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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

Enough straw man attacks on evidence-based medicine to defoliate Kansas

Evidence-based medicine is not perfect. There, I’ve said it. Like anything else humans do in science or any other endeavor, evidence-based medicine (EBM) has its strengths and its weaknesses. On the whole, I consider it to be potentially vastly superior to the way that medicine was practiced in the past, bringing a systematic, scientific rigor […]

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Evolution Medicine

Medicine and Evolution, Part 9: What was that about evolution having “nothing to do” with antimicrobial resistance?

In my last couple of posts on the risks and benefits of ever more sensitive screening tests for various cancers, and in particular breast cancer, I marveled at a a bit of serendipity that had pointed me to a particular old article a mere few days before multiple new papers about breast cancer screening with […]

Categories
Anti-Semitism History Holocaust World War II

Mrs. Hitler and her doctor

In 1907, Adolf Hitler’s mother Klara died of breast cancer at age 47, when Hitler was only 18. The young Hitler was devastated by her death. Indeed, in Mein Kampf, Hitler described her death thusly: These were the happiest days of my life and seemed to me almost a dream; and a mere dream it […]

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Medicine

Guys like this give breast surgeons a bad name

As a surgical oncologist whose practice is made up largely of treating breast cancer, I really hate guys like this: MIAMI – A 76-year-old man claiming to be a doctor went door-to-door in a Florida neighborhood offering free breast exams and was charged with sexually assaulting two women who accepted the offer, police said Thursday. […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The nuttiness that is Whale.to: Save Scopie’s Law!

Some of you may have heard of John Scudamore’s Whale.to site. I’ve referred to it in the past as a repository of some of the wildest and most bizarre “alternative” medicine claims out there. However, I will admit that I’ve only ever scratched the surface of the insanity that is Whale.to. Kathleen Seidel has dug […]