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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Movies Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A district attorney embarrasses himself spewing antivaccine nonsense

Last night was one of those nights where I was working late because I was asked to do a panel discussion on breast cancer last night. Such are the perils of being a breast cancer expert, I guess. That doesn’t mean I don’t have time for an uncharacteristically brief notice of some particularly dumb bit […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A “professor” who isn’t talks science about vaccines that isn’t

One of the great things about having achieved some notoriety as a blogger is that readers send me links to articles that the believe will be interesting to me. They usually come in waves. For instance, after anything having to do with Stanislaw Burzynski, “right to try,” particularly egregious antivaccine idiocy, and the like hits […]

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Clinical trials Medicine Politics Popular culture Skepticism/critical thinking

As I predicted, Stanislaw Burzynski is using “right to try” to bypass the FDA

About three months ago, I was displeased to see in a normally reliable source of medical news (STAT News) a story about a patient of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski, Neil Fachon, that fell victim to every trope that Burzynski’s used for 40 years to present himself to the press as a “brave maverick” doctor and […]

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Medicine

What do used car salesmen and stem cell clinic “entrepreneurs” have in common?

Stem cells are magic. Stem cells cure everything. They are the next big thing in medicine. That’s the narrative one frequently hears about stem cells in the press and courtesy of offshore stem cell clinics in places such as Italy and direct-to-consumer marketing of stem cells in the US. Of course, stem cells aren’t mystical […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture

The cruel sham that is “right-to-try” has returned to California

Here we go again. Remember how I frequently say that naturopaths are relentless, how, whenever they attempt to get a naturopathic licensing bill passed in a state and fail, they’re soon back to try again. Basically, they keep trying until they succeed, and once they succeed, it’s game over for keeping their quackery from having […]