Miracle Cancer Cure!

[woesong]

Hello. I'm the proprietor of a forum for collective journaling called NerdNosh, where we tell our stories, which are presumed to be factual and actual. However, recently I had offered a Living Testimonial from someone who had found, she declared, a cure for cancer.

She wasn't kidding.

I wanted to run it, but not in the sense she intended. I thought it would be fun to follow it with a learned rebuttal, which I'm not qualified to furnish. I wish the argument in better hands.

I'm taking the liberty of including the notice right here. I hope someone reading it might offer a commentary which might be included with the article in NerdNosh, as that's the only way I would allow it to publish.

I thank you.



A CURE FOR CANCER



Last summer I was looking for alternate medicine for treating a muscle disorder I have had for years which keeps me ill and in pain most of the time. I met a lady who sells vitamins and mineral supplements and I began taking them. She told me that nearly every illness can be cured with nutrition, but that it could take up to two years. After taking them for 3 months, I was able to get off most of my 12 perscription medications, which by the way were costing $1400. per month. Although I’m not completely well yet, I am doing much, much better on the vitamin and mineral supplements than I was doing on the medications and it is costing a fraction of what I was spending on drugs.


During my research into nutrition I came across a book by a man who is a chemist and he tells in his book how to use nutrition to let your body cure itself of cancer. I read his book with excitement and wonder. At the back of his book, there are dozens of testimonials from people who have used his formula to rid themselves of cancer.


Of course, this goes against mainstream medicine, but the testimonials were very convincing. This man’s name is Robert Barefoot and his books are “The Calcium Factor” and “Death by Diet.” I got my book on Amazon.com.


A few months later a friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He has cancer of the colon and kidneys. His doctor told him he had about 5 to 6 months and there wasn’t a treatment for him. I took the book to him, explained the theory and BOUGHT HIM THE SUPPLEMENTS TO TAKE! He said he would take them, but he never quite got around to it. I called him often and asked if he had started taking the supplements or if he had read the book I bought for him. The answer was always, “No, but I will soon.” Then his doctors told him NOT to take any vitamins or supplements, so he never started the program. I knew that he didn’t believe me when I told him that a chemist was curing cancer patients with a simple nutritional program. Since I didn’t know anyone who had actually used this method to cure themselves of cancer, I finally dropped the subject, heart sick.



Yesterday, I got a phone call from him. He had been told by a social worker that there is a man who lives in a small town only 15 miles from our town who used Robert Barefoot’s method and has cured himself of cancer. I got very excited and called this man today. His story is amazing!


His name is Robert Caraway. Mr. Caraway told me that in April of 2002 he started feeling a severe pain in his back. He thought he had a pinched nerve. The pain began escalating. He got sicker and sicker and finally had to go to bed. He couldn’t stand up for the pain and also the weakness his illness had caused. After going to doctors and having tests done, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. His cancer was in his prostate and had also metastasized to his bones. His doctors told him to go home and make preparations to die….get his affairs in order.


Instead Mr. Caraway went home and began researching alternative cures for cancer. He came across “Death by Diet,” by Robert Barefoot. He read the book and ordered the supplements recommended. On August 22, 2002, he began taking the supplements. The first two weeks he was taking the supplements, he had flu-like symptoms and some stomach upsets off and on, but he never veered from the program, taking each supplement exactly as directed. During the 3rd and 4th week, his color began coming back and his pain began leaving. At the end of 30 days he was feeling normal again, getting his energy back.


After 60 days it was time for another checkup. His PSA, which had been out the roof, was now zero. He felt great and had no pain. The doctors were amazed! They asked him what he did and he told them. They shook their head and said, “Well, we could never recommend this to any of our patients because it hasn’t been approved by the FDA!” Mr. Caraway said, “well, then, you’ll just have to let your other patients die, but I’m alive!”


Mr. Caraway is now completely well, and is on maintenance levels of the nutritional supplements. He talks to people all over the world who have found out about his fabulous success. Today when I talked to him, he was very nice and didn’t mind spending his time telling me exactly what he did.


Mr. Caraway’s story is just one of thousands who have cured themselves of cancer using this method. Here’s the simplified version, as I understand it, of how this works. Cancer cells live in an acidic environment. They cannot live in an alkaline environment. Everyone who has cancer is very acidic. If you take certain supplements that make your body alkaline, the cancer cells can not live. It’s so simple that no one believes it. By taking Coral Calcium, Vitamin D-3 5,000IU, Cesium Chloride, Oxy Plus Supreme, and CoQ10, together they cause your body to become alkaline. It takes 30 days to rid yourself of cancer cells with this formula.



Robert Barefoot developed this program based on a research paper a doctor had done back in 1933. This same doctor won a Nobel Prize for this research. The medical community has known about this since 1933! But they have ignored it. They can't make money perscribing supplements and moreover, neither can the pharmaceutical companies, who control the medical industry. I get angry just thinking of how many hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this. I have family members and friends, and everyone knows someone who has died of cancer.


The formula is in Robert Barefoot’s two books, and in addition, it’s also on his website which is: www.cureamerica.net If you click on the link that reads, “I’m Sick, I Need Help,” it gives the formula at the end of that chapter. There are dozens of testimonials on his site also, like in his book. You can also email Robert Barefoot directly and ask where to get the Cancer Super Health Package. Robert Barefoot doesn’t sell two of the products for his program, which are Cesium Chloride and Vitamin D-3, 5,000 IU. You can buy those two products from Ministry Minerals in Silver Springs, NV. Their number is: 1-888-818-5580.

If you know of anyone who has cancer, you can tell them this story. It may not help, but you can try. Good luck!

www.nerdnosh.com (http://www.nerdnosh.com) http://www.nerdnosh.com A CURE FOR CANCER [I]

[Ove]

I can't really make up my mind about you. Either you are a TROLL or you are just plain stupid. This is a sceptic board and yet you post a woo-woo tale of dimensions. Well my friend take a deep breath you'll shortly experience a force 12 storm.

Let me begin by pointing out that you do not post ONE SHRED of evidence just a lot of "a friend told me" and "I read about". That just isn't good enough.

Name-Adress-Phone number etc... on the cured please, AND the name of the institute/doctor that diagnosed them before and after the "treatment.

[RichardR]

The only commentary this merits is: they're just anecdotes. And anecdotes are worthless.

The person making these claims needs to provide evidence. As Ove said, names, case histories, independent verification. You don't have to demonstrate anything, the person making the claim does.

[jimerson]

:eek:
Originally posted by Ove
I can't really make up my mind about you. Either you are a TROLL or you are just plain stupid.

Bad day, Ove? ;) . Re-read the first few paragraphs.

woesong, Quackwatch usually keeps up with this kind of stuff.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/coral.html

[edthedoc]

This all sounds so familiar, but like some of the other posters, I can't quite work out if there is an underlying reason for the original posting.

Sticking to the point though, this is all rubbish. Anecdotes don't equal evidence. Vitamins and minerals are essential for a normal diet but very, very rarely make any difference to a particular illness, and DON'T CURE cancer.

Frankly, I'm bored and saddened by all the cancer cure claims, particularly ones involved special diets or supplements, and especially ones promoted by someone trying to make money out of their book. This has been done so many times before. They don't work. It is all bunk.

Show me the EVIDENCE.

[glee]

Here is a another thread on this forum, entitled '101 Ways to Determine if Something is Bogus Science'
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15433

A few of those ways:

17. It is a new invention that will revolutionize the World, yet it can be yours for 5000 $

21. There is anecdotal evidence available to read.

25. The conventional science bureaucracy is conspiring to suppress this theory.

30: Big oil/automotive/aicraft/armament/mining/whatever companies are trying to suppress this invention.

38) It is pushed under one of the headings "complementary", "alternative", "holistic", "ayurvedic", or any combination thereof.

I have two further comments.

1. Real scientists (including a friend of mine) have been searching for a cancer cure for decades. They have considered many hypotheses, done countless scientific trials and still have no surefire cure.
The garbage above is an insult to these hard-working professionals.
The amount of money that would be paid by unfortunate victims of cancer is phenomonal.
Strangely Mr. Barefoot is not richer than Bill Gates. I wonder why? :rolleyes:

2. I am the president of the British Society of Levitators. We are a registered charity, who exist to teach people how to levitate. :cool:
Anyone can learn to do this, provided they pay us a smallish fee to cover administration and expenses.
We have patents pending with both the UK and US patent offices.
We have testimonials from delighted users, which can be inspected at our offices.
Please note that our proven technology uses quantum effects, but is not dangerous if used properly. (Our only fatality so far was a levitator who refused to stop, travelled into outer space and passed away there.)
Note that our fees do not include spacesuits.
Finally there is a limit on our technology.
it is a well-known psychic principle that disbelief in this proven technology emits negative thought waves which interfere with the levitation. Therefore if any so-called 'scientific' observer is either present, or viewing in any way, the levitation will be disrupted.
No refunds.

[woesong]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jimerson
[B]:eek:


Bad day, Ove? ;) . Re-read the first few paragraphs.

woesong, Quackwatch usually keeps up with this kind of stuff.

--

I can only hope somene does. I was beginning to despair of finding someone who can read in this forum, which surprised me. Glad to see jimerson here.

The project to me seemed so very simple. I'll draw it out very plainly so even this Ove should comprehend it.

(1) An article, undoubtedly idiotic, came to me as editor of another forum, that one featuring personal histories.

(2) I wanted to run it for fun and as an object lesson, but with reality included in the form of a clinical rebuttal.


Specifically and to the point, I had hoped my learned reader might zero in on the following paragraph:

"Here’s the simplified version, as I understand it, of how this works. Cancer cells live in an acidic environment. They cannot live in an alkaline environment. Everyone who has cancer is very acidic. If you take certain supplements that make your body alkaline, the cancer cells can not live. It’s so simple that no one believes it. By taking Coral Calcium, Vitamin D-3 5,000IU, Cesium Chloride, Oxy Plus Supreme, and CoQ10, together they cause your body to become alkaline. It takes 30 days to rid yourself of cancer cells with this formula."

I still await the result I had hoped for, but in the meanwhile, let me leave you with a sad conclusion from my own empirical, anectdotal databank.

There are many who substitute the gruff skeptic's manner for basic intelligence. You can see them everywhere; they use insult in place of reading comprehension. The theme, as in almost all criticism, is simply, "You will accept my premise that I am above all that I condemn."

I do not.


Thanks to jimerson, I will hang on in here for another day.

[Luceiia]

Originally posted by woesong
Specifically and to the point, I had hoped my learned reader might zero in on the following paragraph:

<SNIP>



Here ya go:

Acid/Alkaline Theory of Disease Is Nonsense by Gabe Mirkin, M.D. (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/coral2.html)

Related reading:

Robert Barefoot's Credentials (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/barefootcv.html)

Luceiia
Chocolate might cure cancer...even if not it's fun to gorge on it and hope!

[woesong]

I'm much obliged, Luceiia; this is precisely what I was looking for! My confidence is restored. Thanks also for the Quackwatch referral.

The article will run with the expert testimony links the next Nosh issue.

Good work!

NerdNosh, the Collective Journal, since 1991 (http://www.nerdnosh.com)

[jimerson]

woesong, I think some of the hostility you met stems from the way you titled the thread, "Miracle Cancer Cure!". I suspect "Help me debunk a Miracle Cancer Cure" may have fared better. :)

[woesong]

I will accept the criticism about Truth in Labeling for any future thread I might suggest, and so you will know when I flout the convention I do so advisedly - but, c'mon, we're talking about the possibility that anyone would wander into a forum of known skeptics to flaunt a fraud cancer cure. If anyone thought the title said it all, then maybe that explains why there is so much successful bunko going on over the wires in the first place.

I realize the disclaimer, although clearly written into the preamble, does not always suffice. Just look at the thousands who panicked during the War of the Worlds broadcast!

Of course, back then many missed the disclaimer because they were listening to the beginning of Charlie McCarthy.

I wonder...

[Dragonrock]

Originally posted by woesong
but, c'mon, we're talking about the possibility that anyone would wander into a forum of known skeptics to flaunt a fraud cancer cure.

You'd be surprised how often we seen thread titles like "Undisputed proof of global warming!!" or "Proof of alien influence in the Great Pyramids". The thread starter then shows "proof" that is non-existant or obviously wrong, then gets mad when everyone doesn't suddenly admit that they have completely changed their view of the world. It makes people here a little sensitive to trolling.

[spoonhandler]

From the article:
The medical community has known about this since 1933! But they have ignored it. They can't make money perscribing supplements and moreover, neither can the pharmaceutical companies, who control the medical industry. I get angry just thinking of how many hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this.

I get angry just reading the idea that the medical community would ignore or hide a cure for any disease. Angry or tired. People involved in cancer research (and I am one of them) do not discount any untested theory that might hold the answer.

Also, be wary of those who talk about cancer as if it is one thing, one disease for which one cure will work. There are many, many types of cancer, affecting different tissues in different ways and for which we will need different treatments.

Lastly, the apparently miraculous cure that sometimes occurs has a scientific explanation. Some people are very fortunate enough to have their immune system wake up to the trouble in time to respond. Tumours, even extensive and apparently terminal tumours, shrink away to nothing. It is incredibly rare, and researchers are looking into ways of inducing this response, but the answer isn't clear yet. Naturally, patients who experience such a phenomenon may ascribe it to faith, alternative therapy, positive thinking or even conventional therapy, or a combination of these, but the real reason is not yet known.

[Ove]

OK, i'm sorry. I should have left option no. 3:


YOU'RE PULLING MY LEG.

Your post seemed to real for me to spot the irony as other posters have mentioned, we have had dozens of theese posts AND they usually comes from a guy who have only made 2-5 posts.

Another time try an ironic smiley :rolleyes: or something like that. ;)

[shemp]

Originally posted by Luceiia


Here ya go:

Acid/Alkaline Theory of Disease Is Nonsense by Gabe Mirkin, M.D. (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/coral2.html)

Related reading:

Robert Barefoot's Credentials (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/barefootcv.html)

Luceiia
Chocolate might cure cancer...even if not it's fun to gorge on it and hope!

Look at Robert Barefoot's credentials and you'll see that he has accomplished something far greater than curing cancer:

1992 to 1898 Guest speaker at health conventions and on radio and TV talk shows in America and Canada giving detailed defense to the concept that degenerative diseases are caused by mineral anti vitamin deficiency.

Great Flaming Balls of Zeus!!! The man has invented a time machine!!! He is traveling backwards in time!!!

[woesong]

In my neighborhood, Northern California, the vortex of the Nuministic Nuncio of Nincompoops, I could not toss a waterballoon down a crowded street without dousing at least a half dozen citizens who had stood at the foot of the cross. The population of the crucifixion is fixed by those who gauge great crowds at public gatherings at some three hundred thousand.

Oddly enough, no one of them has thought to bring back any relics or worthwhile data from the period. Past-life regressers are warned to pack extremely light, and that includes intellectual ballast as well. I think travel arrangements are through American Airlines overseas, coach class.

So a movement from 1992 to 1898 would not even be worth mentioning where the newage nabobs hobnob.

I'm wondering if a profile of True Believers in fairy tales exists anywhere. The one whose discovery of a cancer cure led off this thread is a former beauty queen who is in her late fifties and still as self-absorbed as ever. She is, I'm afraid, the archetypal cartoon of the type. She grasps at simple solutions, and one reason I'm convinced is because that's the limit of her comprehension.

She broadcast her magical discovery to her online rolodex, and I took the liberty of replying with the research provided right here to all of them. (That's one method I use to remove myself from all those irksome "forward" lists the fledglings foment.) The lady was livid. She has been abusing me in e-mail, even in a certain forum I created some time ago. I guess she was just reluctant to give up the Easter Bunny.

She hasn't, by the way, read the links provided here, and she apparently doesn't intend to. She has "personal experience," she says, by which she means she has called the providers of "living testimonials" on the phone personally.

I feel sorry for her, more than any other emotion. But she can take great comfort in the fact that she represents the vast majority of unthinking minions of misconception and malpractice.

[RichardR]

Originally posted by woesong
She hasn't, by the way, read the links provided here, and she apparently doesn't intend to. She has "personal experience," she says, by which she means she has called the providers of "living testimonials" on the phone personally.People like that will never do anything that might challenge their prejudices.

I have a friend who is into astrology. I’ve been talking to him for some time about how it fails every time it’s tested, and I try to explain how you need to control for confirmation bias by double-blinding, for a test to be meaningful. He was at my place a couple of days ago, and I showed him my copy of Shawn Carlson’s double-blind test of astrology published in “Nature”, and asked him if he wanted to read it. The main points are highlighted in yellow marker to make it easy. He laughed and said no.

I’m sure that some people read the references you provided and have taken note of them.

[woesong]

I’m sure that some people read the references you provided and have taken note of them.

I'm often reminded of a helpful sign I saw which was placed on a wall above the toilets of a latrine in Ft Sill, Oklahoma. The sign read: "This water is not potable!

I told this to a friend, and she scoffed at the obvious: "Anybody who would drink out of a toilet would not know what `potable' means."

I may have wasted my time. Anyone who believes there is a magical cure for cancer in simple supplements cannot be reached by printed logic...

[RichardR]

Originally posted by woesong
I may have wasted my time. Anyone who believes there is a magical cure for cancer in simple supplements cannot be reached by printed logic... There will have been some people on that mailing list who would have only believed that it might be true. Some would have been on the fence. Some who wouldn’t really believe it, but wouldn’t know where to go to find out if it was true. Many of those people have now been exposed to the facts. And people do become less accepting of what they read on the Internet eventually, if this kind of thing is continually pointed out.

So I don’t think your efforts have been wasted.

[CSSMariner]

Did they try the only, real, means of obtaining a "cure" prayer? It works every time.

Yeah, RIGHT, that's why children’s cancer wards are not empty. Nutrition cancer treatment falls in the same hogwash BS category as prayer healing.:mad: :mad: :mad:

[Mark]

MY first wife battled cancer (she died in 1995) for several years; for a couple of reasons, her case was forwarded to some of the front line cancer researchers in the nation. I had many opportunities to meet and talk with these hardworking, dedicated people. If there were such an easy cure out there, it is impossible for me to believe these same people would help to conceal ANY effective treatment for cancer.

They even encouraged her to try Linus Paulings' "Vitamin C" therapy, since they felt it wouldn't interefere with standard therapies, and could at least give her a feeling of actively participating.

At the time, they were working on a new type of gene therapy that held great promise; when it didn't pan out, their disapointment was palpable.

Remember, these are not vague, faceless entities working on this disease. They are real human beings who have dedicated their lives to helping others.

[Soapy Sam]

What exactly is meant by the phrase " A cure for cancer"?

This is akin to a cure for tennis.

Cancer is doing just fine, thanks.

I suspect what is meant is "a cure for people suffering the effects of cancer". This will come, at which point the major killer of humans (apart from car crashes and other accidents) will be...something else. We all die. Very sad for the bereaved, but there it is. One day, the common cold will be one of mankind's most lethal scourges. A great day for medecine, but will we be any happier?

[spoonhandler]

It's a good point Soapy - something gets us all in the end.

However, as someone whose job is based on looking for effective means of treatment for some types of cancers, I know there are better ways to die and better times. I'm not willing to say to a 15 year old boy with testicular cancer, "Well, you had to go sometime!" I'm not even willing to say, "Well, you're going to live, but with terrible side effects, because we can't be bothered to find a better cure than the one we have now. Come on: it's 90% effective! Who cares about side effects!"

I'm also not willing to say to a lady in her 60s that I won't keep trying to find a means of treating kidney cancer because in the end we all die of something. Who wants to die from the effects of having all your healthy lung tissue being replaced by useless tumour?

We're not even necessarily looking for a cure - we're looking for a treatment. Even if the time remaining is going to be short, quality needs to be the priority. We can't live for ever, it's true: all the more important that we live as well we can.

[woesong]

Spoonhandler reminds me of a player in the movie Lord Jim who was leading a band of warriors and he was the only professional and the walls of the stockade were breached and it was all hopeless and yet he continued his expert and diligent processes. It was the finest example of what I used to read in Hemingway, or maybe comments on Hemingway, about how the end result does not void a certain comportment...

I sat in the main room of a hotel on Market Street in San Francisco one year. The cause was a three-day "workshop" on "Divine Light Healing." I was there as an observor, as was my wife. I looked about me and wondered, are all these characters loons?

The star of the show presented slides. They were having much trouble adjusting the picture. It was too large for the screen, you see. Nobody knew what to do. There is the projector and there the screen and the picture is just too large for the screen. What to do?

The star asked whenever there was something important in the lower part of the picture that the projector be physically lifted so it might appear.

The subject was how this divine light flows through our chakras and when you're sick you only need your chakras plumbed. Some of the slides showed the traditional old flash reflection, and the Star identified the light as "chakras."

They all knew all this about chakras...or if they didn't, there were lots of product out in the lobby on tables you could buy to learn it.

Then someone would stand up and ask a career question, say; "Should I be a Divine Light® guru?" The star would inspect his aura. (I'm wondering if anyone here has the clairvoyance to guess what her answer was? The one needing carrer counseling might continue with the game and pay the star hundreds and hundreds for future workshops or go back to the car wash. Take your time.)

And then it hit me. Of course, these aren't all kooks. The star is filling up a large hotel auditorium at something between three and four hundred dollars a shot. Of course, they want their own franchise.

This conclusion about the marketing of the mataphysics was maniifested further years later when I found that my sister-in-law, who is one of those who is weary of the real world and lives in the paranormal, told us of two of her sufi gurus visiting on separate occasions.

These folks gather to talk about healing power and energy action. The gurus developed physical symptoms which spooked them. An aching left arm, a shortness of breath.

They each set aside their divine healing apparatus and hied their keesters to the traditional prossaic mundane unenlightened old emergency room.

[Mark]

A great day for medecine, but will we be any happier?

Soapy, if my wife had not died at the age of 39, then, yes, I definitely would be happier. And so would our children. Duh.

I am resisting the temptation to make rude, flatulent noises in your direction.