Category: Cancer
New Data on Cell Phones and Cancer
This is a science and medicine story we have been following for a while – out of personal and scientific interest, and the need to correct confused or misleading new reporting on the topic. Are cell phones linked to an increased risk of brain cancer or other tumors? New data is reassuring. David Gorski and I have both written on this topic....
The latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending saga of dichloroacetate as a cancer treatment
The road from an idea to a useful drug is a long one, and in cancer it is often particularly long. One reason is that to be able to tell whether a given treatment is effective against cancer often takes several years at a minimum, in order to determine if patients receiving the new treatment are surviving their disease longer than those...
The 2008-2009 Report of the President’s Cancer Panel: Mostly good, some bad, and a little ugly
Mark Crislip is always a hard act to follow, particularly when he’s firing on all cylinders, as he was last Friday. Although I can sometimes match him (and, on rare occasions, even surpass him) for amusing snark, this time around I’m going to remain mostly serious because that’s what the subject matter requires. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:...
The complexity of cancer: A science-based view
Last week I participated in a panel discussion at NECSS with John Snyder, Kimball Atwood, and Steve Novella, who reported on the conference last Monday. What I mentioned to some of the attendees is that I had managed to combine NECSS with a yearly ritual that I seldom miss, namely the yearly meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting....
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...