Clinical trials
oracknows | February 14, 2007[Note: There is a followup to this post here.]
I've been writing a lot about dichloroacetate (DCA) lately, perhaps even to the point of becoming repetitive and risking boring my readers. Fortunately, this post is not primarily about DCA. Unfortunately, it's about a question that is related to the recent hype over DCA in that it pits the desperation of dying cancer patients who want to try out the latest drugs, even if they haven't been demonstrated to be safe or efficacious, versus the what remaining ability the FDA has to regulate drug safety and, some might argue, the scientific method…
oracknows | February 12, 2007Yes, I know that my blog buddy Abel wrote a post with almost exactly the same title as this. No, I'm not mindlessly aping him. I'm doing it because of what Abel revealed in his post: That most of his referrals lately have been Google searches looking for information on where to buy dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA.
I, too, have noticed a lot of referrals to my original post on DCA, in which I tried to explain why it isn't the "cure" for cancer that some have been touting it as, most recently, a rather annoying troll going by the name of Robert Smith who's been infesting my blog lately in my posts…
oracknows | February 8, 2007Well, here I am in sunny Phoenix, having spent pretty much all of yesterday at the conference, sneaking in alterations to and practicing of my talk in between sessions. All in all not a bad day, although I spent the entire day indoors and didn't get to partake of the bright and cheery warmth, which is sad, because it's particularly welcome given the weather at my present abode. The conference produced one other thing for me as well: A good blogging topic. Not only that, but it's a good blogging topic that fits in with the whole "Just Science" theme of this week. Don't worry, though, no…
oracknows | February 7, 2007I happen to be in Phoenix today, attending the Academic Surgical Congress, where I actually have to present one of my abstracts. That means, between flying to Phoenix last night and preparing for my talk, I didn't have time to serve up a heapin' helping of that Respectful Insolence⢠you know and (hopefully) love. Fortunately, there's still a lot of stuff in the vaults of the old blog begging to be moved over to the new blog; so that's what I'll do today. I'll probably be back tomorrow with new material, given that the conference will likely produce blog fodder. (Conferences usually do.) And…
oracknows | February 5, 2007Since DaveScot has made an appearance or two in the comments here, annoying everyone he comes in contact with, it's worth pointing out that mine isn't the only cluestick that could be used to pound some science into him about dichloroacetate, the supposed "cure" for cancer that's being "ignored" or "suppressed" by Big Pharma. Since my original article on the subject, two more excellent (and realistic) overviews of the promise and peril of DCA as an inexpensive chemotherapeutic agent to treat cancer have appeared, one of them by fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy and one actually appearing on…
oracknows | February 2, 2007I know, I know, I said last time that I probably wouldn't post on dichloroacetate and the hype some of the more credulous parts of the blogosphere are falling for over its being supposedly a "cancer cure" that big pharma is either willfully ignoring or actively suppressing. However, when DaveScot and the sycophants on Uncommon Descent join in with the "cure for cancer" hype and conspiracy-mongering (with apparently only one voice of reason trying to counter DaveScot's cluelessness), it's really, really hard for me to resist the urge to introduce the mutual admiration society over at UD to a…
oracknows | January 30, 2007At the risk of irritating a fellow ScienceBlogger again, I thought I'd point out this little post forwarded to me by Norm Jenson as yet another example of exactly the inflated hype for dichloroacetate as a "cure for cancer" that will "never see the light of day" because it has little profit potential (and, by the way, that pharmaceutical companies will "probably lobby against it with all their might") that I was talking about in my original post on the subject.
I should have taken a β-blocker before clicking on the link.
Given the level of silly rhetoric in the post above and even despite…
oracknows | January 25, 2007Grant season is upon us. Every day that I'm not in the clinic and the O.R., I find myself holed up in my office pounding my head against my monitor trying to write just that perfect mixture of preliminary data, blarney, and grantsmanship to persuade the Powers That Be to give me just a taste of that increasingly precious and scarce elixir of life for my lab, grant money. All I want is just enough to keep my lab going another couple of years and to try to add another person to my lab. Right now, I'm working on an grant to go to the Army for breast cancer research and a grant to a private…
oracknows | January 24, 2007The other day, I did a reality check on a story making the rounds through the blogosphere about an alleged new cure for cancer that, if you believe some hysterical bloggers, is being suppressed because it would cut into their profits. I took one blogger to task for what I characterized as the "utterly ridiculous title" of his post (Objectively Pro-cancer). Well, he apparently didn't like that and showed up in my comments claiming that he was joking.
It sure didn't sound like a joke to me, but I thought I'd poll my readers to see if anyone thought I was out of line in my criticism. So, look at…
oracknows | January 23, 2007I came across an interesting tidbit about dichloroacetate (DCA), the compound that the media and all too many bloggers are touting as some sort of cheap "cure" for cancer whose development is being ignored or suppressed by big pharma because it wouldn't be profitable enough. I poured a bit of cold water on all of them yesterday, because most of their comments were based on false hope, given how few drugs that show promise in cell culture and animals actually pan out in human trials, and ignorance of how clinical trials for new cancer drugs work.
This particular tidbit is posted on the…
oracknows | January 22, 2007I would have written about this one on Friday, except that Your Friday Dose of Woo had to be served up. (You did read last week's YFDoW, didn't you? It was a particularly loopy bit of woo, with a bad computer interface grafted on to it, to boot!) The reason I wanted to write about it is because the responses to this particular bit of news in the blogosphere grated on me, for reasons that will become apparent soon.
It's about a new cancer drug that I learned about from both fellow ScienceBlogger Jonah and readers who forwarded articles about it to me. If you believe some other bloggers (one of…
tsmith | January 16, 2007Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is one of those nebulous diseases that's really more of a diagnosis of exclusion than anything else. As the name suggests, it's characterized by overwhelming fatigue--often so much so that patients can barely get out of bed--as well as a number of non-specific symptoms, including weakness, muscle pain, and insomnia. Currently, there is no diagnostic test for the disease, and the cause(s) is (are) unknown. Indeed, it should be noted that there's disagreement over even the most basic assumption that such a thing as CFS exists, or whether it's merely…
oracknows | January 16, 2007One of the consistent themes of this blog since the very beginning has been that alternative medicine treatments, before being accepted, should be subject to the same standards of evidence as "conventional" medical therapies. When advocates of evidence-based medicine (EBM) like myself say this, we are frequently treated with excuses from advocates of alternative medicine as to why their favored treatments cannot be subjected to the scientific method in the same way that medicine has increasingly applied it to its own treatments over the last few decades, in the process weeding out treatments…
oracknows | January 3, 2007Two days after the holidays are over, and I'm still taking care of unfinished business from last year. Still, the study I'm about to discuss is making the rounds of the blogosphere, and because it's about breast cancer risk I felt the need to weigh in. This is particularly true, given some of the representations of this study that are popping up in the press and in the blogosphere, particularly among right wing bloggers. Let's start with a BBC news story about the study:
Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests.
The research on more…
oracknows | December 27, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts, most of which are more than a year old.) These posts will be interspersed with occasional fresh material. This post originally appeared on January 24, 2006
I was made aware of a most interesting study today appearing in the journal Cancer, which is the official…
oracknows | December 21, 2006I'm about a week late on this one.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if some of my readers were wondering why I hadn't weighed in on this story when it broke late last week. (Either that, or no one was wondering, and I'm just displaying some of my surgeon's ego for all to see.) Part of the reason was perhaps because Dr. Charles had handled this whole study well, and I didn't see any need to weigh in. Another part of the reason is because the study came out right when I had to come up with another Your Friday Dose of Woo for last Friday. But, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that…
tsmith | December 13, 2006If the last circumcision post caused a lot of heat, this news is likely to cause even more of an uproar worldwide. From NBC News comes word that the NIH will be announcing shortly that they're stopping two trials looking at circumcision and HIV in Africa, because the intervention group (those who were circumcised) show far less HIV infections than the uncircumcised men:
NBC News has learned that the National Institutes of Health will announce at Noon ET Wednesday that two clinical trials in Africa have been stopped because an independent monitoring board determined the treatment was so…
oracknows | December 13, 2006Believe it or not, I missed my own blogiversary.
It's true. It was two days ago. For some reason, as the date approached I got the idea that it was the 13th, when in fact this blog was born on December 11, 2004 on a dreary Saturday afternoon when, after reading the TIME Magazine story about how 2004 was supposedly the "year of the blog" and, given my long history on Usenet pontificating on various topics, on a whim, I decided that I'd dip my toe into this thing called the blogosphere.
Thus was Respectful Insolence⢠born, and I've never looked back since.
Since then, this thing has grown…
oracknows | December 11, 2006Over a week ago, fellow ScienceBlogger revere fired a bit of a pot shot across my bow regarding my bow regarding a study regarding, of all things, chicken soup. Initially, it was at a bad time, when I had other things to do, having just labored mightily to produce the latest Hitler Zombie extravaganza, after which I had to lay low blogging for a while because of obligations midweek. When those obligations were over, then blogging about the Tripoli Six took precedence, as did this week's Your Friday Dose of Woo (which, by the way, is still overrun by the tinfoil hat brigade). And then I just…
oracknows | November 22, 2006A few days ago, I posted a response to another physician who was not happy with me, no, not happy with me at all. What made him unhappy was the vociferousness with which I criticized the creeping infiltration of woo that is insinuating itself into medical school curricula and expressed dismay at the threat that I see to evidence-based medicine (EBM) from it. He interpreted this vociferousness as "anger," but in reality it is more frustration, a dismay that was exacerbated by his defense of including unproven therapies in his practice. I did not respond so harshly somuch because I think that…