There is no time to wait for alternative cancer therapy to work err… fail

The reason that this blog came to be is the existence of cancer quackery, sometimes called alternative cancer treatments.

Many websites including this blog explain what is wrong with alternative cancer treatments and why they are dangerous and there are horrible examples of what happens to patients who chose to forgo conventional treatment and opt for some kind of alternative treatment instead. But the internet is littered with testimonials touting the successes of miraculous alternative cancer cures that are often claimed to be suppressed. Such testimonials can be very persuasive, especially if the reader/video viewer is afraid and not aware of what to look for, so it is no wonder that people get confused.

If a cancer treatment works in a mouse it works in a human right?? — Well, not necessarily

Researchers are constantly on lookout for new substances that are more effective and safer as cancer treatments than what is already available. In an ideal world it would be possible to know which substances would have effect on cancers and at the same time be safe. But the world isn’t perfect. So the researchers have to use some kind of experimental model to select substances that might be useful to patients. And they publish the results of these experiments.

Burzynski The Movie: Does It Prove The Efficacy of Antineoplastons Against Cancer?

Stanislaw Burzynski treats cancer patients at a private clinic using what he terms “antineoplastons”: mixtures of peptides, amino acids, and other simple organic substances that are said to promote the body’s natural defenses against cancer. He has published his own studies, but nobody has been able to reproduce the clinical results he claims to have achieved. Recently a movie was released that allegedly shows irrefutable proof that his therapy works as a cure for cancer and that the rest of the medical establishment is conspiring against him.

In this post we will not concern ourselves with conspiracy talk: all we are interested in is to review the evidence presented in the movie (click here).

Health Ranger Mike Adams And The Death of Steve Jobs

As was to be expected, it didn’t take Mike Adams long to inform the world of the cause of Steve Job’s death. It was of course, as it always is, conventional cancer treatments – chemotherapy and radiation in particular – and not cancer, for in Mike Adams’s world-of-miracles-that-never-happen, there is no such thing as dying from cancer.

Our Problem with Alternative Cancer Treatments

The purpose of this blog is to warn against alternative medicine, alternative medicine for cancer in particular. With alternative medicine we mean medical treatments which are used instead of standard therapy and for which there is no reliable indication of any efficacy.

Suppressed by Scientists and Big Pharma: The Hidden Cancer Cure… But Which One??

Altmeds keep telling us that “they”  (science and “big pharma”) know there is a cure for cancer, but that this knowledge is hidden from us, “so that the multinational pharmaceuticals could continue to make money. Where would they be if diseases like cancer were easily curable?”

Alternative Medicine: Double Corruption

Last year we blogged about Kim Tinkham, who decided to treat her breast cancer with Robert O. Young’s alternative cancer treatment, which he proudly calls the “pH miracle” treatment.

On his website Young proclaimed that his pH miracle treatment had reversed Kim Tinkham’s cancer. Apparently Kim believed him, for she allowed Young to use her in several of his YouTube videos, in which she touted his treatment and stated that it had cured her of her breast cancer.

Why Are Breast Cancer Rates Increasing? Cancer Research UK Provides Some Answers

Breast cancer survival rates have been gradually improving for the past decades and more women are surviving breast cancer than ever before: 8 out of 10 women will now survive the disease for more than five years.  For stage I breast cancers the survival rate is even higher: 9 out of 10.

The downside is that the incidence rate of the disease has also gone up,  and the risk of developing breast cancer is now as high as 1 in 8. Sounds depressing, and the question of course is: why?

In their latest blog post, Cancer Research UK discuss some of the possible explanations.

Luckily, there are a number of things that we can all do to lower our risk of developing cancer:

• don’t smoke – or if you do, stop now
• limit your alcohol intake
• keep active
• mind your body weight
• eat sensibly
• avoid sunburn

Quack Victim Kim Tinkham Dies of Breast Cancer

I just read on Orac’s Respectful Insolence that Kim Tinkham has died of breast cancer.

A few years ago Kim Tinkham was diagnosed with breast cancer. Inspired by Australian Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret, she decided to treat her cancer with alternative therapy only.

An important part of Kim Tinkham’s treatment seems to have been Robert O. Young’s acid based therapy, which claims that cancer is always caused by excess acid in the body and consequently the only way to cure it is by adhering to an “alkaline” diet.

On several occasions, Tim Kinkham publicly claimed she was cured of her breast cancer thanks to alternative therapy. She appeared in several of Robert Young’s promotional videos (most of which have now been removed) and was touted by him as one of his success stories.

Kim Tinkham also appeared on the Oprah Show, where she explained how The Secret’s “law of attraction”, which claims that we attract what we think and feel, had inspired her and led to her cure.

Sadly, it was not to be.

The Curious Case Of Hollie Quinn And Her Miraculous Cancer Cure

Through a tweet by Blue Wode, who runs the brilliant website ebm-first, I learned of Hollie Quinn and her miraculous cancer cure.

At 27, Hollie Quinn was pregnant with her first child when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In an article on the Huffington Post we are told that Hollie Quinn decided to decline conventional cancer care and treat her cancer with alternative treatments only. And successfully so, for she is still alive and healthy to this day, eight years later. To inspire other cancer patients, she and her husband wrote a book about her extraordinary experience.

Extraordinary indeed.