Welcome to another Clip Show! Here are some things that were lingering in open tabs for a while that I intended to use or share, but haven’t found a proper post within which to do so. I encourage you to click the links and explore, watch the videos here and enjoy. Hopefully there is something for everyone.

I don’t normally reference Fox News as a source of reason, but here is a great interview with actress Maura Tierney discussing her experience with chemotherapy:

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/09/26/er-star-maura-tierney-debunks-chemo-myths-after-breast-cancer/

Carl Sagan speaking on Religion is a good reminder to me of why I look to science over pseudoscience when seeking information on cancer cures (and other things). Not a direct correlation, but inspirational in its own way:

Official European recommendations for reducing cancer risk can be found here.

And another web page with 12 ways to reduce cancer risk from the Skeptical Raptor blog.

The following video link was an interesting surprise, which seems to have been put together to promote a church, through the sharing of a difficult story. The gentleman in the video was a kid from my high school; he was older than me and a star player on the football team, not someone I really knew, though he always seemed like a decent guy and he had a good reputation as both student and athlete. At some point, he turned to religion and became a pastor. I include the video link here because it shows one way that a person uses his faith to deal with maintaining a positive perspective in light of a difficult medical condition. While I personally am not a religious person, I think it is always good to look at the many ways people find their own inner strength to get through whatever obstacles are in their path. Plus, there are some genuinely nice moments in this video, some of which I could certainly relate to.

Watch the Greg Bradshaw Video by clicking the link.

Here are a couple of reference pages that are particularly interesting. I like the “What’s the Harm?” web site because its focus is really on reinforcing the need for critical thinking skills. Here is the link to the page on “alternative medicine,” but you can also go to the main index of topics for  wider range of fun reading.

And here is another good blog, “Science Based Life,” which has a brief entry on a study that showed how Crystal Healing did nothing. The best part of the post, however, isn’t the post itself, but the amazingly defensive responses in the comments section which show an utter lack of critical thinking all through. It’s hard not to laugh at most of the replies, although a few of them do attempt to be reasonable (uninformed, perhaps, but reasonable). There is a comment from a person claiming to have used crystals and nutrition to defeat his or her cancer AFTER having done chemo and then supposedly being given just another 12 months to live, but with no indication of how long ago that had been or what the actual diagnosis and prognosis were (or even evidence that the cancer actually existed, which is a critical issue because many commentators in the alternative fields appear to use fabricated or embellished stories to support their otherwise unverifiable and anonymous claims).

And now, a quick reminder for those of you who may have forgotten, or a primer for those who haven’t figured it out: