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
I was a patient of “Hope 4 Cancer ” and it should be termed another name. They give you two weeks of these treatments that they don’t explain what they are doing or you can not understand them because few speak english. I was completely lost and fearful and I am in the medical field and even have some knowledge of the field. It was the most stressful two weeks in my life, which STRESS CAUSES CANCER. Not only that it was THOUSANDS, AND THOUSANDS of dollors and once you get home YOUR ON YOUR OWN doing treatments that you were give very little if any information on how to do it. They brag about the diet, but we were given literly a 9pages of paper stabled together with few reciepts. While they talk about teaching us to prepare healthy meals. I was told some some some many different things my head was spinning from what one person said to the other. I am currenly trying to get the supply they were suppose to send me to keep treatments up at home and fighting with them about that. IM NOT FIGHTING ONLY CANCER IM FIGHTING WITH “HOPE $ (4) CANCER ” TO GET WHAT I PAID FOR WHICH WAS LIFE SAVINGINGS. it is very sad people feed on the weak and weary who are desparate to live. I don’t wish them to have cancer but I DO wish them to be accountable for their lies. FYI Dr. Tony talks about how he helped his father to remission but he didn’t add that his father is deceased. Can you trust anyone that says that and leads you to believe one thing when in reality it is the other? I am so sorry to say I have ENDLESS complaints about this FALSE HOPE from this place which is also a huge DUMP! they make it look so nice in their ad. I could go on for days about how I was robbed from this place. The worst part is they don’t care all they care about is getting your money.
i wan’t even given a tour of this dump before I had papers shoved infront of my face to sign and pay. I was in tears on arrival because of the treatment I was given right from the start. So please please please do NOT be robbed like I was.
Great reply sir…. u r a gem….
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.
My 65 yr old father who was legally blind from birth went to this facility. They did absolutely nothing for him, he had terminal lung cancer. As we all know they take people when there at there most vulnerable! 3 weeks=30,000!!! My father went there alone from Ohio and after treatment was over, he developed water on his lungs. They drove him across the border on a plane and couldn’t give a damn what happened! Before landing he got shortness of breath and was put on oxygen! After landing he was rushed to the nearest hospital where he stayed for 7 days!! Finally getting home afraid,confused and angry!! Please stay away from this unprofessional disgusting rip off of a dump!!
John, I am glad that you have replied to my post. When we searched the web for information on Hope4 Cancer Clinic in 2011, nothing was there. In discussing the lack of web coverage, we learned that others had experienced the same thing. With the exception of a couple of people who had learned of the clinic because they lived in San Diego or New Mexico, the others had come blindly, as we had. I did not–and still do not–understand why more people have not publicized their experiences. The only information available at that time came from the website for the clinic itself–anecdotal tales of questionable origins. Googling Hope4 only gave their references. I think it is very important that more people publicize their experiences because the cost is significant. We paid about $35,000 for the treatment–excluding all the auxiliary costs such as follow-up equipment, vitamins and other alternative therapies, transportation from Canada, etc. They also do something that is very dangerous. Sometimes they send people home with the catheters (I think that is the name) for receiving intravenous infusions still in their bodies (close to the neck). At least one person from our group (maybe two) had to be hospitalized with infections from these catheters. Their caregivers were provided with about a half hour of training prior to leaving with these medical inserts in their bodies. They also sent us home with vitamin C for infusions, but when we got home to Canada, we learned that medical doctors in Canada will not give the transfusions. Homeopathic clinics give transfusions, but only with their own supplies–not ones obtained from Hope4. Hope4 is in contact with these homeopathic clinics; so they must know the rules; yet they sell the vitamin C anyway. These are just a few of the problems we experienced, but I know that some Americans also had problems finding doctors who would give the vitamin C transfusions. They had, in some cases, to travel quite a distance to receive them at clinics that agreed to use the supplies from Hope4. As I said, until more people publicize their experiences, clinics like Hope4 will continue to be successful in preying on the desperation of people. As had happened with others who were receiving treatment at Hope4, we looked around the globe for possibilities. Unfortunately, those who present more realistic pictures are often being overlooked in favour of those who promise far more than they can deliver.
Good for you for speaking up. I wonder what their kickbacks are to defame alternative medicine. This guy should follow patients undergoing conventional treatments to see how effective they are.
I just replayed to a comment about how conventional treatments here, in USA, care only about money, and they posted on a different comment, makint it look like I was talking about Hope4cancer. This is a joke. Please dont believe anything about of the bad comments on the Mexican clinic or any other holistic clinic. They are really saving lives!!! God will just everyone one day, because he knows everyones heart. So sad…
I suspect you managed that all by yourself, emy.
Nice comment sir…. we are getting a proper perspective now much from public….. can’t trust this so called doctors….. white collar robbers….. thanks for making this comments….. peoples will now see the truth…. May GOD bless u sir….
Thank you! Im totally agre with you. Everything is about money here.
Alternative and holistic treatments and remedies may or may not be effective, but Western medicine and Big Pharma are definitely less effect and have a far higher mortality rate. I’ll go with what comes from nature and God before I’ll go with what was created by man for the sake of profit – billions of dollars of profit.
Well said friend!!!
Amen!!!
If you asked me I was disappointed with this clinic. My wife’s cancer spread like wild fire after she decided to go there and stop treatment in the US. She passed away 2 months after the so called miraculous treatment in Cancun.
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.
Perfectly said, This country main concern is money not the well being of humans. The government can care less if people are getting cured and that’s because their’s no money in cures. The government brainwashes and manipulates that’s what they good at it. People need to begin to step out of the box and begin to think for yourself.
I know this is hard to believe for some people;however, I personally know someone who is now cancer free after being treated at a Mexican clinic with alternative cancer therapy. I do not state that fact to further debate the subject and will not reply to bullies so no need to attack me for a truth being told.
I’m not saying that everyone will be cured by any particular treatment; however, I would like people to try less emotionally heated debates and more attempts at considering different options.
The truth that you told is that you know someone who blah blah blah… What this is not a truth that can be held is that the alternative treatment cured the cancer. There are many other possibilities that would have to be discounted before that became believable.
wow alternative not working???? I am cured of stage 4 Breast cancer with mets to bones, lungs and to see people slam alternative medicine is pathetic. Research, research research. http://www.shannonsstory.com
Oh I am so sorry for my informal comment, I forgot to mention NO CHEMO!!!
Good for you, Shannon! Continue to stand up for treatments that are at least equally or more effective, & certainly less damaging to the body, than chemotherapy, radiation & surgery! The quackery is chemical healing; not healing using nature’s pharmacy that stimulates the body’s natural ability to heal. It amazes me to see the continued widespread brainwashing & strong opinions of those that have never experienced the disease, treatment or its outcome & discount the opinions of those that actually have. smh
You are a liar, plain and simple, and your dishonesty could cost somebody their life if they subscribe to that nonsense you wrote.
I disagree 100%. Recent published studies on pubmed.com show great success using Selenium Yeast and Fish oil in combination with other key vitamins and minerals. I know of a product that this research was based of of. The only lost hope is giving up without a fight. Do your research and don’t think that because a doctor gave you 3 months to live that they are correct. Statistics show chemo kills more people than cancer. Look it up.
References required,
What video?… shame of you. How much are they paying you for posting bad comments of a clinic that is saving lives?. Look at your heart because God is looking at you…
Is this the same god that allows people to suffer terribly from cancer?
The big pharma is the quack. They have taken money for decades and still don’t know what they are doing. The drugs are killing people with hundreds of side effects.
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?
PS: I use my real name on this website. If you used your real name, I might be more inclined not to question if you are a plant.
For the record, my name is David Longman, and I am Director of the KILLING Cancer charity. If you look at our home page, there are references to articles etc about the fake clinics, and press cuttings. http://www.killingcancer.co.uk
For the record, three international news organisations are currently researching stories on fake clinics, and reports have been sent to the WHO and others.
Nobody has any objections to patients seeking out any treatment. If it works, then great. But their visits to such people must be based on accurate data.
David, thank you for the information. I will take a look at your website. I am completely in favour of researching alternative approaches, and I agree that people should have the right to make their own choices. But there needs to be accountability on the part of organizations that hawk their services and mislead with manufactured statistics and false data. People’s lives are on the line.
Dear Sherry. I wonder if you might talk to me me? I am in contact with a group of people who could be very helpful in attempting to close down a certain clinic. Please email me at: [email protected] Many thanks.
Perhaps you should watch the hundreds of personal testimonies on site if the cancer SURVIVORS because of such said “quackery”. Any sensible person realizes neurobladtoma in a 7 year old child is a sad death sentence. Had she been treated at a conventional allopathic hospic, the outcome would have surely been the same. Let’s be realistic, few survive. I know for a fact the Mexico clinics have done many much good. So let’s be fair. Dr. Jeminez MD. NAD is both a Medical Doctor and a Naturopahis Docotor. If he wanted to be banging down the bucks he could go right across the Mexico/U.S. line and bring in an excessive amount of Chemo money into his bank account . Much more than what he makes from Mexico clinics …..IF that were his true desire. It is not.
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?
John Hendricks….you are waisting your time talking to these uneducated fools. I am a stage 4 cancer patient at Sloan Kettering since 2011 , with 9 to 18 months to live. The system fails miserably! The cost is more then 5 times what any alternative clinic cost with 0 hope. They will cut/radiate/ and chemo as long as your body holds up. It is a barbaric system to say the lease, but because its Sloan Kettering it must be the best care out there??? It is the worst!! I am now working with some educated and compassionate professionals who are if nothing else extending my 9 to 18 month death sentence that Sloan gave me. The team at Sloan didn’t even spend more then 10 minutes in the room with me and my devastated family . My $ care since 2011 is outrageous and I am no better then the day I arrived…..just much weaker. Also worth mentioning…in all these years at Sloan, you get to know all the patients who come and go as you do. To this date, I only know of deaths….no one has been cured. There are only two cancers that are proven to be cured by chemo and that is testicular and lymphoma . Chemo has no long term effect on other cancers. Yes they go into remission, however, they come back worse then they started. Also the statistics are not accurate either. I had two parents suffer and die of cancer. Neither death certificate states cancer as the cause of death??? I mean really, 4 years at Sloan Kettering receiving chemo and radiation but cause of death is not cancer!! The scam is in the western world, and working 23 years in the medical field I have seen all too much. These doctors don’t treat their parents or families with chemo and that speaks volumes! Your post reads as an educated man and does not need defending.
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?
You are truly clueless.. PEMF is also used at Hope4cancer and was touted by mainstream to be useless.. Guess what?? There is now a trial in Baltimore using PEMF as a cure for brain tumors.. My sister went to H4C, was there 3 weeks and her breast timer shrunk by 7%, and the blood supply to the tumors was cut in half to the liver and lung.. she was sent home with much more than vitamin c to be used in IV form.. she wasn’t sent home with any IV drugs so whoever is posting all this negative information on alternative therapies either works for Big Pharma or is Big Pharma and this shows how scared they are that people are realizing chemo kills and alternative is the way to go.. Hope4Cancer is a wonderfully curing place and has therapies used for decades in Germany and other countries with astounding curing results..so here is a BIG nose thumb to u nay Sayers who work for or are Big Pharma..
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?
You are absolutely correct, sir.
Badly Shaved Monkey
You’re a highly ignorant sheep-minded trolling fool – that’s basically all that needs to be said. And I’d bet anything that you’re overweight and in bad health as well. But keep on buying all the lies that the Western medical industry and Big Pharma sell you, when many cancers can be prevented and cured for a few hundred dollars or so by using alternative, holistic and natural remedies that were put here on Earth by God. Who I’m sure you don’t believe in, of course.
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
We also spent a great deal of money (more than $50,000 when you add the equipment that we purchased to take home and flights for five family members) when my daughter faced a terminal diagnosis. She received two weeks of treatment and a confusing array of directions for what to do when she went home. Ill and unable to manage the routine, even with dedicated help, she finally gave up trying on the home care part of the program. Once my daughter left Hope4, no one wanted to talk with her any more. They promise you follow-up advice, but they do not follow through. They do not return telephone calls or answer correspondence because they know what is happening. This was true for others at the clinic at the same time. Because we bonded as a group and stayed in touch, I know what happened to the others. Out of a group of about 15 people whose treatment times overlapped with my daughters, there are three survivors at present. One of the survivors had a barely discernible lump in the breast, and she is all right now. The other two still struggle with serious issues. Yet when we spoke with Jimenez in a telephone conference call involving my daughter, myself, and a friend who had learned about the facility on the web, Jimenez had offered glowing statistics about the large percentages of survivors who had participated in their program and the extended time gained even by those who did not survive. Based on our experience and those with whom we stayed touch after leaving Hope4, these statistics are utterly and completely fabricated. One person after another died within months of leaving Hope4. My own daughter survived another several months. In my daughter’s case, I had located an alternative treatment that I thought would work better for her, but she had to forego that treatment in order to participate in the program at Hope4. Although I didn’t agree with her choice, I supported it and took out a line of credit to fund the therapies. When we returned home, we put her in a local clinic to continue following the general regime recommended at Hope4. The parts of the therapy that required home care were eventually abandoned as nothing seemed to be working anyway. The only positive thing I can say about the clinic is that the support staff (nursing help, receptionists, cooks, cleaners, etc.) are kind and caring people; and I am glad that at least some small part (probably not much) of the money that we spent went to the salaries of these people. But they are working for hucksters, whose real interest is the bottom line. I believe in research into alternative cures to cancer. I abhore the large pharmaceutical industries, and I do not support cancer research that is funded by these organizations. I do believe that potentially productive avenues are not always investigated because of the consequences of huge economic losses to the health care field. But I also abhore those who prey on the most vulnerable. My daughter might not have survived, no matter what we did. But we gave up a second evaluation at a well-regarded research hospital and a serious effort to try another alternative that was developed by an internationally renowned researcher after being persuaded to go to Mexico. In terminal cancer cases, a 10% cure rate may be credible, but people should be informed that those are the statistics; they should not be told that the cure rates range in the high 70s. I hope this discussion will be helpful to someone who has alternatives. If you have no alternatives, perhaps anything is better than nothing. (Oh yes, I forgot to say that one of the people at the clinic at the time we were there was a young boy. After being told that his tumour was either greatly reduced or gone completely, his family returned to Australia. He died a short time later. I have to wonder whether the brain scan, conveyed to his parents, was even his scan, whether the Hope4 doctors just wanted to clear another bed for a paying patient. That question tells you something about the level of confidence that I have in the ethics of Hope4 cancer clinic.
I will add one additional comment to what I wrote originally and to my follow-up response. In addition to caring nurses and support staff at the clinic, the one positive benefit was that we met an incredible group of families–both those who were receiving treatment and those who accompanied them. There is something about facing death that bonds people, and we grew to care for and love each other in a very short period of time. That is not an insignificant benefit, but it had nothing to do with the administrators of Hope4.
You’ve included a link to the Hope4 website as support for your claim. I am very familiar with the claims on that website, as it was the only resource we had to identify the validity of the organization. It is sponsored and maintained by the Jimenez organization, which obtains large sums of money from its clients. I don’t know your circumstances, but I find it questionable that the only link you offer is to the Hope4 site, which is about all you get when you google “Hope4”. No one from my group could locate resources on the clinic in 2012, and I would be curious to know how many from your group are still alive to tell their stories. Almost everyone in our group is long deceased–thus unable to give feedback. And the grieving families have little heart to protest anything. Based on my experience, however, the statistics provided in a conference call are erroneous and misleading, and Jimenez promises far more than the clinic could deliver (even if legitimate) in two to three weeks. So that in itself is deceptive. Nonetheless, if you did in fact have stage 4 cancer and you are recovered, I am very happy for you. Since you are promoting their website, however, I can’t help but wonder . . . .
I wonder when some of the people posting here will ‘get real’. There is NO medical basis for any of the claims of clinics like Hope4Cancer. There are frauds in other parts of the world. In mainstream medical work, those who carry our their work have to do so having subjected their work to multiple layers of scrutiny and testing. Has anyone ever wondered why the quack clinics with the amazing treatments (which they claim to own) have not been adopted by medical experts around the world? Surely there would be established, mainstream clinics offering these treatments? I despair when I see people posting here saying that they have been cured by these fake clinics. We have no way or knowing who they are, and if they are genuine people. Much more likely, people with fake identities trying to drum up more business.
And we have no way of knowing if the people posting here of their horror stories at these so-called “quack clinics” as you and others are so quick to categorize are real either do we?
And if so just what is their motivation.
I am confused by your reply – having a go at me or supporting my stance. I work in the cancer world. I know of the professional views of such places, and know that well-meaning people are trying to help cancer victims from wasting time, money and energy on false hopes. There are many genuine clinics around the world, pushing out the boundaries and we would welcome people to go to these. But we have a moral responsibility to offer advice where we have factual evidence that points to places like Hope4Cancer offering services that are worthless. We are not quick to make judgements. Far from it.
Yes it was directed at your statement “We have no way or knowing who they are, and if they are genuine people. Much more likely, people with fake identities trying to drum up more business.”
It seems that if anyone posts about positive results you just insult them by claiming they are “fake” and only here to drum up business. Since you don’t know them you have no right to make that judgement. Maybe it has helped them, maybe not but it’s not for you to judge them and insinuate that they’re being dishonest.
Everyone reporting horror stories are taken at face value, they’re never subject to being called fake or having anterior motives, so why the double standard.
To be clear my girlfriend has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer that’s spread to her liver and spine. She had her left breast removed 2 years ago as well as almost all of her lymph nodes removed under arm. Last summer she was given 3-6 months to live. In January she was told 6 months to a year. She also has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and had a total right hip replacement in April of this year.
Her oncologist says she has triple-negative breast cancer which I’ve been trying to get info on.
We have looked at alternative treatments and I’m not really sure what to believe. I have had her taking vitamin C, D3, graviola, NAC, K2 complex as well as apricot kernels and she’s never looked or felt better TBH and her Cat Scan done in May showed her 3 main liver tumours have shrunk by over 50%, done again in August and they shrunk even more.
Funny thing is she stopped chemo in January to prepare for her hip replacement and hasn’t resumed it as of yet.
Now if someone on here was to say that’s just anecdotal or I’m just a fake person I’d be highly offended.
I don’t think you are a fake person, but it is purely anecdotal.
Brian Bentham said:
I’d start with ‘concern for their fellow human beings’. You?
I second Alan’s comment. I am using my real name. I talked about my deceased daughter–scarcely a subject about which I would have lied. And my motivation is to offer some information about the Hope4 clinic, based on actual experience–something that was not available to me or anyone else in my group when we registered for the program. I am a university professor, and I know how to research. But nothing was there to be found. I have hoped to contribute to filling that information void by talking about not only my experience, but the experience of the larger group with whom we connected. My daughter started to cry when she saw the clinic because she knew that she had made a bad choice. Even the physical setting is depressing. One person left after two days because he recognized the situation. I feel sick right now when I think about the choice that we made to go there. And as I said before, I am no supporter of mainstream cancer therapies, but these people are preying on those who are at the most vulnerable points in their lives. My daughter had to leave two young children behind when she died. So I am offended when a flip comment is made about our motivation for sharing our experiences.
Thank you Sherry, Your contribution is most important.
gallbladder cancer is not pancreatic cancer!!!
Thanks for an informed perspective, David. Someone with terminal cancer doesn’t make that kind of mistake.
14.1 million adults in the world were diagnosed with cancer in 2012.
There were 8.2 million deaths from cancer in the world in 2012.
And?
My mother went to this clinic at the end of November and personally I don’t think it did anything for her and cost her $37,000, she has bladder cancer this clinic as far as I am concerned has given her false hope and now I have to watch her slowly die…I sure hope nobody gets sucked into this clinic because all it will do is give you false hope and cost a fortune..
That was also what we paid, plus the cost of equipment and supplies when we left the clinic, travel for an entire family, etc. And we had the same experience. Once we left, they didn’t want to talk to us either. They know what they are doing. We also kept in touch as a group; so I know what happened to the others. Their statistics are fabricated.
My mother has blood in her urine now so she went to her doctor and he said she had a bladder infection so he gave her antibiotics for 1 week went back and still blood in the urine so my mom asked me to email the results to Carlo is Mexico he replied back to me saying that its from the bladder infection and blood is still on the walls which I think is a crock of bull, so now she has her hopes up again he also told her to stop using the crazy machine she uses almost like an ultrasound that she is doing. These people need to be stopped. I am sorry I do not believe in natural homeopathic medicine when it comes to this disease. You see I work for a lab that tests all the remedies and my boss is a homeopathic doctor and even he said that you do not fool around with this stuff, I have told my mother this but oh no they have her brain washed she came back a totally different woman now I think its to late for anyone to do anything and as I said I have to slowly watch my mother die because of these people doing this to her. Please if you are reading these believe me it is all a scam stay away from these people, think about it if it was true do you not think there would be a huge line up to get in? Its funny when my mom called they had an opening within 2 weeks does that not tell you something?
Kathy & Sherry,
I hope your still on here. I am facing a loved one going to this facility. I remain hopeful but the doubts I have about this place is what you seem to have actually experienced. Any alternate suggestions?
I am sorry about your mother, Kathy. I lost my husband to bladder cancer too. It is a very painful disease. He didn’t go to Mexico, however. It was only my daughter who went to Hope4.
Do I dare ask? is your daughter ok?
Dear Kathy. I have made it my business to make contact with MPs and others who would appear to have the skills to close down fake cancer clinics. We have just had some success with one in the UK. If you can make contact via my personal email, perhaps you will be able to help me to help others avoid the cancer crooks? [email protected] Many thanks.
Sorry for your loss, the doctors told us that my mom has 8 months to 1 year to live that was just over eight months go, back then it was in half her bladder. Now she goes to the bathroom every half hour and she wont even go for an ultrasound.. All these people do is brainwash people believing that it works. I can’t express enough how bad this place is and the people that run it.
No, Kathy. My daughter died about six months after returning from Hope4. The deaths of 10 of the other 13 people with whom we stayed in touch either preceded or followed close on the heels of my daughter’s death. At least two of the survivors have not relied solely on Hope4 treatments. In short, the statistics are very different from the 70% plus cure rates we were given when we had a conference call with the head of the clinic prior to deciding to go to Hope4. The nurses and maintenance workers at the clinic were very kind, but everyone knows what is happening. They have to. I posted earlier on my daughter’s situation, by the way.
I am so sorry, I did not read all of them on here as I am at work and I just came across this site earlier today. Thank you for speaking with me
You will have read comments from me on here. I am posting this note as a leading British journalist is working with me to publish a story about how this ‘clinic’ has failed in its promises – specifically with SPDT. The more people who are prepared to speak up, the greater the chance is that we can take a campaign to the World Heath Organisation and the Mexican Government to take action against Hope4 and other fake clinics that don’t alleviate suffering, but add to it.
Please email me: [email protected]
Can I just say as a nurse in a pediatric hospital on the oncology unit, our physicians do everything they can to extend the lives of these children. We are all constantly going to in services and coordinating with hospitals across the country to make sure we have the most updated treatment protocols. If you look at survival rates in the pediatric population you will see that Many kids have a very good prognosis and there’s been a steady increase of survival rates with the improvement of protocols and implementation and integration of clinical trials. We send so many kids out the door who don’t ever come back. My cousin treated at our hospital has been in remission for over 15 years. Neuroblastoma is a rapidly progressing and very aggressive form of cancer. Unfortunately it isn’t usually detected until it’s late in it’s course. Prognosis is not good in this population but nobody will just be sent home to die. We don’t “give up” on our kids. We research and coordinate until all efforts have been exhausted. If there is some conspiracy about hiding a real cure for cancer I say nobody in my facility has been informed and certainly nobody is standing in the way of our practitioners trying to research treatment. If alternative therapies are out there and our efforts have failed, we will reach out to (real) facilities and try to coordinate further care. But until those places have survival rates as high as the children’s oncology group which guides our practice, I wouldn’t suggest those for first line of therapy.
Believe what you want but don’t tell me we don’t care about our kids. We work off of science. Different chemotherapies can inhibit cell reproduction along any part of the cell line. We know where the problem in the cell line is, “big pharm” gives us a medicine that (based on science) can fix that. Yes it’s not flawless it doesn’t always work there are SO many factors that contribute to what may happen. But we do what we can with what we’ve got and we will never stop improving that process.
At one point we were considering Hope4Cancer but have since backed off from pursuing their treatment due to these complaints posted on the internet. For all the criticism leveled at this particular clinic, I can’t seem to come across any investigation of Rigvir in of itself. Can you speak to this specific cancer virotheraphy?
Baloney!!! I have been to that hospital and their treatments have been used in Europe for decades. In do not belive they claim to holistic . Get your facts correct.
Wow there is a lot of really dumb people here that think they’re smart. Just because you have a high IQ doesn’t make you a wise person. You wanna play the “see it to believe it”, logic and statistic game: If you look at the statistics, chemo kills A LOT of people. You must at least stimulate the immune system if you’re going to use chemo. More people are dying of cancer in one year (in America alone) than all the wars combined (ever). The whole system is rigged smart ones. Why do you think there’s an epidemic of cancer and chronic illness? How could the insurance companies even afford to pay for this stuff without getting kickbacks. That’s why they only cover certain procedures. Western medicine is all emergency medicine to some degree in my opinion. The giant companies owe the politicians and visa versa. They’ve infected the schools and in the FDA. Their deep pockets and elite status impresses all the followers. I hope all of you destroying people’s hope get cancer and experience our medical system firsthand. It is brutal. I don’t want you to die though. I’ll admit, the system is improving, but it’s still a long ways from where it should have been 60+ years ago when many real cures where barried for years. You want facts: Royal Raymond Rife already found the cure to many cancers ALMOST 100 YEARS AGO. You are very naive people! All of you that think the system is looking out for your best interest. You’re a healthier person for it though, I will admit that. Being skeptical and paranoid is not healthy. Quit talking sh*t until you’ve experienced it yourself.
Yeah, lemme guess: Rife’s magic zapper was “suppressed” (by Big Pharma/FDA, AMA/the Rothschilds/the Zionist-run media) yet you can find it mentioned on dozens, if not hundreds of websites and you can buy the machine, or something based on it, on Amazon. I’ve even seen the schematic and circuit layout online with instructions on how to make one.
Doesn’t seem very “suppressed” to me.
Hulda Clark stole Rife’s idea but had a better marketing team promoting her scam. Her zapper didn’t help her though; she died of cancer.
And eff you for wishing cancer on us.
You’re mixing apples and oranges, Curt. Most of us are NOT arguing that the existing medical system is great. We are arguing that Hope4 and a number of other clinics in the world are preying on those failed by the medical system, lying about what they can accomplish, and we speak from personal experience in most cases. I agree that the insurance and pharmacy industries are predatory too, even though there are many dedicated medical professionals like the RN (earlier commenter) who truly care and make a difference to people’s lives. You can’t put everyone in the same category–not those who work in the system and those who work outside the system. However, we are addressing, in this forum, those predators who work outside the system, offering false hope and taking large sums of money from desperate people, some of whom mortgage their homes in order to pay for the treatments. Those kinds of actions are no different and no more defensible than the insurance companies that strip people of coverage when they become ill or the pharmaceutical companies that control the research. And Woo (below) is right. The Rife machine can be easily purchased, often under a host of other names. I can assure you that the commenters on this website are very familiar with all the remedies hawked on the web and elsewhere. I spent seven years of my life researching traditional and alternative therapies when my father, husband and daughter became ill with cancer. IQ is different from education, by the way. Don’t confuse the two. And a more civil tone would add credibility to your comments.
If the author wishes to be credible, they might want to use spellcheck, and/or someone who knows simple grammar, before posting an article like this.
These are difficult to watch as the hypocrisy runs rampant! As the alternative care industry is shamed for making $21,000 here or $35,000 there, let’s just take a moment to reflect on the massive $12 billion annual profits made by the culturally mainstream treatment use of Chemotherapy. I actually do have one friend who outlived her cancer prognosis using Chemo, so I know it can work. Unfortunately, in my personal anecdotal experience, she is the exception. The folks making the most money off of conventional cancer say that these alternative treatments are fraudulent and bogus is a little like the Wizard calling Dorothy a fraud. Follow the money and do the research. Ask yourself what research has not been done, and why.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/business/12cancerpay.html?_r=3&ei=5070&en=1b49d9a0efe3c01e&ex=1189828800&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1190236083-ZwPdi5B9JLKrwdf4DD5CpA&oref=slogin&
Pretty hard to read your comments too after seeing a fraudulent operation up close and losing a daughter in the process. Also you are comparing the $35,000 (actually much more) paid by one person to industry profits for the other. But in addition, if you read more closely, you would see that not all of us defend the mainstream treatments either. I certainly don’t. But there are credible people out there like Henry Lai, Seattle Person of the Year, who are researching alternative treatments to combat cancer, and there are frauds like the Hope4 clinic who are all about making money at the expense of desperate people–making promises and citing statistics that they know are lies, saying they will be in close contact with people after they leave the clinic and then refusing to return telephone calls. Talk to people who have had treatment at this clinic before you judge.
Bean
Exactly. Westernized medicine and Big Pharma are devils in not-so-thinly-veiled disguises.
children are forced to do chemo and mainstream treatments (TOXIC FIRST) before they are ever released to do anything healthy. This post is ridiculous and one sided http://www.shannonsstory.com I have never met or been treated by this doctor but have been cured without CHEMO from stage 4 cancer. Good for fundraising and anyone that can choose healthy FIRST before the poison. You have nothing to lose by trying it FIRST. I did 12 days of healthy treatment and saw improvement wow what do you know! and then just kept getting better. Gamble away your lives on the chemo if you wish but be sure that this is your best first choice, what you chose frst does make a big difference!
Best wishes because it is never easy deciding how to save your life and may God bless every parent where mot parents are TOLD what to do anyway. No child goes to a naturopath until after poison, burning and cutting, I believe in HEALING THE BODY. So what is healing the body, everyone? get busy and do your own research. YOUR OWN research, do not wait until you get sick and then ask the doctor to get you better with poison, radiation and surgery. YIKES that is risky as hell! Pray if you choose that, pray hard. Not everyone will beat the disease and the worse part and probably the most insensitive thing I will ever put in writing is we are all going to get sick, but we can learn about HEALING. we have to LEARN and be better educated. When someone dies we want to blame the last place the person was seeing rather than looking at the first, second third and even fourth place of treatment including HOW LONG DO PEOPLE WAIT TO MAKE A DECISION (NOT IN THIS CASE) I know patients that have waited two years and then go get treated and then lose their fight and BLAME the doctor. .We have to choose and make hard choices. I have seen so many people wait…wait…think about it and the BLAME!!!!
i’m doing research among the insanity of trying to find a last hope therapy for a loved one. i don’t expect to be back on this site but i do want to leave a note for anyone in the future who will be desperately seeking some insightful answers as i am, with the short time and stress of facing stage iv cancer.
leave your b.s. on another forum. if you’re going to write something, leave a reference or recommendation for something that you have experience with as a possible solution.
ditch the self-righteous, egotistical and the opinionated garbage. sifting through this b.s., in addition to the b.s. doctors is an added insult and a waste of valuable time (to someone else.)
I have been doing research as a last ditch effort for a loved one as well. I have not much time but this particular person wants to go here and I am trying desperately to talk this person out of it. Any hope for a similar facility, similar treatment with a more successful honest track record? Please help!
RJ, if you would like to contact me directly, I will direct you to some reading material. Despite my presence on this forum, I am a believer in some alternative therapies and even energy healing for those who truly believe in it, but this clinic is fraudulent in its claims. It is all about money. I understand the desperation because I have been there, but I would not go back. As I said in another post, 10 out of 13 individuals, including my daughter, died shortly after going there, and the three survivors from our group have combined mainstream therapies with more holistic approaches. One of the three progressed to a more serious state after going there and recently decided to undergo surgical procedures; a second went into an experimental program that has proved very beneficial; and the third has combined mainstream and holistic medicine to good effect. For those of us who are trying to give an informed opinion based on personal experience (something that was not available when we made the decision to go to Hope1), I don’t appreciate the unkind words from some correspondents (not you), even though I understand the pain that lies beneath the anger. I can offer a couple of directions for research, but I have not been reading the latest articles. I spent three years of my life reading about all of the trials, the alternative treatments, and studies reported in medical journals. It takes a toll though, and I stopped reading after my daughter died. I will mention one thing though; as you doubtless know, the therapies depend on the kind of cancer. For example, acupuncture did wonders for my husband for several years, but I think it had the opposite effect with my daughter’s cancer. My sister’s breast cancer was cured with chemotherapy, but my husband’s cancer was worsened by radiation.There are well-documented stories of people cured after having near-death experiences and others cured by following dietary regimes. I know one man who overcame terminal cancer by going on a diet of raw vegetables. Another friend was pronounced terminal after surgery (that was about 20 years ago), and she combined nightly visualization exercises with lots of brocoli and a vegetarian diet. Her doctor had been ridiculed for even doing the surgery because they said her cancer was so widespread that it was pointless to operate; so after my friend was cancer-free, the doctor would have her come every year for a checkup just to demonstrate that you can’t give up on people. You never know what determination and faith can do. So don’t give up. You need to read about what is out there, both in trials and alternative therapies. Different things work for different people. If there was one answer, we would not have the statistics that we now face with cancer. And briefly, getting back to Hope4, there may even be some merit to some of the things that they do, but no one is able to afford to stay there long enough to benefit from the treatments; and they send you home with a hopeless assortment of recipes for making your own home style meals and equipment, they put catheters in people that cause serious infections that result in hospitalizations, they give 20 minutes of instruction to family members on how to perform the tasks, they ignore your calls and queries after you leave the clinic, they send you home with bags of Vitamin C that no local physician will infuse for fear of violation of laws and legal suits, and they make false claims about how many people they cure and how many lives they extend with their treatment. You think you are going to get a lot of contact with the head doctor Jimenez, but that doesn’t happen either. When we were there, he was gone most of the time.
It is probably worth noting that these dreadful clinics thrive off the anecdotes of those who say things like ‘there are people who have cured their cancer with diet’.
People do not cure camcer with diet. To suggest otherwise puts people’s lives in danger.
If I read this article correctly this was a last ditch effort to cure this child. Sadly it didn’t work however, it fails to mention whether or not she had prior conventional treatments. Dr. Jimenez doesn’t claim to be a miracle worker just as western medicine oncologist don’t claim to be either. Sometimes treatments just don’t work. I am sure that if you look into the facts, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and alike have also failed to cure this dreaded disease.
I believe in multi-pronged approaches, Andy, but I do know people who have followed diet regimes to good effect. I agree nonetheless that they are not a miracle cure for most people. But neither are the traditional therapies. After being pronounced terminal, my husband was doing so well with diet and alternative therapies such as acupuncture that his doctor took his case to a university tumour board. The medical board of cancer specialists recommended radiation, saying that he was doing so well that he might even be cured if he did the radiation. My husband agreed, and I will not go into the details, but it marked the beginning of the end. Maybe he would have died anyway as the alternative approaches did not cure his cancer, but it would not have been such a painful death and I think he could have lived longer than he lived. On the other hand, my sister had chemotherapy and survives today. I think we need to approach research with an open mind and not discount everything in a blanket way. Also as I said, I don’t think that the same approaches work with everyone. I understand you have a different view, but I think we can honour multiple perspectives on this forum. My reading suggestions would not point only to diets, although I think they help. As I said, I spent three years reading every medical article I could find. I am not uninformed on mainstream or alternative therapies. That does not change the fact that Hope4 is a fraudulent organization. I cannot speak to the others, but I would probably avoid all of them without significant evidence of their efficacy.Wishing you well.
I am sorry for the suffering of your loved one, Mark. If those of us on this forum had clear and definitive answers, there would be no cancer and our loved ones would be alive; however, it isn’t the case. Nonetheless, when choosing a path, it can be useful to identify the dead ends in order not to waste precious time and resources on those avenues. By eliminating what doesn’t work, you can make a more informed choice on the options that remain as possibilities. I sincerely hope some other forum or source will offer this answer to you. Namaste.
Sherry, I appreciate all your thoughtful posts here. My brother is supposed to go into Hope4cancer this Friday. Now I’m terrified – and trying to let him and his friend know about this, so he won’t go. Thank you
I’ve just watched the fourth of a series called The Truth about Cancer where the clinic is shown so I googled Centre4Hope and came to this article/forum.Here’s the link. Its done by someone called Ty Bollinger. I hope it helps.
https://go2.thetruthaboutcancer.com/global-quest/episode-4/?a_aid=1604030
The place is a joke they ripped my mother off……she is in her final stage of living the cancer spread throughout her body, where if she had her bladder removed instead of going to this place she would be fine now………whatever you do I beg anyone who is looking into going to this place PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t. Cancer is a killer and these people cannot cure you. My mother is 72 years old and I am slowly watching her die…..
My mother went to this clinic in Mexico, she has stage 5 breast to bone, if she never went, she would have been dead by now, so I am very greatful for this place.
I’ll admit that there is little science behind some of the therapies used in alternative medicine such as coffee enemas but don’t ignore science when it’s there. Look up the viral therapy Rigvir which is approved for use in at least one country for the treatment of melanoma. Big pharma hasn’t adopted this therapy because it’s a naturally occurring virus and therefore cannot be patented limiting the revenue potential.Also check out the science behind PNC-27, a peptide created in a US college laboratory which for has not been taken up by big pharma for human trials. I suspect that’s because it has already been patented so there’s not enough money in it for them.
John Hendricks wrote “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?”
That’s one of the most UN-scientific claims I’ve read in a while.
The fact is that the survival rates for many cancers have greatly increased. In 1975, the 5-year survival rate for prostate cancer was 66%; it’s now 100%. For breast cancer for those same years, the rate was 75% and is now 90%. Survival rates for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, leukemia and others have more than doubled over that span. Bladder, colo-rectal, pancreatic — all have crept upwards.
During that same time, lung cancer has only increased from 11% to 16%. Why the relative lack of improvement for lung cancer? LACK OF FUNDING FOR RESEARCH. Over the past 3 decades, the breast and prostate cancer communities organized and demanded more funding from the government, and aggressively courted donations. But lung cancer is stigmatized,and consequently it has only received about 1/4 of the funding per fatal sufferer, that the other two cancers have. That lack of funding means that researchers aren’t doing research, so the rates aren’t improving as much as they should.
So it seems that the real issue isn’t that cancer can’t be beaten, but that gaining traction against it is the result of money being invested in research. No investment, no improvement. But where the investments have been made, the gains have been huge.
Your article is not correct. The protocols they use are tested and safe. Soon/photo dynamic therapy is used in some U.S. hospitals, but only for certain conditions. I have been to the hospital and treated by Dr. Tony. I believe you are being paid by someone to say these things to scare people back to chemotherapy and radiation.
What is proven is that conventional medicine has a dismal 95% failure rate on most Stage 4 cancers. Horrendous.
The point of this girl’s health was that she had little to no chance of living with convention conventional medicine. Once a cancer is diagnosed as Stage 3 or 4, modern medicine essentially has no remedy except pure luck where one falsely hopes that you might be one of the 5% that lives. Also, nobody knows if these 5% who lived actually.did so because they changed some other behaviors and pursued other unapproved treatments.
I think modern medicine should admit that it has a horrible failure rate on almost all advanced cancers.
Arnold. The fact that you are able to quote some figures (albeit I referenced and out of context) suggests that modern medicine is well aware of its strengths and weaknesses. Such data obtained through careful trials. Alternative medicine can show no data. It only has anecdotes. The reason for this is that alternative cancer treatments do not offer any hope of prolonging life. I think alternative medicine should admit this total failure. Don’t you?
Andy Lewis
Your ignorance is profound. Every single illness and disease can be prevented and cured with diet. We are what we eat, literally. Many people have reversed and cured cancer with green drink fasts, by juicing marijuana buds, and by talking a combination of natural supplements such as MSM crystals, artimesia (a.k.a. wormwood), laetrile (aka vitamin B-17), alkaline water, Beta 1 3D Glucan, and others.
Chemo and radiation has an extremely low success rate, but makes the Western medical complex and Big Pharma billions per year, by making people sicker and sicker until they eventually waste away and die, usually slowly.
Thousands of testimonials don’t count as “data” to you? I’d say that empirical evidence is the best type of data there is.
Very good point… People are dying and conventional cancer treatments are toxic to the body.
As a cancer patient and gone through 6 punishing chemo sessions and know first hand what this drug does to your body by killing good cells that leave your body in pain and your amune system at it,s lowest, and then you are told that what you just been through is just a stop gap and is not a cure and only reduces the mass and does not kill the root and may if you are lucky it may slow or put it in remition, I can,t see which of the two systems are the biggest con men the kemp route where if the ever discover a cure they will loose hundred of billions of £s or the alternative therapys where they get called qauks and robber,s I can,t tell the difference after all this I,m going to to give the qauk,s a chance because if you have what I have and know that chemo has reduced the mass but can,t cure me it can,t hurt to give them both a chance I’ve read most of the reply,s above and found the one that reply,s the most that I think work,s in the chemo industry so as a lot to loose Is badly shaved monkey I only hope that he never gets cancer and go,s down his misleedlng route, Before you make a move on which route you take ask ask as many question,s as possible and don,t listen fools do it because you want to.
LOL
What a bunch of utter crap!
Andy Lewis wrote “…alternative cancer treatments do not offer any hope of prolonging life. I think alternative medicine should admit this total failure.”
The trouble with blanket statements like that is that they presume some clear demarcation between “alternative” and “conventional” when in reality, that border is ill-defined and constantly in flux. Yesterday’s “alternative” can become today’s “conventional” and vice-versa. At one time, blood-letting was absolutely “conventional”; today, it is considered to be at the extreme fringe. And can you feature how incredulous people would be if someone claimed that exposing a person to the chemical weapons that were used to kill thousands of soldiers could actually arrest cancer?! Yet that is precisely what happened in the 1930s when German researchers experimenting with mustard gas first identified the mechanism by which today’s completely “conventional” chemotherapy works.
Are turmeric or turkey-tail mushroom extracts “alternative medicine”? Both were recommended to my wife to treat her stage-IV never-smokers’ lung cancer, by the director of the oncology department at San Francisco General Hospital, and his recommendation was echoed by one of the most prominent thoracic oncologists at both UCSF and the Stanford Medical Center. Indeed, both substances are considered cutting-edge by most research oncologists, even if their mechanisms are as yet poorly understood.
When Cuban doctors announced that they had developed a vaccine to treat lung cancer, I have no doubt that it was dismissed as quackery by many outside of Cuba. Now it is accepted as factual. When very low-energy alternating electromagnetic fields (“tumor-treating fields”) were claimed to arrest metastases in patients with the brain cancer known as recurrent glioblastoma multiforme, it was, I’m sure, denounced as “woo” by many. The FDA has since agreed that it is efficacious and approved the treatment last year.
So my takeaway from examples like these is that — yes, the public needs to be appropriately circumspect about claims, and the scientific community should continue to demand good science and objective evaluations — but that it’s fundamentally anti-scientific to just to dismiss an entire body of research as “alternative” and therefore “woo”. And given how many breakthroughs have occurred in that gray area between “conventional” and “alternative”, attempts to draw a sharp distinction has a chilling effect upon the development of novel therapies that may end up saving lives down the road.
Alternative medicines come from folk and superstitious ideas or pseudoscientific and fraudulent practices. Cancer cures do not come from such belief systems. Promoting such cures is wasteful and immoral. Of course, there are cures out there that are undergoing scientific evaluation based on fundamental research or plausible mechanisms. EMF field treatment is still undergoing investigation. Too early to anything with confidence yet. That is how science works. Those that propose such treatments before there is reliable evidence do patients a disservice.
lcins
Very true and articulate comment. Andy Lewis is a sheep-minded imbecile who only believes what doctors (who have little-to-no knowledge about actual nutrition and rely almost solely on pharmaceuticals) and Westernized medicine and Big Pharma say. God and nature put everything here on Earth that we need to stay healthy and fight every illness and disease under the sun.
This is Harry Singh. I noticed hope 4 cancer removed the reviews from their page after my review, also ban me from the page after I posted the review. After this I am certain these guys are not genuine, why would anyone do this if they are genuine.
Below was my original review:
We went there(May 2016) for my wife’s(Gurpreet Kaur aka Bree) treatment and did all the treatments they had available, but none of the treatments(PNC 27, Rigvir, SonoPhotodynamic, Localized Hyperthermia, B17, etc.) helped her. My wife passed in just 3 weeks after completing her treatment; We noticed most of the doctors in Cancun clinic are inexperienced; our doctor even didn’t know much about their treatments.
After the treatment, we tried to contact them regarding the possible side effects of Rigvir, no one replied, and we decided to discontinue using it. Until now, we haven’t received any follow-up call.
We were very apprehensive to go there and were not sure if their treatments worked when we asked if they have any case studies or data to support their claims they had none. I do not know they are just another quacks who are making money off desperate cancer patients and family, so please do your research. We spent $57,300 of our hard earned money, please feel free to message me if you have any question.
This is Harry Singh. I noticed hope 4 cancer removed the reviews from their page after my review, also ban me from the page after I posted the review. After this I am certain these guys are not genuine, why would anyone do this if they are genuine.
Below was my original review: We went there(May 2016) for my wife’s(Gurpreet Kaur aka Bree) treatment and did all the treatments they had available, but none of the treatments(PNC 27, Rigvir, SonoPhotodynamic, Localized Hyperthermia, B17, etc.) helped her. My wife passed in just 3 weeks after completing her treatment; We noticed most of the doctors in Cancun clinic are inexperienced; our doctor even didn’t know much about their treatments.
After the treatment, we tried to contact them regarding the possible side effects of Rigvir, no one replied, and we decided to discontinue using it. Until now, we haven’t received any follow-up call.
We were very apprehensive to go there and were not sure if their treatments worked when we asked if they have any case studies or data to support their claims they had none. I do not know they are just another quacks who are making money off desperate cancer patients and family, so please do your research. We spent $57,300 of our hard earned money, please feel free to message me if you have any question.
Dan, will you pls send me the clinic/hospital information? I would really appreciate it!
[email protected]
I agree, I believe this is big Pharma behind this!
The success of ‘Big Pharma’ follows a power-law distribution. They will gain more money by funding a handful of huge successes than they will lose by giving small investments to lots of companies with treatments that end up failing. So it makes sense that they keep casting a wider net, making deals at earlier stages and actively seeking newer and better treatments. They want to make sure they don’t miss out on the next Gleevec. That drug made Novartis $4.6 billion in 2015 and since it’s launch in 2001 it will have made them around $50 billion. They signed a deal with Aduro Biotech worth $750 million http://www.fiercebiotech.com/partnering/novartis-tackles-immuno-oncology-a-750m-aduro-deal-for-new-r-d-group to get full access to their immuno-oncology STING pipeline. They even paid $200 million up front based on just a few preclinical studies http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(15)00432-5 http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/283/283ra52.short
Not long after the deal was made they started a Phase I trial using intratumoral injections of it in patients with advanced/metastatic solid tumours or lymphomas https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02675439 They are also working on a systemic formulation to be used for hematologic malignancies like AML http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(16)30591-5
Other companies are doing the same. If these treatments worked as well as some people claim then they would be all over them. But that’s not happening which should tell you everything you need to know.
Andy Lewis: Wow. It seems you only lend credence to peer-studied group trials that cost millions upon millions of dollars, which follow a controlled group of placebo-pill-taking sign-ups who are not allowed to discuss their health AFTER the trials due to the contracts they sign, and those publications are your “science”? You excel at stating facts, no doubt. You throw around your knowledge like a menacing dodge-ball….but here’s a question that you haven’t answered, and I request that you do: Theory: You are married to the love of your life, and she was just diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She does NOT want Chemo. She does not want Radiation. She wants to heal with alternative therapies. Andy, are you going to insist that she do chemo and radiation, and not support what her wishes are? Will you turn your back on her, and start stating your statistics to her? I think the group here would like to know.
Cancer is, among many things, emotional. It’s stressful. It’s painful. It can metastasize and fracture vetebraes. It can move into the brain, liver, everywhere. So…what do you tell your wife of 30+ years?
I notice you didn’t respond to Shannon Knight’s posts on this page. Shannon knows LOTS of cancer survivors who have cured cancer alternatively. Why are you not engaging her?
Peer-studied clinical trials aren’t usually the answer for a person that was just diagnosed with cancer. Put yourself in some different shoes. If it happened to your wife, husband, child…I guess their only choice is conventional medicine, And make sure they don’t rely on prayer or faith either.
Mel – to address your points.
1) Please provide evidence that people in trials are not allowed to discuss their health after trial. A copy of a contract would be good evidence.
2) If a loved one with cancer was wishing to take so-called alternative therapies instead of tested treatments I would do all I could to ensure that decision was not being made due to the absurd misinformation that washes around the internet. Yes I would try to persuade to take tested treatments.
3) How can I engage with someone who just asserts something and provides no evidence. If Shannon has evidence of success with alternatives i would be delighted to look at it. Until such time, that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without reason.
Andy Lewis
People’s testimonials that alternative treatments have prevented, reversed or cured their cancer isn’t evidence? I’d say that’s the best and most reliable type of evidence there is. Or are you calling all of those people liars?
Dmitry Owens said:
I’ve been reliably informed by many, many very honest people who have personal experience of these treatments that they do not work and are simply sold to the unsuspecting to make money. Or are you calling all of these people liars?
Lot’s of accusations in this article but I see nothing to back any of it up. Where are all the facts and what about all the people that have come forward stating they have had success using Quackery. BTW I know someone personally that beat breast cancer using these very same protocols and treatments so I have seen first hand that they can so work.
So you say this article has ‘nothing to back it up’ and then you go on to assert without evidence that you have seen these treatments work. Do you want to have a little think about that?
Hi Andy,
From a long time reader of this blog – thanks for posting this, the article has come in handy for skeptics in Latvia, as there is currently a producer of Rigvir virus and a Global Virotherapy clinic (both run by the same people) in Latvia, EU who collaborate with their “exclusive accredited partner” Hope4Cancer and are making rather miraculous claims about the efficacy of this treatment. Latvian skeptic community is discussing this, especially on Twitter. Unfortunately there is no information available in English yet (we’re working on this), but maybe this could be of interest to you too, as patients from around the world, including UK, are affected.
A Google Translate version of a skeptic blog post is available here, so you can get the gist: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=lv&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fksenijakomente.lv%2Frigivir-a-par-ko-cepiens%2F%23disqus_thread&edit-text=&act=url
This is the news about the fine applied by health inspectorate for illegal advertising of a prescription drug outside of its indications: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=lv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffarmacija-mic.lv%2Fveselibas-inspekcija-soda-zalu-rigvir-registracijas-apliecibas-ipasnieku-par-negodigu-komercpraksi%2F&sandbox=1
Someone may have updated wiki with the following:
In 2015 Rigvir was included in Latvian clinical guidelines for skin cancer and melanoma, published by National Health Service of Latvia . Page 11 specifies that, according to the criteria of European Society for Medical Oncology outlined in pages 7–8, evidence level for Rigvir even in the case of skin melanoma (which is the only indication Rigvir is registered for) is III/C, meaning: “insufficient evidence of efficacy, or benefits do not exceed disadvantages (negative outcomes, cost of treatment and other risks); optional use”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIGVIR#History
Bravo, Zimba 🙂
Just a note for those reading the google translate. Medicine for crayfish means, of course, cancer.
I went to Hope4cancer and was amazed, I owe the clinic my life. This article is BS, So is he recommending standard treatments? Good luck with those, standard chemo should be on Quackwatch. Dr Tony is great and again the treatments are professional and work. Of course if you show up last minute, and after taking standard treaments and a last resort, well they cant do much of anything to help. I have have nothing but the best regards for them.
You got it totally wrong. You really got it totally wrong.
Olivia Down in Mexico received a “treatment” by Jimenez which immediately knocked her out. She never got conscious after that.
This is what was done to her:
Andy Lewis, your script is a shambles. It blocks entry fields
[*QUOTE*]
——————————————
he clinic gave her a bx injection vaccine….which most definately worsened her condition.gave her torturous pain…then her lungs filled with fluids.we never got to hear her voice again…or see her eyes open…I emailed the clinic and called,asking for a breakdown of the ingredients in the bx protocol.my questions ignored.they took us over there got the money…finished olivia off when she could have spent the time at home and the left us to get on with it,
——————————————
[*/QUOTE*]
You are right. Big Pharmacy has a hold on fda and doctors are only allowed to give you chemo and radiation and surgery. After getting paid thousands for treating you then they say that’s all we can do. You will have to go to Latvia or Mexico to get a virus shot that has proven to kill cancer, call Rigvir. Who should be ashamed? They will all stand before God one day. No one can weasel out then, He is a just God.
Big pharma will refer to any one as a quack if they threaten their pockets by offering cures rather than treating symptoms with drugs that make you sicker!! They are no different to a lot of other big industries that kill in the name of greed hence the sugar industry to name one!!
You write as if conventional treatment had a high success rate. Even if you were to acknowledge the weakness in mainstream treatment, your criticism of anything but establishment-type treatment is myopic.
Notwithstanding that some chemotherapy methods used even a decade ago are now seen as inferior by the medical establishment themselves, I believe in your view these institutions are above reproach.
To suggest that it would be unlawful for parents to seek other treatment for a child who has been given a short time to live, is nazi-like. Disgusting.
No doubt, all the children who die in chemo treatment and in spite of it– with swollen faces and bald, are doing a fine job because their parents kept them in a status quo area of medicine you approve of.
‘Nazi Like’
If I recall from my history books, the Nazis were a genocidal regime responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. In contrast, my actions seek to minimise the pain and suffering of children at the hands of quacks. I do not recall the Nazis doing this.
Just like this guy? : http://www.naturalnews.com/053734_Dr_David_Gorski_patient_complaints_Karmanos_Cancer_Institute.html
Mr. Andy Lewis, just how much are you being paid monthly to discredit Alternative medicine which is saving lives while Chemo, and radiation are killing in multiple fold?
Big pharma will refer to any one as a quack if they threaten their pockets by offering cures rather than treating symptoms with drugs that make you sicker!! They are no different to a lot of other big industries that kill in the name of greed hence the sugar industry to name one!!
It is telling that supporters of so-called alternative medicine cannot imagine any motivation other than the financial. In psychology, this is called projection.
Now these idiots like Andy are actually helping people move to other options, that is a growing reason why people seek, they know something is up with they see these stupid sites. Actually there is a class action lawsuit against these types of sites by losers who just take money and have no morals. Watch out Andy you may be named in that lawsuit if they find you are a co-conspirator in the discover process…Watch out man, besides not caring about people dying, you may end up losing everything and in jail yourself. And the people that pay you will just pawn you off to save their own skin… http://www.naturalnews.com/053751_David_Gorski_conspiracy_allegations_FBI_complaint.html
I am sorry I cannot help you if you are the type that believes what they read on NaturalNews.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032352_homeopathy_medical_fundamentalists.html
Rather than rely on the deliberate distortions that HeathDanger gives out on his web site in order to try to discredit people you should look at the facts. Here is the year on year spending on homeopathy in England and Wales.
http://www.nightingale-collaboration.org/news/183-homeopathy-on-the-nhs-at-death-s-door.html
Mike Adams calls this a ‘catepillar turning into a butterfly’. A 95% collapse in spending does not make a butterfly I would suggest. The London Homeopathic Hospital does not exist anymore. It is at best a few misguided doctors in one small area of one floor of a building still dishing out sugar pills.
Seriously!!! You sound like a scientologist, Andy!!! Along with your little cult… Watch out for the ‘Sqirrels’…
As for BIG PHARMA killing everyone!!! Geez… That’s an absolute!!!
Chemo is a lot more expensive and invasive than the alternatives..
I’m sure most people have had a bad stay at a hospital… I’d rather pay $30,000 over a short period, with SOME HOPE, rather than $300,000 over years of being too sick to even try to live, just to die in the end anyway…
You need to WAKE UP!!!
BIG PHARMA are the 1%!!!
This blog has been of no help to me. Who and what are you to believe.While my wife is deing of liver cancer, and looking for some hope?
Please watch The Truth About Cancer series on YouTube it will change your life for the better.
No it won’t https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-truth-about-cancer-series-is-untruthful-about-cancer/ http://web.randi.org/swift/-untruths-about-cancer-in-the-failed-quest-for-cures-part-6 http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/04/19/another-young-woman-with-cancer-lured-into-quackery-by-ty-bollinger/ http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/05/27/yet-another-woman-with-breast-cancer-lured-into-quackery-by-ty-bollinger-and-holistic-medicine-advocates/
Stay away from this place all they want is your money they cannot do anything for you
Tell ya what fellas (and gals) – I’d rather die by a non-toxic, ineffectual anecdote than be poisoned by ‘science-based’ chemo or radiation any day. My personal choice, and I have no beef with anybody who chooses differently. If you choose to go down the ‘conventional’ route, I’ll defend your right to do so – to the bitter end if necessary.
This is one area where the decision has to be a matter of personal (and preferably informed) choice, and my own conclusions after some modest research in this area is that neither side is the sole repository of truth. The two opposing camps will always be at loggerheads with each other for entirely understandable and rational reasons, and the admitted existence of snake-oil merchants serves only to complicate matters even further. Whether Dr Jimenez falls into that category, I am not qualified to say, but at the very least, one has to concede that the jury is still out as far as he is concerned. Same goes for Burzynski. As for homeopathy, forget it. It’s long since been debunked.
@ Pete: If you are still around, my deepest sympathies mate. I fully understand your frustration. For every altmed protagonist here, you’ll find an equally convincing antagonist, maybe ten. How to decide between the them? Here’s a possible avenue for you to investigate. Try getting hold of ‘Cancer Research Secrets’ by Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby. It’s an appallingly written book that has patently not been subjected to any proofreading worthy of the name, arguably written while he was sipping pina coladas on a sun-kissed island. Despite that, I would still urge you to procure a copy.
I personally don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but Scott-Mumby is almost unique in recognizing the contributions that both approaches can make in the treatment of cancer, so you are not forced down the ‘either/or’ path. Beyond that, I’d be more than happy to give you a few links for you to browse around if you can somehow make direct contact with me, perhaps thru fb.
I wish your wife the very best, and sincerely hope you find a cure for her that actually works.
It isn’t the clinics fault Olivia was taken to hope4cancer center at a late stage after all other treatments failed. id go to H4CC if I had cancer and 30k that’s nothing compared to the cost of cancer treatment in the US . It makes more sense to build up a weak immune system then to harm it with chemo the same chemical designed to kill people in the war that’s recommended by Drs.
Well clearly traditional medicine did not help her either so what harm was there is sending Olivia as a chance for hope?
We took my friend there this week stayed for theee days upon arrival they gave us a tour and showed us all they would be doing. The doctors were extremely caring ..The place is clean and everyone was very helpful when we asked questions. On the third date we left because my friend was very weak to use all the therapies available the director and drs could have taken advantage and let her stay the whole 21 days and take her money they didn’t we paid for 3 days and she is coming home ..When people are given a death sentence they will try anything I know I would. now I don’t know if any of these therapies work I do know by looking at reviews that there are more good reviews than bad reviews about this place ..Do your research and be informed ..If I had to I would go there and take the therapies as part of the program early in my diagnosis not as my last resort…
I do enjoy how you urge people to “do their own research” after telling us you have no idea if the treatments work.
Andy Lewis
The myriad of detrimental sides effects caused by any and every over-the-counter and prescribed pharmaceutical (for both physical and mental illnesses ranging from something as basic as flu to something as serious as cancer) far outweigh any benefits this have – I know this as fact from empirical evidence, which is more accurate than any questionable study or stat.
When I feel that I’m getting a common cold, flu and/or a chest cold, instead of taking Nyquil or
some other such chemical-based synthetic corporate-made garbage “medicine”, I take ten 1000 mg vitamin C capsules and then one every hour for a day or two and drink a hot tea made of water, lemon juice, honey and cayenne powder, and within a day or two at most, my symptoms are gone. Whereas friends I know who take conventional medicine and/or antibiotics for the same above-mentioned ailments are generally sick for a week or two and sometimes it progresses to bronchitis or pneumonia. And likewise, almost every illness and disease under the sun can be either prevented or cured using natural/holistic/alternative treatments. I’m sorry that you’re such a sheep-minded fool who believes all the lies masquerading as “facts” that are derived from slanted biased bullshit “research” and “studies” that were mainly funded by Big Pharma so they can keep pushing their legal drugs and destroying millions of people’s mental and physical health while raking in billions of dollars annually. The FDA is also part of that evil triumvirate (the Western hospital/medical industry and Big Pharma being the other two), Why do you think that many medications which are legal in America are banned in Europe, and vice versa? Because our country and government cares about profits far more than they care about the health and well-being of our citizens – whatever is profitable for hospitals, doctors and Big Pharma, they allow, and whatever isn’t, they ban, regardless of which are helpful and which are harmful. The fact that most illnesses and diseases can be prevented or cured by spending a few hundred dollars on natural remedies rather than tens of thousands on conventional treatments really pisses off those greedy bastards.
My wife has stage 4 brain cancer GBM and we are desperate as she has relapse and not doing OK. I don’t know whether it is wise to seek for their alternative therapy. Even I don’t know what are the alternative therapy offered and whether they work in GBM.
Anyone who is against alternative and holistic treatments are brainwashed sheep – conventional Western cancer treatments (chemotherapy and radiation) have a very low success rate (especially with more serious and/or advanced forms of cancer) and are a billion dollar industry that thrives from keeping people sick and dying and making sure that they don’t use alternative cures. The Western medical complex and Big Pharma are truly an evil empire driven by greed and lies, and go against both God and nature.
Your site is the biggest quackometer going run by whacko shills most probably funded by the Big Cancer Cartel. Know anyone who is a longtime cancer survivor after the conventional cut, burn and poison method? It’s really too bad that the fascists at google put your website at the top of their search engine. Any doctor doing ANY non conventional, big pharma, drug driven therapy is often called a quack because he/she questions the status quo. Honestly, what are you scared of? Oh…lost profits. Of course. You make me sick.
Survival from childhood cancer has doubled in the last 3 or 4 decades due to real medicine. This makes me hopeful of the future and scared of quacks who mislead people.
Hope
For cancer is a fraud my mother was treated there and she got there walking was able
To speak every day that passed we saw she was getting worse at first they said it was normal because supposedly it was the side effects .. by the end after they kept giving her there medicine my mom was so swollen she couldn’t walk anymore and she couldn’t really talk .. that’s when I saw something was really wrong… then to make things worse my mom
Started bleeding from the catete they put in her to feed her and give her her medicine I don’t know how to say that in English and when they try to clean it she started to bleed they weren’t able to Control it we had
To call an ambulance and cross her to San Diego’s to
Take her to The hospital .. as soon as she got in the American ambulance they were able to control the bleeding super fast that was crazy to me . I just remember my moms fave how scared she was and it breaks my heart it make me so mad this fraud clinics the way they play with people their life’s . I didn’t wanna take my mom back but she wanted to she thought that was the only way she would live I didn’t have the heart to tell her no mom there is nothing more to do .. I just said are you sure mami you sure you wanna go back
And she said yes I need to
Finish my treatment and I said ok . We took her back we then started to see how in two days she got worse from
Being able to walk talk now she couldn’t I didn’t like that I said it’s time to
Go I talked with the dr and he said yes your right there is nothing we can do for her anymore she needs to go home and die .. but before he said that they made sure to charge us thousands of dlls !! I’m writing this and I’m
Seriously crying it breaks my heart to remember all the torture my mom
Went through the hope she had to be able to be saved she wanted to live so bad she keepers telling us I don’t wanna die and this people
Took advantage of it they play with your emotions please Please Don’t go they are a fraud never take your love ones it’s a waist of money and lets leave the money out you waist valuable time
With your love one .. the days they sent us home my mom Had a fever and we told them and they said no she’s gonna be ok , we went home and he whole night she had a fever the next day we had to call the ambulance and took her to Kiser my
Mom Never went home again she died a week later !! She had a really bad infection in her blood at the end it wasn’t even cancer that for her it was the infection they gave her ! I never say this but I hate them
They are bad people
Here is some Science, most of these people don’t even know the root cause of cancer, latest studies and science see it only 5 to 10 genetic. Watch and learn : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEE-oU8_NSU
I took my wife down to Hope 4 Cancer in September of 2017. My wife had 5 tumors when she went down to Mexico and has 5 when she came back. Unfortunately most of the people we met there They didn’t help, several of them have passed away since then. Hope 4 Cancer couldn’t show any statistics showing that they have helped any stage 4 cancel patients. I REALLY feel they know they can’t help most cancer patients but take there money anyways. I also know another lady that went down there for only Stage 1 breast cancer. After Spending HUNDREDS of Thousands of dollars in treatments, she finally was smart enough to get surgery in the States to get rid of the single tumor. BELIEVE me, you are wasting your money going to these places. We ended up doing XXXXXXX, XXXXX and we had great success. I do believe in natural remedies for helping with cancer, but you also have to be smart and use chemo also.
Obviously written and paid for by a Chemo producer.
Does everyone know there’s a kick back to every hospital , every oncologist and other Drs who prescribe in the States ? It’s sick and crooked because and they know Chemo kills !
Karen said:
Goodness. You have such a limited imagination, Karen.
I’m curious as to what information is being left out!
They cured my doctor from NC ,,,, no more cancer on the pet scan ,,,,, your a liar
‘your a liar’.
It’s terrible to do this to children who trust in this organization remember u do things to harm children or anyone. Your actions will come back to haunt u GOD doesn’t sleep. Ask for forgiveness and ask GOD to help u do the right thing. Life is short. Use your time to serve GOD not Satan. You reap what u sew. Help others instead of spending your time hurting people. GOD is waiting on you to choose HIS ways. Ignore Satan’s ways. And u will be at peace. May GOD lend u his GRACE to make choices that are pleasing to GOD. And only HIM I will pray for you
Nobody ever talks about the millions that do conventional treatments and die after being mutilated, burned and posioned.
Exactly!! Thank you!
Annette, I absolutely agree with you. The naysayers always seize on isolated cases from failed alternative treatments, probably many of whom have previously received conventional treatment and have become very ill as a result, and yet there are so many more failed chemo/ radiation therapy outcomes which they choose to ignore.
Does anyone actually survive chemo beyond a few years?
My personal opinion, that poor child had been inundated with the toxins of regular cancer treatments; such as chemo and radiation. Her bodies immune system was gone. She couldn’t tolerate anything else. Had they went to Hope4Cancer first I think the outcome would be quite different. I have a friend who has received treatment there and her tumor is shrinking!
They are quietly trying to move into immunotherapy for cancer now. But you know what kills the immune system? Chemo! Tell me if that is not a red flag where they fail to acknowledge their failures of the past and present….
Chemo kills, this article is trash and that’s putting it nice. I’d love to hear a response from the editor, as their likely to only further prove my point in anything they might conjure up as a response. LOL
Chemo kills, this article is trash and that’s putting it nice. I’d love to hear a response from the editor, as they’re likely to only further prove my point in anything they might conjure up as a response. LOL
This article is so unbelievably biased and rooted in misinformation about what natural methods have been the root of what has established every single thing inside the allopathic healthcare world. You’re sold out to the big pharma and mainstream for profit medical industry, and this is coming from someone who is certified in both allopathic and naturopathic studies. Good grief get informed before writing such pseudo intellectual garbage.