Tag: alternative cancer cure testimonial
You’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer. How soon do you need treatment?
Timely surgery for breast cancer is obviously better than delaying surgery, but how long can a patient safely wait for surgery once diagnosed. Because a randomized controlled clinical trial to answer this question would be unethical, this has been a difficult question to answer. Fortunately, a new study provides an estimate of how much of a delay it takes before outcomes start...
Presidential candidate Ben Carson: Shilling for Mannatech with his very own alternative cancer cure testimonial?
Over the years, mainly at my not-so-super-secret other blog, I’ve frequently made the points that the vast majority of physicians are not scientists and, in fact, that many of them suffer from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger when it comes to science outside of biomedical sciences—or even biomedical sciences outside of their medical field of expertise. The most common science I’ve seen...
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...
Another Misguided Cancer Testimonial
Mike Shedlock wrote a post about how he beat prostate cancer. In doing so, he provides a typical example of how difficult the medical literature can be for a layperson to read, and where they can get things wrong.
“Atavistic oncology”: Another dubious cancer therapy to be avoided
An idea promulgated by physicist Paul Davies that cancer is a reversion to a primordial cell type has been making the rounds. It's even spawned a form of quackery, atavistic chemotherapy, promoted by Dr. Frank Arguello. Davies, in his hubris and his view of himself as an "outsider," seems to think he's the first scientist to have ever had this "brilliant insight,"...
Faith Healing
Faith healing is based on belief and is about as far as you can get from science-based medicine, but it is not exempt from science. If it really worked, science would be able to document its cures and would be the only reliable way to validate its effectiveness. Miraculous cures continue to be reported on a regular basis: what are we to...
On the nature of “alternative” medicine cancer cure testimonials
No doubt you’ve come across them before, either on the Internet, printed advertisements, or radio and TV ads: Alternative medicine cancer “testimonials.” They are the primary means by which “alternative” therapies for cancer (or just about any other disease) are promoted and the primary “evidence” that is used to “prove” the efficacy of non-evidence-based therapies. There’s no doubt that they sure can...