Category: Cancer
The compassion gambit
I’ve spent the last three weeks writing about a “brave maverick doctor” by the name of Stanislaw Burzynski who claims that he can cure cancers that regular oncologists cannot. He uses a combination of what he calls “antineoplastons” (which, it turns out, are more or less than the active metabolites of an orphan drug known as sodium phenylbutyrate) plus a very expensive...
Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, antineoplastons, and the selling of an orphan drug as a cancer cure
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time (and, characteristically, verbiage) analyzing the phenomenon known as Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and his “cancer cure” known as antineoplastons. In part I of this series, Stanislaw Burzynski: Bad medicine, a bad movie, and bad P.R., I used the legal threats against bloggers criticizing the credulous promotion by the British press...
Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s “personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy”: Can he do what he claims for cancer?
Last week, I wrote a magnum opus of a movie review of a movie about a physician and “researcher” named Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD, founder of the Burzynski Clinic and Burzynski Research Institute in Houston. I refer you to my original post for details, but in brief Dr. Burzynski claimed in the 1970s to have made a major breakthrough in cancer therapy...
Stanislaw Burzynski: Bad medicine, a bad movie, and bad P.R.
And the Lord spake, saying, “First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the...
HPV Vaccine for Boys
A recent announcement is likely to generate a lot of controversy. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC has recommended that boys and young men be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV). Previously the guidelines said boys “could” be given the HPV vaccine. Now they have recommended that boys age 11 to 12 “should” be vaccinated, as well as boys age 13...
“And one more thing” about Steve Jobs’ battle with cancer
Did Steve Jobs' delay in undergoing surgery for his cancer cost him his life? The new Walter Isaacson biography provides more information, but does not resolve the question.
More Breast Cancer Awareness Month pseudoscience from (who else?) Joe Mercola
I have mixed emotions regarding Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On the one hand, I look forward to it because it provides us with a pretext to get out science-based messages about breast cancer and to highlight a lot of the cool science that we do at our cancer center. On the other hand, the quacks see an opportunity in Breast Cancer Awareness...
Steve Jobs’ medical reality distortion field
As I pointed out in my previous post about Steve Jobs, I’m a bit of an Apple fan boy. A housemate of mine got the very first Mac way back in 1984, and ever since I bought my first computer that was mine and mine alone back in 1991 (a Mac LC), I’ve used nothing but Macintosh computers, except when compelled to...
Steve Jobs’ cancer and pushing the limits of science-based medicine
Editor’s note: There is an update to this post. An Apple fanboy contemplates computers and mortality I’m a bit of an Apple fanboy and admit it freely. My history with Apple products goes way back to the early 1980s, when one of my housemates at college had an Apple IIe, which I would sometimes use for writing, gaming, and various other applications....
Chemotherapy doesn’t work? Not so fast…
A favorite claim made by cancer quacks (and quacks of all varieties, actually) is that chemotherapy doesn't work. One variant of this claim is what I call the "2% gambit." Basically, this gambit claims that chemotherapy is only 2% effective. Not surprisingly, the evidence backing up the "2% gambit" is a highly flawed study, as is the evidence used by quacks to...