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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

More Gardasil fear mongering: A “critical review” of HPV vaccination that lacks critical thinking

Antivaxers fear and detest vaccines, but one of the types of vaccines they fear and detest the most is the HPV vaccine, such as Gardasil and Cervarix, which have been blamed for everything from sudden death to premature ovarian failure to autoimmune diseases. A couple of Mexican “researchers” from a cardiology institute try again with a “critical review” of HPV vaccine safety that lacks anything resembling critical thinking.

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

The cruel sham that is “right-to-try” is one big step closer to being federal law

So-called “right-to-try” is a cruel sham that holds out the mostly false hope of survival to terminally ill patients and their families. In return, all they have to give up is patient protections and agree to pay to be guinea pigs to test a drug company’s product. The product of an ideology that uses the terminally ill as shields to hide the ideological motives behind the law, which are to hobble the FDA, right-to-try is a terrible idea. It’s bad for patients, but it just passed the Senate and could well become the law of the land when the House reconvenes in September if it isn’t stopped.

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Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Quack stem cell clinics: Following the trail blazed by Stanislaw Burzynski charging patients to be on dubious clinical trials

A new study by Leigh Turner has found that dubious stem cell clinics are registering even more dubious “clinical trials” under ClinicalTrials.gov in which they charge patients to enroll. In this unethical practice, they are merely following the trail blazed by cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski.

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

Yawn. Another study tries to convince us that mind-body interventions can “reprogram our DNA.” It fails.

A recent systematic review has been touted as demonstrating that “mind-body” practices like yoga can reprogram our DNA. There are several reasons to doubt these claims, not the least of which is the history of bias in past studies on this topic.

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

Deaths and complications due to treating the fake disease known as “chronic Lyme disease”

Alternative practitioners invent and treat fake diseases like adrenal fatigue and chronic Lyme disease. Unfortunately, as a recent CDC report on complications due to treating chronic Lyme disease with long term antibiotics shows, treating fake diseases can cause harm and, in some cases, even kill.