Category: Clinical Trials

And Now for Something Completely Different

This will be a departure from my usual posts. Several announcements in the news and medical journals have caught my attention recently, and as I delved into the details, I thought I would share them with our SBM readers. Topics include AIDS cures, the continuing danger of polio, eating nuts for longevity, racial differences in vitamin D, and the use of pharmacogenetic...

/ December 17, 2013

The Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients need your help

We at SBM don’t normally ask our readers for much, if anything, other than to read and for the subset of you who like to be active in the comments to have at it. However, given the story of Stanislaw Burzysnki, which I’ve been covering with frequent blog posts for over two years now, how could I not listen to the appeal...

/ December 4, 2013

“Low T”: The triumph of marketing over science

A man on TV is selling me a miracle cure that will keep me young forever. It’s called Androgel…for treating something called Low T, a pharmaceutical company–recognized condition affecting millions of men with low testosterone, previously known as getting older. —The Colbert Report, December 2012   And now for something completely different…sort of. After writing so much about the latest developments in...

/ November 25, 2013

The Burzynski Empire strikes back

You might have noticed that I was very pleased last Friday, very pleased indeed. Given the normal subject matter of this blog, in which we face a seemingly-unrelenting infiltration of pseudoscience and quackery into even the most hallowed halls of academic medicine, against which we seem to be fighting a mostly losing battle, having an opportunity to see such an excellent deconstruction...

/ November 18, 2013

USA Today versus Stanislaw Burzynski

This is an SBM public service announcement—with blogging! Think of it as a bonus post, and don’t forget to read Mark Crislip’s regular biweekly offering, as it’s about an article in Skeptical Inquirer that particularly irritated him—and me, as well. Because, as we all know, the world needs more Mark Crislip. I’ve made no secret of how much I despise Stanislaw Burzynski,...

/ November 15, 2013

Journal of the American Dental Association Falls for Tooth Fairy Science

Another venerable scientific journal has fallen prey to “alternative” medicine research. The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) has joined the New England Journal of Medicine and Annals of Internal Medicine, among others, with its publication of “A pilot study of a chiropractic intervention for management of chronic myofascial temporomandibular disorder,” in the October, 2013, issue. And what “chiropractic intervention” is...

/ November 14, 2013

Revealed by the FDA: The results of the most recent inspection of the Burzynski Clinic

The results of the latest FDA inspection of the Burzynski Clinic are in. They aren't pretty. Why is this cancer quack still allowed to do his bogus clinical trials?

/ November 11, 2013

Medical cranks: Why we fight

Never let it be said that I can’t match Mark Crislip in shameless self-promotion. The world might indeed need more Mark Crislip™, but I like to think that it needs a bit more David Gorski, too. So, in that spirit, here are the videos, recently released by the James Randi Educational Foundation, of Bob Blaskiewicz, myself, and some key SBM players that...

/ November 10, 2013

Chemotherapy doesn’t work? Not so fast… (A lesson from history)

If there’s one medical treatment that proponents of “alternative medicine” love to hate, it’s chemotherapy. Rants against “poisoning” are a regular staple on “alternative health” websites, usually coupled with insinuations or outright accusations that the only reason oncologists administer chemotherapy is because of the “cancer industrial complex” in which big pharma profits massively from selling chemotherapeutic agents and oncologists and hospitals profit...

/ October 28, 2013

Anti-VEGF treatment of Macular Degeneration: Science-Based Success

Let's celebrate some good science with a story about some evidence-based treatments for macular degeneration!

/ October 25, 2013