Last week, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (JACM) published a Special Focus Issue on "integrative oncology." In reality, it's propaganda that promotes pseudoscience and the "integration" of quackery into oncology.
Tag: integrative oncology
ASCO: Endorsing the Society for Integrative Oncology’s “integration” of quackery into oncology
In 2014, the Society for Integrative Oncology first published clinical guidelines for the care of breast cancer patients. Not surprisingly, SIO advocated “integrating” dubious therapies with oncology. Last week, the most influential oncology society, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), endorsed a 2017 update to the SIO guidelines, thus endorsing the “integration” of quackery with oncology and paving the way for insurance coverage. The advance of quackademic medicine in oncology continues apace.
Defining “integrative oncology” and failing
Earlier this month, the Society for Integrative Oncology published an article attempting to define what “integrative oncology” is. The definition, when it isn’t totally vague, ignores the pseudoscience at the heart of integrative oncology and medicine.
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.
Hallelujah! The mainstream press finally notices quackademic medicine!
I've been writing a long time about a phenomenon that I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," defined as the infiltration into academic medical centers and medical school of unscientific and pseudoscientific treatment modalities that are unproven or disproven. Few seem to listen. That's why it's reassuring to see a mainstream news publication get it (mostly) right about this phenomenon.
Selling an alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial as an “N-of-1” trial: Integrative medicine’s new propaganda technique?
If there’s one thing that proponents of “integrative medicine” (or, as it’s been called in the past, “complementary and alternative medicine,” or CAM) take great pains to emphasize whenever defending their integration of prescientific and pseudoscientific medicine into medicine, it’s that they do not recommend using “alternative medicine” instead of real medicine but in addition to real medicine. Indeed, even the “gods” of integrative medicine, such as Barrie Cassileth at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, not only emphasize that but actually often take umbrage when it is suggested that integrative medicine advocates ever suggest that alternative medicine should be used instead …
Is there a role for homeopathy in cancer care? I think you know the answer to that question…
Homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All. There, I’ve started off this post the way I start off most posts about homeopathy, with a statement of just how enormous a pile of pseudoscientific (or rather prescientific) quackery that it is. You’d think that in 2015 no one would believe that diluting a substance (with vigorous shaking between each serial dilution step, of course, in order to “potentize” it) makes its effects stronger or that water has some sort of mystical “memory” that remembers the therapeutic substance but forgets all the other impurities, chemicals, and urine with which the …
Studying “disparities” in access to “complementary and alternative medicine”
When it comes to the use of what is sometimes called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, increasingly, “integrative medicine,” there is a certain narrative. It’s a narrative promoted by CAM proponents that does its best to convince the public that there is nothing unusual, untoward, or odd about CAM use, even though much of CAM consists of treatments that are based on prescientific concepts of human physiology and pathology, such as traditional Chinese medicine or homeopathy. In other words, it’s a narrative designed to “normalize” CAM usage (and therefore CAM practice), making it no different than the usage of …
Old wine in a new skin: The Society for Integrative Oncology promotes integrating pseudoscience into oncology
Last week, I discussed a monograph published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs entitled Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Use of Integrative Therapies as Supportive Care in Patients Treated for Breast Cancer. As you might remember, I was completely unimpressed. However, those guidelines were not the only thing in that particular JNCI monograph. There were lots of other articles, and, given that some of them show just how deeply quackery has insinuated itself into oncology in the form of “integrative oncology,” I thought it was worth revisiting one more time. Sometimes, it’s hard not to get the …
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 promoting the scientific basis of medicine, and just this year managed to publish a lengthy commentary in a high impact journal criticizing the very concept of integrative oncology. Unfortunately, it seems to be the equivalent of the proverbial pissing in the ocean, as the flood …