Category: Cancer
Here we go again: Another study is being misrepresented as evidence that COVID vaccines cause cancer
An eminent oncologist, cancer researcher, and cancer center director is promoting a study that seems to show—but, when critically examined, doesn't—that COVID vaccines are associated with increased cancer risk.
Natural History
It usually takes me several weeks to write these essays, in part because I am slow, and in part I have more to do in retirement than I ever did when working. But as this goes live, I am recovering from a new knee replacement. As I age I am having everything that fails and either be replaced or removed. Orchiectomy next?...
No turbo cancer at ASCO: William Makis vs. Scott Adams and A Midwestern Doctor instead?
I was in Chicago this weekend attending the ASCO meeting, the largest oncology meeting in the world. Nary a talk or poster about "turbo cancer" was seen, but that doesn't mean there wasn't cancer quack fight online to distract me from the meeting.
Apple Cider Vinegar
I just watched the new Netflix series, Apple Cider Vinegar, which tells the story of Belle Gibson, an Australian woman who launched a wellness business based largely on the false claim that she had survived “terminal brain cancer”. It is worth a watch, and overall I feel the writers (this is a fictionalized version, not a documentary) captured the industry of fake...
Is watchful waiting for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) safe? Preliminary results of the COMET trial
Ductal carcinoma in situ is a precursor of breast cancer that is usually treated with surgery, radiation therapy, and estrogen blockade. A new study suggests that watchful waiting might be safe for some women with DCIS.
“And we’d better not risk another frontal assault. That plasmid’s dynamite.” Antivaxxers vs. plasmid DNA
Ever since recombinant DNA has been used to develop and manufacture vaccines, antivaxxers have portrayed it as evil. This weekend, an antivaxxer decided that fear mongering about SV40 in COVID-19 vaccines wasn't enough. Here we go again...
Quoth Myrna Mantaring: “US government data” confirms a “143,233% increase in cancer cases due to COVID vaccination”? I answer with a plea for math-based reality checks.
Myrna Mattaring, a retired scientist who worked in diagnostic labs, claims that COVID-19 vaccines caused a 1432% increase in cancer cases, a clearly impossible claim. Here I make a plea for examining such claims, including a much more famous and accepted one, with basic math.
Revisiting “integrative oncology”: The battle to integrate quackery with oncology continues
Nature Reviews Cancer published a propaganda piece disguised as commentary promoting "integrative oncology," or what I like to call "integrating" quackery with oncology.
How Google listings are used by alternative cancer clinics to lure in desperate patients
I've long been writing about "alternative cancer clinics" (i.e., quack clinics) that sell false hope in the form of very expensive but ineffective treatments to desperate cancer patients. A recent study demonstrates how they use Google to do this.
Paul Marik: Disparaging chemotherapy in order to sell cancer quackery
Everything old is new once again, as COVID-19 quacks rehash old cancer quack claims that chemotherapy doesn't work in order to sell their preferred cancer quackery.