Tag: cancer
Breast implants and anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL): Is there a link?
I must admit that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with breast implants. On the one hand, as a breast cancer surgeon, I see them as a major benefit to my patients who are unfortunate enough to require mastectomy in order to control their disease. The armamentarium of techniques for reconstructing breasts after mastectomy generally falls into one of two...
A New Perspective on the War against Cancer
Myths and misconceptions about cancer abound. Oncologists are frequently criticized for torturing patients by burning, cutting and poisoning without making any real progress in the war against cancer. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist and cancer researcher, tries to set the record straight with his new book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. It is a unique combination of insightful history,...
Evidence-Based Medicine, Human Studies Ethics, and the ‘Gonzalez Regimen’: a Disappointing Editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Part 2
NB: If you haven’t yet read Part 1 of this blog, please do so now; Part 2 will not summarize it. … At the end of Part 1, I wrote: We do not need formal statistics or a new, randomized trial with a larger sample size to justify dismissing the Gonzalez regimen. In his editorial for the JCO, Mark Levine made a...
“Integrative” oncology: Trojan horse, quackademic medicine, or both?
One of the main topics that we’ve covered here on this blog over the last couple of years is the relatively rapid, seemingly relentless infiltration of pseudoscience into what should be bastions of science-based medicine (SBM), namely medical schools and academic medical centers promoted by academics who should, but apparently don’t, know better. From the very beginning, we’ve written numerous posts about...
Red Meat: Is It Hazardous to Health?
Red meat consumption has been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and several types of cancer (breast, colorectal, stomach, bladder, prostate, and lymphoma). There are plausible mechanisms: meat is a source of carcinogens, iron that may increase oxidative damage, and saturated fat. But correlation and plausibility are not enough to establish causation. Is red meat really dangerous? If so, how great is the...
The latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending saga of dichloroacetate as a cancer treatment
The road from an idea to a useful drug is a long one, and in cancer it is often particularly long. One reason is that to be able to tell whether a given treatment is effective against cancer often takes several years at a minimum, in order to determine if patients receiving the new treatment are surviving their disease longer than those...
The 2008-2009 Report of the President’s Cancer Panel: Mostly good, some bad, and a little ugly
Mark Crislip is always a hard act to follow, particularly when he’s firing on all cylinders, as he was last Friday. Although I can sometimes match him (and, on rare occasions, even surpass him) for amusing snark, this time around I’m going to remain mostly serious because that’s what the subject matter requires. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:...
The complexity of cancer: A science-based view
Last week I participated in a panel discussion at NECSS with John Snyder, Kimball Atwood, and Steve Novella, who reported on the conference last Monday. What I mentioned to some of the attendees is that I had managed to combine NECSS with a yearly ritual that I seldom miss, namely the yearly meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting....
Chemotherapy versus death from cancer
Editor’s Note: Having pivoted immediately (and dizzyingly) from attending NECSS and participating with John Snyder, Kimball Atwood, and Steve Novella in a panel on the infiltration of quackery into academia to heading down to Washington, DC for the AACR meeting, I’ve neglected my SBM duties a bit this week. After a packed day of talks at the AACR meeting followed by spending...
Biologie Totale and other bastard offspring of Ryke Geerd Hamer’s German New Medicine
A few months ago, I wrote about a particularly nasty form of cancer quackery known as the “German New Medicine” or Die Germanische Neue Medizin in German. As you may recall, the German New Medicine is based on the nonsensical idea that cancer arises from an internal emotional conflict. This conflict then results in what is called the “Dirk Hamer Syndrome” (DHS)...