Science-Based Medicine

Dr. Gorski’s posts for Science-Based Medicine are archived here.

PATIENTS WHO FOUND THIS PAGE THROUGH GOOGLE: PLEASE SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE FOR A NOTICE.

David H. Gorski, MD, PhD, FACS is a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute specializing in breast cancer surgery, where he also serves as the American College of Surgeons Committee on Cancer Liaison Physician and Co-Leader of the Breast Cancer Biology Program, as well as an Associate Professor of Surgery and member of the faculty of the Graduate Program in Cancer Biology at Wayne State University. An NIH-funded investigator whose primary research interests include tumor angiogenesis and the role of glutamate receptors in promoting the growth and metastasis of breast cancer, Dr. Gorski also runs an active research laboratory at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and has recently taken an active interest in the problems of breast cancer overdiagnosis and overtreatment, inspired to a large extent by what he learned by blogging here at SBM^1,2,3,4. Dr. Gorski has also discussed the recent USPSTF mammogram guidelines.

Dr. Gorski first became interested in pseudoscience and “alternative” medicine around 2000, when quite by accident he wandered into the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative and began critically examining the claims there. Since then, he has accumulated considerable experience refuting quackery and pseudoscience online. For the last five years, he has blogged under a pseudonym, producing what is consistently ranked as one of the top ten medical blogs, and is happy to drop his pseudonym in order to join such an accomplished group of skeptical doctors to discuss science- and evidence-based medicine (SEBM) for a broad audience.

DISCLAIMER: Because he is still a working academic surgeon and researcher (and hopes to remain so until he retires, which means—hopefully–for another 20 years or possibly even more), Dr. Gorski must emphasize that the opinions expressed in his posts on SBM are his and his alone and that all blog posts for SBM and elsewhere are written during his own time during evenings and weekends (although he does occasionally reply to blog-related e-mails or post comments in reply to readers during lunch at work). Also note that any e-mails relating to SBM sent to his work addresses will probably be ignored. Dr. Gorski’s opinions posted on this blog are most definitely not intended to represent the opinions or positions of Wayne State University School of Medicine, his department, or the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and should never, ever be construed as such. He doesn’t know how he can make this statement any stronger. Finally, his writings are for the purposes of commentary and general education only and are therefore not meant to be used as specific health care recommendations for individuals. Readers should consult their own personal physicians for advice regarding specific health problems or issues that they might have.

FINANCIAL AND CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURES: Dr. Gorski has been funded over the last decade by institutional funds, the Department of Defense, the National Cancer Institute, the ASCO Foundation, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. He currently receives no funding from pharmaceutical companies, although he did once receive a modest payment for an invention from such a company back in the mid-1990s. Indeed, so bereft of pharmaceutical funding is Dr. Gorski that before his talks, when he is required to make his disclosures of conflicts of interest, he often jokes that no pharmaceutical company is interested enough in his research to want to give him any money. Maybe one day that will change, but for now, like most biomedical scientists in academia, he must beg the NIH and other granting agencies for the money to keep his lab going. Please be aware that he does also write elsewhere for a small monthly payment for a blog collective that has unfortunately allowed a corporate blog by PepsiCo to take up temporary residence in its pages. He is actually quite disturbed by this development and reassessing his situation there.

NOTICE FOR POTENTIAL PATIENTS WHO FIND THIS WEBLOG THROUGH GOOGLE SEARCHES FOR DR. GORSKI: Please note that, through his criticism of pseudoscience and quackery on Usenet, online discussion forums, and blogs over the last decade, Dr. Gorski has managed to anger some supporters of dubious health practices and pseudoscience. As a result, there are a fair number of “alt-med”-friendly bloggers and anti-vaccine activists out there who really, really, really don’t like him, even to the point of posting screeds against him, a few of which even border on being libelous^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18}. For example, in 2009 a self-styled “health freedom” activist named Tim Bolen decided to attack Dr. Gorski online as well, most likely because of Dr. Gorski’s criticism of Suzanne Somers and Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez. Please be aware that Mr. Bolen’s history of online personal attacks, harassment, and vacuous legal threats against physicians who publicly stand up for science-based medicine is well-documented^1,2,3,4,5.

These days, most (but not all) of the intentional poisoning of Dr. Gorski’s Google reputation appears to come from the anti-vaccine blog Age of Autism (AoA). Most recently, in 2010 an AoA blogger named Jake Crosby launched an incredibly deceptive and misguided attack on Dr. Gorski that is nothing more than the “pharma shill” gambit and to which Dr. Gorski preemptively replied here. Also note that, as a result of Jake’s post, anti-vaccine activists began an e-mail and telephone campaign to the WSU Board of Directors to try to get Dr. Gorski fired from his job or, failing that, to get WSU to stop him from blogging. Fortunately, as a result of this attack, Dr. Gorski discovered that Wayne State University and the Karmanos Cancer Institute are even better places to work than he had realized, as the administrations supported his academic freedom and right to free speech.