for his promotion of quackery and pseudoscience on his daytime medical talkshow. The most delicious height of schadenfreude (for skeptics, at least) came mid-year, when Dr. Oz was asked to testify in front of Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill's Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection,…

This new year, researchers concluded that 2/3 of the difference in cancer risk between different parts of the body can be attributed to the number of stem cell divisions those parts undergo. More cell divisions reflect a higher risk as errors that occur naturally during the DNA replication process can contribute to the development of cancer. In other words, the same genetic mutability that enables evolution also ensures that many people will be afflicted by a terrible disease. On Pharyngula, PZ Myers suggests this is one reason our cells naturally get old and stop dividing: because if they…

I'm depressed and angry as I write this. The reason for this is simple. I hate it when cancer quacks claim the lives of patients with cancer, particularly patients who were eminently treatable for cure. It's happened again, and it makes me sad. Florida cancer quack Brian Clement has claimed the life of Makayla Sault, an 11 year old Ojibwe girl with leukemia: The entire community of New Credit is in mourning today, following the news of the passing of 11 year old Makayla Sault. The child suffered a stroke on Sunday morning and was unable to recover. Friends and family from across the…

If you’re in the market for a paint remover and head to your local hardware store, most of the products you’re likely to find will contain methylene chloride. These products’ containers promise “professional results” – that they remove paint “in 10 minutes” – and that they are “specially formulated for antiques and fine furniture.” One called “Dad’s Easy Spray,” suggests it can be used to remove paint from fabrics and rugs. Also available are adhesive removers and “prepaint” products that contain methylene chloride. Some of these come in aerosol dispensers. These products all carry hazard…

Standing in her wedding gown, Courtney Davis held this sign: "Message2Congress: If you had banned asbestos, maybe my dad would have been here to give me away." Her father, Larry W. Davis, 66, died in July 2012 of pleural mesothelioma---a cancer caused by asbestos exposure. Stephanie Harper was a daddy's girl. She told reporter David McCumber, her father was a jack of all trades--repairing vehicles, fixing HVAC--and when he came home at night, "I'd sit on his feet and grab his pants leg." The 37 year-old mother from Texas now suffers from mesothelioma and agonizing pain that goes along with it…