http://www.quackwatch.org/01Quackery...harmquack.html

How Quackery Harms Cancer Patients

William T. Jarvis, Ph.D.
There is an old saying: "The highwayman demands 'your money OR your life,' but
quacks demand 'your money AND your life!'" This statement is particularly true
when it comes to dubious cancer treatment. The harm done by quackery may be
categorized as economic, direct, indirect, psychological and societal.

Economic Harm

The amount of money wasted on cancer quackery is unknown but probably exceeds
one billion dollars per year -- the amount spent for cancer research. The
financial impact upon individuals and families can be catastrophic if they fall
into the trap of heroically "leaving no stone unturned" in their quest for a
remedy in hopeless cases. Some quacks are quite willing to bleed them dry
financially. I know of cases in which survivors were deprived of the family's
savings, were left with a large mortgage on a previously paid-for home, or even
lost their home.

Direct Harm

Dubious therapies can cause death, serious injury, unnecessary suffering, and
disfigurement. Cyanide poisoning from ingesting apricot pits or laetrile,
Salmonella dublin infection from drinking raw milk, electrolyte imbalance
caused by coffee enemas, internal bleeding from deep body massage, and brain
damage from whole-body hyperthermia have all caused needless death of cancer
patients. At clinics providing substandard care, intravenous infusions of
various concoctions have caused septicemia and malnutrition. And the
application of escharotics (corrosive chemicals) to the skin of cancer patients
has resulted in needless disfigurement.

Ruth Conrad, an Idaho woman, had a horrible experience as a result of
consulting one of the state's many unlicensed naturopaths. While seeking
treatment for a sore shoulder, she also complained of a bump on her nose. The
naturopath stated that it was cancer and gave her a black herbal salve to apply
directly. Within a few days, her face became very painful and she developed red
streaks that ran down her cheeks. Her worried phone call to the naturopath
brought the explanation that the presence of the lines was a good sign because
they "resemble a crab, and cancer is a crab." He also advised her to apply more
of the black salve. Within a week, a large part of her face, including her
nose, sloughed off. It took three years and 17 plastic surgical operations to
reconstruct her face.

Mrs. Conrad's experience illustrates another aspect of cancer quackery -- fake
diagnosis. She never had cancer in the first place. In addition to suffering
direct harm from a caustic treatment, she also suffered the mental anguish of
thinking she had a dread disease.

Indirect Harm

Some of the worst quackery-related tragedies result from delay or failure to
act. An example of a needless death involved an Oregon man who treated his
basal cell carcinoma of the mouth with a mail-order remedy for 15 years. What
makes this case especially tragic is that since this type of cancer almost
never metastasizes, he had many years in which to correct his folly. Although
badly disfigured by the growing tumor, he continued self-treatment.

Overreliance upon dietary treatment is a common means by which indirect harm
kills cancer sufferers. The appeal of dietary remedies is connected to folk
medicine. Nearly every culture, beginning with the ancient Egyptians, has
believed in the half-truth "you are what you eat." This implies that diseases
are caused by faulty diet and, conversely, can be cured by eating the "right"
foods. Publicity given to epidemiological speculations about "cancer-prevention
diets" encourages the belief that diet holds great promise for both prevention
and treatment of cancer. The fact is that, although nutrient deficiencies can
cause some diseases and dietary excesses can cause or aggravate several others,
the vast majority of diseases do not have a nutritional cause.

One food-as-medicine approach that is popular today is macrobiotics, which
received widespread publicity when Anthony Sattilaro, M.D., a Philadelphia
physician, concluded that the diet had helped him overcome prostatic cancer.
National magazine articles, a book and television appearances spread the belief
that macrobiotics had cured his cancer. Although Sattilaro had also undergone
conventional therapy, macrobiotics seemed to fulfill some emotional need unmet
by regular therapy. He eventually died of his disease, but this fact was not
mentioned in the macrobiotic press.

The macrobiotic diet bears some resemblance to currently recommended
cancer-prevention diets. However, because of its rigidity, low-fat content,
negligible use of simple sugars, and exclusive reliance upon vegetable rather
than animal protein, it is a poor one for cancer patients undergoing radiation
or chemotherapy. These patients need a high-quality, nutrient-dense diet
because the ability of their intestine to absorb nutrients is impaired.

"Natural" treatments that can delay proper care are often advocated by
well-meaning friends and relatives who are culturally conditioned to believe in
their value. This thinking is deeply rooted in many cultures and is as old as
written records themselves. The Book of Job, said to be the oldest in the
Bible, is a drama aimed at dispelling the notion that victims are responsible
for their own diseases. Job is a good man who suffers terribly. His friends
plead with him to confess his wrongdoings, but he is innocent. The message is
clearly that the presence of disease does not mean the sufferer is a sinful
person. However, moralistic approaches that blamed victims for their diseases
were prevalent until Pasteur proved the existence of germs that can strike the
innocent and immoral alike.

Pasteur's discovery was made more than a century ago. But even today, many
people perceive cancer as a modern-day "leprosy" and consider it "a curse by
God." The notion of a cancer-prone personality -- capable of self-healing with
psychological gymnastics that include visualization, laughter and excessive
optimism -- is unproven and may represent nothing more than elaboration of the
old folklore. Unfortunately, cancer sufferers who believe this and fail to cure
themselves may wind up with the added psychological burden of thinking that for
some mysterious reason, they really don't want to be cured.

The frequency of needless or premature death due to quackery is difficult to
ascertain. A survey of 166 California oncologists done for the National Council
Against Health Fraud in 1980 found 12 probable needless deaths and 14 other
adversely affected patients. Due to a low (7%) response rate, a second survey
of 65 randomly selected cancer specialists who agreed by telephone to
participate was done in 1981. Thirty-three respondents reported 7 probable
needless deaths, 6 premature deaths, and 14 cases of hopeless prognosis due to
diversion by quackery. These numbers are conservative because several doctors
who stated they had cases failed to reply, and others withheld reports because
of the difficulty of knowing whether certain patients would have survived
longer without quackery.

Psychological Harm

In addition to the unjustified guilt referred to above, cancer patients and
their loved ones can be psychologically harmed in several other ways.

Misplaced trust. In nearly every case of harm I have examined, misplaced trust
either preceded the use of a directly harmful procedure or prevented the
patient from obtaining effective care. The deadly message promoted by cancer
quackery is that "orthodoxy cannot be trusted." Undermining trust in the
research and therapeutic establishment, the government regulators, and the
American Cancer Society is crucial to the promotion of so-called "alternative"
approaches to cancer management.

A case I investigated from Oregon provides insight into the thinking and
actions of "true believers." A health food store owner discovered a lump in her
breast. After diagnosing it as cancer, she boasted to her health food friends
that she was "going to prove once and for all that diet cure works!"
Unfortunately, although at least 80% of self-discovered breast lumps are
benign, hers was cancerous.

Her first attempt at self-treatment was to apply the methods in the book The
Grape Cure. This book claims that grapes have "powerful" and "antiseptic
properties" to help "eliminate evil while building new tissues." According to
the book, "cleansing" and "purification" are accomplished by eating nothing but
grapes and grape juice until one stops losing weight. In the second stage,
fresh fruits, tomatoes and sour milk may be added to the grape diet. The third
stage introduces a wider variety of raw foods, and the fourth stage a " mixed
diet." After many months, it became apparent that the grape cure had not
prevented the tumor from growing.

Next, she turned to a popular herbalist in her community who treated her with
herbal remedies for about six months without avail. She then went to Mexico for
laetrile. Several weeks later, she asked her husband to take her home because
laetrile, too, had failed. Her husband looked after her for more than a year
before the lesion became so gross and her pain so unbearable that she asked to
be taken to a doctor for the first time. She died five days later.

The most shocking part of the story is that she went to her grave still
believing that she had done the right thing. Her husband, who provided me with
the details of the tragedy, also continued to believe in the value of diet
cure. He stated that he knows where she went wrong, and that if he gets cancer,
will use the dietary treatment correctly. He continued to operate the
health-food store, send people to the herbalist, and advocate laetrile.

Conversion to deviance. Cancer patients and/or loved ones who accompany them to
the cancer treatment underworld may become converted to antisocial behavior.
Often these people are encouraged to steer other cancer patients to the clinics
or urged to smuggle drugs across the border that cannot be legally marketed in
the United States. Even when the cancer patient dies, the loved ones may
continue to believe that the treatment is effective. Failures are commonly
blamed upon not getting treatment in time or to negative effects of
conventional treatment. Having met others who claim they were cured may cause
loved ones to determine to use it exclusively should cancer strike them. This
sets the stage for a future tragedy.

Untrained people should not be expected to realize that those who claim to have
been cured either may not have had cancer in the first place, may have been
successfully treated by conventional methods but not converted to believe in
them, or may still simply be surviving with their disease. The fact that some
cancers can take a long time to run their course or produce no symptoms for a
long period of time has misled many patients into believing that a quack remedy
had cured them.

Stealing time. By offering false hope, quackery steals the most precious thing
terminal cancer patients have -- the best use of what little time that they
have left. The notion that terminal patients have nothing to lose by turning to
quackery is dead wrong. Most people faced with a life-threatening disease can
make a reasonable psychological adjustment. Those who face reality experience
five classical stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Those who accept their fate are in the best position to use their remaining
time wisely.

In the ABC-TV special "Who Will Love My Children" Ann Margret played an
impoverished Iowa mother with cancer who spent her last few months finding
homes for her ten children. I know of two similar cases. Quacks discourage
people from making the difficult adjustment by reinforcing their denial. Such
people usually die unprepared because preparation for death is an admission of
failure.

Distortion of perspective. Without proper perspective, people can be made to
"strain out gnats and swallow camels." Unable to tell good from bad, some
people shun "toxic" chemotherapy, but swallow cyanide (laetrile). Unable to
gauge how good a generally good thing is, they will overdose on vitamins,
essential minerals, or dietary fiber.

Harm to Society

Quackery can also harm our democratic society when large numbers of people hold
wrong beliefs about the nature of cancer and the best way to deal with it. The
results can be far-reaching. Limited resources can be wasted if funds are used
to follow leads based on data that are inadequate or faked. The public is
giving large amounts of money in response to mass mailings by fund-raisers who
extol dietary measures for preventing and treating cancer. When misinformation
based upon wishful thinking becomes popular, the mass media exacerbate the
problem with their power to spread ideas. These ideas can influence
decision-making by patients, judges, policy-makers, and legislators. During the
1970s, the very fabric of our sound consumer protection law was seriously
threatened by laetrile promoters who attempted to legalize its use.
Fortunately, although about half the states passed laws permitting its sale,
federal laws blocking interstate distribution were not changed. After the FDA
won a protracted court battle, the use of laetrile within the United States
became minimal.

Patients should be warned that when they patronize cancer quackery they face
economic exploitation, risk injury or death, place themselves beyond reach of
consumer protection laws, and help sustain quack operations that will exploit
other cancer sufferers in the future. In addition, they expose themselves and
their loved-ones to deception by some of the most persuasive con artists around
-- some of whom have criminal records. People who believe they are a match for
an experienced cancer quack would do well to recall P.T. Barnum's sage advice:
"Never try to beat a man at his own game."

What is Needed

Quackery is a society-wide public health problem. To cope with it adequately, a
more scientific approach is required. As with any other public health problem,
an epidemiologic strategy is needed to develop information on causal agents
(which people become quacks and why), host susceptibility and resistance
factors (the characteristics of people who do and do not turn to quackery), and
environmental aspects that favor or discourage the proliferation of quackery.
Vital statistics are needed on the morbidity, mortality, incidence and
prevalence of cancer quackery.

Presently, we have only isolated case reports. These are enough to indicate
that great harm is being done, but don't tell us how many people are being
harmed. I suggest that a system be developed for reporting quackery cases,
patterned after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's system in
which doctors report cases of communicable disease. This would enable us to
keep track of what is being promoted, where the "hot spots" are, and what legal
and educational efforts are needed for an effective response.

Health professionals have a duty to take action when the public is being abused
in an area in which they have special knowledge. The failure to take concerted
action against cancer quackery sends an unprofessional message. We should not
condone the "victim-blaming" ideology which says that if people are too dumb to
spot quackery on their own, they are probably too dumb to be worth saving. Nor
should we condone the attitude of law enforcement officials who feel that
quackery is "merely" a form of white collar crime" that takes money from its
victims. Through our actions, we need to convey that the exploitation of cancer
sufferers should not be tolerated by our society.

______________________________

Dr. Jarvis is Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, School of
Medicine and Public Health, Loma Linda University, and President of the
National Council Against Health Fraud.