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

Still more oversold placebo research from our old friend Ted Kaptchuk

Here we go again. In the wake of study after study that fails to find activity of various “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) beyond that of placebo, the campaign to a “rebrand” CAM as “working” through the “power of placebo” continues apace, in the wake of the successful campaign to “rebrand” various needle-based medical modalities […]

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

It’s 2014, and Stanislaw Burzynski has begun his counteroffensive

Well, that didn’t take long. I knew it had been too quiet on the Burzynski front. In retrospect, that was almost certainly because of the holidays, but the holidays are over, and real life is here again. Yes, the year 2014 is only a little more than a week old, and here comes Stanislaw Burzynski […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

As 2013 draws to a close in the skeptical world…

As I write this, 2013 is drawing to a close, with only a little more than 12 hours to go before the crowds now gathering at Times Square and elsewhere ring in 2014. For some of you, 2014 has already arrived or will arrive many hours before it does for me. I’m not normally one […]

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Biology Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture

Supplements: Flushing your money down the toilet in expensive urine

I remember during medical school that more than one of my faculty used to have a regularly repeated crack that the only thing that taking vitamin supplements could do for you was to produce expensive pee. My first year in medical school was nearly thirty years ago now; so it’s been a long time. During […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The drip, drip, drip, drip of FDA findings against Stanislaw Burzynski continues

The central mystery of Stanislaw Burzynski is how he keeps managing, no matter what is thrown at him by state and federal medical authorities, to keep on treating patients with deadly cancers. He’s like the Energizer Bunny; he just keeps going and going and going and going. Or maybe he’s like the game Whac-A-Moleâ„¢, where, […]