Categories
Cancer Medicine

“Obama’s fixin’ death panels for your mama,” the misogyny gambit, and other idiotic responses to the updated USPSTF mammography recommendations

I knew when I first heard about them that the new United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on breast cancer screening would be controversial. I tried to discuss these guidelines and the issues involved in a calm and rational way, relatively devoid of Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, yesterday, pointing out that screening guidelines […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

“Obama’s fixin’ death panels for your mama”: The USPSTF recommendations for mammography used as a political weapon

As I discussed in detail when I analyzed them, the new USPSTF recommendations for screening mammography for breast cancer have sparked a debate that has degenerated from a scientific and public policy debate into pure emotional rhetoric. When last I visited this topic, yesterday, I had intended it to be my last post for a […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Evolution History Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The “vindication of all kooks” corollary to the principle of crank magnetism

A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, “crank magnetism,” describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety […]

Categories
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 […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine Politics Surgery

How not to protect your medical turf

When the USPSTF issued new guidelines for who should undergo screening mammography, at what ages, and how often, it set off a firestorm of negative reactions. Some of this is not surprising, given that the reevaluation of the evidence for screening mammography led the USPSTF to recommend against its routine use in women between the […]