Category: Cancer
Chemotherapy versus death from cancer
Editor’s Note: Having pivoted immediately (and dizzyingly) from attending NECSS and participating with John Snyder, Kimball Atwood, and Steve Novella in a panel on the infiltration of quackery into academia to heading down to Washington, DC for the AACR meeting, I’ve neglected my SBM duties a bit this week. After a packed day of talks at the AACR meeting followed by spending...
Taking Control of Death
Science isn’t the only game in town. Literature can teach us things about the world that science can’t. It can give us vicarious experience and insight into other minds. Two recently published novels illuminate why perfectly rational people might reject the help of scientific medicine and prefer to die a little sooner but to die on their own terms.
Biologie Totale and other bastard offspring of Ryke Geerd Hamer’s German New Medicine
A few months ago, I wrote about a particularly nasty form of cancer quackery known as the “German New Medicine” or Die Germanische Neue Medizin in German. As you may recall, the German New Medicine is based on the nonsensical idea that cancer arises from an internal emotional conflict. This conflict then results in what is called the “Dirk Hamer Syndrome” (DHS)...
Questioning Colonoscopy
Everybody knows that colonoscopy is the best test to screen for colorectal cancer and that colonoscopies save lives. Everybody may be wrong. Colonoscopy is increasingly viewed as the gold standard for colorectal cancer screening, but its reputation is not based on solid evidence. In reality, it is not yet known for certain whether colonoscopy can help reduce the number of deaths from...
Abortion and breast cancer: The manufactroversy that won’t die
Whatever one thinks about abortion from a moral standpoint, we at SBM would argue that any discussion of the risks of abortion should be based in rigorous science. One "risk" of abortion frequently claimed by antiabortion activists is that it causes breast cancer, even if it takes science as bad as that found in a recently published epidemiological "study" on abortion and...
Radiation from medical imaging and cancer risk
Science-based medicine consists of a balancing of risks and benefits for various interventions. This is sometimes a difficult topic for the lay public to understand, and sometimes physicians even forget it. My anecdotal experience suggests that probably surgeons are usually more aware of this basic fact because our interventions generally involve taking sharp objects to people’s bodies and using steel to remove...
Another wrinkle to the USPSTF mammogram guidelines kerfuffle: What about African-American women?
A while back I wrote about rethinking how we screen for breast cancer using mammography. Basically, the USPSTF, an independent panel of physicians and health experts that makes nonbinding recommendations for the government on various health issues, reevaluated the evidence for routine screening mammography and concluded that for women at normal risk for breast cancer, mammography before age 50 should not be...
Cell phones and cancer again, or: Oh, no! My cell phone’s going to give me cancer! (revisited)
It’s been about a year and a half since I’ve written about this topic; so I thought I’d better update the disclaimer that I wrote at the beginning: 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,...
The Mammogram Post-Mortem
The Mammogram Post Mortem Steve Novella whimsically opined on a recent phone call that irrationality must convey a survival advantage for humans. I’m afraid he has a point. It’s much easier to scare people than to reassure them, and we have a difficult time with objectivity in the face of a good story. In fact, our brains seem to be hard wired...
The USPSTF recommendations for breast cancer screening: Not the final word
Preface: On issues such as this, I think it’s always good for me to emphasize my disclaimer, in particular: Dr. Gorski must emphasize that the opinions expressed in his posts on Science-Based Medicine are his and his alone and that all writing for this blog is done on his own time and not in any capacity representing his place of employment. His...