Is defending science-based medicine worth it?
Pseudoscience, denialism, fake news, and disinformation about health are a bigger problem than ever, thanks to social media. As doctors and scientists join lay defenders of science on social media, will they be willing to pay the price in terms of harassment? Or will they decide it's not worth the hassle? And what about our fellow docs who think that it's beneath...
Contrary to what we are frequently told, we are not “losing the war on cancer” (2020 edition)
The narrative we hear from the media (and, of course, from alternative medicine mavens) is that we are "losing the war on cancer." It's actually not true. As the latest statistics from the American Cancer Society show, the mortality rate from cancer has been declining for decades.
More evidence that acupuncture doesn’t work for chronic pain
Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo whose real history has been retconned beyond recognition. A new systematic review of systematic reviews of acupuncture for chronic pain highlights that conclusion and catalogues the many weaknesses in the design of acupuncture clinical trials.
How do we stop crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe from being used to fund quackery?
GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sites have long been used by desperate patients seeking to fund their use of unproven and downright quacky treatments. How can these sites be changed in order to keep them from being used as a funding supply for unethical quacks?
“Natural health” and the antivaccine movement: The case of Dr. Joseph Mercola
Dr. Joseph Mercola has been selling quackery for over two decades. It turns out that he also promotes antivaccine pseudoscience, as a new report from The Washington Post shows.
NCCIH surveys physicians on their recommendation of “complementary health approaches,” with depressing results
The NCCIH recently published a study examining the percentage of US physicians who had recommended "complementary health approaches" to their patients in the last year. The percentages are far higher than they should be.
Spinning a negative acupuncture study: Same as it ever was
Investigators at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center reported the results of a trial of acupuncture for xerostomia (dry mouth) secondary to radiation therapy for head and neck cancers. It was a negative trial, but investigators still tried to spin it as positive, but with a twist. There was a large difference between results found at M.D. Anderson and the second site in China....
Would you pay $1 million to enroll in a phase 1 clinical trial of an “anti-aging” gene therapy?
Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC made the news last week for announcing a "pay-to-play" trial of its telomerase-based anti-aging gene therapy. What was shocking about the announcement was not that it was a "pay-to-play" trial, given that such trials have become all too common, but rather the price of enrollment: $1 million. Worse, the trial is being conducted in Colombia; the therapy doesn't...
Another serious complication from chiropractic cervical manipulation: Vertebral fracture leading to paralysis and death
John Lawlor was an 80 year old man with leg pain. Thinking he was going for physiotherapy, he ended up in the office of Arleen Scholten, a chiropractor. What happened next involved cervical spine manipulation, vertebral fracture, death, and a lack of accountability.
Clínica 0-19: False hope in Monterrey for DIPG patients (Part 5, A dubious poster is presented)
Clínica 0-19 is a clinic run by Instituto de Oncología Intervencionista (IDOI) Drs. Alberto Swiller and Alberto Garcia in Monterrey Mexico that claims to have a much higher rate of survival for patients with DIPG, a deadly brain cancer, than conventional treatments. Patients come there from all over the world for an unproven concoction of chemotherapy drugs administered directly into arteries feeding...