dichloroacetate
oracknows | August 21, 2016I've frequently written about various dubious and outright quack clinics in different parts of the word with—shall we say?—somewhat less rigorous laws and regulations than the US. Most commonly, given the proximity to the US, the clinics that have drawn my attention are located in Mexico, most commonly right across the border from San Diego in Tijuana for easy access by American patients. Sometimes, in the case of dubious stem cell clinics, they are located in countries like China, Argentina, or Kazakhstan. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of quack clinics right here in the US (…
oracknows | April 1, 2015It's no secret that I don't have a high opinion of naturopathy. Just enter the word "naturopathy" into the search box of this blog, and you'll quickly see what I mean. Indeed, when last I mentioned the topic a couple of weeks ago, I was discussing the revelations of Britt Marie Hermes, a former naturopath who realized what a load of pseudoscientific quackery she had bought into, unfortunately, after having finished naturopathy school with a quarter million dollars of debt and having practiced for a while. Her account confirmed my impression of naturopathy as a veritable cornucopia of quackery…
oracknows | August 1, 2012Dying of cancer can be a horrible way to go, but as a cancer specialist I sometimes forget that there are diseases that are equally, if not more, horrible. One that always comes to mind is amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It is a motor neuron disease whose clinical course is characterized by progressive weakness, muscle atrophy and spasticity, with ultimate progression to respiratory muscles leading to difficulty breathing and speaking (dysarthria) and to the muscles controlling swallowing. The rate of clinical course is variable, often…
oracknows | May 16, 2010Late last week, a crank I hadn't heard from in a while showed up in my comments. I'm referring to DaveScot, who normally was known for promoting anti-evolution rhetoric in the service of the pseudoscience known as "intelligent design" creationism. This is what he said:
Hi Orac,
terrasig suggested you do a followup article on dichloroacetate (DCA) given the paper just published on the phase 1 trial in Edmonton.
Three years have passed and countless cancer patients were denied this drug. Now at the end of its first phase one trial we know exactly what we did from the reports of people self-…