Tag: cancer
Sarah Hershberger: “Health freedom” and parental rights vs. child welfare
One of the more depressing topics that I regularly write about on this blog includes of analyses of news stories of children with cancer whose parents decided to stop science-based treatment (usually the chemotherapy) and use quackery instead. There are, of course, variations on this theme, but these stories take form that generally resembles this outline: A child is diagnosed with a...
“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...
An aspirin a day to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and cancer?
Taking an aspirin a day has always been controversial when it comes to preventing disease before it occurs. Now a task force is recommending daily use under some circumstances. Do the benefits really outweigh the risks?
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food? The obsessive worship of “medicinal foods”
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – attributed to Hippocrates Who said anything about medicine? Let’s eat! – attributed to one of Hippocrates forgotten (and skeptical) students Who hasn’t seen or heard Hippocrates’ famous quote about letting food be your medicine and your medicine your food? If you have Facebook friends who are the least bit into...
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...
Vitamins and Cancer Risk
Vitamins have been promoted as a general panacea, as well as a means of preventing cancer. In reality, high doses of vitamins may even cause cancer.
Ken Burns Presents Cancer
Note: I wrote two posts today to alert readers to two upcoming television events in time for them to plan their viewing. See the second post for an announcement about a film on scientology, along with an article about Scientology’s War on Medicine that I wrote for Skeptic magazine. Ken Burns has made a lot of outstanding films. His The Civil War...
On the “right” to challenge a medical or scientific consensus
While everyone has the "right" to challenge a scientific consensus, overthrowing a scientific consensus takes data. Lots and lots of data. Few people realize how difficult it is.
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...