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...
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...
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...
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),...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...