Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Dichloroacetate to enter clinical trials in cancer patients

I’ve written a lot about dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA (my last post here, along with links to my previous posts), the small molecule drug that burst onto the scene after Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta published a paper in Cancer Cell in January describing strong anti-tumor activity in preclinical models (in this case, a […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

A bad day for antivaccinationists: Yet another study fails to support an association between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders

I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for the mercury militia. Think about it. They’ve been claiming for the past several years that the mercury in the thimerosal used as a preservative in childhood vaccines is a cause of autism. If you believe Generation Rescue, A-CHAMP, SAFEMINDS, and various other activist groups, vaccines are the root […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Yawn…another overhyped acupuncture study

Never let it be said that Orac doesn’t give the people what they want. Well, most of the time, anyway. What I’m referring to is a recent German study about acupuncture for low back pain that’s been making its way around the media. I had actually been planning on commenting about it yesterday, but Iranian […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The cranks pile on John Ioannidis’ work on the reliability of science

Pity poor John Ioannidis. The man does provocative work about the reliability of scientific studies as published in the peer-reviewed literature, and his reward for trying to point out shortcomings in how we as scientists and clinical researchers do studies and evaluate evidence is to be turned into an icon for cranks and advocates of […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Surgery

How “evidence-based” is evidence-based medicine?

Sadly (with regards to vacation) and not-so-sadly (with regards to the events of last week), it’s time to dive headlong back into the “real world” at work, starting with clinic today. It also means it’s time to get back to my favorite hobby (blogging) in a much more regular way, although I will say that […]