Results for: Burzynski
This Book Won’t Cure Your Cancer, But It Will Help You Think More Clearly About It
Gideon Burrows has an inoperable brain cancer that is slow growing but is inevitably going to kill him. He has written a remarkable book about his experience, This Book Won’t Cure Your Cancer. A professional wordsmith, he is able to describe his experience of illness so vividly that the reader enters into his life, feels what he feels, and shares his suspense...
To debate or not to debate: The strange bedfellows of Andrew Weil
Those who stand on the wrong side of science love public debates and frequently challenge science advocates to them. The reason, of course, is that public debates are almost never a good venue to argue science, and these debates almost never happen in a truly neutral venue. This time around, I got a bit of ego gratification when Andrew Weil apparently wanted...
The elusive “potential” of integrative medicine
UPDATE: Dr. Katz has responded to this post in his usual venue, The Huffington Post. Alternative medicine was all about “potential” from the get go: In 1991, the Senate Appropriations Committee responsible for funding the National Institutes of Health (NIH) declared itself “not satisfied that the conventional medical community as symbolized at the NIH has fully explored the potential that exists in...
“Liquid biopsies” for cancer screening: Life-saving tests, or overdiagnosis and overtreatment taken to a new level?
I’ve written many times about how the relationship between the early detection of cancer and decreased mortality from cancer is not nearly as straightforward as the average person—even the average doctor—thinks, the first time being in the very first year of this blog’s existence. Since then, the complexities and overpromising of various screening modalities designed to detect disease at an early, asymptomatic...
Florida strikes out against Brian Clement
Brian Clement is a charlatan. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the State of Florida. I made two (which turned into three) attempts to get the state to take action against Clement or the Hippocrates Health Institute, where he serves with his wife Anna Maria Gahns-Clement as co-director. All of them failed. Brian Clement slithered through the cracks in...
As in 2014, “right-to-try” laws continue to metastasize in 2015
Last year, I did several posts on what I consider to be a profoundly misguided and potentially harmful type of law known as “right-to-try.” Beginning about a year and a half ago, promoted by the libertarian think tank known as the Goldwater Institute, right-to-try laws began popping up in state legislatures, which I likened to Dallas Buyers Club laws. Both Jann Bellamy...
Stem cells versus Gordie Howe’s stroke, part 3
Here I am in Philadelphia attending the 2015 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting to imbibe the latest basic and translational science about oncology. So what am I doing in my non-conference time? I’m holed up in my hotel room near Rittenhouse Square writing a DoD Grant and this post. Fortunately, I am nearly done with the grant, with nothing I...
Medical marijuana as the new herbalism, part 3: A “cannabis cures cancer” testimonial
Medical marijuana is often touted, primarily in the form of cannabis oil extract, as a cure for cancer that “they” don’t want you to know about. While some cannabinoids do have modest antitumor activity in vitro, there is no compelling evidence that cannabis can cure cancer. Yet that doesn't stop a proliferation of testimonials claiming that cannabis cured cancer. They are no...
The Hippocrates Health Institute: Cancer quackery finally under the spotlight, but will it matter?
I first came across Brian Clement, the proprietor of the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida, a little more than a year ago based on the story of Stephanie O’Halloran. Ms. O’Halloran was—word choice unfortunately intentional—a 23-year-old mother of an 18 month old child from Ireland who was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in 2013, with metastases to her...
What do we do about politicians and physicians who promote antivaccine misinformation?
There are politicians and physicians out there promoting antivaccine misinformation. None of us expect politicians to be scientists or physicians, but we do expect them to listen to them. Worse are physicians who betray their profession to promote antivaccine pseudoscience. What can be done about these very public figures who endanger public health?