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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The (not so) Thinking Moms’ (D)evolution’s Declaration

One of the most inaptly named groups I’ve ever seen is called Thinking Moms’ Revolution (henceforth abbreviated as TMR). Given the reality of what TMR really is, the word “thinking” applied to TMR is, as they say, so wrong it’s not even wrong. As for a “revolution,” what TMR really represents is nothing revolutionary at […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Dietary supplements: Scary substances manufactured under scary conditions

If there’s a law that I view as a horrible, horrible, law, it’s the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA of 1994). It is a law that blog bud and former ScienceBlogs blogger Dr. Peter Lipson has rightly called a travesty of a mockery of a sham, and, quite frankly, I think he […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

An update on the youth who “cured himself” of melanoma, Chad Jessop

About a month and a half ago, I discussed an e-mail that was being propagated far and wide that described the case of the mother of a 17 year old male who, or so the e-mail claimed, cured her son of stage IV melanoma using “natural means” and was supposedly thrown in maximum security prison […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The story of the 17-year-old with melanoma being forced to undergo chemotherapy: Urban legend?

My recent update of my ongoing discussion of the Abraham Cherrix case reminded me that there’s a bit of alarming e-mail being sent out and forwarded far and wide. If you read it, at first glance, you will think it sounds utterly horrifying, the Abraham Cherrix and Katie Wernecke cases all rolled up into one […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Thomas Cowles twisting in the wind defending the “cancer boy” urban legend

I’m rather amused. No, I’m very amused. Yesterday, as you may recall, I discussed a seemingly alarming e-mail that’s going around about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whom the State of California had allegedly removed from the custody of his mother because she and he had wanted to use “advanced natural medicine” to treat his […]