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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Understanding alternative medicine “testimonials” for cancer cures

NOTE: I had been thinking about how to migrate my old posts from the old blog over to ScienceBlogs, and came up with an idea. Whenever “real life” intrudes on my blogging–as it has now, thanks to two different grant applications that ate up my entire weekend that prevented me from coming up with the […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Medical wiki revisited

Last week, I wrote a rather lengthy (or, as my detractors would probably call it, “long-winded”) post about the concept of a medical wikipedia. As you may recall, I expressed considerable skepticism about whether the wikipedia concept could work as well as its boosters claim it could. Even though others have clarified what a medical […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Humor

Be a celebrity nutritionist, marry a porn star!

I tell ya, life just ain’t fair. I work and slave for many years to master medicine, surgery, and molecular biology because I want to be part of developing new therapies for cancer. My reward? Instead of being in the lab directly participating in experiments, I spend more of my time begging for money to […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine

By Seed prodded, or there’s less to these studies than meets the eye

OK, I’ve been prodded enough! Yes, I’ve been aware of the study purporting to present good anecdotal case reports showing that there might be something to the hypothesis that megadoses of vitamin C can cure cancer where other therapies fail. I’ve also been aware of an in vitro study that suggested selective toxicity of vitamin […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine EneMan Evolution Medicine Science

Orac has a change of heart

You know, after all these years as a scientist, physician, and skeptic, I’ve been wondering. Perhaps it’s time to undergo a reassessment of my and philosophy. I’ve always been a bit of a curmudgeon, and it hasn’t really gotten me anywhere. My words appear to have no impact on the credulous. For example, perhaps I’ve […]