Finally, two items of good news come out of this dreadful affair in which Aboriginal families stopped chemotherapeutic treatment for their leukemic daughters and sought nonsensical pseudoscientific treatment in Florida. While one of the children passed away this winter, the other, known in the media as “J.J.”, is being reported as feeling well. Could it … Continue reading
Tag Archives: cancer
R.I.P. Makayla Sault
The First Nations girl with leukaemia who had refused to continue her course of chemotherapy and instead elected to be treated with blatant pseudoscience in Florida has passed away. She was 11 years old when the story was first reported half a year ago. The typical question one gets when criticizing wishful thinking and pseudoscience is, … Continue reading
Listen / Watch: The Cost of Cancer Drugs
The only good drug is the one the patient can afford. WNYC radio show and podcast extraordinaire RadioLab most recently did an episode entitled “Worth” in which the show’s hosts and producer investigated the worth of an extra year of human life. They stumbled upon a very interesting story centred on the cost of cancer drugs in … Continue reading
Follow-Up on the Hippocrates Health Institute: Lawsuits
Listeners of my podcast and followers of Canadian news in general will probably be familiar with the case of two First Nations girls with leukemia whose parents decided to have treated at a Florida massage establishment called The Hippocrates Health Institute. A judge recently declared that the girls could not be taken away from their parents, … Continue reading
Listen: Dr. Christopher Labos and I on the Rise of Integrative Medicine
This month, Within Reason tackles a scientific topic, so I can publicize it here! Woohoo! Would you like a side of magic with your chemo? Disproven folk remedies used to be the domain of snake oil salesmen; now, they are being integrated into university health centres. Jonathan speaks to Dr. Christopher Labos, a public science educator and … Continue reading
Read: Making “Quackoncology” Respectable
I hate to start the week with a depressing article, but I must pass this along. From the fantastic blog Science-Based Medicine, David Gorski reports on the latest development in a horrifying trend: integrative oncology, in which otherwise respectable medical bodies end up promoting Reiki and naturopathy to their medical and scientific audience. “Let’s just put … Continue reading
Cracked Science Video 4: Irreproducible
We often hear the science corrects itself in the long run, but how efficient is this mechanism? Jonathan Jarry reports that reproducibility in the scientific literature is not always a given. (Des sous-titres en français seront bientôt disponibles!) Just so you are not too demoralized, the landscape may be changing: http://www.nature.com/news/journals-u… http://www.nature.com/news/metascienc… Continue reading
It’s All in Your Head: A Statement on Which Both Christian Scientists and I Can Agree
Out of curiosity, I ask the woman I have been speaking to for a minute about the “Science” in “Christian Science”. She approached me at the end of the talk because the presenter had asked everyone in the room to introduce oneself to a stranger and talk about one’s inner qualities. I don’t remember if … Continue reading
Interview with Dr. Joe Schwarcz on Within Reason
Readers of this blog probably know that I also have a monthly podcast entitled Within Reason, which explores contentious issues from a rational perspective. While the topics are not always science-related, our latest episode features Dr. Joe Schwarcz, director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University, on the subject of chemophobia. We talked … Continue reading
Jargon: Chemotherapy (A treatment modality by which potent chemicals kill fast-growing cells)
Chemotherapy: A medical treatment modality, commonly used against cancer, by which strong chemicals are used to destroy rapidly dividing cells. One of the classic characteristics of cancer cells is that they divide uncontrollably: they can thus be killed by agents that target fast-growing cells. Unfortunately, chemotherapeutic drugs also, by their very nature, target healthy cells … Continue reading
Cracked Science 
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