Alternative medicine mavens like to promote a stereotype of cancer doctors as practically slavering to poison patients with chemotherapy. The TAILORx trial and its results would beg to differ.
Tag: breast cancer
Why do some breast cancer patients decline chemotherapy and radiation?
Adjuvant therapy after surgery, such as chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, and radiation therapy, has contributed to a 39% decrease in breast cancer mortality since 1989. Unfortunately, a significant number of women decline evidence-based adjuvant therapy. A recent study suggests that distrust of the medical system plays a significant role in such refusal.
Why a case report being circulated by advocates doesn’t show that the ketogenic diet combats cancer
it's October, which means that it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which means that it's time for dubious breast cancer case reports. Here's one about ketogenic diets that doesn't show that such diets cure cancer.
Does chemotherapy work? Chemotherapy vs. “spreading” cancer.
Earlier this month, cancer quacks everywhere were touting a study that suggests that chemotherapy administered before breast cancer treatment can stimulate the spread of cancer, pointing to it as evidence that chemotherapy doesn't work and even makes cancer worse. In reality, the study was far more nuanced. It didn't show that chemotherapy doesn't work (quite the contrary) but does point to ways we can make chemotherapy more effective.
Old wine poured into a newer skin: The Society for Integrative Oncology updates its clinical guidelines for breast cancer
Just over two years ago, the Society for Integrative Medicine issued clinical guidelines for breast cancer care. Now it's updated them. Unfortunately, mixing cow pie with apple pie for a little longer doesn't make the cow pie any better than it was last time.
Homeopathy for breast cancer surgery? Isn’t it bad enough that the patient has cancer and needs a mastectomy?
I like to refer to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All, so much so that I almost always call it that within the first two paragraphs of any post I write about some tasty bit of homeopathy pseudoscience. It’s also a wonderful tool for teaching critical thinking because it’s easy to explain and people grasp intuitively why homeopathy is pseudoscience when it’s explained properly to them. Basically, it’s because of homeopathy’s two laws. The first is the Law Similars, which states that, relieve a symptom, you must use something that causes the symptom. It’s nonsense. There’s no …
Poppa was a Rolling Stone…who likes homeopathy?
Old fart that I am, I’ve been a fan of The Rolling Stones since the mid-1970s, when I was in junior high school. Over the years, I’ve accumulated pretty close to all of their studio albums—and even bought multiple remastered versions of classics like Exile on Main Street and Beggar’s Banquet—and got access to the rest when I discovered the joy of streaming through Apple Music. Granted, the Stones went through a rough patch, creatively speaking, in the 1980s (the less said about Under Cover and Dirty Work, for instance, the better) and nothing they’ve done since the late 1970s …
The new Secretary of Health and Human Services is a member of a fringe medical organization. Here’s what that means.
I’m always hesitant to write about matters that are more political than scientific or medical, although sometimes the sorts of topics that I blog about inevitably require it (e.g., the 21st Century Cures Act, an act that buys into the myth that to bring “cures” to patients faster we have to neuter the FDA and a retooled version of which is still being considered). This is one of those times. Yesterday, I woke up to the news that President-Elect Donald Trump had chosen Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) as his new Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Department of Health …
Diet and exercise to prevent cancer: What does the evidence say?
One of the most effective spin techniques used by advocates of “integrative medicine” (also sometimes called “complementary and alternative medicine,” or CAM for short) to legitimize quackery has been to claim basically all non-pharmacologic, non-surgical interventions as “integrative,” “complementary,” or “alternative.” Thus, science-based interventions such as diet changes to treat and/or prevent disease, exercise, and other lifestyle alterations are portrayed as somehow so special, so outside the mainstream, that they need their own specialty, “integrative medicine,” even though they are simply part of medicine. I pointed this out a mere two weeks ago when I discussed the National Center for …
Yet another woman with breast cancer lured into quackery by Ty Bollinger and “holistic” medicine advocates
To say that I, as a cancer surgeon, am not a fan of Ty Bollinger is a massive understatement. He’s not exactly one of my fans, either, but I view the hatred of a man like Bollinger directed at me as a badge of honor. Indeed, if a man like Bollinger didn’t detest me, I would view my efforts as a failure because I view him as a quack whose desperately deceptive film series The Truth About Cancer has been correctly dubbed untruthful about cancer by Harriet Hall and whose message has led cancer patients into rejecting conventional medicine in …