Category: Cancer

Plasmid is dynamite, not killer rabbit.

“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...

/ October 21, 2024
Chart titled "At a Glance" showing estimated new cancer cases in 2024 as 2,001,140 and deaths as 656,870. Graph shows decreasing trends in both cancer incidence and death rates from 1992 to 2022. Mantaring note: the 5-year relative survival rate for 2014-2020 is at an encouraging 69.2%.

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.

/ September 3, 2024
Integrative oncology

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.

/ August 19, 2024
Google reviews alternative cancer clinics

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.

/ August 12, 2024

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.

/ July 1, 2024
Cancer cells

Forget “turbo cancers” caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Does COVID itself cause cancer?

The Washington Post recently published an article asking if COVID-19 infection can cause cancer. Probably not, but cancer caused by a virus is more more plausible than "turbo cancer" caused by the vaccine.

/ June 10, 2024

FitScript™: Functional health quackery and a misleading alternative cancer cure testimonial

Perusing the hellscape that is what Twitter has degenerated into as X, I found an alternative cancer cure testimonial, which led me into "functional health" nonsense that I hadn't encountered before. Introducing FitScript.

/ May 20, 2024
Turbo cancer?

COVID-19 vaccine-caused “turbo cancer” nonsense just keeps getting more turbocharged

No matter how implausible it is or how weak the evidence for it is, the myth that COVID vaccines cause "turbo cancer" just won't die. Quite the contrary, alas. Antivaxxers are—dare I say?—turbocharging it with bad science.

/ April 22, 2024
Cancer cells

There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are causing cancers associated with “accelerated aging”

A recent presentation at AACR found a link between markers of accelerated aging and an increased risk of cancer. Then antivaxxers got a hold of it to blame COVID-19 vaccines not just for cancer, but for "accelerated aging" causing it.

/ April 15, 2024
Mark Sircus

Mark Sircus and “natural allopathic medicine”? Now I’ve heard everything from quacks

The term "allopathic medicine" was invented by homeopaths in the 19th century as a disparaging term for medicine. So to see a quack like Mark Sircus try to coopt it as "natural allopathic medicine" is quite something.

/ March 25, 2024