Threats to science-based medicine: When clinical trials for new drugs are designed by the marketing division
When the marketing division designs clinical trials, scientific medicine loses.
Thanks, Jenny McCarthy! Thanks for the measles!
Thanks for bringing back a once-vanquished disease, Jenny!
High dose vitamin C and cancer: Has Linus Pauling been vindicated?
Treating cancer with high-doses of vitamin C is a zombie idea that began with Linus Pauling, and has failed to die ever since. But has new research vindicated this idea? No. No in any meaningful way. This work is the very definition of a long run for a short slide.
The Orange Man
Alternative medicine is not harmless, and carrots cannot cure cancer.
Medscape quietly pulls a bad news article
Three days ago, I published a disapproving commentary about a disappointingly credulous and misinformation-laden article published on Medscape about the human papilloma virus vaccine Gardasil. The article was clearly biased, and, worse, it quoted Oprah’s favorite woo-loving gynecologist Dr. Christiane Northrup parroting germ theory denialism and the myth that Louis Pasteur “recanted” on his deathbed. All in all, it was a terrible...
Animal rights terrorists endanger science-based medicine
Animal rights terrorists strike again at the University of California Santa Cruz. This time it's firebombing.
HPV vaccination misinformation and bias in Medscape
Like many physicians, I often peruse Medscape. It’s generally been a convenient and quick way to catch up on what’s going on in my field not directly related to my research, for which I tend to rely on pre-configured RSS feeds for PubMed searches to highlight any articles related to my areas of interest. Since these searches routinely flag hundreds of articles...
Cell phones and cancer again, or: Oh, no! My cell phone’s going to give me cancer!
Before I start into the meat of this post, I feel the need to emphasize, as strongly as I can, four things: I do not receive any funding from the telecommunications industry in general, or wireless phone companies in particular. None at all. In other words, I’m not in the pocket of “big mobile” any more than I am in the pocket...
Resistance is futile? Hell, no! (A call to arms)
Well, I won’t back down No, I won’t back down You can stand me up at the gates of hell But I won’t back down Gonna stand my ground Won’t be turned around And I’ll keep this world from draggin’ me down Gonna stand my ground And I won’t back down From “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty, 1989 This week,...
When “investigative reporting” becomes anti-vaccine propaganda
Introduction: The following is the text of a letter that I mailed to Bob Sliva, General Manager of WXYZ-TV in Detroit in response to arguably the most biased and incompetent “investigative report” about mercury, vaccines, or autism that I have ever seen. I sent the letter by snail mail, because I was always taught that that gets a station manager’s attention far...