Wellness App Author Lied About Cancer Diagnosis 256
Freshly Exhumed writes: Wellness advocate Belle Gibson, who translated her high profile as a cancer survivor into publishing success, has admitted her cancer diagnosis was not real. Ms Gibson, 23, who claimed to have healed terminal brain cancer by eating wholefoods, made the admission in an interview with the Australian Women's Weekly. The success of Gibson's book, The Whole Pantry, and her smartphone application, which advocates natural therapies, has been largely dependent on her high-profile as a cancer survivor. Sadly, we've seen this sort of behaviour before. It would seem that Belle Gibson has emulated Dr. Andrew Wakefield in knowingly decieving the public in ways that could possibly be dangerous to the health of believers.
Duuuh. (Score:2)
Wait. A person who made dubious claims that had no scientific backing to them was actually lying? What next? Water is wet?!!
I think pretty much everyone but the nutjob, true believers in psuedo-science knew all along that this woman was lying.
No, This Is Important for People to See (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait. A person who made dubious claims that had no scientific backing to them was actually lying? What next? Water is wet?!!
I think pretty much everyone but the nutjob, true believers in psuedo-science knew all along that this woman was lying.
So you're saying everyone knew she was lying about her charity donations as well [theage.com.au]? Or was it only the charities that knew that? From the article:
The 26-year-old's popular recipe app, which costs $3.79, has been downloaded 300,000 times and is being developed as one of the first apps for the soon-to-be-released Apple Watch. Her debut cook book The Whole Pantry, published by Penguin in Australia last year, will soon hit shelves in the United States and Britain.
So you're saying the 300,000 downloads are by people that knew they were downloading the app architected by a liar? And they were paying $3.79 to Apple and this liar for a recipe app that contain recipes that someone lied about helping her cure cancer? And you're saying that everyone at Apple that featured her app on the Apple Watch knew they were showing a snake oil app on their brand new shiny device? And that the people at Penguin did all their fact checking on any additional information this cookbook might contain about Belle Gibson's alleged cancer survival? And that everybody involved in these events know society's been parading around a fucking liar and rewarding her with cash money while she basically capitalizes on a horrendous disease that afflicts millions of people worldwide ... that she never had?
... anybody who accepts it as the sole cure for their ailment is putting their health in the hands of such charlatans and quacks.
No, this is not the same as "water is wet" and it needs to be shown that holistic medicine is temporarily propped up on a bed of anecdotal lies
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Well, I can't speak for the poster ... but I think you can reasonably conclude (and in fact should) that if someone comes out of the blue and claims to have a miracle cure for cancer, but no scientific evidence you should treat them with a degree of skepticism.
That absolutely nobody ever confirmed a diagnosis of cancer tells me this was a fraud which was committed with the willing complicity of the media, her publisher, and everybody else who utterly failed to do anything other than take her on face value.
M
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Well, I can't speak for the poster ... but I think you can reasonably conclude (and in fact should) that if someone comes out of the blue and claims to have a miracle cure for cancer, but no scientific evidence you should treat them with a degree of skepticism.
That absolutely nobody ever confirmed a diagnosis of cancer tells me this was a fraud which was committed with the willing complicity of the media, her publisher, and everybody else who utterly failed to do anything other than take her on face value.
Maybe everyone didn't "know" ... but people sure as shit should have been saying "OK, how credible is this claim". Because, really, reading the news stories about this ... there was absolutely no basis to deem her claims credible.
Just a media who wanted to show a story, and a bunch of people who lacked critical thinking skills who wanted to believe in miracles, or something which matched their existing world view.
When people make big claims about their magic healing cure which has no scientific evidence or study ... they should not be taken at face value.
Folks diagnosed with cancer are desperate people. Desperate people, sadly, just want to believe they can make every horrible boogeyman disease go away if they do the right thing, especially when receiving a grim outlook from conventional medical practitioners.
Fact checking, logic, and realistic thinking are displaced by the grasping of straws.
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Yes, but all of the people who weren't diagnosed with cancer who were reporting this, enabling her to commit this scale of fraud, and otherwise completely failing to do any degree of fact checking can't claim to be desperate people.
The idiot journalists and book publishers who utterly failed to confirm a single detail of what she said ... those people are clowns who were just phoning it in by being too fucking lazy to say "can we at least confirm she had cancer?"
The problem becomes when it becomes an intern
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Yes, but all of the people who weren't diagnosed with cancer who were reporting this, enabling her to commit this scale of fraud, and otherwise completely failing to do any degree of fact checking can't claim to be desperate people.
The problem is that we are so indoctrinated with the idea that our diseases are somehow "our fault" makes for a powerful blockage of any skepticism that might be shown. Its a powerful part of human nature, whch spans from Eating "right" to retribution by god for supposed sins.
Fact checking for this sort of thing? Ain't gonna happen.
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I think pretty much everyone but the nutjob, true believers in psuedo-science knew all along that this woman was lying.
So you're saying the 300,000 downloads are by people that knew they were downloading the app architected by a liar? And they were paying $3.79 to Apple and this liar for a recipe app that contain recipes that someone lied about helping her cure cancer?
No, he was clearly saying any person who downloaded the app based on her cancer story is a nutjob. He is saying that for any non-nutjob finding for sure she was lying is like finding out for sure that water is wet.
I don't agree with the OP, as I think people can be naive without being a nutjob. I think its a good thing when stories like this get out because it may help people realize that unscientific medical claims should always be disregarded by the public. I make that last stipulation because I think its
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No, he was clearly saying any person who downloaded the app based on her cancer story is a nutjob. He is saying that for any non-nutjob finding for sure she was lying is like finding out for sure that water is wet.
I don't agree with the OP, as I think people can be naive without being a nutjob.
I was probably being a bit harsh calling them all nutjobs, but yes, there was more to my sentence beyond the "everyone" part that eldavjohn didn't seem to read past.
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When you're sick with an incurable or hard to cure disease you try every stupid thing you can think about to get better. At worst this "whole foods" scam will have negligible negative health impact so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people tried it out just for the heck of it.
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So you're saying everyone knew she was lying about her charity donations as well [theage.com.au]? Or was it only the charities that knew that? From the article:
Everyone? No. But anyone who wasn't some doe-eyed true believer? Yes [theage.com.au] and Yes [essentialbaby.com.au].
So you're saying the 300,000 downloads are by people that knew they were downloading the app architected by a liar? And they were paying $3.79 to Apple and this liar for a recipe app that contain recipes that someone lied about helping her cure cancer?
Of course not. They are those psuedo-science nutjobs that I referred to. The same idiots who by crap from Kevin Trudeau, etc. Did you even bother to read everything I wrote or did you just read up to the "everyone" part of the sentence and then start foaming at the mouth?
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It is to anyone with even a half-working brain.
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Everyone knows that water is wet. You compared this to announcing that water is wet.
Ice is the solid form of water, and it most certainly isn't wet.
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"but the nutjob, true believers in psuedo-science" - those words mean something. Maybe try not just skipping over them?
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The "water is wet" was for a different claim and thus irrelevant. Again words mean things, as does punctuation. You can't just randomly stick things together to build your strawman.
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That's very likely, it's just "business". The bar has been set low by respectable pharma companies selling herbal crap that they know does not work. People want snake oil they would say, so there's no harm in giving them snake oil.
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And you're saying that everyone at Apple that featured her app on the Apple Watch knew they were showing a snake oil app on their brand new shiny device?
The extra irony here is that it's quite likely that Steve Jobs is dead because of BS cancer treatments [wikipedia.org].
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Probably because you're not willing to lie to get what you want. And you're likely not hot.
Re:Duuuh. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes, I do. It's why we have idiotic parents who aren't giving their kids vaccinations so now we have kids dying again of measles, whooping cough, etc. Diseases that a few decades ago were all but eradicated.
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She said cancer was a fungus (Score:3)
That could be 'cured' via a special diet. First off, were that true, bicarbonate would be chemotherapy and secondly, this sounds to me like practicing medicine without a licence. The nutritional version of "crying fire in a movie crowded theatre" shouldn't get special exception simply because it's about nutrition and people wanting to do good things for their children and themselves by not eating crap. She hurt people by broadcasting this nonsense.
Will she refund all of the money she made? Doubt it.
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More from wiki... (Score:5, Informative)
"In early 2015, media scrutiny revealed that Gibson's cancer claims appear to have been fabricated, that she had lied about her age and other details of her personal life and history, and she had used campaign donations to lead a profligate and affluent lifestyle instead of delivering the money to charitable institutions as promised. There are claims she rented an expensive town house, leased an office suite and luxury car, underwent cosmetic dental procedures, and holidayed internationally from the proceeds of money purportedly raised for charity"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
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Seems this is just a case of fraud and greed rather than someone lying to promote a cause they truly believe
Same with Wakefield, who was planning to launch a diagnostic kit based on his MMR bullshit.
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Got a link/source for that? I'd like to add it to my armament of anti-bullshit weaponry. :)
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Here are a couple culled from his Wikipedia page
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HE... [cnn.com]
http://briandeer.com/wakefield... [briandeer.com]
Frankly I would like to see the psychopathic bastard banged up in jail for the fraud.
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Fraud she certainly is, but the fraud was so transparent that clearly she's not right in her head.
While the financial aspect of this makes her culpable, building an outrageous fraud around readily disprovable details of your personal biography is a very bad idea in the long run if you're simply a con artist. Doing that suggests that there are short term needs that trump simple financial considerations. Perhaps she felt she deserved more sympathy, nurturance and nurturance than she'd gotten in life. That's
I hope she is prosecuted (Score:5, Insightful)
Separately, I wish all these self professed wellness "gurus" would jump off the nearest cliff and rid the world of their stupidity.
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Unfortunately, the cliff-jumping would do nothing for stupidity, as that is in the side of the believers and they would just find something else of comparable stupidity to believe in. It would rid the world of quite a bit of immoral scum though. Now, if all priests, politicians and CEOs could jump right behind, we might be getting somewhere...
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As for being sued for calling them quacks, I assume you mean Simon Singh's run-in with chiropractors. He eventually prevailed (they dropped it after an onslaught of complaints against their members) and the case became a driving force for reforming defamation law.
So the UK should be glad they sued. Libel law in the UK now requires the claimant to demonstrate it caused serious harm and there are defences for honest opinion, academic peer review, and public interest.
Extraordinary claims ... (Score:3)
It never ceases to amaze me how people want so badly to believe this crap that they just blindly accept some pretty extraordinary claims without proof.
What utterly boggles the mind is absolutely nobody ever fact checked what she said ... not her cancer diagnosis, not her recovery, not a damned thing ... she basically said "I had cancer and now I don't, I cured it with unicorns and ponies and stuff I read on the interwebs, hey, why not buy my app?"
Hell, she published a damned book, and nobody ever checked a single fact to make sure she wasn't lying.
Sorry folks, but as usual, if someone makes an extraordinary claim, they better provide some evidence. Or you should be treating them like they're full of shit.
From the anti-vaxers to the people who think the can cure cancer with healing crystals ... people should stop being so damned trusting and naive. Because generally the people making these claims are full of shit, stand to gain financially.
Hell, the great quack Atkins never did a scrap of research despite selling tens of millions of books. Which means everything he ever said or the products which sprung up around him were more or less complete bullshit.
i just don't understand why people are so willing to believe in quackery with zero evidence.
So, when do we prosecute? (Score:5, Insightful)
If a person claims authority on a subject based on falsified experiences isn't that pretty much the essential definition of FRAUD? (Particularly if money is made in the process.)
If your advice is connected to peoples' actions that could have ramifications for their health and safety, then negligent manslaughter might be included as well.
Look at it this way, if we started this, we'd at least have fewer celebrities talking about health issues, which is ultimately a net good.
Stolen valor, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are men - and women too, I suppose - who hunt down people who claim to be veterans. Watched video just recently, some old Marine chased down some panhandler posing as a veteran, and made him take the Marine Corps jacket off. Told him if he EVER saw him with it on again, he was going to stomp the shit out of him.
This woman deserves as much as any fake veteran has ever received at the hands of real veterans.
Big brave man picking on the weak (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Big brave man picking on the weak (Score:4)
Personally I hate those videos.
And I am a Marine.
Some may be legit, catching a guy getting preferential status fraudulently.
But far too many are just overzealous-I'm-special-types chasing homeless people.
its one thing for a guy to commit actual fraud, such as the guy Rep. Duckworth chewed out in front of a congressional committee for claiming "disabled veteran" status to get preferential bidding on government contracts, when he had never served a day in life.
it's completely another to harass homeless folks (and even not so homeless folks) panhandling on the side of the road in clothes they got from a surplus store or clothing charity.
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Because it's been proven, probably. I've seen video evidence collected by local news media more than once about this. "Homeless" panhandler finishes up, walks a ways to their car, drives to their nice home. That it happens is beyond question. How often it happens and what percentage of panhandlers are genuinely in need of help vs those who are sponging off the rest of us, I don't know.
To be fair, though, I've also seen people with signs like "Homeless, living in the woods", then winter comes around, the
Fails simple test (Score:2)
Such bullshit is the same sort of reality denial as falling for this cure cancer with diet scam.
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It's not bullshit, it's just what was reported. Camera footage of panhandler walking to car, then they followed the car to the guy's house. Sounds like it doesn't fit with *your* preconceived notions. I'm not coming at this with preconceived notions, just observations. I've seen evidence that some panhandlers are liars and evidence that some really are living in the woods.
Saying "Here are my observations." is actually the complete opposite of reality denial. Note I never said the guy owned the house.
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So maybe not the norm, but it does happen.
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Go ahead, call the police. They'll draw some chalk lines around your body, before the coroner has the carcass bagged up and transported to the morgue.
Veterans in general, and Marines in particular, tend to MAKE stuff their business. No one tells us what our business is, or is not.
Enjoy a nice video - listen carefully to the lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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If involves breaking the law -- not just some kind of namby-pamby administrative regulation but the basic stuff of civilization like like the prohibitions on assault or murder -- then I'll sure as hell tell what not to do.
If you're a veteran I'll gladly shake your hand and thank you for your service. I'd be honored to buy you a drink. But I won't hand you a get out of jail free card.
Have a little perspective. Yes it's wrong to impersonate a veteran, but it doesn't impugn the character of veterans. But cla
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Let me say it again: Stolen valor. If you're wearing our uniform, you are stealing from these guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
What does a man deserve from me, if he is willing to steal from my brother's corpse?
What a scumbag (Score:2)
I don't want forgiveness.
Good! You're not going to get any from me.
I hate it when people say that. By refusing something they're implying that it has been offered to them, which reveals that they think that someone, somewhere, thinks they deserve it.
I just think [speaking out] was the responsible thing.
No, not deliberately lying about having and being cured of cancer was the responsible thing to do.
But she said people needed to "draw a line in the sand where they still treat someone with some level of respect or humility".
Sorry, but you've lost the right to dictate how much respect is due to you.
Above anything, I would like people to say, 'Okay, she's human.
I'd insist on a genetic test before believing even that, from her.
She's obviously had a big life.
Jesus... she's obviously got an ego inflated to
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I'd insist on a genetic test before believing even that, from her.
A genetic test would probably reveal that she is, in fact, a cancer. A walking, talking, lying, murdering, moneymaking malignant tumor.
I think that qualifies as irony. "I don't have cancer, I AM cancer."
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A very old trick revised - yet people fall for it (Score:2)
Capital Offense (Score:2)
almost a stupid as Steve Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
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He also bribed a doctor with a large property to jump the queue when it was too late, preventing someone else from living from the organ transplant. Nice chap that Jobs.
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At least Jobs did it to himself. This lady is doing it to others to promote herself and make money.
Jobs did the quackery based on his own beliefs and in the end, the only people he harmed was his family by his death - he didn't try to promote his lifestyle as good or it would cure cancer. What he
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Media's role (Score:4, Insightful)
That there are people who are willing to lie, even if their lies cause suffering to others, does not surprise me in the list.
What concerns me is the media's role in all this, who for the most part accepted her story without any questions or fact checking. There were so many inconsistencies in her story that even the most basic background check should have exposed her. I'm shocked that no one tried to even talk to her doctors to follow up on her medical claims, for example. Or a quick phone call to the charities she claimed to be supporting would have also exposed her charitable claims.
Her claims should never have been allowed to stand as long they did.
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Medical records are confidential. It is likely that a journalist could not fact-check this.
They wouldn't have needed to go through her medical records to expose her claims. As soon as they called the doctors and hospitals she claimed to have been treated at, and had been told that they had no records of such a patient, that should have been their first obvious clue. Had the media that hyped her story bothered to place a single call her story would've been easily exposed as an obvious sham. This wasn't an elaborate lie - it was full of inconsistencies, contradictions, and the most fundamental fact
This is my shocked face (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Jenny McCarthyism (Score:2)
And for those who get their medical advice from Playboy's Playmate of the Year there is Jenny McCarthy, of whom Wikipedia reports [wikipedia.org]:
"McCarthy's public presence and vocal activism on the vaccination-autism controversy, led, in 2008, to her being awarded the James Randi Educational Foundation's Pigasus Award, which is a tongue-in-cheek award granted for contributions to pseudoscience..."
"McCarthy's claims that vaccines cause autism are not supported by any medical evidence, and the original paper by Andrew Wakefield that formed the basis for the claims...
"In January 2011, McCarthy defended Wakefield..."
So in honor of Ms. McCarthy, can we henceforth refer to populist medical quackery practiced by uncredentialed public attention seekers as "Jenny McCarthyism?"
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Why the fuck did anyone listen to a playmate, of all the people on this planet, when it comes to advice on a medical subject? Do you go to your doctor for make up tips?
It speaks volumes about the people who fall for that bunk when you consider whose advice they take on what subject.
Wow! Ok, that IS actually news (Score:2)
You don't hear a snakeoil peddler admit that their crap is useless any day!
It's almost as rare as a politician admitting being wrong.
Impressive? (Score:2)
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Wait! Eating whole foods *doesn't* cure cancer?!
I don't know... sad though this is, people who believe this shit may just be Darwin in action.
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Usually it's called reckless endangerment, or perhaps criminal negligence. If you take an action that you know will cause death, it usually qualifies as murder though, whether it's telling a lie or pulling a trigger.
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It's true. Taking advantage of people who are desperate and fearful is despicable.
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The most irritating thing to me is that the people who believe her dreck will continue to believe it even after her and every other huckster selling miracle cures are shown to be charlatans. There is a large overlap between her fans and the anti-vaxxers.
Re:This is not good... (Score:5, Informative)
Eat all the healthy foods you like, it won't do jack for cancers caused by other factors like smoking, drinking, overtanning, etc... And this is just the kind of ignorance that this nasty piece of excrement posing as a human being expolited when peddling her snake oil.
Personally I hope that she gets tied up in lawsuits based off this for the rest of her miserable life.
Re:This is not good... (Score:4, Funny)
Personally I hope that she gets tied up in lawsuits based off this for the rest of her miserable life.
Getting brain cancer would be karma.
Re: This is not good... (Score:2)
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Not true; diet is known to have lots of effects on cancer treatment. Many of the treatments involve taking lots of toxic medicines, and a healthy diet can make the difference between a successful treatment, or not.
Learning the wrong thing is just as stupid as believing some book based on an individuals claimed experience.
The lesson here is just that the specifics she claimed were not true for her; it actually tells us nothing about the relative value of nutrition in cancer treatment; it doesn't support or r
Re:This is not good... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are SO full of shit, I'm surprised you can hear yourself think over all the noise from the flies swarming about.
Decades of research and trillions of dollars have done A LOT for cancer patients. In the past, cancer survival rates were so discouraging that the 5 year mark was considered terrific. The fact that you posted that comment, suggests that research has come a long in treating cancers. Instead of survival times of 6 months- 2 years, we now have significant numbers of people surviving past the 5 year mark. Hey, maybe we should start talking about things in terms of 10 year survival, but that's a long time for cancer patients to die of heart attacks, accidents, diabetes, etc. Pinning down survival rates would be much more difficult. Cancer research is already complex. We've done such a good job (yes good) of treating cancers (not curing) that jackholes like you ignorantly spill vitriol on the web. Classical Hodgkin's lymphoma was considered a death sentence 50 years ago. Now, the 5 year survival rate for Stage IV Hodgkin's is 65%. It's so treatable that we force teenagers to receive therapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma, because it's idiotic not to. Seminomas, which are cancers of testicles (more or less), have a 70% chance of survival even when it's Stage IV, meaning the cancer is widely metastatic and over the place. Stage II melanoma has survival rates of 90%. Our therapies are also getting better and better, with fewer side effects. Yes, they're expensive as hell, but they literally took decades of research to develop.
No, we haven't cured every type of cancer out there and we're still doing a terrible job with others (pancreatic carcinomas and glioblastomas come to mind). That said, we've come a long way with so many other types of cancers and even if they aren't cured, they're living longer and without disease/symptoms. You don't think that was worth the decades of research and trillions of dollars? Well, fuck you too then!
Re:This is not good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not cure cancer, but almost certainly eating right can prevent it.
No, eating right almost certainly cannot prevent cancer. It almost certainly can reduce the chances of getting cancer, but it has no hope of actually preventing it. It is a very small but incredibly significant distinction.
Re: This is not good... (Score:3)
That's not how cancer works. Cancerous cells are constantly arising and being killed by the immune system. Let's assume that eating healthy food reduces the incidence of metastatic cancer. Then it is preventing cancer in many instances. To claim that it prevents all run-away cancer processes would be a stronger claim with a much higher bar to meet.
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If doing X will prevent Y, then if I do X, Y will not occur.
Eating healthily may prevent many individual tumors from forming, but it does not prevent ALL of them, so it can't be said to prevent cancer. It may HELP prevent cancer, much like condoms help prevent pregnancy, but that's a much weaker claim.
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If eating better reduces the risk of cancer, then by definition it prevents SOME cancer. Remove the "SOME" and the statement still implies "SOME". If you assume "ALL" instead of "SOME", it does break, because "ALL" and "NONE" are rarely true absolutes.
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reduce the chances of getting cancer, but it has no hope of actually preventing it
If you reduce the chance, you do prevent it in at least some cases. So, your statement is in fact not accurate, as there is HOPE. I will repeat it, EATING well does prevent cancer in at least some people. Further, eating well does can reduce the severity of cancer, and that gives you a much better chance of beating it (at least certain forms). But if you insist on eating Bacon Wrapped Pork Chops thinking it doesn't matter to your health by all means keep eating it.
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If you reduce the chance, you do prevent it in at least some cases. So, your statement is in fact not accurate, as there is HOPE. I will repeat it, EATING well does prevent cancer in at least some people.
I suppose its just semantics, but if it is really eating poorly that causes risk to increase, then not eating poorly is not really preventing cancer, just not causing it. So, its really not eating bad food that lowers cancer risk.... and of course that implies eating well. Kind of like saying not riding in a car prevents you from getting a serious injury from an accident...technically true but kind of useless when looking for prevention techniques.
Not eating anything will prevent cancer.
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reduce the chances of getting cancer, but it has no hope of actually preventing it
If you reduce the chance, you do prevent it in at least some cases. So, your statement is in fact not accurate, as there is HOPE. I will repeat it, EATING well does prevent cancer in at least some people. Further, eating well does can reduce the severity of cancer, and that gives you a much better chance of beating it (at least certain forms). But if you insist on eating Bacon Wrapped Pork Chops thinking it doesn't matter to your health by all means keep eating it.
Like I said, there is a small but incredibly significant difference between saying something can be prevented and saying something is a prevention technique.
By saying you can prevent cancer you are saying it is 100% effective. If there is any chance cancer can arise, you are not preventing cancer.
By saying you hinder the growth or occurance of cancer, you are saying something is beneficial as a prevention technique. But you are not saying that it can prevent cancer.
Re:This is not good... (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe not cure cancer, but almost certainly eating right can prevent it.
Wrong. Very very incredibly wrong. Substantially more than half of all incidents of cancer are the result of random mutation. No amount of "eating right" will change that.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Honestly I'm tired of this stupid fucking "eating right means you never get sick" religion that seems to be going around (spread by some stupid celebrities like Bill Maher.) Eating wrong can cause problems (most common of which would be liver and heart disorders caused by eating too many sugars or too many electrolytes, followed by undernourishment from not consuming enough amino acid groups) but eating right isn't going to guarantee you'll never get sick.
Oh, and by the way, the actual store "Whole Foods" promotes some of these snake oil ideals:
- They sell very expensive homeopathic medicines which are proven to be worthless
- They maintain a list of banned foods that aren't harmful (glutamates, such as potassium glutamate) while including some foods that are known to kill some people (i.e. peanuts.)
- They sell a LOT of junk food that is VERY high in sugar, but claim to be a health food store.
Honestly the sooner this organic foods/whole foods religion dies, the better.
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Wrong. Very very incredibly wrong.
You are absolutely wrong. Eating right does prevent some cancers, because eating right reduces the risk of cancer, thus can be said to prevent. This is not "all or nothing" claim, which you are making it. Reducing the risk, means you prevent some.
Just as the opposite is true, increasing risk means "causes at least some" as in Smoking. Does smoking cause cancer if someone smokes their whole life and dies at age 100 of old age? Why yes, yes it does. It doesn't cause it in everyone. Increasing risk means helps
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the vast majority of lung cancer is people who smoked. the rest are usually found or believed to be caused by long term exposure to cigarette smoke, or other pollutants. only a tiny tiny fraction (2%) is thought to develop a cancer of the lungs without any adverse environmental inputs being the chief factor. it is one of the few cancers that is largely preventable through behavior/avoidance.
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Honestly I'm tired of this stupid fucking "eating right means you never get sick" religion that seems to be going around
All of these insane ideas, end up having at their very core, the concept of your disease is somehow your fault. Get XXX disease? That's because you weren't a vegan, or you ate too much thisorthat.
It gets really weird, because we end up doing things like avoiding all sun exposure, and people frantically thinking they are going to get melanoma and die because they got a little sun, and their skin turned pink for a day.
And the results? Vitamin D deficiency. When I was a child, we got a lot of outdoor time.
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This is nothing new. A friend's mother was diagnosed with cancer back in 1980 and she found a book promoting eating various sprouts as a "cure" for cancer. The family spent the next year growing sprouts in huge trays for her until she died. Didn't help a bit.
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And unfortunately for some, once the Cancer has arrived, eating right won't help, as the immune system is already compromised. Eating right helps keep the immune system optimized (helps, not perfect).
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And unfortunately for some, once the Cancer has arrived, eating right won't help, as the immune system is already compromised. Eating right helps keep the immune system optimized (helps, not perfect).
And there you have it. No True Scotsman meets cancer blamer.
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Or, you know the anecdote could be not intended to "prove" anything but show that "this is nothing new". "Cyberchondria" is just a new label, crap like this has been around since even before snake oil salesmen.
Read before replying.
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Are folks who write about phoney cures legally liable for the deaths that could be prevented by scien
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It makes sense though. You start with a small lie and you get sucked into it and pretty soon it's a lifestyle.
For example, I once claimed to understand computers in order to get a job and now I'm chief architect of a multinational tech giant. A user once asked where the missing files were and I was so flustered I blurted out "I don't know, maybe they're in a cloud somewhere", and suddenly the whole industry of cloud storage was born. Meanwhile I have a sneaking suspicion that the IT group has given me a Speak-and-Spell as my new laptop. I would complain but I think I'm more productive now.
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Then I hope you'll take one for the herd?
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You're dumber than a sack of hair.
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I'd think that whatever the verdict, I'd at least slap 200 hours of community work in a hospital for terminally ill cancer patients on top of it.
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"religion" = "large cult"
"cult" = "small religion"
I think we can conclude that any "cult" (except those instances not taken seriously) is bad.
Also: Eat healthy -> minor benefit, eat unhealthy -> massive problem.
On exercise, you are perfectly right of course, as long as it is not overdone.
Side note: How uneducated and stupid do you have to be to believe brain cancer can be cured by eating right? Sure, there is the minuscule number of people where a terminal cancer just vanishes, but no obvious cause ha