Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery Religion

If only it were this simple…

Inspired by the story of the faith healer who claimed that Jesus cured her of a breast cancer she in fact never had and, it turned out, who also claimed that faith had healed her brother of a terminal cancer and covered up the fact that he was dying while promoting her book, here’s a […]

Categories
Bioethics History Holocaust Medicine Religion Science World War II

Richard Dawkins’ tin ear regarding bioethics: The execution of Saddam Hussein as an “act of vandalism”

It is with a bit of trepidation that I write about this. The reason, for anyone who reads ScienceBlogs specifically or science blogs in general, should be obvious. Richard Dawkins is such a polarizing figure with a penchant for stirring things up with regards to the most deeply held beliefs of both the religious and […]

Categories
Medicine Religion Surgery

A most uncomfortable question

While I am on vacation, I’m reprinting a number of “Classic Insolence” posts to keep the blog active while I’m gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I’m guessing that quite a few of my […]

Categories
Evolution Religion Science

Gideon’s backlash (a.k.a. Darwin’s revenge)

Here’s a great idea: I was staying in a hotel in New York earlier this year, and I noticed that as well as the usual Gideon’s bible, there was also a copy of the Quran. So that got me thinking – why limit the principle to religious books, why not get some science in there […]

Categories
Bioethics Medicine Religion

Separating doctoring from doctrine

You may recall how I’ve criticized the infiltration of woo into medical school and medical education in general. Such an infiltration threatens the scientific basis behind the hard-won success of so much of modern medicine over the last century. Unfortunately, woo isn’t the only threat to scientific medicine. Now, there is a growing movement that […]