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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Abraham’s law: Bad medicine has made bad law

There hasn’t been much news in the last two or three months about Abraham Cherrix, the 16-year-old with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who rejected conventional chemotherapy, first in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy and then for the ministrations of a radiation oncologist in Mississippi named Dr. Arnold Smith, who combines non-woo (low dose radiation […]

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Cancer Medicine Politics

Elizabeth Edwards and bone metastases from breast cancer

As odd as it seems, my timing in posting about removing chemotherapy ports yesterday was eerily coincidental. I’ve alluded to this before, but I’m most definitely not a big fan of John Edwards and would never vote for him for President. That being said, I can’t help but feel for him and, even more so, […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

A happy little case

[Note: The following is based on an aggregation of multiple patients. It does not represent any single patient’s case.] It was a little case. I know, I know, I’ve said in the past that there’s no such thing as a little operation, at least not when it’s happening to you, and that’s true. Nonetheless this […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Magical thinking versus Tumor Biology 101

Late yesterday afternoon, I was lazily checking my referral logs to see who might be linking to Respectful Insolence™, as most bloggers like to do from time to time (and any blogger who claims otherwise is probably feeding you a line), when I noticed a fairly large number of visits coming from one location, namely […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

More links on dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer for your edification

Although I’ve been blogging alot about dichloroacetate, the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that has shown promise against a variety of cancers in preclinical animal tumor models, but I’m not the only one. Fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy, whose knowledge of pharmacology surpasses my own, has also been on the case and has produced some articles worth […]