Fenbendazole is fast becoming the laetrile of the 2020s

Antivaxxers who "repurposed" deworming drugs like ivermectin and fenbendazole are peddling cancer "miracle cure" testimonials that remind me of laetrile and Stanislaw Burzynski. Truly, everything old is new again.

/ March 4, 2024

Doctors Who Performatively Fetishized RCTs Aren’t Out to Advance Medical Research, But Rather to Sow Doubt & Mistrust

Actually running an RCT is a lot harder than merely calling for one. Those who recognized this obvious fact are not against RCTs.

/ March 3, 2024

Skeptics in Pub. Cholera. Chapter 11a

The morning started too early. For some reason, I snapped awake just before sunrise and could not fall back to sleep. Probably that ball of guilt in the pit of my stomach. I suspected it is a minor example of what a condemned man feels on the morning of his execution. I lay in bed and stared thoughtlessly at the ceiling waiting...

/ March 2, 2024

More Evidence that Ignoring Safe Sleep Advice Puts Babies at Risk of Unexpected Death

A new study of thousands of cases confirms that sharing a sleep surface with a caregiver significantly increases the risk of unexpected death in infancy.

/ March 1, 2024

Quality differences of supplements vs. drugs

When it comes to drugs or dietary supplements, accuracy should be a given. What’s on the label should accurately describe what’s in the bottle. No exceptions. When it comes to ensuring the products we buy are of high quality, we’re all effectively reliant on regulation to protect us. As a pharmacist, I can’t personally verify that each tablet in your prescription contains...

/ February 29, 2024

What Is Somatic Therapy?

Is modern medicine descending into pseudoscience, or is scientific medicine still going strong? Unfortunately, I think both of these things can happen at the same time. On the one hand, scientific research in medicine is progressing nicely. We are seeing the results of scientific breakthroughs made decades ago, with monoclonal antibody therapies, new therapeutic targets, the beginning of real genetic therapy, brain-machine...

/ February 28, 2024

How antivaxxers weaponize vaccine safety studies to falsely portray vaccines as dangerous

Antivaxxers have weaponized a huge multinational vaccine safety study of 99 million patient records that found rare adverse events and concluded that the risks of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the benefits. How? A combination of the Nirvana fallacy and spin.

/ February 26, 2024

Skeptics in the Pub. Cholera. Chapter 10b

A young woman was waiting at the pump. She introduced herself as Amy Blogg, an Illustrator for the River Weekly. She quickly let us know that she had been briefed by Mrs. Howitt. I demonstrated the workings of the microscope on a blade of grass and an ant. It was met with the usual expressions of amazement by first-timer users. If I...

/ February 24, 2024

The Great Barrington Declaration Wasn’t a Plan For Public Health Officials. It Was a List of Absurd Demands of Them.

The authors of the GBD advised and influenced many politicians at the highest level. They claim to have delineated many practical policies to protect the vulnerable, and they said it would’ve been possible, certainly. So an obvious question emerges. Why didn’t they protect the vulnerable?

/ February 23, 2024

Pesticide in Oat Products – Should You Worry?

You know the rule about headlines - if there is a question in a headline the answer is almost always "no". This article is no exception.

/ February 21, 2024