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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Knowledge versus certainty in skepticism, medicine, and science

“I don’t want knowledge. I want certainty!” –David Bowie, from Law (Earthlings on Fire) If there’s one universal trait among humans, it seems to be an unquenchable thirst for certainty. This should come as no surprise to those committed to science and rational thinking because there is a profound conflict between our human desire for […]

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Cancer Medicine

Cancer overdiagnosis and overtreatment revisited

I think the message may finally getting through. That message is that it’s not always the best strategy to treat cancer aggressively. Don’t get me wrong. If I have acute leukemia, I know I’ll need the big guns, every bit of chemotherapy appropriate to the disease that modern oncology can throw at it up to […]

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Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

“Patient-centered care” vs. CAM in the New England Journal of Medicine

“Patient-centered care.” It’s the new buzzword in patient care. Personally, I find the term mor ethan a little Orwellian in that it can mean so many things. Basically, it’s a lot like Humpty Dumpty when he says to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

No, Virginia, cancer care in Europe doesn’t suck, contrary to what a recent paper implies

The U.S. is widely known to have the highest health care expenditures per capita in the world, and not just by a little, but by a lot. I’m not going to go into the reasons for this so much, other than to point out that how to rein in these costs has long been the […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

The spontaneous regression of breast cancer?

I tell ya, I’m on the light blogging schedule for a mere four days, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the happy invasion of family on Thursday and Friday, and a significant amount of grant writing I’ve had to deal with on Saturday and Sunday, and somehow I missed not only a study relevant to […]