Richard Branson has apparently intervened to fly a desperately poorly girl from Mexico who was undergoing last ditch cancer treatment to save her life. The treatment did not work and seven-year-old Olivia Downie found herself in a different hospital in a ‘critical condition’ and too ill to fly home.
Appeals appeared in the Daily Mail and the Sun saying the parents were trying to raise £140,000 to charter a special plane with full medical assistance so she could fly home to England and be with her family during her last days.
Some weeks previously, the papers had been reporting Olivia’s situation and trying to raise money to send her to the clinic in Mexico as it might be “last chance to save her life”. Aided by charity Families Against Neuroblastoma, an appeal was made to raise tens of thousands of pounds to send Olivia to the Hope 4 Cancer clinic to undego their Sono Photo Dynamic Therapy.
The Scottish Sun describes this therapy as ‘holistic’ and as a “safe, effective and proven therapy for treating cancer using sound and light.”
Except it is not. There is nothing ‘holistic’ about this treatment. Nor is it a proven therapy. The clinic looks indistinguishable from the many cancer quack clinics that exist in Tijuana on the Mexican border with the United States. The video at the end of this post shows a documentary where an investigative journalist secretly filmed Dr Tony Jimenez of the Hope 4 Cancer clinic telling her how successful his treatment was and how mainstream chemotherapy would kill her.
It’s now a familiar media trope – a desperate cancer patient who has been told the NHS ‘can do no more’, and a ‘pioneering’ and hugely expensive treatment in the Americas. It makes a good media narrative. It allows the the newspapers and TV stations to present themselves as heroes in helping to raise the money. Last Autumn, we saw the Observer and the BBC promoting the highly questionable Burzynski Clinic in Texas where several UK children have been sent, at huge cost, to receive nonsense cancer treatments. The child concerned died a few weeks ago. We will not see the Observer examining the issues. The death is not a story. Their heroic fund raising was.
The media appear to be incapable of discussing a most important issue in these stories. The clinics concerend are offering unproven treatments and false hope. The desperation of parents is being preyed upon by promises of a chance for life. And in failing to address the highly dubious nature of these clinics, the cycle will continue of more patients being sucked in, media fund-raising campaigns launched and, ultimately, tragedy.
Except in this case, the media can be heroes both for sending this poor girl to Mexico and then bringing her home against all the odds when it has all gone horribly wrong.
It is difficult to imagine that Olivia went to Mexico with the blessing of her medical team in the UK. But we can understand fully the parents’ motives. As is so often asked in these cases, what lengths would you go to in order to give your child the chance of life?
Surely, there is a case here to be made for social services to intervene. Would it be preferable to have prevented the young girl from flying when the trip was clearly not in her best interests? This is quite obviously a very difficult question. It would place the authorities in a very difficult position. Would they be seen as preventing the parents giving their child a last hope? But such an action would protect both the child and their parents. The fatal allure of these clinics must be overwhelming and there are currently no brakes on the momentum to do absolutely everything no matter what the cost.
There is an important debate to be had here.What role should doctors and social services have in intervening in cases where children are being put at risk by cancer quacks? Whilst the media appear to be incapable of even hinting at the problems, I see little chance of such a public debate.
One partial solution might come in the form of a law that exists in Sweden that forbids alternative practitioners from treating children under eight years old. Tighter controls on charities that promote these overseas cancer clinics and raise money, such as Families Against Neuroblastoma, is also desperately needed.
Unless we do something we will continue to see children placed in horrific situations, such as with Olivia, and millions raised in charitable giving that only enriches quacks.
Am curious to know why so much of the UK media wishes to be complicit in what is really no less than child abuse.
They rightly complain when thieves con their way into vulnerable people’s homes and steal property and money. But they actively participate in the medical deceptions and fraudulent practices perpetrated on young terminal cancer sufferers and their carers. All done in the spurious name of “hope”. They could check people out if they really wanted to, but they don’t want to.
What they do is the most disgusting, despicable thing when they could actually use their influence to help make sure these same suffering people get the best possible care and comfort during their final days/weeks.
How about a bit of honesty for once? It’s really not that difficult to be honest and sensitive. Sometimes people need saving from themselves. And sometimes sick children need saving from their well meaning relatives. Education is a good and noble cause.
As one that has gone to a “Mexican” clinic, when main stream allopathic medicine wrote me off, I would have to question your motives. You speak of “medical deceptions” in the midst of a medical culture that preys on peoples desires for health. Yep, BIG PHARMA. That’s right: “Take my drugs but remember that some side effects may occur”. On average, people spend about $300,000 on radiation/chemo over the course of their disease, only to be ultimately kicked to the street (hospice care: another “grim reaper” revenue source). It’s interesting that I was referred to a Mexican clinic almost a decade ago by someone else who had a positive experience, who later I found was referred by someone else who had received a substantial benefit at the same clinic. Strange that the “Mexican Clinics’ are generating so many referrals. But according to you all the clinics in Tijuana are performing “fraudulent practices”. So what; Big Parma “proves” that their drugs kill people. And I’m supposed to feel good about that??
Dan, your testimonial would need to contain a lot more detail to be worth considering even as anecdote. But at most it would still be an anecdote, which is of very limited evidential value.
Would you like to tell me where the evidentiary support is for your claims that the mexican Clinic did something wrong or that the clinic does not produce results equal to or greater than chemo and radiation. And while your at it please also tell me why 12 million people died of cancer last year, most of whom did chemo and radiation, most of whom were charged amounts of money that would make a person sick, and yet i see no reference to the quackery of a system that charges these victims while providing no lasting benefit. your loosing credibility real fast.
Hi Dan. When we are on the subject of credibility, it is ‘you’re losing’.
It seems I need to repeat myself for the hard of understanding.
Dan, your testimonial would need to contain a lot more detail to be worth considering even as anecdote. But at most it would still be an anecdote, which is of very limited evidential value.
Your reply to me contained nothing of relevance to what I said.
I’ve just been looking through some of these threads again and have been reminded how we see the irrationalists’ enthusiastic nonsense dribbling away into nothing and then they just disappear. We ought to have something to mark these points. Internet discussions of alt.med would soon be seen to end almost uniformly in this feeble way. Discussions on the loons’ own forums end just the same way unless they stop discussion by banning the sceptical commentators.
So, Dan Stevens, I call;
>ENDWOO
Good for you Dan, thats great news. I’ve heard similar stories too. I find this article extremely one sided, almost as bad as the alternative view taken by the newspapers – “in failing to address the highly dubious nature of these clinics, the cycle will continue of more patients being sucked in, media fund-raising campaigns launched and, ultimately, tragedy”, obviously Mr Lewis has contacted every patient that has been to a Mexican cancer clinic and has evidence that no-one has ever benefited from their attendance … As for Badly Shaved Monkey, Dan owes you no further response since you are a pompous saddo (with limited value).
Oh, good. Someone else who doesn’t understand the difference between anecdote and controlled trials. I predict your career posting here will be short and unsatisfactory.
SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: SOCIAL SERVICES SHOULD NOT ALLOW PARENTS TO SEND THEIR CHILDREN FOR ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT? AND CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF EIGHT SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO DO NON TOXIC, ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES? WOW. YOU REALLY ARE A COMMUNIST!
Oooh CAPSLOCK.
OK. Jenny. Informed consent is a really important aspect of medical ethics. A child cannot give informed consent. And it is very difficult for adults to do so when they are being misled and are under extreme pressure.
So, I think there is a genuine need for society to take steps to help protect children in these circumstances.
How it is done, is of course, a genuine issue for debate.
But to be naive and believe that there are either no utterly deluded quacks out there or even evil scammers is to bury your head in the sand.
Jenny Sweetie,
There is NO alterative treatment that works. Never has been, never will be. The quack cancer industry in Mexico is thriving by robbing people and selling false hope. Did you even watch the video?
Marc, great comment that was completely undermined by use of the word ‘Sweetie’. Unless patronising and sexist was the effect you were looking for.
Turn on the lights, maybe you’ll be able to see in the dark. There are 100′s of ways to cure, treat & reverse cancer. The problem is that there no money to be made by the power that be. So you better wake up before you fall into a big hole.
There’s no money to be made? So how is it that these quack treatment centers are doing so well, and raking in $30-50k per patient? Seems like there’s plenty of money to be made.
Strictly speaking, denial of appropriate medical treatment is neglect and a form of child abuse.
The real predatory quacks are those that submit children to lethal doses of radiation and then send them home to die. researchers from the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report that radiation treatment actually drives breast cancer cells to be 30X more malignant. But a clinic in mexico treats a child and all hell breaks loose.
Yes, lethally irradiating a child then kicking them out is unconscionable. When and where did this happen? I would hope that a full investigation was carried out and the relevant doctor was struck off. Because when doctors do things like that there are repercussions, unlike when people die under the care of unregulated alternative medicine practitioners.
As an aside, roughly how common is breast cancer in children?
I can’t believe that BBC news in covering the NatWest fandango is blindly reporting on this as her ‘not responding well to the medication’ hence her now being on life support. I obviously feel awful for the parents but like you say, the only people who will profit from all this money which has and now will be donated is the quack clinic, the ‘other hospital’ where she then ended up and the medcal flight business who is now needed to bring her home. She like so many others treated in these places would not have been helped and may well have been harmed by going there. I know a donation to the same amount that has thus far been spent to my local cancer centre would have made a massive difference to the lives of cancer patients undergoing treatment. Makes me furious. And yes, I’ve had cancer.
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE FACT THAT THE “QUACK CLINIC” ACTUALLY ARE THE ONES THAT PAID THE “HOSPITAL BILL” FOR THE PARENTS SO THAT THE GIRL COULD GO HOME. GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT. UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED THEN KEEP YOUR COMMENTS TO YOUR SELF.
Are you familiar with the “caps lock” key?
Knows it and LOVES IT. It makes her words IMPORTANT.
It is interesting that nobody seems to know what they really are talking about. Media hype, people bashing – simply a way of the world, isn’t it? No one really knows WHY they believe in a certain system, but they surely are armchair experts when the opportunity shows up.
This is what I know: alternative medicine is not perfect, but it provides a real option. Plenty of people can stand up as testimony to alternative systems working. If I had cancer and my oncologist had given up on me as I have seen happen countless of times to others, I wouldn’t be willing to give up.
The fact is that death is a certainty for both you and me. But when it seems like your turn has come, would you be willing to tuck your tail and give up when you know that there are options out there? If you continue being stubborn, your answer just might be yes.
Just like the success of a drug in the conventional world cannot be determined by one patient, the same way, the failure of the alternative system cannot be judged based on the media blast because of one patient’s failure either. Let us be mature and understand that there are things we do not understand and be willing to learn rather than cast aspersions. Both systems fail. Both systems succeed. So let us leave the witch hunts to the middle ages, where they should really belong. Based on what I read, Olivia is a very sick child that was forsaken by the system to die. The conventional system said: we will help ease her to death, not give her a hope of living. The parents took a chance and it may not have worked. But hats off to them for trying, and I hope they understand that the journey was worthwhile whatever the outcome.
the failure of the alternative system cannot be judged based on the media blast because of one patient’s failure either.
No, its failure can be judged on its systematic lack of efficacy under trial conditions and/or its intrinsically low prior probability given other things that are well-established to be true.
Let us be mature and understand that there are things we do not understand and be willing to learn rather than cast aspersions. Both systems fail. Both systems succeed.
Medicine claims neither to know everything nor to be a panacea. The claimed successes of alternative medicine, however, are illusory for every modality that has been examined in any meaningful systematic manner. Its only successes are in the provision of comfortable lies but these come at a price, e.g. the undermining of genuinely effective palliation and the fostering of dangerous anti-medicine in alt.meddlers’ attitude to vaccination.
Ironically, while Ademo has been keen to call his opponents fascists recently, a really unpleasant feature of alt.med is the tendency to blame the patient rather than the therapy when things go wrong. Alt. med believers have to clap their hands really hard to show they believe in fairies. When the fairies fail to materialise the therapists do not accept that fairies don’t exist. Instead the poor old patient and his bruised hands get the blame.
Your statement: “Medicine claims neither to know everything nor to be a panacea. The claimed successes of alternative medicine, however, are illusory for every modality that has been examined in any meaningful systematic manner.” This might be news to you, but alternative medicine doesn’t claim to be a panacea to all ills either. There are percentage losses, just as there are successes. The numbers are not big, so it is hard to draw huge statistics. Quackery, on the other hand, is a different story. Let us not confuse the two.
Agreed, there is plenty of quackery out there, I will not contest that. Not just in medicine, but in every field. Notice I use the word medicine to encompass the conventional world of medicine as well. That is a function of the world we live in, lets see how we can change that!
The fact is that there is a lot of great work going on in the alternative world of medicine, that one day the world will have to wake up and accept at least some of it. This is the same world that just a few years ago did not believe in the importance of proper supplementation. That field has now become the arena for intense jostling led by big pharma companies that aim to take control of the industry because of the riches beyond. The same will happen for interventions in more serious health conditions too.
When you speak of “meaningful systematic methods”, let us examine that as far as results are concerned. The overall statistics of reduction in cancer mortality rates are nothing short of abysmal. Is a 5% reduction of mortality rates from cancer over a period of 60+ years the best these organized, “meaningful systematic methods” can do? If that is so, give me another method, please!! Please note that I am not putting down research and all the efforts made by intelligent, trained scientists and MDs. But the numbers show that they have been grossly ineffective in the field of cancer, even as I applaud their accomplishments in other areas of medicine.
I hope the reader gives what is written here some real thought. I think our society needs an adjustment in thinking – an understanding that good, effective ideas are not just the domain of highly funded corporations with scientists trained to march in just “that way”. Even in those organizations, the absence of thought leaders, which are always a handful at best, that rely on their intellect rather than the robotic power of the masses, are the difference makers. I suggest you do some reading and meet some thought leaders in the alternative medicine world. You just might be surprised.
What sort of test would you use to disinguish between them?
Sorry, John there is so much wrongness in what you say that I am simply not going to be able to deal with it all.
You criticise medicine for failing some patients as if it ever claimed to be perfect. Hence my response. It is not then relevant to note the failures of alt.med. that is not this issue. The issue is the absence of any well-documented successes at all.
It is tiresome to have to deal with arguments that arise only as a result of lazy reading or trivial confusion.
[Citation needed]
And make adequate allowance for the increasing age of our population.
I think you’ve been swallowing too much of the alt.med Kool-Aid when coming out with these pat little assertions.
Proper supplementation? I think those of us on the science-based medicine side see the creation and exploitation of a huge market for dietary supplements as exactly one of the failings of Big Pharma and Big Quacka that we find to be obnoxious. Citing one of the worst practices of big business as support for your position does nothing to lend it credibility.
But, please do not be so obtuse as to convert that statement as a blanket assertion that no dietary supplement is ever likely to be of benefit for any condition.
I wasn’t really planning to write a scientific paper, and I do not appreciate being taught by a badly shaved monkey how to write, but out of courtesy to others here is a link to satisfy your “citationary” needs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/health/research/24cancerside.html
Of course I know dietary supplements are important, maybe you need to read a bit more carefully. Good quality plant-based dietary supplements are crucial, in my opinion, for health especially past the 30 to 40 year mark. Harvard Medical School has published papers about the need of supplementation (find your own citation). I am an expert in that field so I do not need to be taught about it. You can drink your own Kool-Aid.
It is the jousting that I was pointing out that brings out the evil in people in different industries and across the world. Instead of wasting time, maybe you can go fix that?
Anyway, Badly Shaven Monkey, I have stopped responding to you since it has become a slight annoyance to read your responses. I am writing here to ensure that people are not swayed by the over-righteous assertions of people who think they know what is best for the world such as yourself, and in the process are willing to steamroll over the process of independent thought. In your world Thomas Edison would not be able to discover the light bulb, Jonas Salk wouldn’t have been able to develop his vaccine. You cannot take a corporate juggernaut run solely for the purpose of making profit rule over independent thinking men who are living on purpose.
I think you missed the part where I pointed out that Big Pharma and Big Quacka are aligned on this one to create and exploit a market. The supplements industry has very handily become a huge corporate juggernaut. Oh, the irony.
So has the Cochrane Collaboration:
If you want us to take your appeal to authority seriously, you will need to provide citations for your Harvard Medical School papers.
But, Mojo, you don’t understand, John Hendricks is an “expert”. He says so himself, so it must be true.
Mojo, the anti-oxidant story is an interesting one. Anti-oxidants clearly have biological effects. Inappropriate oxidation is damaging to the body in various ways. But oxidation is also a normal process in the body in, for instance, defence against microbes. So, this was always a classic story of the sellers of supplements promoting only one side of what was inevitably a two-sided story and what was missing was evidence about the other side.
It makes an interesting counterpoint to something like homeopathy which does absolutely nothing so there never could be an actual negative biological effect.
Where there’s an effect there will be side effects. Science and medicine need to work out how to maximise the ratio by choosing the right patient, the right product and the right dose. This is not helped by Big Suppla being given a free pass in the USA by the DHSEA
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/dshea-a-travesty-of-a-mockery-of-a-sham/
to make almost limitless claims of efficacy with no practical way of holding them to account.
Then you should stop eating and definitely avoid the blueberries. As I said, I refuse to waste my time scouring literature to satisfy your needs. Find it yourself.
John – it is a classic sign of the quack – “find your own evidence to support my own assertions.” The world does not work like that.
No Andy. I know and have written many papers and know the value of references. It is just that I choose not to waste my energy finding them for a set of people who are too close minded to even give an argument that bends their thinking even one bit. I choose not to, even though I have a bunch of references that I have collected over the years. It is not worth it.
If you are convinced that the world is flat, there isn’t much I can do to point out that there is a different reality. Food is not a bunch of white powdered chemicals, chronic diseases do not take linear pathways in their development. However, our scientists out of the necessity of the scientific method can only draw straight lines in their pursuit of logic as a necessity of organized research. And as I stated before, I do not blame them for it, many applaudable discoveries have been made through that pathway.
But the reality of the total picture lies in the web of criss-crossing lines. Simply look at kinase research over the years and you will see how the pharma and academia have unraveled so many truths about the myriad of pathways, but have hardly been able to control any one of these intricate pathways without causing severe impact somewhere else. Does not take away from the work that they have done, but it does point out that the truth is larger than what most people see. I am simply asking for more open-mindedness, some humility in knowing that the knowledge of the universe is not simply reserved for you. I wish you luck and good temper, especially my monkey friend!
“I know and have written many papers and know the value of references. It is just that I choose not to waste my energy finding them for [you]“
That is what all the quacks say.
The reason you do this is so that you cannot be challenged about the substandard references that you think support your claims.
So in your book ‘eating and blueberries’ is taking supplements? Strange, I used to think that eating was “the norm”, and supplementation was taking some nutrients in addition to your normal food. That eating a balanced diet is good for you isn’t a new insight, and it’s not CAM.
“I know and have written many papers and know the value of references.”
Have you? Published in which journals?
Whole plant supplements, again read up about them, you might need them pretty soon. Signing off for good, have fun in your witch hunt.
“Food is not a bunch of white powdered chemicals”
Quite right. It’s also oils, and coloured powders too. All chemicals of course.
Really disappointed you turned out to be a loon John.
All the classic nonsense; oooh chemicals, linear (I miss Iqbal…), there’s tons of convincing papers but I’m not finding them for you (as really it’s a load of crap and you’ll tear it to shreds), I’ve written loads of papers but I’m choosing not to provide them (as they’re a load of crap and you’ll tear them apart), I’m signing off now SO YOU CAN’T GET ME!
Did you know, John, that I can fly? I’m just choosing not to do it right now… Yea, I’m a bit tired, I’ll demonstrate later… But you believe me, right?
Your approach to discussion is appropriate for primary school children.
So sad. Thought this one might have some legs.
What an entertaining man.
If only I could bask in the superior knowledge he says he has…
Not the right way to educate us ‘unbelievers’.
Unless he gives us references to some of the papers he has written, I am reserving judgement.
and
Yes, if every plant based food is a supplement I need them very regularly, usually 3-4 times a day. (Yeah, I know it’s “five a day”, but what can I say, I’m not perfect.) Thank you for reminding me of that.
<
@BSM:
If it ducks like a quack…
I am certainly suspecting a degree of ducking.
Reading with much amusement! I find it amusing that no one that responded to John had the guts to face the numbers on reference that he did indeed give you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/health/research/24cancerside.html
Stats are not everything – we need to look at ways in which we can improve patient’s survival without affecting their quality of life tremendously. Conventional methods are in abundance, but are clearly not making an impact. A lot like the chatter on this column.
Wendy Jordan
And you would look at these ways without the use of any statistics? Well, that will be interesting to behold.
Answer the stats that have been provided. Do not skirt the issue trying to beat someone else up. Explain the stats from conventional medicine. If you cannot explain them, then you are just a loud, obnoxious voice that does not deserve an explanation in return.
Do I see some ducking here?
Wendy,
I wasn’t sure what you were looking for. I’m not a cancer epidemiologist, and I’m as capable of reading that article just as well as you are.
There are obviously many factors at play and different subgroups to analyse, but survival rates for solid tissue cancers are disappointing for a lot of them.
No one here is covering up for medicine. I’m fully prepared to criticise medicine and drug companies. I do that all the time in my day-job. But that’s the real world and not especially funny. Alt.med. lives in a fantasy world and is often unintentionally funny, so I amuse myself poking fun at it.
But, you can’t then say medicine isn’t working well, therefore irrational treatments work.
Of course, Wendy, it was you who said, “Stats are not everything” so I don’t really know why you then want to discuss the stats.
Of course, Wendy, evidence based medicine is struggling to keep up with many diseases. Especially given an ageing population. Just look at our inability to keep up with microbial evolution. With so many multi-drug resistant strains about we may soon return to pre-penicillin levels of morbidity and mortality from readily caught infections.
Part of the problem is that medicine has to be able to actually treat conditions, and prove it, which is not easy at all. Conversely, alt med just makes it up as they go along, which is easy.
Perhaps you’d like to discuss exactly how the failings of med validate alt med. Also, a point that alt med apologists always overlook, how most of the sceptics here know more about the failings/evils of medicine than you do, and are very outspoken about that. Can you discuss that?
Just because planes crash, that doesn’t make flying carpets real.
No, I am totally with you on that: The failings of conventional med do not in anyway validate alternative medicine at all. And I like the current line of argumentation. Thank you!
Can I also take it that you would be accepting of an alternative medicine option that could prove itself or at least give you a percentage mortality/remission expectation?
You are right, it is indeed frustrating. I am in a place as a caregiver where I have seen many alternative therapies work to improve quality of life, defy a dismal prognosis, and it is unfortunate that it is hard to differentiate the good from the bad. I seek evidence too, but when a person is willing to take a chance and that chance work, it would be foolish for me to deny what my eyes have seen.
More often than not, those that have good remedies, often don’t have the ability to conduct exhaustive trials to prove to the world that they have something worthwhile on their hands. I think, and this is my personal opinion and you are more than welcome to differ from that, that especially in terminal cases, it becomes a matter of personal choice. As hard as it is for me to say this, the onus falls on the individual to be discerning about what they are walking into. I know that is not a perfect answer and it opens up argumentation worthy of a few more pages here. But what I think is this: until we have better options available, I would not like to be the one that takes away a chance to survive from someone else.
Wendy;
But here you are you assuming what you cannot assume. Without statistical evidence, these case anecdotes tell you nothing about the therapy itself in distinction from a whole host of confounding factors. Cancer quacks blatantly exploit this to gain financial advantage and evade all attempts to hold them to account for their claims. This is the difference between Big Pharma and the quacks.
Wendy, when a treatment is proven to work it isn’t an alternative medicine that works. It’s just medicine.
So, what about an alternative medicine that has been shown NOT to work? In the case of homoeopathy, carefully designed trials have conclusively shown again and again and again that it doesn’t work; publications that do suggest an effect have been shown to be poorly designed tests without controls, or written by people with vested financial interests.
Where people claim personal experience of healing by homoeopathy (like every example that has been offered by individuals here, which we have then examined) they are always mistaken. It turns out that the condition they had was self limiting for example (one guy came on to argue incredibly vigorously in favour of homoeopathy but when I asked what had convinced him he said that his son had had glue ear, the GP had prescribed something but it hadn’t cleared it up, then he started using homoeopathy and the condition went away after a few weeks. I directed him to the NHS direct website which stated that there are no effective treatments for glue ear, but that it often clears up by itself after a few weeks. This showed that there was no way he could conclude that the homoeopathy had done anything in this case. We didn’t hear back from him).
Add all this to the absence of any ingredients, and no plausible mode of action and you’d have to really, really need to believe in homoeopathy to still be a supporter. And this I don’t understand.
Would you be willing to share some specifics of what has convinced you of the efficacy of an alternative medicine, so that we could examine them with you? It’s great that you’ve stuck around this far.
You might prove me wrong, but I’m excited about that as I am a scientist. That’s how I learn. But then again, we might prove you wrong, how do you feel about that? Neither might prove the other wrong, but we would both have learned something.
Nice comments. Before I say anything, let me clarify that I am not a proponent of homeopathy, even though I do not completely discard it as a potential therapeutic option either, but I have no reason to believe in it either.
I wish I had the resources to follow up and prove what I have seen and experienced, but unfortunately I do not have the resources to do so. I live at a level where I learn from observation, much like the paleolithic man who rubbed two sticks together and realized that he could create fire. He observed something that he saw could be repeated with some effort. Where he was at, he could easily convince himself that what he saw was real. As far as convincing others, that was a different matter altogether.
You want examples, and that is all I can provide. I have, for instance, observed nutritional measures, including diet changes and targeted supplementation, accelerate recovery periods drastically which could not be accomplished otherwise. I will give you one example. I once assisted a young patient some time ago who was going to one of the top opthalmologists in the US because of an ocular nerve inflammation that had taken away a good part of his eyesight in a very short period of time. The worried parents went to this doctor after hearing about his experience of treating many cases of his nature. He said that it was connected to a viral infection that would take its course, in his estimation, at least 6 weeks to resolve. No medications were recommended. Not wanting to interfere with the therapy, I simply suggested a few dietary changes, and some supplements that are given to assist with inflammation in a normal, healthy person without any intention, of course, to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease in any way. The condition resolved itself in about a week, and the ophthalmologist said that he had never seen anything like this resolve so fast. Can I prove that what I recommended may have assisted in the process? Maybe I don’t want to! But I do find it curious how opportunities like this often tend to mysteriously help to “push” things forward.
This is what I believe: sometimes it is not so much about curing a problem – it has a lot to do with taming a nutritional deficit in the body that may lie at the root of the problem. Modern medicine unfortunately is not trained to look at healing from that context. It is skewed and contrary to the process of established research.
The problem then does not lie in the accepted formats of clinical research and statistical analysis. I think before we can enforce a statistical paradigm on “alternative” methods of medicine, there has to first be a certain acceptance of the possibility or alternate solutions. Until we can open up the dialog, the possibility of finding a consensus is as good as non-existent. Nothing would give me greater pleasure in finding a clear trail or evidence of some of the things I have seen. It does indeed hurt that sometimes good methods are seamlessly classified with those of the quack. The quack is probably more of an enemy to traditional (“irrational”?) forms of medicine than he is to the practitioner of modern medicine. Arguably the person getting sandwiched in the middle of this altercation are the patients.
No, Wendy. You have got this utterly wrong. Testing is not there merely to illustrate things you think you know to be true. It is done to find out whether they are true.
In your three sentences, you exemplify everything that is wrong in research on SCAM modalities.
Are you able to acknowledge your mistake?
I will note, in passing, your classic use of the n=1 anecdote that depends entirely for its emotive strength on a doctor getting a prognosis wrong.
Wendy, it takes A-levels to get into medical school not psychic ability.
But SCAM advocates live in a world that is totally beholden to the power of convincing authority figures. Ironically, you cite that authority to make your point even when he was wrong but you still use the weight of his authority to try to persuade us that your tale contained something of significance. It’s a particularly neat piece of doublethink.
“As far as convincing others, that was a different matter altogether.”
Why?
The evidence is either convincing or it isn’t. If it doesn’t convince others (rational scientific others) why does it convince you? Why are your standards lower? Because you need to believe?
With regards to your story, the 6 week estimate was just that. Not that it always takes 6 weeks; but on average around 6 weeks. Sometimes maybe 10 weeks, sometimes maybe 1 or 2. So your intervention MAY have had an effect, it may not. I don’t know, but, more importantly, neither do you. You can chose to believe it did, and that could motivate you to investigate further. But if you don’t have the time or resources to do this then that’s where your search for the truth in this field ends.
As s scientist I want to be the guy with all the big discoveries, the cool results etc. etc. But if I get an apparently remarkable result in my lab, even if it looks kosher and it’s taken 6 months to achieve, I will immediately discuss with my colleagues: “can you check these numbers for me?” “what have I missed?” “Do I have appropriate controls?” “are these data really saying what I think they are?”. And 9 times out of 10 I’ve overlooked something. The result is different when I repeat the experiment etc.
This is science. This is how we approach the truth. We want to be right, but we’re prepared to be wrong. Because only by really understanding when and how you are wrong, can you truly recognize when you’re right.
Wendy, do you understand? And do you understand that the commenters here are not flag wavers for big pharma, or against and new ideas threatening their monopoly on medicine? They just want people to think. You suggest that there had to be an acceptance of the possibility of ‘alternative methods’. There is. There totally is. 100%.
It’s just not an unquestioning acceptance.
I don’t want to ‘believe’ my theories ate right. I want to ‘show’ they are right. I need to show myself. Because I question myself.
Do you want to say ‘I know’ (or as is more often the case ‘I don’t know’) or do you need to say ‘I believe’? If the last, what do you get out of it?
This is a horrible, horrible story and it naturally makes so many of us say, “something must be done”. The media play a reprehensible role in this sort of thing.
I would like to think otherwise, but I don’t think legislation is the answer. The outrage from the uninformed public can easily be imagined (not to forget the self-interested outrage from the fringe practitioners!). One can see the headlines now.
I think that we must instead do what we can to educate and inform the public. It’s a very slow and frustrating process, but it seems to me to be the only solution that will have a lasting effect.
Poor little girl.
I agree with you that this is a horrible story, the bit that worries me is”I think that we must instead do what we can to educate and inform the public. It’s a very slow and frustrating process, but it seems to me to be the only solution that will have a lasting effect.” people like you and the skeptics “educating’ the poor, so vastly inferior people who cannot “think” exactly as you do as much of a nightmare as this story, Stadium full of uneducated people will have to be processed and educated in the right way.
No thanks, your help is not needed
Nobody (except maybe you) thinks that people who fall prey to quacks are inferior – they’re lied to by the quacks (if they were given appropriate information to make an informed choice they wouldn’t agree to be “treated” by them). Of course they should be told how much (or little) really speaks for trying such treatments, and if you don’t want to do that – fine, but don’t think you can stop others from doing so.
Ademo. So is your position that you agree this is a ‘horrible story’, but others who realise about its horribleness should keep their thoughts to themselves and do nothing?
Well, you see you mustn’t interfere with people’s freedom, nasty scientists!
People’s freedom to believe in fairies, freedom to believe in homoeopathy, freedom to make a killing out of homoeopathy, and kill.
Whatever you do, you mustn’t stop people being stupid, because they must be free to be stupid…
You see, this freedom leads to creativity; you wouldn’t want people coming out like sausages now would you. No, no, no!
Precisely what they do with this much coveted freedom is another matter. Line the pockets of quacks, deny life-saving treatment to themselves and their loved ones… Maybe. Sit around watching Big Brother… Who the hell knows. Who cares, as long as they buy their homoeopathy pills, their dietary supplements, their organic veg, their anti-oxidant detox smoothies, their vegetable dyed hemp clothes, their, their… Who cares, as long as they’re consuming, consuming, consuming! And of course being free! And creative!
Could be Nike trainers and McDonalds, I really can’t see the difference.
But you mustn’t curtail their freedom! Or their creativity!
Except when they don’t like how someone else if using their freedom to assault them in the street or burgle their house. Or robustly criticise mumbo jumbo.
The fact they they are not free at all and go waddling from one false hope to another utterly at the whim of whichever messiah figure they’re seeing today; don’t mention that!
Trapped in a vortex of unquestioning credulity, being taken in by one scam after another; No, don’t mention that.
They must feel free! And buy this tiger charm while you’re at it, there’s a good boy Ademo.
I think the word sheeple is now compulsory in any list like that.
The problem with you sceptics is your lack of discrimination, you put everybody in the same bag; is a decent osteopath or acupuncturist or reflexologist trying to do a decent job to be pilloried in the same way as the bastards who invent those cruel scams? When I started reading this blog, I was rather sympathetic, but some of the right wing, even downright fascist comments made me lose any respect for some of your supporters
And yes there is a price for freedom, some people will always try to come up with some scams, and this is not exclusive to alternative medicine, it happens in every possible fields, including in scientific research.
And yes, BSM, the world steeple does come to mind, only to describe the sceptics and their rather rigid attitude to everything that they disapprove of.
Your line of thinking definitely brings us one step closer to a big brother society.
Most people are not stupid, and can make up their mind and pass on their judgement; unfortunately, there will always a few people falling pray of ruthless scammers, in this case they cannot be described as alternative therapist, they are doctors! All credits to Andy Lewis for highlighting this particular scam, but hey! Try to keep a sense of perspective
Your gross generalisations about alternative medicine are not worthy of people who claim to be scientists: not all homeopath are evil children killers, many of them are decent and honest doctors, not all alternative therapists are evil scammers as they have been described many time on this blog.
Having said that, I am off to my osteopath, my neck still hurt a bit.
If you believe that people like me think homeopaths are scammers then you dont understand the problem. It is possible to do much harm by being systematically incompetent too. That is probably the far bigger problem in the world of alternative medicine rather than plain old hucksterism.
It’s the honest incompetents I worry most about.
Well Mr Lewis, I do not deny your honesty or your integrity, but I do not think you have a degree in medicine, or any competence in the medical field; so you are among the honest incompetents we need to worry about
Ademo
I do not base my arguments from any sort of authority in medicine. My arguments stand on their own merits.
You do not attack my arguments, rather you judge me on your assumptions about what certificates I have hanging on my toilet wall.
I trust you will in future engage with the arguments.
It’s far simpler than all that. Ademo can’t possibly be an idiot. Don’t you see?
So you have your deceitful alt med pushers, dispensing sugar pills or whatever and telling people it’s medicine.
And it’s OK to point out these scams.
And then you have Ademo’s chosen alt med suppliers, doing the same. But as he can’t be an idiot, the ones he chooses must be OK.
So some alt med pushers are OK, and some deceitful.
Simple!
“not all homeopath are evil children killers, many of them are decent and honest doctors”
So even though they prescribe water and sugar pills and tell people it’s medicine, some are still decent and honest doctors.
They simply must be.
Otherwise Ademo is an idiot for buying into it all.
And as he never stops to really think about what he’s saying, or whether it makes sense, he just can’t be an idiot now can he?
“The problem with you sceptics is your lack of discrimination, you put everybody in the same bag;”
Ademo: Do you even read your own posts?
One doesn’t need a medical degree to see through the arguments of alt med apologists.
Just a minute’s break from the opining for reflection and thought.
Because Ademo has no answer to it.
That should have appeared somewhere else…
Will, you are keen on restraining freedom and as other members of your crowd, keen on “educating” the ignorant people about what is good for them: Fancy a holiday in North Korea?
Andy, you argument is always the same, you know better what is right or wrong because science is behind you (allegedly) so I am dealing with your main argument, that only medicine that has been so far defined as evidence based medicine is good and that everything else is harmful
I and million others, including eminent professors disagree with you
You are using a straw man argument. I do not say ” only medicine that has been so far defined as evidence based medicine is good and that everything else is harmful”.
I say that making claims about the effects of treatments that are not true has the potential to do harm. But mostly I write about why people believe absurd health claims. You make a good case study.
I don’t want to restrict anyone’s freedom.
Look at it this way: You wouldn’t jump off a building would you? No. Because people are restricting your freedom? No. Because you understand it would be stupid.
Someone might tell you to be open-minded about it, that you might fly up into the sky. You would say that they were at best deluded and at worst murderously irresponsible.
Why? Because you understand the facts about jumping off a building. Just that.
No one NEEDS to restrict your freedom. You just understand, and would not jump in a million years.
Yes. Many people believe homoeopathy works.
Many people think they can fly and die jumping off buildings.
Ademo, you have a set of issues; about nasty skeptics restricting your freedom, about seeing the scientific establishment as fascists, all the numbers in paranoid bingo. It’s really sad, because, like almost all paranoias, you create it and you suffer with it.
But can you overcome these obstacles to logical thought and just examine your own posts? Your own thought processes? Why do you say what you do? Really? Why do we say what we do? Really?
Perhaps we feel like we’re standing on the ground seeing the person on the building edge, with a flying believer whispering in their ear.
But our world vision, where you can’t fly, is so dull! So conformist! So closed minded!
And the world they paint, where you can fly is so lovely! And it makes you feel special!
Will: first your analogy is ridiculous, yes I have an issue with nasty skeptics wanting to restrict my freedom, No I do not see the scientific establishment as fascist, but on the other hand i am starting to see the skeptics as definitely going down that road, no I do not see numbers as paranoid bingo, but since you mention paranoia, this is something that one can detect a bit too often in the skeptic’s comment on this blog
“Will: first your analogy is ridiculous”
Why?
Andy – have you done your homework? Both photodynamic and sonodynamic therapies for cancer have been proposed for some time with promising results – check them out on Pub Med. of course they are not holistic methods but based on reasonable chemistry and biochemistry.
Yes, thank you. I have done my homework. Both sono- and photo- dynamic therapies are techniques that have been researched and may have some useful applications. As far as I can see, there is no evidence that either of them can help with the sort of cancer this little girl has. And absolutely no evidence to suggest that together they are more effective. My opinion is that the plausibility of these techniques is part of the allure. And it is also my opinion that such clinics offer little more than a sunbed and an ultrasound machine.
I don’t think that you have worked hard at your homework. Phototherapy can only be applied to tissues that are topographically on the body surface so that is not only the skin but also from the buccal cavity to the anus and the vagina – so not just sunbed treatment and requires “light” of the appropriate wavelength. Since not all cancers are on the”surface” ultrasound has been shown to activate suitable receptors that attach to cancerous cells. for your readers who do not refer to PubMed there are over 7000 published reports on photodynamic therapy for cancer and 100 for sonodynamic therapy.
Since you are keen on homework, perhaps you would like to point to any peer-reviewed research that would suggest that the Hope 4 Cancer technique of SPDT is a viable option for children like Olivia?
I think you will find there is none.
Only around 100 children are diagnosed with neuroblastoma each year. It is very difficult to work out how many are diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, but as there are five (sometime 6) stages let us say 20. This particular treatment was being used after Olivia had relapsed. Children who relapse with s4 neuroblastoma nearly always die. Many children die during treatment, particularly from infection and with the treatment protocol for s4 neuroblastoma Hepatic veno-occlusive disease (VOD). Bearing this in mind how would you find enough ‘children like Olivia’ to conduct a trial into SPDT for children with relapsed S4 neuroblastoma that would give you a clear idea of the efficacy of the treatment. You would need to have a control group, who wouldn’t receive the treatment. What parent would choose for their child to be part of this control? There is no doubt Olivia should not have travelled to Mexico, but this does not mean SPDT does not show promise in the treatment of cancer. We should be funding more general trials into this treatment so that if it is of demonstrable benefit it can begin to be used in treatment protocols. We will then have the resources to start using it at diagnosis to see if it helps against the few cases of relapsed S4 neuroblastoma.
As an aside I am suffering from scurvy, does anyone know which drug I should take to sort it out?
Newspapers always look for a story which shows them in a good light. And how better than to be seen raising money to give hope for a dying child. It doesn’t matter to them that it’s an expensive false hope, it sells papers!
There will always be shameless hucksters who are prepared to make a buck. There will always be mugs who will fall for their blandishments. It is very sad to read of cases such as these. Legislation will achieve nothing. Perhaps the best hope is that there will be a sufficiently large number of such tragedies that word will get round and convince desparate parents that some children have horrible illnesses from which there is no release. Any monies raised by public appeal can then be used to improve palliation rather than fattening the wallets of evil minded hucksters promoting snake oil remedies.
David Amies
“Illnesses from which there is no release?” Try telling Louis Pasteur that, or all the thousands of scientists who have worked for decades looking to find ways to help children and adults survive and prosper! Palliation methods exist in abundance, they involve narcotics and a plug that can be pulled when needed. The greatest creations do not happen in big pharma establishments because of millions of dollars invested. They happen as a concept in a person’s mind that expands into something big. Read some history of science and medicine, David. Learn a little bit before you speak your mind because you are revealing what lies within.
It’s interesting to look at the income and expenditure records of the charity which facilitated this tragic excursion, Families Against Neuroblastoma.
These are publicly and easily available on the Charity Commission website.
For the financial year ending 31 Mar 2011:
Income – £304,485
Expenditure – £76,965
I look forward to seeing how they got on this year, but may have to wait a bit. Their last accounts were submitted 135 days late.
This is a different picture from the 6 or so charities I checked more or less at random, where they seem to spend roughly 90% of their income, rather than around 25%.
I would be interested in the explanation.
The difference between a maverick and a quack is that a maverick is willing to believe they may be wrong.
I’m not sure how much this clinic charges, but I’m pretty sure it’s a big enough sum to persuade a practitioner that the treatment works, no matter what the evidence says.
The saddest part of these sort of stories is the impact it must have on the child. Being ill is bad enough, being ill and having to fly to an unfamiliar country, be in an unfamiliar hospital, surrounded by unfamiliar people, not to mention being subjected to potentially unpleasant treatment, must be really distressing. It strikes me that this factor is often forgotten about when a decision about whether or not to go ahead with treatment is made.
Even if it was the most amazing, side effect free, most efficacious medicine ever, the impact on the child’s quality of life should still be considered.
Wendy, if you want to read more about cancer survival times and the problems of interpretation then here’s a couple of useful links;
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/cancer-care-in-the-u-s-versus-europe/
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-early-detection-of-cancer-and-improved-survival-more-complicated-than-most-people-think/
They hopefully give you a clear view of how real doctors view these things and the responsible way in which they reflect on their own practice of medicine. Unlike the quacks…
Beware of the egos on that site. The Ego tends to find ways to bend & distort the truth to maintain their altitude.
What is a real doctor? Is it someone who stays in line with the real Quackery of the big 3 profit makers, Chemo, Radiation & Surgery? Sounds more like business than science based medicine.
Look at who sponsors that site? Question everything?
The Mexican Clinic and the little girl is a tragically sad story.
Well i would just like to add a little observation about Cancer. Is it, or is it not, a scientific thing to do – and curiously something that is persistently overlooked – to look not simply at treating Cancer as it arises, but to look globally at the demographics, evolution, and prevailing cultural proclivities, in context to incidence of, and types of Cancer.
Ii it not a very simple, cheap, and logical approach, and pretty much leaves very little work to do, when it comes to identifying strategies to reverse Cancer incidence, and indeed Cancer Treatment through reversing the factors that likely gave rise to Cancer.
Remember the great spending boost for allegedly tackling Cancer in the Nixon era to great exhaltation, which has continued unabated to this day…….the result?…..an American or chance of a Cancer Diagnosis increasing more than threefold!!!!
I see the CICHealth group organising the Cancer Conference in Birmingham this October have pitched directly at the iniquity and decrepitude of the 1939 Cancer Act. I, as they, have had enough of Cancer Treatment Monopolisation by the big spend and ‘ slash, burn and poison’ approach supported so long by mainstream information control.
Lets get on with Health and abundance, not control, fear and limitation. When you do that Corporations, or ther bidders, and Institutions will feel threatened…..
Because, of course, no one is investigating cancer epidemiology at all.
Muppet!
Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Eat a well-balanced diet. Don’t get fat. Have children earlier. Avoid HPV, hepatitis viruses and HIV. Don’t get old. Don’t be unlucky.
Don’t give money to scumbags making a living from selling simplistic ideas of easy cures.
Some are easier said than done. And unfortunately cancer is complicated.
Has that cleared things up for you?
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but the Observer did in fact comment on this and agreed that it should have looked a bit further:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2011/dec/04/observer-readers-editor-cancer-treatment
As one who has actually used a treatment in mexico i at least have the basis to comment. I have tracked the patients who were at the clinic with us and not all have survived, some arrived literally at death’s door, including Coretta Scott King…..who was there only 1 day. So it can hardly be said that “they” killed her.
but of those who were there when we were most were stage 4, had tried all that conventional medicine had to offer and were told to prepare for death. My husband arrived with stage 4 cancer as well. about 60-70 percent are still alive and doing well and some have added additional treatments since leaving including low dose chemo. I think the problem with this post…is that it tries to define everyone by one person’s experience. I did watch the video, I was at Hope4Cancer and heard the same explanation from Dr. Jimenez but I didn’t come trying to find error, I came with my brain fully engaged to look for what made sense for my husband, not elusive hope. You do your readers a disservice by trying to paint every thing with the same brush……if conventional medicine was getting the job done….people would have no need to add “un”conventional treatment or replace them. I think it’s time to do an investigation into conventional treatment and track all millions in donations raised by walks, drives, charities and see what actual life expectancy advancements our charity money has paid for. We did our homework, with Mayo Clinic and Piedmont and Emory and Cancer Treatment Centers before selecting Hope4 Cancer on purpose. You try to paint people who use these clinics as only desperate, ill advised hopefuls. However, when we were there, oncologist family members, pro athletes and more were there with us. I stand by my free choice to get the treatment we want. We still have that freedom here and thank God for it. I look forward to many more years with my husband of 35 years… than what he was offered by his oncologist. Take hope, those of you out there who feel trapped by limited options. There are a lot of options. Do your homework, ask straight questions and then do more homework. Then, make up your own mind. don’t let ANYONE lead you blindly.
Let me stop you right there. If personal experience (aka anectodes) were the basis one needed to comment, you’d be pretty much doomed with any diagnosis as it would be unlikely your doctor could comment on them. Fortunately, there’s a much better basis to comment on, and it’s called science.
I went along with my grandfather trying homeopathy in addition to chemo and radiation, fully knowing that it wouldn’t do a thing for him. What was the alternative – telling him “face it, you’ll die old man, so don’t waste our inheritance on sugar pills”?
I went along with my grandmother getting acupuncture in addition to pain medication when her pain from arthrosis was almost unbearable, fully knowing that all we could hope for was that it would help her keep busy and positive until her doctor had found the right medication/dosage to manage her pain (it didn’t, by the way). What was the alternative – telling her “we all know arthrosis hurts so stop complaining”?
That’s what family and friends do, they try to help you stay positive even if they know what you’re doing isn’t going to help.
Just a quick note to you all about ‘anecdotes’. Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘blinded by science’? If there is a lack of scientific evidence then are we to completely ignore the experiences and wisdom of others? There are many reasons for a lack of science, not least of all a lack of funding. If I was to suffer from migraines and someone recommends I take wild feverfew as it ‘worked for them’ I would be foolish not to look into it and possibly give it a go. If it didn’t treat my headache then I would not pass this wisdom on. If I have a bad neck and someone suggests I try a different type of mattress on my bed ‘because it worked for them’ should I ignore them because they have not furnished me with a double blind randomly controlled study? Somewhere on this thread the example of jumping of a building is used (classic). I would like to turn your argument on its head. If I told you not to jump of a building would you ignore my advise because I could not furnish you with a clinical trial to prove it could kill you?
Ian – there are a number of factors here about how we should accept anecdotes. Firstly, plausibility. We can make very good plausibility arguments about the harms one might come to about jumping off a house without having to be told it is harmful and to even reject someones anecdote. With alt med, there are a number of common thinking fallacies that people are victims of that mean that despite routine anecdotes, people are almost certainly wrong. Believing that a health improvement that occurred after a treatment was because of the treatment is the most common of all these thinking errors.
We make these judgements all the time in everyday life – to not do so risks you being known a gullible or foolish. Why many people cannot be naturally sceptical about health claims is rather astonishing really. In other areas of life, they would not be so credulous.
Eight years ago I was conned by a clinic in Russia claiming to have a PDT cure for my daughter’s tumour. She went to Russia and Salzburg for three treatments and we were told by the medic that it had been a success and the tumour had shrunk. As the coverage of our European journey showed on ITV, the tumour actually grew.
For far too long, clinics across the world have been offering useless PDT treatments that have failed and have given ‘real’ PDT a bad name. They have been exploiting the media coverage this charity (and others) have achieved for PDT, and they then claim all sorts of miracle cures with their versions of the science.
The medical people I work alongside can find no evidence that the treatments offered either work or could ever work. They fly in the face of basic science.
When the charity tells a patient that they are not suitable for PDT in the NHS – and perhaps that no trial has been run so far – many hit the web and tell us they are going to one of the clinics that has promised them a cure.
The claims made are no longer a shock to us. They are just too incredible for words.
I find it impossible to comprehend that anyone claiming to be a medical professional could so crudely and cruelly exploit a cancer patient and their families at the time of the greatest need for honesty. But this is clearly happening.
If we can’t have honesty at a time when we are nearing the end of life’s journey, there is something sick about the person who will charge a cancer victim £10,000 for a hope and promise they know they can’t deliver.
After much lobbying, NHS Choices has published a guidance notice on these clinics and the treatments, based on their own research.
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/photodynamic-therapy-NGPDT-sonodynamic-therapy/Pages/Introduction.aspx
The story is also in the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/30/cancer-patients-clinics-unproven-treatment
This is a very proud moment for me, as Director of the charity. PDT and the charity can’t change the lives of everyone who reaches out to us.
I must thank Norman Lamb MP. He and the Lib Dems have taken the time and trouble to understand PDT. I thank Norman for his efforts, most sincerely. He is one of the finest men I know. How good it is to have a really competent and talented Health Minister.
David Longman
Director – KILLING Cancer