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Cancer Medicine

Cancer overdiagnosis and overtreatment revisited

I think the message may finally getting through. That message is that it’s not always the best strategy to treat cancer aggressively. Don’t get me wrong. If I have acute leukemia, I know I’ll need the big guns, every bit of chemotherapy appropriate to the disease that modern oncology can throw at it up to […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The Huffington Post promotes breast cancer quackery again

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a fact that is hard to escape. It’s one of those things that I have mixed feelings about, particularly now that I’ve had a close relative, namely my mother-in-law, die of breast cancer less than two years ago. On the one hand, the attention that’s brought to the cause […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer?

Why haven’t we cured cancer yet? If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer? If we can harness the atom, why can’t we cure cancer? How many times have you heard these questions, or variants thereof? How many times have you asked this question yourself? Sometimes, I even ask […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Quackery Surgery

Mammography and the risk of breast cancer from low dose radiation: Weighing the risks versus hysteria

I’m beginning to understand why evolutionary biologists are so sensitive about how creationists abuse and twist any research that they think can be used to cast doubt upon evolution. Whenever there is research that changes the way we look at evolution or suggest aspects of it that we didn’t appreciate before, where scientists get excited […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

The USPSTF mammography guidelines and African American women: Do they even apply?

A while back I wrote about really rethinking how we screen for breast cancer using mammography. Basically, the USPSTF, an independent panel of physicians and health experts that makes nonbinding recommendations for the government on various health issues, reevaluated the evidence for routine screening mammography and concluded that for women at normal risk for breast […]