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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

When testimonials are used in medical advertising

(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.) If there’s been one theme running through this blog every since the very beginning, it’s the unreliability of testimonials as “evidence” for the success of a cancer treatment. Indeed, if you go back to one of the very first “Orac-length” […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Yet another misleading alt-med cancer testimonial

They call them Necromancers. Necromancers have an uncanny ability to resurrect an old thread by commenting on it months, even years, after the last comment. Unfortunately, as hard as it is to believe, the version of Movable Type used by Seed to power our blogs does not have a preference panel that allows us to […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

JAMA actually gets it right regarding supplements

I just saw something I don’t see every day. Or every week. Or every month. Or even every year. I frequently complain about supplements on this blog. Well, not supplements per se but rather the double standard we have in this country when it comes to supplements. Basically, supplements are about as close to unregulated […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The complexity of cancer, part II: Enter the quacks

A couple of days ago, I couldn’t resist discussing a recent article in the New York Times about recent discoveries in cancer research. I considered the article to be a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. While the article did a pretty good job of describing recent discoveries about how noncoding RNA, […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

A “homeopathic physician” in Arizona versus science

I’m a cancer surgeon and have been since I finished my fellowship nearly 13 years ago. That is, of course, one big reason that, after I found myself drifting towards becoming a skeptic, it didn’t take long for me to take an interest in “alternative medicine,” in particular alternative medicine for cancer. Perhaps that’s why […]