All posts by David Gorski

Dr. Gorski's full information can be found here, along with information for patients. David H. Gorski, MD, PhD, FACS is a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute specializing in breast cancer surgery, where he also serves as the American College of Surgeons Committee on Cancer Liaison Physician as well as an Associate Professor of Surgery and member of the faculty of the Graduate Program in Cancer Biology at Wayne State University. If you are a potential patient and found this page through a Google search, please check out Dr. Gorski's biographical information, disclaimers regarding his writings, and notice to patients here.

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Acupuncture

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.

/ January 6, 2020

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?

/ December 30, 2019
Mercola versus flu vaccines and COVID-19

“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.

/ December 23, 2019

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.

/ December 16, 2019
Acupuncture for xerostomia

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....

/ December 9, 2019
One Million Dollars

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...

/ December 2, 2019

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.

/ November 25, 2019
Clínica 0-19 poster

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...

/ November 18, 2019

Dichotomous thinking and uncertainty in medicine and science

Medicine is by its very nature uncertain. Unfortunately, humans don't deal well with uncertainty, and our tendency towards dichotomous thinking leads us to think that if we're not absolutely certain about something we don't know anything.

/ November 11, 2019

Shame on HBO! Bill Maher interviews Dr. Jay Gordon and the antivaccine misinformation flows.

Friday night, an old "friend" of the blog, pediatrician and antivaccine apologist Dr. Jay Gordon, made an appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher. In a long segment, the antivaccine misinformation flowed fast and furious in a Gish gallop of pseudoscience. WTF, HBO?

/ November 4, 2019