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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Abusing celebrities with cancer in order to promote quackery

I find it hard to believe that we’re already two weeks into 2009. The older I get and the longer I’ve been blogging, it seems, the faster time files. It’s gotten so bad that it’s not at all infrequent that I remember a post that I’ve written, go searching for it, and end up amazed […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine News of the Weird Quackery

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The revenge of semiotics

Three weeks ago, I reintroduced my readers to one of the most amazingly skilled weaver of woo tales who has ever lived. I’m referring, of course, to Lionel Milgrom, the man who can pepper his homeopathic woo with quantum nonsense the way Bobby Flay seasons his latest creation with various spices. Now, I’m about to […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Most credulous news report on an “alternative medicine” treatment ever?

Just as a quick followup to my post on Tong Ren, the quackery that combines acupuncture, “energy healing,” and, in essence, the stereotype of voodoo dolls in a veritable potpourri of woo, take a look at this news report done by the FOX News affiliate in Boston: If you want horrible, credulous, idiotic reporting, the […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Tong Ren: An unholy union of acupuncture and voodoo

After four years and five days of nearly continuous blogging about skepticism, quackery, science- and evidence-based medicine, and a variety of other topics, you’d think there wouldn’t be much that I haven’t seen before. Certainly, lately, I’ve been wondering lately if there was anything left that could surprise me or horrify me anymore, and jaded […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Patient-led “clinical trials” versus clinical research

In 2007, I wrote a series of posts about what I found to be a fascinating yet at the same time disturbing phenomenon, specifically self-experimentation by cancer patients using an as yet unapproved drug called dichloroacetate. If you’ll recall, DCA is a small molecule drug that was used to treat congenital lactic acidosis in children […]