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Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Penn Jillette interviews water fast guru Dr. Michael Klaper. Woo ensues.

Dr. Michael Klaper advocates a plant-based “whole food” diet and water fasts as the cure for what ails you, with demonstrably overblown claims for the benefits of such practices and invocation of nonsense “detoxification”? Yet Penn Jillette gave him a friendly forum on his podcast. Where did the Penn of “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!” go? Here we examine Dr. Klaper’s claims and find them weak on science.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Homeopathy Integrative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Stealth advertising for Dr. Mark Hyman and the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine

Over the weekend, I came across a local news story from Toledo about Chris Tedrow, a patient who was treated at Dr. Mark Hyman’s Center for Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. Let’s just say that it was, in essence, free advertising for functional medicine nonsense. The Cleveland Clinic should have had to pay the Toledo ABC affiliate to air it.

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Bad science Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Clínica 0-19 and IDOI: Not making DIPG history in Monterrey (part 3 of 4)

This is the conclusion of my series on Clínica 0-19, the cancer clinic where Drs. Alberto Siller and Alberto Garcia see patients with DIPG, a deadly brain tumor, whom they treat at Hospital Angeles in Monterrey Mexico with an unproven combination of intra-arterial chemotherapy with up to 11 drugs and a poorly defined dendritic cell immunotherapy. Some people have asked me: What’s the harm? In this concluding post, I attempt to answer that question.

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Bad science Cancer Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Clínica 0-19 and IDOI: Not making DIPG history in Monterrey (part 1 of 4)

Drs. Alberto Siller and Alberto Garcia run Clínica 0-19 in Monterrey, Mexico, which has become a magnet for patients with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a deadly brain cancer. Unfortunately, their treatment is an unproven combination of 11 chemotherapy drugs injected into an artery feeding the brainstem, plus an unknown and unproven “immunotherapy.” Of course it all costs $300,000 or more for a complete course of treatment, and the good doctors are “too busy to do clinical trials” or even publish their survival and recurrence statistics, despite having used this protocol for 20 years. I say: If it quacks like a duck…

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience

The excuses and conspiracy theories flow over Dr. Bob Sears’ being disciplined by the Medical Board of California

Last week, we learned that antivaccine pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears was disciplined by the Medical Board of California. It didn’t take long for him to take to Facebook to make excuses and paint himself as a martyr to the “vaccine freedom” cause or for his antivaccine admirers to come up with ridiculous conspiracy theories.