medicine
oracknows | December 22, 2011The holidays are now upon us, but I can't resist having a bit of fun before I disappear for this year's Christmas weekend to visit family and catch a rare bit of relaxation. Nothing too heavy, but, equally important, nothing too fluffy either. One topic that fits the bill is anything to do with homeopathy, and in this case I have a doozy of a "teachable moment relevant to homeopathy. It appeared a couple of days ago in what I like to refer to as that wretched hive of scum and quackery or Arianna's happy home for quacks. Yes, I'm referring to The Huffington Post, or, as a lot of people…
oracknows | December 21, 2011Nature is one of the oldest and most respected scientific journals around. It's been around since 1869 and is said to be the world's most cited journal. What makes Nature unusual these days is that it's a general science journal. Astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine, biology, it publishes it all. The only other journal of its type that I can think of is Science, which also has a similar high impact factor. In any case, getting published in Nature is a big deal, one that can make a career. Believe it or not, I actually have a Nature publication. True, it's from the 1990s, and, true, I'm the…
oracknows | December 21, 2011I've made no secret of my opinion of the animal rights movement, in particular Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon who has openly advocated the murder of researchers who use animals while--wink, wink, nudge, nudge--denying that he's advocating anything. Another animal rights activist who is equally despicable is Stephen Best, who is affiliated with the even more despicable Camille Marino of the odious Negotiation Is Over, which has recently taken to targeting for harassment students interested in biomedical research who have worked with animals. NIO put this strategy into action, too, by targeting…
oracknows | December 20, 2011After yesterday's video and the video from the day before demonstrating just what "antivaccine" means, I thought you'd all need a little something to cleanse the palate after having swallowed so much crazy. Fortunately, Paul Offit provides just the thing, a lecture at the NIH in which he discusses on vaccines and how to educate the public about vaccine science can be found here:
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Dr. Offit hits all the high points, including the false "balance" in journalism, how to deal with scientific uncertainty, and when not to let oneself be sucked into "debates" with the…
oracknows | December 19, 2011Yesterday, I discussed the meaning of the word "antivaccine," using the example of Dr. Suzanne Humphries, an MD-turned-homeopath, as an example of why I refer to people like Humphries as "antivaccine." She really laid down the crazy, too, repeatedly calling vaccines the injection of "disease matter" and "unnatural," while piling conspiracy theory on top of conspiracy theory about big pharma. After seeing that, I didn't think I'd soon find another example of someone as antivaccine as Humphries.
I was wrong.
I was actually debating whether to subject you to this video a mere day after having…
oracknows | December 18, 2011Every so often, someone will take a great deal of umbrage at my use of the term "antivaccine." The assumption behind criticism directed at me (and others) when we use such terms is that we throw the term about without a care, using it as a weapon unjustly and incorrectly to smear parents who are in reality "pro-safe vaccine." Of course, what antivaccine activists and their apologists don't realize (or conveniently forget) is that I view the term "antivaccine" as having a fairly specific definition, and it's not simply to describe anyone who questions the efficacy or safety of vaccines. If…
oracknows | December 15, 2011I thought I'd be leaving the topic of Dr. Stanislaw Burzysnki and his combination of Personalized Cancer Therapy for Dummies-level "personalized, gene-targeted cancer therapy" coupled with his "cancer-curing" antineoplastons, which have morphed into an orphan HDAC inhibitor used off-label as part of his pricey everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" combination of targeted therapies and old-fashioned chemotherapy. After all I figured that there would probably be nothing new to say before sometime in January, when he is schedule to appear before the Texas Medical Board to answer for his dubious…
oracknows | December 13, 2011I've been so busy writing about things like Dr. Stanislaw Burzysnki's highly exaggerated cancer claims, which have become a new favorite topic of mine despite the fact that Dr. Burzynski himself has been plying his "alternative" cancer treatments for over three decades, and one of my long time topics, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), that I actually missed a couple of vaccine-related posts that would normally affect me the way catnip affects cats. Also, after two days of doing even longer than the usual Orac-ian screeds, one of which required quite a bit…
oracknows | December 12, 2011I've made no secret of my admiration for Trine Tsouderos. Whether it be her investigations into the rank quackery of prominent members of the mercury militia wing of the anti-vaccine lunatic fringe, Mark and David Geier, who seem to think that chemical castration is a perfectly fine and dandy treatment for autism because testosterone binds mercury (it doesn't under physiological conditions) and prevents it from being removed by chelation therapy, the equally rank quackery that is the "autism biomed" movement, or the chronic Lyme disease underground, Tsouderos is one of the rare journalists…
oracknows | December 11, 2011Over the last couple of weeks, I've been spending a lot of time (and, characteristically, verbiage) analyzing the phenomenon known as Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, his "cancer cure" known as antineoplastons, and his incompetent version of "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy." In this third and final part, I want to come back to antineoplastons, because it has been pointed out to me that there is an aspect of this story that has received little attention. One of my readers in particular has helped enormously. I wish I could credit this person by name to express my gratitude, but, for reasons…
oracknows | December 9, 2011I have an unfortunate announcement today.
Because the most craptastic of all broadband services, Comcast (since rebranded as Xfinity) let me down last night, going out for several hours and only deigning to start working again a couple of hours ago, there's no blog post this morning other than this rather annoyed announcement. So, if you're jones-ing for your daily dose of Insolence, be it Respectful or Not-So-Respectful (and my original intention for this morning was Not-So-Respectful, which is always more entertaining, although too much of it gives the haters an opening to become tone…
oracknows | December 7, 2011In my eagerness to pivot back to an area of my interest after having had a little fun with anti-vaccine cranks, I ignored a paper to which several of my readers referred me over the last few days. Many of them had first become aware of it when everybody's favorite smugly condescending anti-vaccine crank, Ginger Taylor, started pimping it on her blog. Before that, it apparently popped up on the only anti-vaccine site almost as loony as Age of Autism, namely SaneVax, and it wasn't long before this paper started making the rounds of the anti-vaccine crankosphere, showing up at Gaia Health, and…
oracknows | December 6, 2011One thing I've learned over the years is that there is a palpable hostility in the "alternative" medicine world towards chemotherapy. Many are the times I've posted examples, including rants by Mike Adams, cartoons, and a post about what I like to call the "2% gambit" that claims that chemotherapy only contributes 2% to survival in cancer. Basically, that last gambit uses and abuses a rather mediocre study whose design almost seemed intended to minimize any detected benefit from chemotherapy. On second thought, strike the word "seem." It was pretty much designed to minimize any apparent…
oracknows | December 6, 2011While I'm having a bit of fun with the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism, I notice that its Boy Wonder Jake Crosby, the one-trick pony whose trick is playing "six degrees of separation" in order to try to link anyone who supports the science of vaccines with big pharma, the CDC, the FDA, or any other company or regulatory agency he doesn't like, has a new post up at AoA. In it he complains about being kicked out of a conference, the Research Ethics Book Group Lunch and Book Signing at the annual Advancing Ethical Research Conference held by Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (…
oracknows | December 5, 2011After the lengthy post from yesterday, I must admit, I'm a bit tired; so I think it's time to slum a bit for a day. No, that doesn't mean I'm going to throw up a video and call it a day. That's not how Orac rolls (well, usually, at least). I just need a bit of something that doesn't take a lot of mental firepower to take on, unlike the discussion of "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy" yesterday and why what Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski doesn't qualify as anything other than a parody of "personalized" therapy. It didn't take me long to find just the place to find what I was looking for.…
oracknows | December 5, 2011Last week, I applied a little not-so-Respectful Insolence to a movie about a physician and "researcher" named Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD, founder of the Burzynski Clinic and Burzynski Research Institute in Houston. I refer you to my original smackdown for details, but in brief Dr. Burzynski claimed in the 1970s to have made a major breakthrough in cancer therapy through his discovery of anticancer substances in the urine that he dubbed "antineoplastons," which turned out to be mainly modified amino acids and peptides. Since the late 1970s, when he founded his clinic, Dr. Burzynski has been…
oracknows | December 2, 2011A while back I wrote a brief, snarky post about a bizarre hypothesis that I considered so risible as not to be worth applying my usual 1,500 to 3,000 words of not-so-Respectful Insolence to. My original post was in response to a press release announcing a book by Michael J. Dochniak and Denise H. Dunn entitled Vaccine Delivery and Autism (The Latex Connection). Basically, the book posits a ridiculous hypothesis that the Latex in some vaccine delivery systems is a cause of autism. Not long after I posted it, Mr. Dochniak himself showed up in my comments, and hilarity ensued. Boy, did it ever!…
oracknows | December 2, 2011I'm a cancer surgeon and have been since I finished my fellowship nearly 13 years ago. That is, of course, one big reason that, after I found myself drifting towards becoming a skeptic, it didn't take long for me to take an interest in "alternative medicine," in particular alternative medicine for cancer. Perhaps that's why I went a little bit crazy on Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski earlier this week for his "antineoplaston" therapy and his clinic's harassment of critical bloggers. As a result of that incident, I decided to keep my eye out even more than usual for clinics, websites, or practitioners…
oracknows | November 30, 2011As I said yesterday, it's time to take a break from blogging about Stanislaw Burzynski; that is, unless something new happens that I consider to be worth commenting on. Fear not, though. I will return to the subject. As I said yesterday, Burzynski is now pushing some sort of nonstandard "personalized gene-targeted therapy" in addition to his antineoplaston therapy.
In the meantime, it's back to business. I'm a bit tired, but I'm (almost) never too tired to analyze a claim made by a supporter of pseudoscience.
Amazingly, sometimes the gods of the blogosphere are kind and benevolent. They…
oracknows | November 29, 2011Remember yesterday how I said I would be following the "rule of three" in blogging about the Burzynski Clinic, its questionable practices in charging patients huge sums of money for dubious therapies, the even more dubious science behind his "antineoplaston therapy," and his shill Marc Stephens threatening bloggers with legal action in hilariously crude ways? In other words, in the tradition of comics and documentaries everywhere, I'd stop at three posts about Burzynski, at least for the moment.
I lied.
Well, no, actually I didn't lie. When I wrote yesterday's post, I fully planned on taking…