Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery

Your Friday Dose of Woo: These boots were made for detoxifyin’

I tried not to write about the altie obsession with “detoxification” again. Really, I did. It gets repetitive, and I don’t want Your Friday Dose of Woo (YFDoW) to become to repetitive. Of course, a certain amount of repetitiveness is unavoidable, given that there are only a few major themes running through medical woo. First, […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Thar’s gold in them thar “cures”

One of the favorite gambits that alternative medicine mavens like to use to defend their favorite remedies when a skeptic starts asking uncomfortably pointed and specific questions their scientific and evidentiary basis is to accuse said skeptic of being “in the pocket of big pharma.” Indeed, I’ve written before of the “pharma shill gambit,” where […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Starchild Abraham Cherrix: Radiation shrinks his tumors

It figures. After posting yesterday about whose responsibility it is when a cancer patient rejects evidence-based effective treatments in favor of quackery and then progresses, I would have to be made aware of an update in the case of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. Ever since Cherrix’s story first rose to national prominence a few months ago, […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Death by alternative medicine: Who’s to blame?

One of the more onerous duties I have as faculty at our cancer center is to “show the flag” at our various affiliates by attending their tumor boards. I say “onerous” not so much because the tumor boards themselves are onerous but rather because traveling to them cuts into my already limited time for research […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Coffee, the ultimate cleanser

Earlier this week, I thought that I had identified this week’s woo target. I told myself that this was it, that this was the one for this week. I even started writing it the other day, because, as much as I try to get this thing done early, somehow I always seem to be writing […]