Trick or Treatment—The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Electronic book text)

For example, a BBC news item in 2005 featured a bioresonance machine that could supposedly cure smoking addiction, but this was nothing more than fake gadgetry. John Agapiou, a neurophysiologist at University College, London, complained to the BBC:

The item presented a treatment where the ‘wave pattern of nicotine’ is allegedly recorded and then inverted, nullifying the effect of nicotine on the body…In short the entire piece was a credulous and uncritical advertisement for this treatment…Bioresonance does not work. There is no experimental or theoretical validity to this nonsense. No scientific knowledge is necessary to realize this, just a little critical thought or even a little googling…It was stated in the program that bioresonance can be used to treat illness. In fact, proponents claim that it is an effective treatment for cancer! It is not. I’m sure you can see that an uncritical report such as this conspires to put vulnerable people and their money into the hands of charlatans and is culpable in any damage to their health caused by delaying or even preventing their access to effective medical care.

Another good example of bad broadcasting, cited by Dan Hurley in Natural Causes, comes from CBS in America. Their flagship investigative news programme 60 Minutes essentially created an entire market for one of the most dubious alternative treatments in recent years. In 1993 the programme ran a segment entitled ‘Sharks Don’t Get Cancer’, based on the contents of a book with the same name. Written by a Florida businessman called Bill Lane, the book argued that shark cartilage could be used to treat tumours. Lane’s evidence to back this treatment came from some very preliminary research and the observation that sharks rarely get cancer. In fact, the ‘Tumor Register of Lower Animals’ records that forty-two varieties of cancer (including forms of cartilage cancer) have been found in sharks and related species.

There was already a small market in shark cartilage as a cancer treatment, but the hype generated by 60 Minutes triggered a rush for shark-based remedies. According to Lane, there were thirty new shark-cartilage products on the shelves within two weeks of the broadcast and within two years these products were generating $30 million per year.

Yet the preliminary research did not demonstrate with any confidence that shark cartilage was effective in treating cancer. Had this been a conventional pharmaceutical, then it would have been forced to undergo years of research in order to prove that it was safe and effective, and only then would it have been available through prescription. But, because this was a natural alternative product, then no such regulation and testing were deemed necessary. Instead, shark cartilage was being distributed to health stores across America, and cancer patients were clamouring for it.

Incidentally, this took a terrible toll on the shark population. For example, Holland & Barrett, the UK’s largest chain of health-food shops, has admitted that it sourced its shark cartilage from Spiny Dogfish and the Blue Shark, both of which are classified as ‘vulnerable species’, which means that they carry a high risk of becoming extinct. In a letter to the Shark Trust, the company stated: ‘Holland & Barrett will continue to sell shark cartilage due to customer demand, until such time that the species is classed as an endangered species.’ The classification ‘endangered’ means a very high risk of extinction, as opposed to merely a high risk.

In the late 1990s, concerned that the public was being duped, scientists began submitting shark cartilage to the sort of rigorous clinical trials that it should have undergone before being widely promoted. One by one, the trials concluded that shark cartilage had no medical value. Today, we can see how 60 Minutes had nationally promoted a treatment that in reality offered no benefit, causing thousands of people to waste millions of dollars.

Worse still, it seems that some cancer patients suffered as a direct result of being swept up in the fad. In 1997 the New England Journal of Medicine reported the case of a nine-year-old Canadian girl who had undergone surgery to remove a brain tumour. Doctors had recommended radiation and chemotherapy as a follow-up treatment, which would have given the girl a 50/50 chance of survival. Her parents, however, had been impressed by the publicity surrounding shark cartilage and decided to forgo the conventional treatment in favour of the alternative. This decision, according to the doctors, removed any chance of survival: ‘Four months later, marked tumor progression was documented, and the patient subsequently died…We find it difficult to understand how conventional treatments for childhood cancer can be repudiated in favour of alternative approaches for which any evidence of efficacy is lacking.’

6 The media (again)