All about the science of disease
Having been on the internet talking about bad science for about a year, I had until recently managed to stay away from talking about vaccines. However, I have recently broken my personal rule and talked about vaccines here. I was almost immediately reminded of why I had made such a rule, when I received quite … Read more
As a scientist who spends a lot of her time engaging with public policy and the media, the anti-vaccination (anti-vax for short) is one of the few things that manages to exasperate me on a semi-daily basis. The main reason I have not covered much of its proceedings on this blog is simply because I … Read more
Last year we covered one of the most diffuse misconceptions about health and nutrition: that turmeric, one of the key ingredients in a delicious curry, is somehow a cure for cancer. As we explored in our piece at the time, this claim is completely baseless. One of the active compounds contained in turmeric, however, is … Read more
The American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO) has declared immunotherapy the Clinical Advance Of The Year for the second year running – a sentiment that is very much shared by the cancer research community as a whole. The term immunotherapy as a whole refers to therapeutic strategies that utilize the patient’s own immune system to … Read more
As of December 2018, the FDA has proposed a new, risk-based enforcement approach to homeopathic drug products that have the greatest potential to cause risk to patients. This represents a welcome first step in attempting to regulate so-called “alternative medicine”, which has, as mentioned several times in this and in other related platforms, the potential to … Read more
This week, scientists from the University of Singapore have published their findings on a novel new system to fight colorectal cancer. In particular, they have found a way to fight cancer stem cells, a small group of cells within a tumor that are considered among the most dangerous part of cancer. These cells can reproduce … Read more