A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a remarkable study, just published in the BMJ which had found that over half of the new cancer drugs released onto the market in a four year period by the EU drugs regulator had no good evidence that they were effective. In other words, there was also no evidence that their benefits outweighed their risk or that they were value for money.

Cancer drugs can come with nasty side-effects, we know that, but they are worth taking because they have been properly scientifically tested and found to help patients live longer and have a better quality of life. But the latest research shows that the reality is not so comforting. Over half of new drugs are being prescribed to patients with little or no evidence they do any good at all. Here’s how it works.

Why are some cases of cancer cleared from the body after surgery while others lurk, waiting to metastasize and emerge elsewhere months or even years later? There is no good answer at the moment because the conditions that allow these invaders to flourish doesn’t fit with our gene-focused theory of how and why cancer develops in the first place.

It’s hardly news that things have not been going well for various professional elites lately. Economists so busy promoting the neo-liberal agenda they failed to notice the on-coming depression; politicians resolutely deaf to constituents’ complaints that generosity to those at the top had destroyed jobs and cut wages at the bottom.

Last week a ‘Presidential Advisory Statement’ about saturated fat from the American Heart Association (AHA) produced a ‘you cannot be serious’ reaction from anyone who has looked at the evidence for the theory that saturated fat raises the risk of heart disease.

Patients hoping for a diet to help with diabetes are doomed to disappointment in South Africa. Meanwhile over a billion pounds has been spent in the UK on cancer drugs that don’t work, says a new report. In South Africa, the scientist who blew the whistle is in the dock…

A fine example of post truth and alternative facts appeared in the Guardian on Monday. Defining any diet that made a medical claim as a fad, the article consigned them all to the bin.

On Monday I watched the C4 documentary ‘Food Unwrapped: Diet special’ because I’d been alerted to the fact that it featured Dr David Unwin and his success with the low carb diet as a way of treating diabetics.

The Brexit effect – ideological conflicts, bitter disputes over facts, distrust of experts, trolling abuse on twitter– seems an apt description of what has been happening recently in the supposedly evidence-based world of nutrition.

A diagnosis of cancer is really scary. It can seem as if there are only two options, neither very appealing. Conventional treatment which promises a lot but is likely to be toxic and gruelling or the complementary route, seen to lack the punch needed to beat cancer.