Results for: burzynski
Is defending science-based medicine worth it?
Pseudoscience, denialism, fake news, and disinformation about health are a bigger problem than ever, thanks to social media. As doctors and scientists join lay defenders of science on social media, will they be willing to pay the price in terms of harassment? Or will they decide it's not worth the hassle? And what about our fellow docs who think that it's beneath...
How do we stop crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe from being used to fund quackery?
GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sites have long been used by desperate patients seeking to fund their use of unproven and downright quacky treatments. How can these sites be changed in order to keep them from being used as a funding supply for unethical quacks?
Would you pay $1 million to enroll in a phase 1 clinical trial of an “anti-aging” gene therapy?
Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC made the news last week for announcing a "pay-to-play" trial of its telomerase-based anti-aging gene therapy. What was shocking about the announcement was not that it was a "pay-to-play" trial, given that such trials have become all too common, but rather the price of enrollment: $1 million. Worse, the trial is being conducted in Colombia; the therapy doesn't...
Clínica 0-19: False hope in Monterrey for DIPG patients (Part 5, A dubious poster is presented)
Clínica 0-19 is a clinic run by Instituto de Oncología Intervencionista (IDOI) Drs. Alberto Swiller and Alberto Garcia in Monterrey Mexico that claims to have a much higher rate of survival for patients with DIPG, a deadly brain cancer, than conventional treatments. Patients come there from all over the world for an unproven concoction of chemotherapy drugs administered directly into arteries feeding...
Federal “right-to-try” over a year later: Still a failure and still about the money (and weakening the FDA)
Federal "right-to-try" legislation was passed and signed into law by President Trump over a year ago. Advocates promised that lots of terminally ill people who were dying then would be saved by having the right to "try" experimental therapies outside of the context of clinical trials. That has not happened. This should come as no surprise, because right-to-try was never about getting...
For-profit stem cell clinics, universities, and “pay-to-play” clinical trials for autism
Stem cell therapies show great promise, but as yet the vast majority of that promise has not been validated in rigorous clinical trials. Unfortunately, for-profit stem cell clinics are running clinical trials that require patients to pay to be part of it. These trials are not rigorous. Even more unfortunately, it appears that some universities are also running "pay-to-play" clinical trials that...
Facebook, Google, and social media vs. medical misinformation: An update
Over the last couple of weeks, there have been two major stories on the efforts of social media companies to combat health misinformation on their platforms. What are they doing, and are they succeeding? Dr. Gorski decided to look into these questions.
Dubious for-profit stem cell clinics: Co-opting ClinicalTrials.gov as a marketing tool
Over twenty years ago, cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski pioneered the abuse of the clinical trial process as a marketing tool to sell his antineoplastons. Now, for-profit stem cell clinics are using ClinicalTrials.gov as a marketing tool for their unproven therapies by listing dubious and scientifically worthless trials in this government database. What can be done?
Chronic Lyme disease: Fake diagnosis, not fake disease
Believe it or not, an encounter on Twitter actually changed Dr. Gorski's mind. Chronic Lyme disease is a fake diagnosis, not a fake disease.
Combatting dangerous quackery and antivaccine misinformation on streaming services and social media
Last week, Amazon began removing antivaccine videos from Amazon Prime. Last month, YouTube announced that it was demonetizing antivaccine videos, and Facebook stated that it would be taking action to de-emphasize antivaccine pages in its searched. These are all good first tentative steps, but the problem of quackery on streaming platforms and social media goes way beyond just antivaccine content. Making it...