Category: Clinical trials

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

A naturopathic cancer quack tries to silence criticism with legal thuggery

Not-a-Dr. Huber is a prime reason why cancer patients should avoid naturopaths at all costs.

Britt Hermes is an ex-naturopath who realized that she had become a quack and had the bravery to quit and study to become a real scientist. Because she is an apostate, the church of naturopathy has a special antipathy reserved for her, which is why a “naturopathic oncologist” named Colleen Huber has engaged in legal thuggery to silence her. Not-a-Dr. Huber has apparently never heard of the Streisand Effect, because a look at her website and her incredibly badly done and incompetent clinical study claiming that her treatments plus eliminating processed sugar results in much better cancer survival would be very embarrassing…to her.

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Clinical trials Medicine Politics Popular culture Skepticism/critical thinking

“Right To Choose Medicine”: The free market fundamentalist assault on the FDA continues

Free To Choose Medicine? Mr. Madden clearly has no good understanding of how we determine which medicine work and which do not.

Yesterday, I wrote about how right-to-try and an unethical offshore vaccine trial are part of free market fundamentalists’ attack on the FDA. Here’s another example, the “right to choose medicine.”

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Bioethics Biology Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Shame! Another front in the libertarian war on the FDA: Rational Vaccines’ unethical offshore herpes vaccine clinical trial

The shame this unethical clinical trial deserves cannot be overemphasized.

I’ve discussed so-called “right-to-try” laws, which promise to speed experimental drugs to terminally ill patients, but which in reality are about weakening and bypassing the FDA. Now über-Libertarian Peter Thiel is trying a new tactic to bypass the FDA by organizing an offshore clinical trial of a new herpes vaccine based on dubious science and not overseen by an IRB to protect patients. Both right-to-try and this trial are different fronts in the same fundamentalist free market war on FDA regulation.

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

A new nomenclature for auricular acupuncture: The ultimate in Tooth Fairy science

Tooth Fairy science is the study of a phenomenon before having actually demonstrated that the phenomenon actually exists. I can’t think of a better example than trying to construct an elaborate mapping system of body parts and organs to the surface of the external ear for purposes of sticking needles in them to heal and relieve pain (auricular acupuncture). Yet that’s what’s just been published.

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Alternative medicine: Deadly for cancer patients

By definition, alternative medicine has not been shown to be effective or has been shown to be ineffective. Thus, alternative medicine is ineffective against cancer and can best be represented as either no treatment at all or potentially harmful treatment. It is thus not surprising that cancer patients who choose alternative medicine have a higher risk of dying from their cancer. A new study confirms this conclusion yet again.