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Cancer Medicine Quackery

Does chemotherapy work or not? The “2% gambit”

“CHEMOTHERAPY KILLS!!!!” I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve come across brain-dead statements like the one above, often in all caps on websites resembling that of the Time Cube guy, quite frequently with more than one exclamation point, on the websites of “natural healers,” purveyors of “alternative medicine.” In fact, if you Google “chemotherapy […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

On the enormous variability of cancer behavior

Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions held about cancer among lay people is that it is one disease. We often hear non-physicians talk about “curing cancer” as though it were a single disease. Sometimes, we even hear physicians, who should know better, using the same sort of fuzzy thinking and language about “curing cancer” […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

The spontaneous regression of breast cancer?

I tell ya, I’m on the light blogging schedule for a mere four days, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the happy invasion of family on Thursday and Friday, and a significant amount of grant writing I’ve had to deal with on Saturday and Sunday, and somehow I missed not only a study relevant to […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine Surgery

Media medicine actually gets it right for a change

Granted, it is the print media, rather than the bubble-headed TV doctors that I railed against a couple of days ago, but even so I had a hard time believing this article in the Washington Post when it was forwarded to me. Compare: Washington Post article Part 1 and Part 2 of Early Detection of […]

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Cancer Medicine Politics

Overdiagnosis of breast cancer due to mammography

Screening for disease, especially cancer, is a real bitch. I was reminded of this by the publication of a study in BMJ the very day of the Science-Based Medicine Conference a week and a half ago. Unfortunately, between The Amaz!ng Meeting and other activities, I was too busy to give this study the attention it […]