Federal “right-to-try” over a year later: Still a failure and still about the money (and weakening the FDA)
Federal "right-to-try" legislation was passed and signed into law by President Trump over a year ago. Advocates promised that lots of terminally ill people who were dying then would be saved by having the right to "try" experimental therapies outside of the context of clinical trials. That has not happened. This should come as no surprise, because right-to-try was never about getting...
The long, strange road to passing SB 276 appears to be near its end…finally
In 2015, California passed SB 277, which eliminated religious and personal belief exemptions to school vaccine mandates. Unfortunately, there was a problem; a weakness in the law allowed antivaccine quacks to help parents get around the law by writing medical exemptions not supported by science. The long strange battle to get SB 276, the law designed to close that loophole, reveals a...
Veterinary quackery at the San Diego Zoo
As I was spending a quiet Saturday night watching Animal Planet, I was disturbed to see out and out quackery on The Zoo:San Diego, as an elephant named Tembo, who was suffering from arthritis of the hip and one of her legs, was being subjected to thermography and acupuncture. Yes, as with human medicine, acupuncture quackery has infiltrated even the highest levels...
One reason mouse studies often don’t translate to humans very well
Mouse models are often used as preclinical models of human disease, but the number of drugs that succeed in mice but go on to be approved as a drug for humans is only about one in ten. A new study comparing gene expression in the cells of human brains with those of mouse brains provides new insight into why.
The Vaccine Guide: Cherry picked studies and deceptive highlighting in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience
The Vaccine Guide is a website and a book by Ashley Everly, a "toxicology consultant" for Health Freedom Idaho. It's been making the rounds in the antivaccine underbelly of social media lately and basically consists of screenshots of cherry picked studies, articles, and web pages, with Everly's highlighting passages to provide an antivaccine spin. It's clever in a way, but also rather...
Americans still (mostly) trust scientists and doctors, but there are some troubling warning signs
Given all the denial of the science behind vaccines, GMOs, evolution, and climate science, you might think that Americans in general distrust scientists and physicians. It's actually not true. Trust in scientists and doctors remains high, but there are still areas where mistrust of scientists is a significant problem. What can be done?
Is today’s generation of children “the sickest generation”?
Presidential candidate and New Age self-help guru Marianne Williamson has been repeating a claim that over half of our children have chronic illness and implying that the expansion of the vaccine schedule since the late 1980s is responsible. But is it true? Are over half of our children sick? Is this "the sickest generation"?
For-profit stem cell clinics, universities, and “pay-to-play” clinical trials for autism
Stem cell therapies show great promise, but as yet the vast majority of that promise has not been validated in rigorous clinical trials. Unfortunately, for-profit stem cell clinics are running clinical trials that require patients to pay to be part of it. These trials are not rigorous. Even more unfortunately, it appears that some universities are also running "pay-to-play" clinical trials that...
A new study reinforces the conclusion that autism is primarily genetic
Last week, the largest epidemiological study of its kind was published and concluded, once again, that autism is primarily due to genes and that the environmental component of autism risk is much smaller. Not surprisingly, once again antivaxers didn't want to hear that message.
Facebook, Google, and social media vs. medical misinformation: An update
Over the last couple of weeks, there have been two major stories on the efforts of social media companies to combat health misinformation on their platforms. What are they doing, and are they succeeding? Dr. Gorski decided to look into these questions.