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Bad science Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Quoth chiropractor William Cole: “Have your doctor run a bunch of useless functional medicine tests”

“Functional medicine” preaches the “biochemical individuality” of each patient, which is why one of its key features is that its practitioners order reams of useless lab tests and then try to correct every abnormal level without considering (or even knowing) what these abnormalities mean, if anything. So they make up fake diagnoses and profit.

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Quackery

Belief in alternative cancer cures: We have a lot of work to do to combat quackery

Earlier this week, a new survey from the American Society of Clinical Oncology showed that belief in alternative cancer cures is common, with roughly four out of ten Americans believing that “natural” alternative treatments alone can cure cancer, without any conventional oncologic therapies, like chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy. This survey points to just how ingrained misinformation about cancer is in our society and how much work advocates of science-based oncology have ahead of them to combat it.

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Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Will the Medical Board of California crack down on the stem cell hard sell?

For-profit stem cell clinics selling unproven and downright quacky stem cell therapies have proliferated over the last several years, with federal and state law seemingly powerless to stop them. Recently, the FDA and FTC have shown signs of acting to crack down on them. Now, the Medical Board of California is forming a task force to determine how to regulate physicians offering these unproven therapies. Will it matter?

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Cancer Medicine Quackery Television

My Cancer Free Life: Reality docuseries as a commercial for cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski

When I first encountered Stanislaw Burzynski and the Burzynski Clinic around a decade ago, I didn’t know what to make of him. Sure, he seemed quacky, with all the testimonials of miracle cures and the claims that he cured deadly brain cancers like diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) that conventional oncology could do no more […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Integrative medicine Naturopathy Quackery

How online crowdfunding supports cancer quacks

Patients with cancer frequently use online crowdfunding to pay for trips to quack clinics. The Good Thinking has undertaken an investigation that is the first to suggest the extent of the problem. The question is: What to do about it?