Tactless About TACT: Critiques Without Substance Should Be Abandoned
In May 2008, the article “Why the NIH Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) Should Be Abandoned” was published online in the Medscape Journal of Medicine. The authors included two of our own SBM...
View ArticleIs Tylenol Safe?
Tylenol (acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol outside the US) has been in the news recently. Most of the stories I’ve seen have been accurate, but I’ve run across a couple of people who...
View ArticleOff-Label Use of Prescription Drugs
A recent survey of 599 primary care physicians and 600 psychiatrists found that: The adjusted response rate was 47%, respondents were similar to non-respondents, and physicians commonly prescribed the...
View ArticleAvastin and metastatic breast cancer: When science-based medicine collides...
One of the most frustrating aspects of taking care of cancer patients is that in general, with only a few specific exceptions, we do not have good curative therapies for patients with stage IV cancer,...
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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...
View ArticleWho’s to Blame for Drug Shortages?
All the best effort to practice science-based medicine are for naught when the optimal treatment is unavailable. And that’s increasingly the case – even for life-threatening illnesses. Shortages of...
View ArticleIt’s time for true transparency of clinical trials data
What makes a health professional science-based? We advocate for evaluations of treatments, and treatment decisions, based on the best research methods. We compile evidence based on fair trials that...
View ArticleNow that Burzynski has gotten off in 2012, Burzynski The Movie will spawn a...
About a year ago, I became interested in a physician named Stanislaw Burzynski who has been treating cancer with compounds that he calls “antineoplastons” for over three decades without, in my opinion,...
View ArticleKudos to a Journalist
Many SBM readers will remember the late, great Barry Beyerstein, a luminary of the skeptical movement and author of a classic article that has been cited many times on SBM, an explanation of why bogus...
View ArticleDr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s cancer “success” stories update: Why is the release...
It’s no secret that I happen to be on several mailing lists of groups or doctors whose dedication to science is—shall we say?—questionable. Of course, the reason I join such mailing lists is to keep my...
View ArticleStanislaw Burzynski: A deceptive propaganda movie versus an upcoming news report
Well, I’ve finally seen it, and it was even worse than I had feared. After having heard of Eric Merola’s plan to make a sequel to his 2010 propaganda “documentary” about Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski...
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Acetaminophen: Still the pain reliever you should trust?
Recently ProPublica and This American Life (TAL) released the results of an investigation into acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. TAL devoted an entire episode to the issue, and...
View ArticleRevealed by the FDA: The results of the most recent inspection of the...
After posting the talks that Bob Blaskiewicz and I gave at TAM this year, I realized that it’s been a while since I’ve written about the topic of those talks, namely Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleThe Center for Inquiry weighs in on the FDA’s mishandling of Stanislaw...
We interrupt our usually scheduled post for an important announcement. OK, we do nothing of the sort. Scott Gavura’s post will go live a little later this morning. In the meantime, here’s a public...
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Using the fear of Ebola to promote the placebo legislation that is “right to...
Perhaps the most pervasive medical conspiracy theory of all involves stories that there exist out there all sorts of fantastic cures for cancer and other deadly diseases but you can’t have them...
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Stem cell clinics and unapproved, for-profit human experimentation
Editor’s note: I met Dr. Paul Knoepfler online in the wake of my two posts on Gordie Howe and his stem cell treatment for stroke. I was impressed by his posts on the topic and what I saw at his own...
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Should the FDA crack down on homeopathic “remedies”?
In the category of potentially dangerous complementary or alternative medicine, I can think of few products worse than ones claimed to relieve asthma, yet don’t actually contain any medicine. Yet these...
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Supplements are the Wild West of health. One Attorney General is out to...
Bold moves from the New York State attorney general’s (AG) office are shaking up the supplement industry. In February, the AG accused four retailers (GNC, Target, Walmart, and Walgreens) of selling...
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