Tag: chemotherapy

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

The Role of Liquid Biopsies in Oncology

Liquid biopsies can be used to reduce the amount of chemotherapy used for patients with stage II colon cancer.

/ June 28, 2022

Deciding Which Risks to Take

No medical treatment is risk-free. Paul Offit's new book covers the history of innovations that went awry and advises how to balance the risks of new medical innovations with the risk of not treating.

/ March 8, 2022

Cold Caps Combat Hair Loss from Chemotherapy

Hair loss from chemotherapy can be prevented with cold caps, but scalp hypothermia has some downsides and may not be acceptable to all patients.

/ March 24, 2020

How can we counter misinformation from “chemo truthers”?

Denial of the benefits of chemotherapy is very prevalent in "natural health" movements. This denial is based on fear mongering, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories and thus shares many similarities with the antivaccine movement. How can the misinformation spread by "chemo truthers" be countered on social media?

/ January 27, 2020
Clínica 0-19 poster

Clínica 0-19: False hope in Monterrey for DIPG patients (Part 5, A dubious poster is presented)

Clínica 0-19 is a clinic run by Instituto de Oncología Intervencionista (IDOI) Drs. Alberto Swiller and Alberto Garcia in Monterrey Mexico that claims to have a much higher rate of survival for patients with DIPG, a deadly brain cancer, than conventional treatments. Patients come there from all over the world for an unproven concoction of chemotherapy drugs administered directly into arteries feeding...

/ November 18, 2019

Dichotomous thinking and uncertainty in medicine and science

Medicine is by its very nature uncertain. Unfortunately, humans don't deal well with uncertainty, and our tendency towards dichotomous thinking leads us to think that if we're not absolutely certain about something we don't know anything.

/ November 11, 2019

Flipping the Script In Action: The Nick Gundersen Case

The tragic consequences of a boy with leukemia and a mother who believed an alternative medicine documentary-maker over her son's oncologist.

/ March 1, 2019

A Review of Flipping The Script: Parents Fight Back

Jeff Witzeman has released a new documentary on cancer, Flipping the Script: Parents Fight Back. It is terrible and dangerous.

/ October 30, 2018

Alternative medicine kills cancer patients, “complementary” edition

By definition, alternative medicine has not been shown to be effective or has been shown to be ineffective. Thus, alternative medicine is ineffective against cancer and can best be represented as either no treatment at all or potentially harmful treatment. It is thus not surprising that cancer patients who choose alternative medicine have a higher risk of dying from their cancer. A...

/ July 23, 2018