Tag: basic science
Paralyzed Patient Communicates with Brain Implant
Brain-machine interfaces continue to advance.
A Call for Caution on Antioxidant Supplementation
Antioxidants have gotten a lot of press here on SBM; this post digs a little deeper into the basic science of antioxidants, and the importance of understanding more than just one part of a complex biological system before you interfere with it.
Does chemotherapy cause cancer to spread?
Earlier this month, a study was published in Science Translational Medicine that showed how chemotherapy before surgery can stimulate breast cancer invasiveness and invasion under certain circumstances. Not surprisingly, alternative cancer cure mavens everywhere are spinning the study as "proof" that chemotherapy has no benefit and causes only harm (and so you should buy their nostrums instead). Unsurprisingly, the actual results are...
The 21st Century Cures Act: The (Somewhat) Good, The (Mostly) Bad, and The (Very) Ugly
The approval of new drugs and medical devices is a process fraught with scientific, political, and ethical landmines. Inherent in any such process is an unavoidable conflict between rigorous science and safety on the one side, which tend to slow the process down by requiring large randomized clinical trials that can take years, versus forces that demand faster approval. For example, patients...