Categories
Cancer Medicine Quackery

The deadly false hope of German alternative cancer clinics, part 3: Hallwang Clinic revisited

I’ve written twice before about German alternative medicine cancer clinics, the quackery they ply, and how they take advantage of desperate cancer patients. Finally, in a disturbing report a journalist has investigated what one of these clinics (Hallwang) does and how such clinics can continue to operate.

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Integrative medicine Naturopathy Quackery

How online crowdfunding supports cancer quacks

Patients with cancer frequently use online crowdfunding to pay for trips to quack clinics. The Good Thinking has undertaken an investigation that is the first to suggest the extent of the problem. The question is: What to do about it?

Categories
Clinical trials Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture

Crowdfunding to pay to be a research subject in a clinical trial: The case of Lily Wythe [UPDATED 1/23/2020—see addendum]

Lily Wythe is a teenaged girl with a deadly brainstem cancer whose case has made international news because of her family’s crowdfunding to get her into a clinical trial. Should investigators be allowed to fund trials this way?

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Medicine Quackery

Toni Bark has cancer

Toni Bark is an antivax physician. Recently, she announced that she has cancer. She is also expressing amazement that she could get it, given her supposedly incredibly healthy lifestyle.

Categories
Cancer Computers and social media Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

How online crowdfunding supports cancer quacks (part 2)

A new study by Jeremy Snyder and Tim Caulfield shows how much money is raised by GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sources to support quackery. It’s a lot of money, which is unsurprising to Orac, given that he’s been writing about how crowdfunding is “baked into” the business model of cancer quacks since he discovered Stanislaw Burzynski a decade ago.