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Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine

When human subjects protection stifles innovation

The other day, I happened across an Op-Ed article in the New York Times that left me scratching my head at the seeming insanity of the incident it described. The article, written by Dr. Atul Gawande, author of Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science and Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, described what […]

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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

Enough straw man attacks on evidence-based medicine to defoliate Kansas

Evidence-based medicine is not perfect. There, I’ve said it. Like anything else humans do in science or any other endeavor, evidence-based medicine (EBM) has its strengths and its weaknesses. On the whole, I consider it to be potentially vastly superior to the way that medicine was practiced in the past, bringing a systematic, scientific rigor […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Making lab rats out one’s children: Do-it-yourself cancer cures hit the media again

Several months ago, i wrote quite a few posts about a new anticancer drug that had not yet passed through clinical trials but had demonstrated efficacy against tumors in rat models of cancer. The drug, called dichloroacetate (DCA), is a small molecule that targeted a phenomenon common in cancer cells known as the Warburg effect. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quoth Dr. Rashid Buttar: “The medical board is a ‘rabid dog'”

Dr. Rashid Buttar is a quack. There, I’ve said it. It’s my opinion, and there’s lots of evidence to support that opinion. As you know, I seldom actually invoke the “q-word.” Indeed, for the longest time after I started blogging I tended to go out of my way to avoid using it, even to the […]

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Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The ethics of therapeutic touch

Lest I forget to mention this one, Randy Cohen, a.k.a. The Ethicist, answers a question. Here’s the question: I work at a hospital where several nurses practice therapies like healing touch and therapeutic touch, said to adjust a patient’s energy field and thereby decrease pain and improve healing, although there is no significant evidence for […]