Tag: cancer

Is watchful waiting for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) safe? Preliminary results of the COMET trial

Ductal carcinoma in situ is a precursor of breast cancer that is usually treated with surgery, radiation therapy, and estrogen blockade. A new study suggests that watchful waiting might be safe for some women with DCIS.

/ January 13, 2025
An NIH study section

Are NIH study sections a waste of time?

Since the nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for NIH Director, I've been seeing a suggestion from certain contrarian doctors for a "randomized trial" of study sections vs. a "modified lottery" to determine which grant applications are funded by the NIH. Just what the heck is Dr. Vinay Prasad talking about?

/ December 9, 2024
National Institutes of Health (NIH).

RFK Jr. vs. the NIH: Say goodbye to the greatest engine of biomedical research ever created

President-Elect Donald Trump has nominated antivaccine activist and anti-pharma conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. I've written about the damage he will do, if confirmed, to the CDC and FDA, but what about NIH, the greatest engine of biomedical research ever?

/ November 18, 2024
A silhouette of a man in a suit holds a smartphone, standing in front of a background with Wi-Fi signal icons and concentric circles emanating from the phone. The imagery suggests a connection between technology, communication, and connectivity.

WHO Systematic Review of RF and Cancer

In our increasingly technological world, we are constantly exposed to radio frequency electromagnetic waves (RF-EMF). It would certainly be inconvenient, to say the least, if this ubiquitous and essential technology had negative health effects. But of course we would need to know if this were the case so that steps could be taken to fix it. Fortunately, a recent systematic review conducted...

/ September 4, 2024
Chart titled "At a Glance" showing estimated new cancer cases in 2024 as 2,001,140 and deaths as 656,870. Graph shows decreasing trends in both cancer incidence and death rates from 1992 to 2022. Mantaring note: the 5-year relative survival rate for 2014-2020 is at an encouraging 69.2%.

Quoth Myrna Mantaring: “US government data” confirms a “143,233% increase in cancer cases due to COVID vaccination”? I answer with a plea for math-based reality checks.

Myrna Mattaring, a retired scientist who worked in diagnostic labs, claims that COVID-19 vaccines caused a 1432% increase in cancer cases, a clearly impossible claim. Here I make a plea for examining such claims, including a much more famous and accepted one, with basic math.

/ September 3, 2024
Integrative oncology

Revisiting “integrative oncology”: The battle to integrate quackery with oncology continues

Nature Reviews Cancer published a propaganda piece disguised as commentary promoting "integrative oncology," or what I like to call "integrating" quackery with oncology.

/ August 19, 2024
Google reviews alternative cancer clinics

How Google listings are used by alternative cancer clinics to lure in desperate patients

I've long been writing about "alternative cancer clinics" (i.e., quack clinics) that sell false hope in the form of very expensive but ineffective treatments to desperate cancer patients. A recent study demonstrates how they use Google to do this.

/ August 12, 2024

Paul Marik: Disparaging chemotherapy in order to sell cancer quackery

Everything old is new once again, as COVID-19 quacks rehash old cancer quack claims that chemotherapy doesn't work in order to sell their preferred cancer quackery.

/ July 1, 2024
Cancer cells

Forget “turbo cancers” caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Does COVID itself cause cancer?

The Washington Post recently published an article asking if COVID-19 infection can cause cancer. Probably not, but cancer caused by a virus is more more plausible than "turbo cancer" caused by the vaccine.

/ June 10, 2024

FitScript™: Functional health quackery and a misleading alternative cancer cure testimonial

Perusing the hellscape that is what Twitter has degenerated into as X, I found an alternative cancer cure testimonial, which led me into "functional health" nonsense that I hadn't encountered before. Introducing FitScript.

/ May 20, 2024