My Malignant Melanoma

Someone has written to me to suggest that the delusional quack Tullio Simoncini, convicted of the unlawful killing of one of his patients is "200% correct" in his assertions that cancer is a fungus. Here is the story of one of his patients. Judge for yourselves.

Labels: killer, quack, Tullio Simoncini

Over on CRUK's cancer chat site, there's a muppet who is plugging the Budwig Diet to cancer patients. Here's what I had to say to him:

"A quick glance round the internet shows that people are using this diet instead of radio-and chemo-therapy on the advice of morons like you.

Thinking that the papers you linked to in some way supports the Budwig diet only confirms your scientific ignorance. None of the papers are about the Budwig diet at all.

As I said, science deals with evidence, and there is no evidence whatever for the Budwig diet. There's nothing more to say from a scientific point of view. I have an open mind-show me some evidence. Believing the unsupported word of an internet time-waster like yourself isn't open-mindedness, it's stupidity.

Linus Pauling's ideas on dietary Vitamin C and cancer were tested and are nonsense (We might note in passing that he actually died of cancer)

The research you refer to is about intravenous vitamin C rather than dietary Vitamin C, in mice rather than people, and is far from conclusive. Linus Pauling won the Nobel prize for work on the nature of the chemical bond. He had neither training nor any research background in Medicine, or any biological science.

Your logical error is called the appeal to authority. Linus Pauling also had strong political opinions. Should we remake society in line with them because he won a Nobel Peace Prize? It does not logically follow that being right about chemical bonds makes you right about cancer, politics, or indeed even reliably right about some other aspect of chemistry. (Even Budwig's supporters claim that she was nominated for the peace prize rather than the prize for medicine, incidentally)

Bring some real evidence to back your assertions, or shut up. Since you clearly wouldn't know evidence if it was tattooed on your forehead, it's going to be a long wait. That's evidence that the Budwig diet is helpful for the outcome of all cancers which I'm talking about, as this is the claim that is being made.

The most impressive of the papers you linked to concludes that one component of the Budwig diet MIGHT be worthy of further investigation for some prostate cancer patients.

1. It does not study the Budwig diet at all, but a simple low-fat diet with flax seed oil. Budwig made strong claims that organic flaxseed oil must be mixed with organic cottage cheese to be effective, and that either component taken separately would have the opposite of the desired effect. The study you quote does however pertain to this claim. It tends to disprove it, as no excess deaths were recorded in the patients as would be expected from Budwig's claims.

The Budwig Protocol is actually a complete lifestyle, which besides flaxseed oil/cottage cheese includes a number of elements. It includes a vegetarian diet, flaxseeds, fruit juices, vegetable juices, sauerkraut, sunshine, "emotional and spiritual peace" "stress control", "avoiding negative energy" from a variety of sources in synthetic clothing, bedding, etc. in your immediate environment. and so on...

2. It only studies one sort of cancer. Things which help with one sort of cancer can harm in the case of another. For example testosterone is required to allow prostate cancers to grow, but it may inhibit breast cancers.

3. It does not study the post-treatment period when people seem most likely to be conned into the Budwig diet.

4. It does not conclude that the diet helps in any way, but that it MIGHT be worth looking into. Since the paper dates from 2008, it seems that they have not cured cancer in the meantime, or I would surely have heard about it.

5. The study does not actually look at survival or any real-world end-point at all, but biochemical changes which they believe might be associated with a better outcome.

Advising anyone to even consider the Budwig diet on the strength of this research is highly irresponsible. But of course your ideas on the Budwig diet come from internet quack sites, not scientific or medical research. These are the only places where this diet is promoted. You are just parroting quack propaganda.

Might I suggest that you, and anyone else like you, who want to play scientist/doctor based on tripe they read on the internet, who think that any study of a field implies scientific endorsement, and doesn't understand what the resulting papers mean refrain from giving unqualified medical advice to cancer patients?"

Obviously it would be better if people like this were split, salted and nailed to a fence, but we do what we can.

Labels: Budwig, Diet, nonsense, quack

I was recently showered with increasingly offensive emails by someone who thought that turmeric can cure cancer, and that I was highly irresponsible to say on this site that it doesn't.

So I had a look to see if any new evidence had come to light since I last looked into it. No new favourable evidence, but as ever, even more hucksters plugging alternative medicine. No wonder people get taken in, if they don't understand that being on the front page of Google isn't anything to do with accuracy of content.

CRUK have a page on turmeric, which I referenced in my previous post on the subject. It says that there is some anti-cancer activity in the test-tube, but that trials showed that it is so poorly absorbed from the gut that it is useless for anything other than gut cancers. It also cautioned against internet turmeric supplements, which have been shown to contain dangerous drugs.

Pretty much everything, including paracetamol has anti-cancer effects in cell culture or lab mice. It doesn't mean a damn thing.

The ranter also insisted that if he spoke to his doctor as I suggested, that his doctor would be struck off or even jailed if he were to agree that turmeric cured cancer. There is no conspiracy to suppress the truth about cancer treatment, other than the one perpetrated by the commercially motivated snake-oil merchants. You've been had, friend.

Labels: conspiracy, curcurmin, quack, snake-oil, turmeric

A concerned friend of a melanoma patient has written to me to ask about naturopathy in general and a naturopath called Etienne Callebout in particular. Of course naturopathy is little more than systematised quackery, but let's have a quick look at the things Callebout's publicity says he uses to treat cancer:

714X-Quackery
Aloe vera-Quackery
Amygdalin (laetrile)- Quackery
Bovine cartilage - Quackery
DMSO - Quackery

- you get the idea.

Wobe-Mugos enzymes - worthless
Glandulars - senseless
Green tea can be a nice drink, but does not cure cancer.
Iscador -is a trade name for mistletoe extract which "has no proven benefit and can cause harm"
Flaxseed oil - extremely questionable
Maitake - extremely questionable
Shark cartilage - Quackery
Homeopathic remedies - there are no such things

A quick glance over the 'net shows that these are just a small selection from Callebout's extensive arsenal of nice little earners. Cancer Patients Beware!

Labels: etienne callebout, naturopathy, quack

A fellow cancer patient has written to ask me whether Bernie Siegel is Kosher or Quack. Let's have a look at what Quackwatch have to say:

"Various psychologic methods are being promoted to cancer patients as cures or adjuncts to other treatment. The techniques include imagery, visualization, meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, and various forms of psychotherapy. These techniques may reduce stress, alleviate depression, help control pain, and enhance patients' feelings of mastery and control. Individual and group support can have a positive impact on quality of life and overall attitude. A positive attitude may increase a patient's chance of surviving cancer by increasing compliance with proven treatment. However, it has not been demonstrated that emotions directly influence the course of the disease.

Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of "Love, Medicine & Miracles" and "Peace, Love & Healing", claims that "happy people generally don't get sick" and that "one's attitude toward oneself is the single most important factor in healing or staying well." Siegel also states that "a vigorous immune system can overcome cancer if it is not interfered with, and emotional growth toward greater self-acceptance and fulfilment helps keep the immune system strong." However, he has published no scientific study supporting these claims.

A 10-year study co-authored by Siegel found that 34 breast cancer patients participating in his program did not live longer after diagnosis than comparable non-participants. The program consisted of weekly peer support and family therapy, individual counselling, and the use of positive imagery. In November 1998, Siegel sent a series of email messages to Dr. Barrett (who runs Quackwatch) in which he said that the study bearing his name had been done by a student and was improperly designed."

I think it would be more than fair to say that Siegel is making claims with no scientific foundation, which fly in the face of even his own research. This seems less than kosher to me.

The idea that attitude affects the course of cancer has been scientifically discredited for some time. As cancerbacup point out, whilst it has no beneficial effect the pressure to be positive can become an additional burden for a cancer patient.

There is some evidence that stress might have an effect on cancer progression, but that pressuring people with less sunny coping styles to be positive is stressful for them. This article discusses the research in question.

And then there are all of the studies (including Dr. Siegel's own one) which do not show the effect. Every one of these is a nail in the coffin of claims that it exists. Like so much pseudoscience, the harder you look, the less you see it.

But of course there are people for whom a positive mental attitude works wonders. The loved ones of the cancer patient. Perhaps this is why some of them are such fierce advocates of the PMA. Bad enough that their loved one is possibly dying, but do they really have to go on about it? Let's tell them that if they don't be a bit more positive they'll die sooner, that'll shut them up!

I'm sure that like myself, most cancer patients would like to take as positive and hopeful an attitude to their cancer, its treatment and prognosis as they can from moment to moment, as dictated by their normal coping style.

I'm sure that like me, they are as nice as they can be under the circumstances, and put on as brave a face as they can to protect their loved ones to the extent allowed by the emotional and physical resources available to them.

Having cancer is however a bit of a downer at times. Telling us to pull ourselves together is even less useful than it would be for someone suffering from depression. Telling us to be a bit more cheery on pain of death is less useful still.

Coming back to Dr Siegel, not only has he not proven that his ideas or "treatment" prolongs life, he has not proven that it makes people happier. He has not proven any one of his claims, but has in fact apparently personally supervised someone who has disproved them. He has no evidence to support his claims, but does has evidence to show that his personally supervised programme is worse than useless. Yet he does not retract any of his claims.

Is this fraud or quackery? I suppose that that decision depends on the precise definition of the words you are employing. We can however be pretty clear that this is not acting as a scientist or as an effective medical practitioner.

Labels: Bernie Siegel, Cancer, Clinical, evidence, Love, Love and Healing, M.D, Medicine and Miracles, Peace, promotion, psychologic methods, psychological, quack, Therapy

Another poster on What Now has passed on the irresponsible claims of a "Dr" Lodi about chemotherapy.

Legal threats on behalf of Lodi prevent me from commenting further than to say that Mr Lodi is presumably seeking only to promote the oxidative, chelation, homoeopathic, and other quack therapies he offers at his private clinic by his attacks on proven conventional treatments. His motivation is therefore financial.

His profoundly unhelpful and scientifically unjustified claims that doctors would not themselves have the treatments they give to patients were published in "Get Fresh" magazine.

This publication looks like a harmless health and beauty mag, but seems to actually be a slick propaganda sheet pushing the raw food quack diet, and seemingly all other forms of dietary alternative medicine.

This is not a reliable source of scientific or medical information. I wouldn't even trust its beauty tips.

They have been reported to their local trading standards department and the The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for what appears to be a clear breach of the Cancer Act, which prohibits anyone from making claims to be able to heal cancer of the sort they do on their website.

"Dr" Lodi is out of reach in the US, but these muppets are in the UK, and bound by our laws.

There is no alternative therapy which can strengthen the immune system. I'm sorry that anyone has been given false hope, or distressed by the false claims of a quack and a worthless magazine, but that's the truth.

Don't believe me? Ask Paul Merton's wife. Oh that's right, you can't, because she tried to beat cancer with the power of nutrition and positive thinking, and is consequently dead.

I think Gary38 is being a little too kind in describing this as "unproven" on the WN site, when "total and complete bollocks" might be more accurate, but sometimes it's hard to know which description is more convincing to the audience.

Labels: Alternative, Cancer, Chelation, Clinical, Diet, evidence, Get Fresh, Homeopathy, immune system, Insulin, Medicine, Oxidative, promotion, psychological, quack, Therapy, Thomas Lodi, Trial

I see someone has posted the old internet myth about asparagus and cancer on What Now. Perhaps someone at the asparagus marketing board is forwarding this tosh out in time for the fresh asparagus season.

The only reference anywhere in the world to the supposed original author "Richard R. Vensal, D.D.S" seems to be the version of the article which has been circulating the internet since 2006.

There is no other trace in the scientific literature of either the author, or the journal in which it was supposedly published (a now defunct collection of anecdotes on alternative medicine).

However, we can note that if there is a Richard Vensal, a DDS would make him a dentist, rather than a biochemist, a nutritionist or an oncologist.

As someone has pointed out on the board, "It is...a load of bullshit". Ah, le mot juste!

Ooh look, a timely nurse blog on this. Whatever next?

Labels: Alternative, asparagus, Cancer, Diet, evidence, Malignant, Medicine, Nature, promotion, quack, Richard Vensal, Trial

I see someone is promoting a dietary supplement called Biovitali Vitalcells on the What Now board with what looks to the unsophisticated eye like some reasonable scientific evidence. I guess the moderators will eventually get round to deleting this, but wouldn't it be better to have a look at how strong the evidence is?

So let's have a look at that evidence, which is:

1. The product has apparently been patented

2. It is supposedly endorsed by the MD Anderson Cancer Research Centre and the National Foundation for Cancer Research

3. Laboratory trials show it not just to stop cancer and cardiovascular illnesses in their tracks, but to prevent them occurring in the first place, and to extend life by 30%

Taking these claims one by one-

1. Patenting something does not mean that anyone has shown it to actually work. It is a commercial device to prevent anyone copying your work. Having a patent does not mean that something does what it claims. This is no evidence at all.

2. It seems not to be endorsed by either the MD Anderson Cancer Research Centre, or the National Foundation for Cancer Research as is claimed in the manufacturers literature. Both of the organisations in fact have advice against cancer patients and others taking non-prescribed food supplements on their websites, here and here. Neither of their websites make any mention of this product.

3. If the non-peer-reviewed in-house research on the manufacturer's website were true, and applicable to humans, cancer would be no more serious than the common cold. Every single one of the ingredients shows at least 80% tumour inhibition, and together they are even more powerful. But every one of these ingredients is a substance present in normal foodstuffs. How can this be?

Let's see what might be going on. Have a look at the table at the end on lifespan increase. 100% of these mice get cancer during their lives. That is because this strain of mouse has been specially bred to get skin cancer.

The experimenters made getting cancer a racing certainty in their antioxidant experiments by also injecting the mice with a powerful cancer-causing agent, and then constantly feeding them with something which helps cancer to grow.

They have not published their experimental protocol, but let us generously assume it was similar to that used in this real scientific research, despite us not being in a position to check whether they did things properly.

They fed the supplements along with the substance which helps cancer to grow, so that exposure to the promoter and the antioxidants was simultaneous.

Every single one of the ingredients showed incredible levels of tumour inhibition, far higher than that shown by the real treatment linked to previously. If I were a mouse genetically engineered to get a type of skin cancer who happened to have accidentally been injected with a potent carcinogen, and to be unfortunate enough to be on a drip of a drug which promoted the growth of cancer, it seems like this product would be well worth a look. Any other species, any other sort of cancer? Well, we'd have to look at the peer reviewed evidence.

Of course, this product is just a vitamin and antioxidant supplement, which contains the usual stuff, including a number of substances that in real people have been shown promote cancer when taken as a supplement, rather than inhibiting it, such as:

Beta Carotene
Vitamin A
Vitamin E
Vitamin C

Furthermore, the claims that taking combinations of these substances improved their effect is the opposite of what has been found in real studies. Combining beta carotene with vitamin A or vitamin E actually kills more people than either ingredient alone. Source.

There is therefore no chance whatever that the lab results shown in its website have any meaning for cancer patients.

Cancer Research UK advise as follows about all food supplements:

" We need a lot more research in this area before we will know for sure which vitamin and diet supplements may play a role in helping treat, prevent or control cancer. The best way to get the vitamins and minerals you need is through a balanced and varied diet, with plenty of fruit and vegetables. Vitamin supplements don’t have the same benefits as naturally occurring vitamins in fruit and vegetables."

And of course we now know that for those receiving active treatment, antioxidants and vitamin C can block the effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Source.

Someone has suggested on the What Now site that explaining all of the above is unnecessary, and that the last thing the site needs are know-alls telling you all what to think. But here is that same person thanking me for educating them on this very subject after they gave bad advice to someone.

Maybe the site doesn't need know-alls, but know-somethings are useful in situations like this, aren't they? Failing that, the know-nothings could at least not give advice to desperate people in areas they know nothing about.

I see someone has started a new "natural treatment" thread on WN. I'll be interested to see if Gary's polite and sound advice is well-taken. History suggests no, but the site is under moderator lockdown whilst my complaint is being investigated, so who knows?

Labels: Biovitali, Cancer, Clinical, Diet, evidence, immune system, Malignant, Medicine, Melanoma, Nature, promotion, quack, Supplements, Trial, Vitalcells, Vitamin D, Vitamins

Cancer Quack "Dr."Tullio Simoncini claims that all cancers are fungal colonies. It might be worth mentioning upfront that his license to practice medicine has been withdrawn, and in 2006 he was convicted by an Italian judge for wrongful death and swindling.

Since it is simple to demonstrate that cancers are in fact human cells gone wrong, he is a quack of the first magnitude. A detailed explanation of why this is is here. His "treatment" is dangerous

Yeast and other fungi are nothing to do with cancer, other than that certain fungi (not Candida) produce a carcinogenic toxin called aflatoxin, and some yeasts (not Candida) produce alcohol under certain circumstances, which is associated with a number of cancers.

The Candida hypersensitivity claim is well-known as a false claim of alternative practitioners. The alkaline theory of cancer is also classic quackery

This also mentions Tullio Simoncini, as well as giving more general rules for evaluating testimonials.

Labels: alkaline, bicarbonate of soda, Cancer, candida, quack, Tullio Simoncini

I have been asked the question who is "Brandon Bays", and surprise has been expressed that Caron Keating rejected conventional therapy, after someone on here recommended Mrs Bays book on the What Now boards.

Yes, Caron Keating was under the spell of a number of quacks, one of whom was Mrs Bays. Caron apparently beleived the slash/poison/burn extremist school of alternative medicince propaganda, which claims that conventional treatments such as surgery, chemo and radiotherapy are harmful, and cause cancer patients to die.

That this flies in the face of all medical evidence is explained away by paranoid conspiracy theories involving science and medicine being controlled by big business.

And what was the result of this? With more or less unlimited money to spend on alternative treatments, Ms. Keating managed to turn her small grade one breast cancer into multiple grade 3 metastases. Refusing a second mastectomy and chemo, she managed to die of a small, low risk cancer.

Alternative medicine propagandists are very fond of single cases, which they often claim contradict medical evidence from hundreds or thousands of cases. What do they make of this single case? Well, one of our resident altie apologists claimed that if only she had rejected slash/poison/ burn earlier she might still be alive. Source The person making the claim does not have the courage of their convictions, however, and takes every conventional option available. Very sensible, if a little dishonest.

But Ms. Keating was happy to let a naturopathic quack claim that he had diagnosed her cancer. Source. She was being "treated" by quacks from the very start. Naturopathy is the distillation of quackery. Source.

Mrs Bays was just another parasite on poor confused Caron. Her mother knew that she was being exploited by charlatans, but could not stop it. Source.

The Rose Shapiro book ("Suckers") I recommended has this to say about Mrs Bays:

"Brandon Bays says she is inspired by the work of Deepak Chopra, and there are certainly echoes of his pricing structures and recruitment techniques in her project. 'Journey Intensive' two-day seminars are held all over the world, for which she charges each of the reportedly five hundred or more attendees per event £245. After one of these 'you become a 'Journey Grad' which opens you to a wide range of benefits and support and qualifies you to attend the advanced Journey programs' such as the two-day Manifest Abundance Retreat, which costs £670."

Mrs Bays has claimed she cured herself of a tumour the size of a basketball in 6.5 weeks. Of course she offers not a scrap of evidence to back this ludicrous claim, which seemingly does not stop people from uncritically repeating it. We do however have at least one test case for her techniques: Ms Keating. Who died of a low grade 12mm tumour. Hmm.

Labels: Alternative, Brandon Bays, Caron Keating, Medicine, quack