Tag: cancer

Eric Merola’s conspiracy-mongering and more of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s cancer “success” stories

About a month ago, Eric Merola screened his second movie about “brave maverick doctor” Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as “Burzynski II”), a screening that Brian Thompson and an unnamed colleague from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) attended, took notes, and even managed to ask a question. At the time, I took advantage...

/ April 15, 2013

Houstoncancerquack.com Campaign Aims to Shame Burzynski While Raising Money for Legitimate Cancer Research

David Gorski already mentioned this on Monday,  but Burzynski’s birthday is rapidly approaching (January 23rd) and I want to encourage our readers to donate to the Burzynski birthday campaign. Burzynski’s misdeeds are highlighted by the stories on the website The OTHER Burzynski Patient Group   If you haven’t already visited that site and read some of the stories, please do. 26 patient...

/ January 18, 2013

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s antineoplastons versus patients

Prelude: Doin’ the Antineoplaston Boogaloo with Eric Merola and Stanislaw Burzynski In December I noted that Eric Merola, the “film maker” (and, given the quality of his work, I do use that term loosely) who was responsible for a movie that was such blatant propaganda that it would make Leni Riefenstahl blush were she still alive (Burzynski The Movie: Cancer Is Serious...

/ January 14, 2013

Everything we eat causes cancer…sort of

Red meat causes cancer. No, processed meat causes cancer. OK, it’s both red meat and processed meat. Wait, genetically modified grain causes cancer (well, not really). No, aspartame causes cancer. No, this food coloring or that one causes cancer. Clearly, everything you eat causes cancer! That means you can avoid cancer by avoiding processed meats, red meat, GMO-associated food (no, probably not),...

/ January 7, 2013

Now that Burzynski has gotten off in 2012, Burzynski The Movie will spawn a sequel in 2013

About a year ago, I became interested in a physician named Stanislaw Burzynski who has been treating cancer with compounds that he calls “antineoplastons” for over three decades without, in my opinion, ever having ever produced any compelling evidence that antineoplastons have significant anticancer activity. Although I had been vaguely aware of Burzynski and his activities, it was the first time that...

/ December 3, 2012

Journal of Clinical Oncology editorial: “Compelling” evidence acupuncture “may be” effective for cancer related fatigue

Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) is a high impact journal (JIF > 16)  that advertises itself as a “must read” for oncologists. Some cutting edge RCTs evaluating chemo and hormonal therapies have appeared there. But a past blog post gave dramatic examples of pseudoscience and plain nonsense to be found in JCO concerning psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and, increasingly, integrative medicine and even integrations...

/ November 28, 2012

True Informed Consent Is Elusive

Most of us would agree that doctors should not treat patients without their consent, except in special cases like emergency care for an unconscious patient.  It’s not enough for doctors to ask “Is it OK with you if I do this?” They should get informed consent from patients who understand the facts, the odds of success, and the risk/benefit ratio of treatments....

/ November 20, 2012

Questioning Whether Psychotherapy and Support Groups Extend the Lives of Cancer Patients

What a wonderful world it would be if  cancer patients could  extend their survival time by mobilizing their immune systems by eating the right foods, practicing yoga, and venting their emotions in a support group. The idea that patients can enlist their immune systems to fight the progression of cancer is deeply entrenched in psychosomatic medicine and the imagination of the lay...

/ August 31, 2012

Dr. Gorski pontificates about the Gerson Therapy on Uprising Radio

Every so often I get requests to be interviewed on the radio about skeptical topics. Now, why anyone would ever want to interview me, who knows? But they do, and when I can manage to accommodate reporters or interviewers, I do. Last week, I was interviewed on Uprising Radio, in which I discussed alternative medicine (particularly the Gerson therapy for cancer). My...

/ August 19, 2012

Meet the new drugs, same as the old drugs?

“Targeted therapy.” It’s the holy grail of cancer research these days. If you listen to its most vocal proponents, it’s the path towards “personalized medicine” that improves survival with much lower toxicity. With the advent of the revolution in genomics that has transformed cancer research over the last decade, including the petabytes of sequence and gene expression data that pour out of...

/ July 23, 2012