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

A disturbing example of quackademic medicine at an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center

Note: I was busy doing something last night that left me no time to compose any fresh Insolence, which will become apparent by this weekend. In the meantime, however, I’m betting quite a few of you haven’t seen this before, and those who have might want to discuss it further in a different environment. Quackademic […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Stanislaw Burzynski and the cynical use of cancer patients as shields and weapons against the FDA: Yes, the FDA has caved.

As I sat down to write this bit of Insolence, I had at least two ideas for what I thought would be informative, entertaining, and timely posts. I also didn’t want to have to write about Stanislaw Burzynski again after having just done so on Friday, having to note that the FDA caved, granting compassionate […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Stanislaw Burzynski and the cynical use of cancer patients as shields and weapons against the FDA: Has the FDA caved?

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” I know I’ve used that quote before several times over the 9+ years that I’ve been blogging. These days, I probably use it most frequently when it comes to the topic of Stanislaw Burzynski. Every time I think that I can give the […]

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Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Conspiracy theories: The dark heart of alternative medicine

If there’s one thing a budding skeptic quickly learns is that at the core of any good woo almost invariably lurks at least one conspiracy theory. At the risk of flirting a little too close to Godwin territory, this simple fact about pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and other non-evidence-based belief systems was first driven home to me […]

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Clinical trials Medicine

Neonatal death rates after home births and a strange skeptic kerfuffle

If there’s a topic that I don’t write about much, it’s obstetrics. The reason is that it’s not a major area of my interest, and it’s not an area where I have as much expertise as I do in, say, cancer or even vaccines. My expertise in cancer comes from my career, of course, and […]