Quackery

I’m finding myself really annoyed lately by some of the articles and basically infomercials that are sent to me by other cancer patients I’ve connected with since my diagnosis. I’m all for a holistic approach to treating disease of all types, and I think intuitively people know the things they need to be doing in order to be healthy, even if they don’t want to do those things. I do however think it’s important to note that just because you do the things that should lead to a healthy happy life, there’s no guarantee you’ll be granted that elusive prize. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of people smoking, drinking, lazing around and living to be 100, and plenty of healthy living folks who die at 30 of cancer, or a sudden heart attack or whatever.

Anyway, what’s led to this rant was a recent video message I was sent about an Italian “doctor” named Simoncini who’d “discovered” that cancer is a fungus and treatable by via topical application or intratumoral injection of a baking soda solution. Of course the medical community has so much to lose they’re suppressing this discovery. I watched the video, but maybe I’m a little more skeptical than the cancer patient who sent it to me, because from what I could see the doctor’s only evidence that cancer is a fungus is the “fact” that it’s white. Well my cat is white, and he’s not a fungus. His evidence of baking soda as a cure was a picture of a lesion in a colon via colonoscopy being squirted with a baking soda and water solution… and a picture of a colon via colonoscopy that didn’t appear to have a lesion… I’m no brain surgeon, but I do have the ability to edit video footage, and I don’t find those pictures particularly conclusive. Also while Dr. Simoncini goes on about how inexpensive baking soda is as a treatment (the reason “Big Pharma” is persecuting him) Simoncini charged some patients as much as 7,500 Euros for his treatments.

In any case, I wasted 45 minutes of my time watching this video and was kind of ticked off about the whole thing, and I have a lot of bull dog in my nature. So I go looking for more information on “Dr.” Simoncini, mostly because I get a lot of these stupid videos and articles, and I was particularly annoyed by this guy begging for money and presenting such bull crap. He’s actually no longer a doctor, as his license was revoked in Italy because he perforated a patients bowel in the course of one of his treatments, and the patient died. He performs his baking soda experiments on humans, in spite of the fact that lab tests on animals were failures. He’s got some legal troubles in the Netherlands for an experiment on a breast cancer patient that went awry and ended in her death, and the list goes on.

I know that cancer is a scary disease. I know that not every variant of it carries the same positive prognosis as mine. I know that some people diagnosed with certain variants have nothing to look forward to but a painful death, and it really makes me angry that there are charlatans out there who are not only willing, but happy to take advantage of these people and others who actually can be helped by established treatments. I put up with all of the information on dietary changes to heal cancer because I actually enjoy a healthy diet and am a proponent of healthy eating, but I don’t believe you can heal every type of cancer via dietary changes; I think it’s possible there may be some, but I have a healthy diet, and I got cancer, and I don’t believe that juicing my broccoli instead of just eating it will have had any effect on my cancer. I honestly get pretty annoyed by a lot of this.

I also get annoyed by people suggesting I’ve thought up my cancer and infected myself via my thoughts. First off, I don’t hate my pelvis or any of my bones. I love all of my parts. I hurt when I hear about people losing parts, because it hurts me to think of being separated from even a toe. I still miss my gall bladder, and I’m so happy my parents never had my tonsils taken out. I love all of my pieces parts, and I like the idea of remaining whole. I can honestly say I never, consciously or unconsciously thought cancer into my pelvis. Hell, I didn’t even know you could get cancer in your bones, let alone your pelvic bones. How could I think it up as a disease for myself when I didn’t know about it. Though her theory was something more along the lines of… you’re sexually abused as a child, you subconsciously hate the body parts that were complicit in your abuse, so you get breast or cervical or ovarian or testicular cancer. I did fall on my ass a couple of times as a child, but I don’t believe I subconsciously hated my ass so much for being involved in those falls that I hated cancer right into it.

Anything is possible I guess, but cancer by its nature is multi-variant with a lot of known, and probably more unknown causalities. Painting every patient and every cancer with the same brush is a mistake, and honestly I’m glad the majority of these people never suggest these things to my face because it’s likely I’d go completely ballistic on them.

Anyway, here’s to good research, and the people involved in it. Here’s to those people who dedicate their lives to finding cures and making advances in treatment for so many diseases, and here’s to the people who provide support in so many ways to facilitate that research. As for the charlatans preying on the weak and scared, I won’t even say what I hope for them because I hope more for the hapless people that turn to them that they educate themselves a little better, that they take the time to do a little research, to think a little more about what they’re being told, to question.

Sources for information on Simoncini:
This article is in English relating to the legal troubles he’s had in the Netherlands:
http://www.dokterlutser.nl/archives/tullio-simoncini-cancer-fungus/

This is an article discussing the legal issues he’s had in Italy, but it’s in Italian. There were actually three deaths that were a direct result of the treatments, I only discussed the gentleman with the perforated bowel above, the article discusses all three.
http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2006/maggio/21/Medico_condannato…

The same article, roughly translated by Google for those who don’t read Italian:
http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http…