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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Alternative medicine: Deadly for cancer patients

By definition, alternative medicine has not been shown to be effective or has been shown to be ineffective. Thus, alternative medicine is ineffective against cancer and can best be represented as either no treatment at all or potentially harmful treatment. It is thus not surprising that cancer patients who choose alternative medicine have a higher risk of dying from their cancer. A new study confirms this conclusion yet again.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Quackery

Medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates soar in California as SB 277 makes personal belief exemptions unavailable

California’s new law that eliminates personal belief exemptions has been a success, increasing vaccine uptake after just one year. That isn’t to say that there aren’t problems. One potential problem is the increasing number of medical exemptions, likely fueled by doctors willing to write letters of support for them based on reasons that are not science-based.

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

More Gardasil fear mongering: A “critical review” of HPV vaccination that lacks critical thinking

Antivaxers fear and detest vaccines, but one of the types of vaccines they fear and detest the most is the HPV vaccine, such as Gardasil and Cervarix, which have been blamed for everything from sudden death to premature ovarian failure to autoimmune diseases. A couple of Mexican “researchers” from a cardiology institute try again with a “critical review” of HPV vaccine safety that lacks anything resembling critical thinking.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Politics Quackery

Naturopathy: When fake doctors cosplay real doctors

Naturopaths are fake doctors who fancy themselves to be real doctors, so much so that they call themselves “physicians” even when explicitly barred from doing so by law.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

The death of Jade Erick from intravenous curcumin: Mystery solved

In March, it was widely reported that a young woman named Jade Erick had died suddenly of a hypersensitivity reaction while undergoing an infusion of intravenous curcumin ordered by a naturopath named Kim Kelly to treat her eczema. The FDA investigated and found egregious problems with the injectable curcumin used. This tragic incident serves to demonstrate how dangerous a combination naturopaths and dubious compounding pharmacies can be.