Investigators at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reported the results of a trial of acupuncture for xerostomia (dry mouth) secondary to radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. It was a negative trial, but investigators still tried to spin it as positive, but with a twist. There was a large difference between results found at M.D. Anderson and the second site in China. What could be going on?
Antivaxxers flooded the New Jersey statehouse Thursday to protest S2173, a bill to end nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Unfortunately for them, they initially went to the meeting room way too early and wouldn’t leave when informed it was a meeting about NJ Transit. There’s definitely a metaphor there.
Whole Foods was purchased by Amazon in 2017. If you thought that would make a difference in the selling of quackery by Whole Foods, you thought wrong. Homeopathy and antivaccine quackery still rule there.
Sherri Tenpenny and James Grundvig contort logic into pretzels to deny that low vaccine uptake is responsible for measles outbreaks in Samoa and Congo.
Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC made the news last week for announcing a “pay-to-play” trial of its telomerase-based anti-aging gene therapy. What was shocking about the announcement was not that it was a “pay-to-play” trial, given that such trials have become all too common, but rather the price of enrollment: $1 million. Worse, the trial is being conducted in Colombia; the therapy doesn’t have the greatest preclinical justification; and it’s a phase 1 trial, which means it is only trial of safety, not efficacy. How can unethical and scientifically dubious trials like this be stopped?
