If someone makes scientific claims, but fails to follow a rigorous process, and when called out on it hand wave away the objections, they are teetering on the brink. When they then market the product despite the unfounded claims, they have moved past the line.

However I think there is one additional component. Research dollars are scarce. Plausibility of interaction is paramount to being able to place limited research dollars into the best therapies to really make a difference.

Peter,

To be clear, I am absolutely open to the possibility that gerson therapy might have a non-negligible influence on a persons recovery rates from cancer.

The mechanisms involved can be subtle....when I eat some kinds of food, I'm more likely to wake up in the morning feeling energized and interested in doing some light exercise. With other kinds of food, I'm more likely play video games. By doing some light exercise, I will circulate my lymph just a little more effectively, which will have a small, temporary influence on the distribution of immune system components in my body.

I believe that some aspects of the course of a disease process are, sometimes, highly non-deterministic. Small changes in the state of a system at key points in time could lead to large changes in the outcome.

The person doing the light exercise might get lucky, and find that the tiny improvement in their immune systems functioning due to the temporary improvement in the circulation of lymph could end up having a significant influence on the course of their disease.

They could also get unlucky - if the increased heart rate happened to break up a collection of cancer cells and aid them in moving through the body to a new location. These are just examples, there are other tiny ways that gerson therapy could increase or decrease a persons chance of survival.

Take these tiny potential influences, and then multiply them over a 6 month period (while also setting aside 'magical thinking', and assuming this 'treatment' choice has no impact on what other treatments they would do or not do), and it seems possible to me that some parts of gerson therapy could improve some people's chance of survival, and, possibly, lessen other people's chance of survival.

So I do not dismiss gerson therapy as useless.

It qualifies as 'quackery' in my book purely because of the marketing ******** behind it.


BBC wrote:



I agree.




I agree. I think its silly, often, when CAM enthusiasts cry about the lack of research money being spent on 'therapies' that have no real evidence supporting them, and no plausible pathways. These people are usually part of a subculture that has mesmerized itself into believing the ridiculous, including dramatic misrepresentations of the treatments effectiveness (and the evidence/plausibility thereof).

In theory I agree with them that too much of the total research money is being spent by big pharma, but what are you going to do? For the most part, its their money. Do they want to take down capitalism, altogether? And sadly, these are the same people who would vote against increased government funding for research.

massage,

I suggest you watch the documentaries that I have posted in this thread. If you watch no other vids, at least watch the one I'll repost at the end of this post.

You claim the label of "quackery" is based on the marketing and/or sale of these treatments, correct?

Well, Gerson, Hoxsey and the hemp oil treatments all have been offered free of charge, which would exclude them from being labeled "quackery" by your definition.

All thereapies have their ingredients and premises freely available to anyone who wishes to know. If you truly research these remedies, you may find that a great number of the ingredients are and have been researched for anti-tumor properties with a majority of them having supporting scientific evidence of their effectiveness.

Until you or others have done the appropriate studies, calling any type of treatment "ridiculous" is a premature condemnation that falls into the catergory of "quackery"...

Well I followed the link and saw that it was 90 minutes total. I spent 5 minutes jumping to different parts of the video, all which I found excruciatingly boring and filled with things I have already heard. (Whether its from formal study at a university, or my deep and lengthy immersion in fringe health culture, or other).

I would be far more open to spending 15-20 minutes reading a complete transcript, and then jumping to portions that might have video worth watching, rather than spending 90 minutes watching this.

Do you have a link to a transcript?



To be clear, I intentionally use the label 'quackery' when any one of a collection of sets of sufficient conditions are met, only some of which I've commented on. Exploiting people for huge dollar amounts is part of one set of sufficient conditions, but its not a necessary condition. Depending on the particulars, the existence simply of over-hyped marketing BS involving claims of therapeutic benefit, which do not meet good standards of evidence, may be a sufficient condition for me to call something quackery.

Its not necessary for a treatment to be sold - sometimes the motive is simply to aggrandize one's ego. Sometimes its the books that are being sold, not the treatment. If it involves grandiose, unsubstantiated claims (or careful language intended to deceive people into believing such things, without explicitly claiming it), then I'd likely call that quackery.

I'm not calling gerson himself a quack simply because i lack enough specific information on him. There have been cases where a non-quack presented an interesting idea, and then foolish people developed a subculture around it, distorting the idea, and creating 'quackery' (wrong beliefs in the effectiveness of a treatment method, and a collection of memes to propagate those wrong beliefs) of their own. Which is a rare edge case in which I might call a treatment a 'quack treatment' without there being any actual 'quacks' profiting (or selling books, or aggrandizing their ego as the inventor).

In the case of people (supposedly) selling gerson therapy treatments for cancer patients for $5k a week, thats also a cause (given the lack of evidence for effectiveness) for calling them quacks. People like them can turn gerson therapy into a 'quack treament', just as could be done with aspirin. Just like with the aspirin example - the alleged practioners just south of the border do not, by themselves, invalidate any notion that gerson therapy may have a legitimate use.

If there was a group of people who were successfully selling aspirin in the manner described a few posts back, then I would call aspiring a 'quack treatment'. Clearly, its still good for headaches (and a dozen other uses).




I don't know if Gerson was a quack or not. I'm not even concerned about it.

Regardless of Gerson's integrity, or lack thereof, it looks like the therapy that bears his name is used by quacks. Further, the mythos surrounding the therapy that bears his name has gone far beyond quack status.




We all know that some foods contain cancer-fighting compounds.

This doesn't mean that eating that food will cure you of cancer.




Looking at the past couple pages, it seems like this really bothers you.


Your next comments criticize the FDA and big pharma. It's a sad state of affairs. Organizations like the FDA have even been selling out to big CAM, at least in other countries.

You don't care... You are too bored to watch a video...

All thereapies have their ingredients and premises freely available to anyone who wishes to know.

Oh, no, you have it backwards. I am not bored. If I was bored I might watch the video. And when I was 16 I would have found the video interesting, since it would have had so much new information.

... I spent 5 minutes jumping to different parts of the video, all which I found excruciatingly boring and filled with things I have already heard....

What did you mean when you said this?

Most of those links are like watching David Copperfield and expecting him to show you the details of the trick . . . it isn't going to happen.

Real science can be summarized, and the sources can be easily defined.

Which must be why you haven't shown ONE study that supports your position...

Go figure...

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001SPIE.4378...90M

I found time to let the video run while tidying my room, the later when resting. I watched about the middle hour of the 90 minutes.

Remember, I spent a year associating with raw foodists. I've heard all this before. While I don't bother remembering specific names, dates, and specific trials, I've heard variations of the basic stories again and again and again and again. Most of the time, these events are tied to the most insane abuses of logic as these people draw conclusions about things.

Somehow they will go from "prominent AMA (or FDA etc) person is corrupt" to "therefore raw pineapple juice cures gall stones!"

The evils of big pharma and the evils of individual AMA or FDA members does not justify the evil of claiming that coffee enemas will cure cancer.

A number of much smaller errors of logic were made in this video, but in only a few places did I find it directly crossed a line into some misleading or anti-reality memes.

It took me a while to realized that the most important messages were not being explicitly stated. Like all good conspiracy 'documentaries', they posed questions, and presented answers, in such a way as to make dishonest insinuations and implications - without making the outright dishonest claims themselves. They also used music and imagery to try to shape the emotional experience of the viewer, encouraging those same wrong and biased views. It was like a lengthy big pharma advert, except for a different kind of product.

In short, this is a propaganda piece. Like all good propaganda pieces, it includes a healthy dose of factually correct information.