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Cancer Clinical trials

New cancer drugs: Fitter, happier, more productive? Or not?

It’s known as “targeted” therapy, and it’s the holy grail of cancer research these days. If you listen to its most vocal proponents, it’s the path towards “personalized medicine” that improves survival with much lower toxicity, in which, instead of using the hammer that is chemotherapy, precisely targets specific molecular abnormalities that drive cancer growth. […]

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Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine Popular culture Science Surgery Television

I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy

I’ve pointed out before that pover the last couple of years I’ve become a bit of a fan of old time radio, having discovered Radio Classics on Sirius XM Radio. I don’t remember how I discovered it, but I rapidly became hooked on shows like Suspense, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, The Whistler, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, The […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Preclinical research has a problem, but that doesn’t mean religion is better

Remember Vox Day? Sure, I bet you do, at least if you’ve been a regular reader of this blog more than a year or two. If you’re a really long-timer, you probably remember him even better. Let’s just put it this way. Vox is a guy who has a much higher opinion of his intellectual […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

No, Virginia, cancer care in Europe doesn’t suck, contrary to what a recent paper implies

The U.S. is widely known to have the highest health care expenditures per capita in the world, and not just by a little, but by a lot. I’m not going to go into the reasons for this so much, other than to point out that how to rein in these costs has long been the […]

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Clinical trials Medicine Politics Quackery

Acupuncture: Not an “essential health benefit” in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

This week, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that can only be described as historic. Any of you out there (in the U.S. anyway; I realize that my readership is international) who have paid even a passing attention to the news can’t help but avoid reporting, debate, and polemics related to the Patient Protection […]