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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The “wisdom” of cancer cells?

I was perusing my newsfeeds last night looking for topics for Your Friday Dose of Woo this week when I came across what, initially at least, I considered to be primo material for my weekly bit of fun at the expense of the more far out excursions into woo. Then I thought about it some […]

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Cancer Medicine

An opposite effect of chemotherapy?

Let’s face it. These days, research papers in the peer-reviewed biomedical scientific literature are becoming more and more complex and difficult to understand. For many journals, it seems, if you don’t have at least seven meaty, dense, multipanel figures (preferably some of which with flashy color confocal microscopy), you don’t have a prayer of getting […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Quackery Surgery

Dr. Judah Folkman: A true scientific giant has died

Today is a very sad day around my lab. I’ve just been informed that one of my scientific heroes, the man whose work inspired me to enter the research area that I entered, namely tumor angiogenesis, died last night. Yes, sadly, Dr. Judah Folkman reportedly died of a heart attack last night. I had the […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

A horrifying breast cancer “testimonial” for “holistic” treatment

(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.) Cancer is scary. It’s very, very scary, even when it is a cancer that is treatable and potentially curable. It’s such a common disease that, by the time we reach a certain age, the vast majority of us have seen […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

End of year update on Abraham Cherrix

It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything about Abraham Cherrix, the teen who rejected conventional chemotherapy for Hodgkins’ lymphoma in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy. Ultimately, there was a legal battle resulting in a compromise that allowed Cherrix to pursue “alternative” therapy at a clinic in Mississippi run by a radiation […]