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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

The results of the unethical and misbegotten Trial to Asess Chelation Therapy (TACT) are finally revealed, part 2

With very limited exceptions, chelation therapy is, as I said before in my somewhat Insolent opinion, is pure quackery. The sole exception is for real, documented cases of acute heavy metal poisoning that are known to respond to chelation, such as iron overload due to transfusion, aluminum overload due to hemodialysis, copper toxicity due to […]

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

The author of the acupuncture meta-analysis lambastes the “sceptics’ movement” in a “peer-reviewed” paper

So I finally made it to the Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Symposium. Thanks to the snowstorm that apparently wasn’t (at least, I don’t see any snow around), my arrival was delayed by a day, as all flights to the Washington, DC area were canceled on Wednesday. But I did finally get here, and, although […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

A brief fable about a pharmaceutical company for the benefit of believers in “alternative” medicine

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Movies

As Josh Duhamel shills for the Burzynski Clinic, Eric Merola prepares to carpet bomb the blogosphere with nonsense

About a week and a half ago, I noted that the FDA had apparently paid every skeptic’s favorite cancer doctor who is not an oncologist, Stanislaw Burzynski, a visit, while taking notice of a particularly credulous piece of puff journalism that portrayed Dr. Burzynski as a “brave maverick doctor” fighting The Man, who (of course) […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine

No more antineoplastons? Will the FDA finally slap down Stanislaw Burzynski for good?

Earlier this week, there was a very bad, very credulous story was broadcast. Now, I realize that this is not an uncommon occurrence. Indeed, I’m sure that this sort of thing happens pretty much every day somewhere in the country and even on national media, but on this particular occasion the story was about a […]