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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Naturopathy Politics Quackery Religion Science

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer

A few weeks ago, Steve Novella invited me on his podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, to discuss a cancer case that has been in the news for several months now. The case was about an 11-year-old girl with leukemia who is a member of Canada’s largest aboriginal community. Steve wrote about this case […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery Science

R.I.P., McKenzie Lowe. Stanislaw Burzynski failed you.

R.I.P., McKenzie Lowe. Unfortunately, Stanislaw Burzynski was no more able to save you than anyone else, his claims of great success treating pediatric brain tumors notwithstanding: HUDSON — Thirteen-year-old Hudson resident McKenzie Lowe died Friday evening after a 2-year-battle against an aggressive and inoperable brain stem tumor. McKenzie died at 10:27 p.m. in her own […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Ebola, "right-to-try," and placebo legislation

One of the biggest medical conspiracy theories for a long time has been that there exist out there all sorts of fantastic cures for cancer and other deadly diseases but you can’t have them because (1) “they” don’t want you to know about them (as I like to call it, the Kevin Trudeau approach) and/or […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

An old "friend" thinks Ayurvedic "auto-urine therapy" can cure Ebola

I’m beginning to feel that I’m flogging a topic a bit too hard again. Usually, this happens primarily when I’m on a roll over some particularly tasty ridiculous tidbit of antivaccine nonsense. This time around, it’s not so much antivaccine nonsense (although some did manage to slip its way into the discussion) but rather Ebola […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The cruel sham of “right to try” comes to Michigan

There are times when supporting science-based health policy and opposing health policies that sound compassionate but are not are easily portrayed as though I’m opposing mom, apple pie, and the American flag. One such type of misguided policy that I’ve opposed is a category of bills that have been finding their way into state legislatures […]