Struck off and convicted for fraud and involuntary manslaughter in Italy, under investigation in the Netherlands, baking soda salesman en cancer quack Tullio Simoncini is always trying to find new markets. 

In the USA he is co-owner of a television show that deals with alternative medicine and conspiracy theories.

But for Tullio, this is not enough: he is always in search of more chickens to pluck. Reports have come in lately about new patients, mainly from Mexico but also from Brazil, who are facing the long journey to Italy to be given the sodium bicarbonate that will cure them from their cancer – or so they think.

Our Italian friend WeWee has done some research and found out how this sudden influx of new clients has come about.

It turns out that Simoncini was interviewed on Mexican tv by Jaime Mausan, a UFO/paranormal sensationalist with his own tv show in Mexico. Mausan is a celebrity in South America. He is completely obsessed with UFOs, aliens and everything paranormal and is the author of hundreds of scoops on UFO sightings and personal meetings with extra terrestrials in all shapes and sizes (penguins turning into balloons and flying horses.) The odd thing is though that the UFOs and aliens are always only seen by him. No UFO group wants to be associated with Mausan; they all think he is a fake and he his “discoveries” been debunked by many skeptics as well.

He is also the man of the hoax of the “alien” that was found in a trap in Mexico. The alien turned out to be a monkey’s skeleton:

In his interview with Mausan, Simoncini paints a picture of himself as a hero, a  genius and a brave maverick, robbed of his title and forced to flee from one country to another by mainstream doctors and scientists who fear the consequences for their incomes of his great discovery.

And who has Simoncini entrusted with the revelation of his great discovery? A cancer hospital? A scientific foundation? A medical journal of proven scientific standing? No. He has entrusted the spreading of his gospel to a UFO/paranormal sensationalist and hoaxer: Jaime Maussan.

And there it was: the “meeting of the century” of two voices crying in the wilderness: of the man who found the cure for all cancers, and of the seer of aliens.

In the interview, Simoncini claims that his treatment results in the disappearance of the cancer in only 3 to 4 days. In only 6 days, no trace of the cancer can be found. However, when you analyse his testimonials, his patients are either not cured or had conventional treatment before going to Simoncini.

He claims a success rate of 90%. For terminal cancers, he claims a lower success rate. This is because these patients have usually followed conventional therapy when they come to him and this had compromised their health to such an extent that even for him it is difficult to bring about a complete recovery.

Simoncini stresses to bear in mind that there is no other way to cure cancer than with baking soda. This is what he says on his website:

At the moment, sodium bicarbonate (in a solution of 5% or 8.4%) is the only remedy capable of making the tumours disappear completely. In order to get the maximum of damaging effect, the sodium bicarbonate should be brought into direct contact with the tissue.

Of course there is the Quack Miranada Warning, the red flag which is so often overlooked by desparate patients:

[...] We make no claims concerning health & disease in relation to usage of this book. The information we provide is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Users assume all responsibility for the application of the content on themselves. The information and products which on this website are reproduced are not mend to replace and/or to ignore the advice of a practicing physician.

In an interview with Emma Holister he says:

“I have treated hundreds of patients. Most of them had extremely advanced cancer, especially after having been subjected to conventional therapies. Many of them made a complete recovery and are still alive and well years after the treatment.

In the cases of cancers caught early (lumps smaller than 3cm, with minimal incidence of metastasis) 90% of patients have made a recovery.”

Mausan asks Simoncini whether he has any doubts as to the efficacy of sodium bicarbonate against cancer and he says no, none whatsoever.

During the interview a video is shown of a miraculous breast cancer cure. We see a woman, Amelia Parra, telling us of her breast cancer of gargantuan proportions. We are shown photos of the breast with the giant cancer – which to me looks more like a cyst than cancer by the way, but never mind. What strikes me at once that the skin colour of the woman with the “cancer” is very different from Amelia Parra’s. But perhaps this is due to a different light incidence. Anyway, when Amelia went to see a doctor, he immediately told her that she was done for. She went for a second opinion and received the same answer there.

Desperate, she turned to Jaime Maussan. Stands to reason of course; what else can a cancer patient do but consult a seer of aliens and UFOs? Mr Maussan in his infinite goodness referred her to Simoncini, who cured within a few days. When she is back in Mexico she has a scan done and there no trace of cancer to be found. Wonderful, isn’t it?

There are no documents shown to prove Amelia Parra really had cancer, no diagnosis, no biopsy result, no pathology report; nothing. We don’t even know if the woman with the tumour and Amelia Parra are the same person. We only have the word of the woman telling the story.

But desperate people are desperate to believe. The video makes a great impression and brings Simoncini a lot of new customers.

His mantra that he is ousted by the scientific community because they hate innovative science is so lame and annoying: innovative scientists are the life blood of the scientific community, they are not ousted but awarded Nobel prizes. We don’t believe Simoncini does not know that this video means nothing. He is not stupid; he is looking for customers.

It is advertising of the most despicable kind.

We have spent a lot of energy here to debunk Tullio Simoncini’s baking soda therapy as a cure for cancer.

I am afraid we may have been wrong…

There now is indisputable evidence for the powers of baking soda and it is shown in this video. It is about someone who had a terrible accident, which was completely resersed with baking soda. Now, if baking soda can bring about something as impressive as this, what reason is there to think that it cannot cure cancer either?

The video is in Italian, but the message is clear to anyone, so please watch and be amazed…

(First published Sep 24, 2009; updated Nov 12, 2009)

September 24, 2009 we posted a YouTube video in memory of Hamer victim Corinne Thos. The video was made by Corinne’s brother. Some time later the video appeared to be removed from YouTube without the brother’s knowledge.

We promised we would find out what happened and keep you posted. Here’s the update.

Corinne Thos died in Rouen, France, on 25 November 2005. She was 41 years old and had two young children.  At the advice of someone very close to her, Corinne followed treatment with the Nouvelle Médecine, the French version of the German New Medicine of Ryke Geerd Hamer, when she was diagnosed with cancer.  Sadly, this proved fatal.

After her death, Corinne’s brother posted a video on YouTube in memory of his sister and to warn people for this dangerous quackery.  However, some family members felt embarrassed by the video and demanded that it be removed.

Corinne’s brother has now created a new, less personal video in memory of his sister and he also made an English version which we show here:

Since Corinne’s death her brother feels very much alone. The silence surrounding the victims of the Nouvelle Médicine is stifling and this makes him feel that he is completely on his own in a fight that nobody seems to care about.

To break this silence he has decided to start a blog. He has said that he would like to work alongside us and of course we will help him as much as we can.

Doll made of liver cancer cells

On Tony Isaacs’s Curezone, a forum member is asking advice on how to treat advanced liver cancer. The patient in question – the forum member’s mother – has previously undergone surgery. However, according to Tony Isaacs, it is precisely surgery that causes cancer to metastasize:

The thread is here.

Tony Isaacs, as well as many other alternative “health advisors” for that matter, regularly make the claim that surgery is the main cause for cancer to metastasize. Since we have a pathologist on board here, I decided to ask him whether there is any truth in this. Here’s what he said:

There is no such thing as a protective coating separating a cancer from the normal structures of an affected organ. Some cancer cells loose their adhesiveness, which probably contributes to their invasiveness, but this is a property of the cancer cells itself.

There has been a discussion of risks of implants of cancer cells after needle biopsy of metastatic lesions. Because of this risk it has been contraindicated to do a liver biopsy if curative surgery was an option. But the risk is so low, that this restriction is being removed from the forthcoming guidelines. 

Surgeons strive to remove healthy tissue at a safe distance from the cancer itself. And the surgical margin clearance is a very important factor in the chance of survival. With rectal cancer we have increased the survival to 82 % by introducing chemoradiation before the operation. See for instance this study. This makes the tumor shrink to such an extent that margin clearance is technically possible.
 
But Tony has not explained how he believes metastases arise when the tumor has not been touched in anyway by a surgeon. 

No, indeed he has not. Well, perhaps he’d care to enlighten us on this some day… 

Vascular invasion of cancer cells

This is an example of the microscopic appearance of vascular invasion. In the middle you can see a vein with cancer cells inside. The transportation of cancer cells through the blood stream is a real and commonly observed phenomenon.

Another opinion of Hamer that can easlily be checked is that immunohistochemical examination of a metastasis is useless because as he puts it: “…this procedure does not identify metastasizing cancer cells but only proteins, released from a tumour”.  And he believes that a webpage about “Atomic Force Microscopy” backs him up on this view. Needless to say the website says nothing of the sort. In fact, immunohistochemistry clearly identifies proteins within the cancer cells and thus shows us where the metastatic cancer cells originate from.

To understand how immunohistochemistry really works you only have to know two things:

1) Cancer cells try to imitate the normal cells of the organ they originate in – including the production of structural proteins characteristic  of the cell type in question.
2) These structural proteins can be detected through immunohistochemistry.

The photo below is a microscopy photo from a large bowel cancer, where you can see the adjacent normal cells on the left, and the cancer cells that try to imitate them on the right.

Cancer cells imitating normal cells

An important structural protein in normal large bowel cells is a protein called “cytokeratin 20”. If the pathologist looks at an immunohistochemical staining for “cytokeratin 20” he sees positive reaction in the cancer cells as well as in those normal cells the cancer imitates. It looks like the photo below. The brown color shows where cytokeratin 20 is present. Again the normal cells are on the left, and the cancer cells are on the right.

Immunohistochemical staining of cancer cells

Now let’s make this fact useful. The photo below is a microscopy photo of a core biopsy from a liver metastasis without the use of immunohistochemistry. The cancer cells are at the top of the picture, and the normal liver cells are at the bottom.

Core biopsy of liver metastasis without immunohistochemistry

A pathologist has no trouble in telling which cells are normal and which cells are cancerous, but based on this alone it is not possible to tell where the cancer comes from. Immunohistochemical staining for cytokeratin 20 staining on the biopsy looks like this photo:

Core biopsy of liver metastasis with immunohistochemistry

It shows that the cancer cells contain the same structural protein as the cells of the large bowel (and the cancers that originate from them). And sure enough this patient did turn out to have a large bowel cancer.

So, in conclusion:

1) Cancer cells do appear in the blood stream
2) Immunohistochemistry does show cancer cells
3) Cancer cells have features of the cells from which they originate – and this is readily seen through immunohistochemistry.

Lung cancer cell, Wellcome Images Awards 2009

All the images can be viewed on the Wellcome Images website. The Biomedical Collection holds over 40 000 high-quality images from the clinical and biomedical sciences. Selected from the UK’s leading teaching hospitals and research institutions, it covers disease, surgery, general healthcare, sciences from genetics to neuroscience including the full range of imaging techniques.

The annual Wellcome Images Awards reward contributors for their outstanding work. This year, nineteen extraordinary images have been chosen by a panel of judges based on the ability of the picture to communicate the wonder and fascination of science.

The selected images are now on display on the Image Awards website, which explains the stories behind the pictures: how the images were created, what they add to scientific understanding and why the judges picked them out as the best images this year.

Embryonic mouse head. Wellcome Images Award 2009

There were also two special awards, one given to the makers of animations showing the intricate structure of a mouse’s head during development and the other for the unique capture of sensory nerve endings, both showing an astonishing level of detail and accuracy that has previously not been possible with conventional microscopy techniques.

You can click here to view the winning images of 2009 (on the website, click Awards 2009, then click the link given in the text)

See also:
How it’s made – the art of science
See this: images of cancer

Through my twitter I came across an article in the New York Times about a problem that many mainstraim doctors and patients are faced with.

The article is about doctors bending the rules of clinical trials in order to get patients enrolled in clinical trials for which they would otherwise not qualify.

The article presents a real and very poignant dilemma with which many patients and doctors are faced. As it says in the article, a compromised trial has no value, which may mean that admission of a possibly life saving treatment will be postponed or even denied definitely. But even if the problems do not come to light, it can harm patients because of flawed trial outcomes. So it is imperative that all the rules be applied as strictly as possible. But what about the patients?

Imagine your doctor has just told you that you cannot be cured, that all he can offer is palliative treatments and that you must expect to die in a foreseeable time. What would you do? I think all of us would be prepared to try anything to extend their time with our loved ones as long as possible. So when you hear of a clinical trial in which a new cancer drug is tested, but you are told they won’t let you enrol because you might compromise the trial, this is unspeakably bitter, for patients and their family, but for doctors as well.

No pain and all gain for the quacks

Alternative “healers” are not faced with dilemma’s like this. They do not have to carry out difficult and often very expensive scientific trials to get a drug accepted on the market, for their products are sold as “supplements” only and consequently, they are not burdened by the rigorous ethical rules that apply to real science and medicine. They can make far-reaching claims without having to worry about legal consequences, as long as they make sure the infamous “Quack Miranda Warning” is somewhere on their website. It is easy for them to lie to patients with stories of  false hope and empty promises of cure. Not bothered by any ethical qualms, they step in where medicine and science stand with their hands tied by the ropes of their professional ethics.

What can we do?

Mainstream medicine and science are and should be bound by a great number of ethical rules and professional and scientific standards and bending the rules of science is never a good thing in our opinion.

Therefore, in mainstream medicine there is a thing called “Compassionate Use”. Compassionate use refers to the treatment of seriously ill patients with new, unapproved drugs or treatments when no other options are available. 

Although compassionate use is also subject to ethical rules and standards, there often are a surprising number of ways to get treatments normally available only in a trial (or offered in one) outside of a trial, and frequently patients are simply not told that they may be able to obtain a treatment outside a trial (also called off protocol or  expanded access to investigational drugs). So the first thing you should do is: ask.

You can click on the following links for more information on expanded use and how to obtain treatments:
Rules to Help Patients Gain Access to Investigational Drugs
Resources: Compassionate Use
Terminally-ill cancer patients to be offered ‘last chance’ experimental drugs
Brits Turning To Experimental Cancer Drugs 

I’m sorry if I seem a tad triumphant, I don’t mean to, honestly. But I just could not let this go. Unbelievable as it sounds, apparently überquack Hulda Clark died of cancer, multiple myeloma to be precise. Now how in the world can this have come about?

See also Respectful Insolence.

In the UK, statutory regulation of practitioners of herbal medicine and acupuncture has been advocated by a House of Lords’ Select Committee and by three subsequent Dartment of Health (DH) working groups as well as the vast majority of respondents to a previous DH consultation on this subject (the Pittilo consultation and report). The NIMH is strongly in support of statutory regulation of this sector. They feel that only statutory regulation of this sector can enable the public to identify qualified practitioners and maintain the availability of a full range of herbal medicines in herbal practice. The same discussion is going on in other countries, the Netherlands for example. For our Dutch readers: click here.

Is it true that statutory regulation will protect the public against the risks of alternative medicine?  Many people think not and we agree with them. The pitfalls and downsides of the suggested regulations have been aptly described in a submission that was sent to the Pittilo consultation. You can read it here. There is a summary on DC’s Improbable Science, as well as extensive information on the Pittilo consultation.

On October 26, 2004, Stephen Serenelli died of bowel cancer.

Initially he was treated conventionally, but under the strong influence of his wife Eileen and Ian Shillington, a naturopathic doctor and Scientologist, he decided to follow alternative treatments only.

The alternative treatments made him feel weak and miserable and resulted in his tumour becoming inoperable. This almost certainly shortened his life considerably, as well as seriously compromising his quality of life.  The fact that the alternative treatments wore him out so much may also have decreased his survival time. 

Shortly before his death, Serenelli wrote a letter to his ND Ian Shillington. Serenelli also kept a diary during his illness.