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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Quack attack: Naturopaths and supplement companies press for naturopathic licensure in Michigan

Over the years, I’ve taken care of women with locally advanced breast cancer so advanced that it’s eroded through the skin, forming huge, nasty ulcers filled with stinky dead cancer tissue that’s outgrown its blood supply, leaving the patient in chronic pain. If the patient is fortunate, her cancer has not metastasized beyond her axillary […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

An anonymous Canadian foundation grants $4 million to study "integrative oncology"

Supporters of science-based medicine and keeping pseudoscience out of medicine have a few years to prepare for an onslaught of crappy studies “proving” the value of “integrative” oncology. No doubt at this point you’re wondering just what the heck Orac is talking about. I will tell you. It involves an institution we’ve encountered before and […]

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

Old wine in a new skin: The Society for Integrative Oncology issues guidelines for breast cancer

It should come as a surprise to no one that I’m not exactly a fan of “integrative oncology”—or integrative medicine, or “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or whatever its proponents want to call it these days. After all, I’ve spent nearly ten years writing this blog and nearly seven years running another blog dedicated to […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Patients, doctors embracing alternative medicine in battle against cancer? Not so much.

In the well over nine years that I’ve been blogging, there’s one tried and true, completely reliable topic to blog about, one that I can almost always find. I’m referring, of course, to the credulous news story about pseudoscience. The pseudoscience can be quackery, creationism, anthropogenic global warming denialist arguments, or whatever; inevitably, there will […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy

A study contributes to the deceptive rebranding of naturopathy as “lifestyle counseling”

That naturopathy is a veritable cornucopia of quackery mixed with the odd sensible, science-based suggestion here and there is not in doubt, at least not to supporters of science-based medicine (SBM). However, what naturopaths are very good at doing is representing their pseudoscience as somehow being scientific and thus on par with actual SBM. So […]