Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski. That Orac has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 30 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)
DISCLAIMER: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.
I realize I repeat this a lot, but it bears repeating a lot. Vaccines are, without a doubt, one of the greatest advances in health care devised by the human mind. Arguably, vaccination campaigns have saved more lives and prevented more suffering and death than pretty much any other medical…
Remember Vox Day?
Sure, I bet you do, at least if you've been a regular reader of this blog more than a year or two. If you're a really long-timer, you probably remember him even better. Let's just put it this way. Vox is a guy who has a much higher opinion of his intellectual prowess when it comes…
Almost exactly a year ago, I came across a bit of woo so incredible, so spectacularly stupid and unbelievable, that I dedicated one of the last segments I've done in a long time of Your Friday Dose of Woo to it. Basically, it was about a movie called Eat the Sun, which described a bunch of people…
A couple of months ago, I couldn't help but rejoice when I learned that Indiana Representative Dan Burton had finally, after twenty years in the U.S. House of Representatives, decided to retire after the end of this term. I thought that anyone in the U.S. who supports science-based medicine should…
About two and a half weeks ago, I was disappointed to learn that Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski had somehow managed to delay justice again. At the time, I didn't know what had happened other than that his hearing before the Texas Medical Board, which had been scheduled to begin on April 11 and to which I…
The U.S. is widely known to have the highest health care expenditures per capita in the world, and not just by a little, but by a lot. I'm not going to go into the reasons for this so much, other than to point out that how to rein in these costs has long been the proverbial political hot potato.…
It's not infrequent that I come under fire from antivaccinationists for, ironically enough, calling them antivaccinationists. "Oh, no," they protest, "I'm not antivaccine. How dare you call me that? I'm actually a vaccine safety advocate." Of course, when you probe more closely and ask a few…
Thanks again, antivaccine activists. Thanks for the measles. Again:
Last year was the worst year for measles in the U.S. in 15 years, health officials said Thursday.
There were 222 cases of measles, a large jump from the 60 or so seen in a typical year. Most of the cases last year were imported --…
It just occurred to me that, even though there was news about it, I never mentioned what's happened recently with respect to California bill AB2109. As you might recall, I wrote about this bill about four weeks ago. In brief, this bill, if passed into law, would require that California parents…
Yesterday was a bit of a rough patch; so today there won't be the usual Orac magnum opus to which you've all become accustomed. Instead, maybe I'll do a briefer post with semi-random thoughts. Of course, even Orac's shorter posts are longer than the average blog post; so you're still getting your…
I thought that a solid basic understanding of basic and clinical science was a prerequisite to be a bioethicist. AFter all, the prefix "bio" is in the word "bioethicist," which implies to me that bioethicists study the ethics of biology and medicine, which, of course, they do. Some bioethicists are…
Periodically, I like to make fun of homeopathy and homeopaths. I realize that to some that might seem like the proverbial shooting of fish in a barrel, but it is amusing and educational. However, it's not always amusing. For instance, I am not amused when I see The One Quackery To Rule Them All (my…
If there's one difference between so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and science-based medicine (SBM), it's the role of anecdotes in each. CAM and SBM each take a very different view of anecdotes. In SBM, anecdotes are relegated to a very low rung on the evidence ladder. They…
You know, I really, really hate the way quacks abuse molecular biology. I know, I know. I've said it before, but certain quacks have a way of willfully misunderstanding the latest advances in genomics, molecular biology, and biology in general. Of course, this isn't limited to just medicine,…
Proof. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
That thought kept running through my mind as I perused an article appearing on an antivaccine website. Another thought that rant through my mind is that this was clearly not a scientist of any sort speaking. In…
Repeat after me one more time: Just because something is natural does not necessarily mean it's effective or, more importantly, safe. If there's one thing common among virtually all purveyors of "alternative" medicine, it's that they fetishize anything they consider "natural." To them, "natural" is…
Over the years, I've written a lot about overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Basically, overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of a condition that, if left untreated, would very likely never cause the patient harm. Because I'm a cancer surgeon, I've almost always written about overdiagnosis in the context of…
As you might be aware, I'm (almost) always willing to help a blogger out, particularly when that blogger is a regular commenter here who's gotten down and dirty battling antivaccine pseudoscience in the trenches of the comments right here on this very blog. Regular readers might have noticed that I…
April 11 is a mere five days away.
What's the significance of April 11? Easy. April 11 is the date when the hearing before the Texas Medical Board to determine whether Stanislaw Burzynski will lose his license to practice medicine in Texas. Dr. Burzynski, as you recall, is the Texas doctor who has…
Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times, and it doesn't help that it's a holiday week plus a week I was traveling. So I dug way back into the archives, back…
I have a soft spot for pareidolia, as regular readers know. It amuses me to no end to see Jesus and Mary popping up on freeway underpasses, tacos, toast, pieces of sheet metal, Lava Lamps, and the like. I thought that I had seen it all--until now:
His image has been seen on rocks, windows - even a…
Remember The Refusers?
They're the antivaccine band with the recycled classic rock sound lacking a shred of originality or chops that flooded the blogosphere with their crazy in the form of Clash wanna be songs like Vaccine Gestapo, which inspired Surly Amy to make me a Vaccine Gestapo pendant to…
Note: Today's a travel day. I'm driving home from the AACR. As a result, I decided to post something that appeared elsewhere, doing a quick edit to make it a bit more "insolent." I realize that since the show I discuss aired an episode during which he featured a psychic medium in a segment called…
As I mentioned yesterday, I'm at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting imbibing the latest and greatest that science-based medicine has to offer against cancer. The AACR is mainly a basic science and translational meeting; so a lot of this stuff is seriously preclinical. That's what…
Blogging might be a little sketchy for the next couple of days, because I'm at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting (AACR) in Chicago, all to to imbibe the latest and greatest in cancer research. I'm sure I'll manage to get a post or two in while I'm here, but I doubt there will be…
If there's one thing that I've learned that I can always--and I do mean always--rely on from the antivaccine movement, it's that its members will always be all over any new study regarding vaccines and/or autism in an effort to preemptively put their pseudoscientific spin on the results. It's much…
Since when did Opposing Views become NaturalNews.com?
Anyone who's read this blog for a while knows that NaturalNews.com is one of the wretchedest hives of scum and quackery anywhere on the Internet, surpassing even The Huffington Post. Indeed, so full of misinformation, pseudoscience, quackery,…
This week, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that can only be described as historic. Any of you out there (in the U.S. anyway; I realize that my readership is international) who have paid even a passing attention to the news can't help but avoid reporting, debate, and polemics related to the…
It would appear that Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Vaccine Book, is in the news again. Specifically, he's brought himself back into the spotlight by publishing in that wretched hive of scum and quackery, The Huffington Post, a fallacy-filled attack on a bill in California, AB 2109, designed to…
