The Wellness Warrior, Jess Ainscough, has passed away

Two months ago, I took note of a somewhat cryptic blog post by a young woman named Jess Ainscough. In Australia and much of the world, Ainscough was known as the Wellness Warrior. She was a young woman who developed an epithelioid sarcoma in 2008 and ended up choosing "natural healing" to treat her cancer. Among the "natural healing" modalities touted by the Wellness Warrior included that quackery of quackeries, the Gerson protocol, complete with coffee enemas and everything. She even did videos explaining how to administer coffee enemas and posted them on YouTube, although that video is now private. In fact, most of her videos appear to have disappeared from her YouTube channel as private, and there is nothing but a notice on her website announcing this:

Banner announcing Jess Ainscough's death

Sadly, yesterday Jess Ainscough passed away. There's no information on what took her life, but it's hard not to assume that it was her cancer. Given this development, Ainscough's words from two months ago make more sense:

When I left you back in June to begin a period of self-care hibernation, my plan was to get my health back in tip top shape and then spend some time creating some awesome new stuff for you. The reality, however, is that I’ve spent the whole time focused on my health. For the last few months, I’ve been pretty much bedridden. Let me fill you in on what’s been going on with me …

This year absolutely brought me to my knees. I’ve been challenged, frightened, and cracked open in ways I never had before. After my mum died at the end of last year, my heart was shattered and it’s still in a million pieces. I had no idea how to function without her, and it turns out my body didn’t either. For the first time in my almost seven year journey with cancer, this year I’ve been really unwell. I’ve lived with cancer since 2008 and for most of those years my condition was totally stable. When my mum became really ill, my cancer started to become aggressive again. After she died, things really started flaring up.

I’ve had scans to detect what’s going on in my body, and I can report that the disease is still contained to my left arm and shoulder, however I do have a big fungating tumour mass in that shoulder that’s causing me dramas. Over 10 months of non-stop bleeding from the armpit has rendered me really weak (and uncomfortable) and as a result I’ve had no choice but to stop absolutely everything and rest. Tallon, my freaking hero, has had to step up and help me with everything from making food and juices, doing all of our housework and laundry to doing my hair.

At the time, I noted that Ainscough's health had clearly taken a turn for the worse and couldn't help but wonder whether she was doing even worse than she was letting on. Indeed, at the time, her admission seemed rather amazing, given how jealously she had guarded any hint that she wasn't doing very well and how careful she was to hide her arm in publicity photos. Of course, this being the age of smartphone cameras, where almost everyone has a camera on herself at nearly all times, she couldn't always succeed, and photos of her showing how bad her arm was did appear. I also speculated at the time that maybe Ainscough had finally decided to return to "conventional" treatment, possibly even an amputation. In retrospect, I now have to wonder whether when Ainscough posted this she knew that she was dying and that nothing more could be done. For example:

I believe that as a result of my willingness to stop controlling my healing path and surrender to whatever the universe has up its sleeves to help me, I’ve attracted the most amazing healing team. I’m working with an oncologist who is kind, caring and non-judgemental – completely unlike any of the specialists I worked with in the early days of my journey. When we are open and in a state of surrender, the right people/situations/tools will appear. Final decisions and plans are now in process and I’ll keep you in the loop in the new year.

This was so sad then. It's even sadder now.

I first encountered the Wellness Warrior a year and a half ago when her mother, Sharyn Ainscough, died tragically of breast cancer. Her mother, it turns out, had treated her breast cancer with the same sorts of useless treatments as her daughter treated her sarcoma. Now, I can understand why Jess would choose woo. She was unfortunate enough to develop a cancer that was, paradoxically, both very nasty and very indolent. (After all, she survived seven years with it.) Moreover, because her tumor involved her shoulder, the first line treatment recommended consisted of a very disfiguring amputation that sounded like a forequarter amputation. It's an amputation that involves removing not just the arm, but removing the entire shoulder joint and the shoulder blade. It would have left her not just without an arm, but without a shoulder as well. It's a seldom-performed operation these days (indeed, I've never done one or even seen one performed in my entire career stretching back to my residency beginning in the late 1980s), and with good reason. Still, sometimes it is necessary. It's hard not to feel for Ainscough, who, at age 22 was facing such an awful choice.

In my original account I noted that Ainscough actually reported herself to have steeled herself up to undergo the surgery, but apparently her doctors came to her at the last minute with an alternative, which was to do isolated limb perfusion. Basically, this is a technique sometimes used for soft tissue sarcomas of the extremity or multifocal melanoma that can’t be resected without amputation to try to destroy the tumor. As its name implies, isolated limb perfusion involves isolating the limb from the body's circulation and infusing it with very (and I do mean very) high doses of chemotherapy. That’s what necessitates the isolation of the limb’s circulation; the dose of chemotherapy is so high that if it leaked back into the rest of the circulation the consequences could be disastrous. Isolated limb perfusion can often cause seemingly near miraculous results, and apparently that was the case for Ainscough. Unfortunately, tumors tend to recur, and that’s exactly what happened to Ainscough about a year later, which led to the doctors recommending an amputation of her arm at the shoulder again.

It was at that point that Ainscough rejected that option and was reborn as the Wellness Warrior. Over the years, she became quite the media figure in Australia, based on her many advantages for a media career. She was young. She was telegenic. She was very likable and soon became very media-savvy. Over seven years, she built up an impressive empire of "natural healing" modalities, enabled, of course, by credulous reporting. She wrote books. She appeared on television. She sold cookbooks, cooking supplies, and various other implements necessary for a "natural" lifestyle. She promoted, as I said, that cancer quackeries of cancer quackeries, the Gerson therapy. Indeed, she even listed the various supplements she took as part of the Gerson therapy (and in addition to the at least daily coffee enemas), which she described thusly:

Some of you might think the list is a bit extreme, but I assure you that it is totally manageable. It’s nowhere near as much of a pain in the ass to get through as the medicine cabinet full of pills and potions I was taking prior to Gerson. I swear, as soon as we heard that a supplement had anti-cancer properties, I was all over it. I’ve taken everything from sea cucumbers to bovine cartilage. This list is like a trip to the beach in comparison.

The supplements a Gerson patient must take generally varies to suit the individual. But all the medications are designed to support the diet therapy by increasing the energy capacity of the cell and by increasing the rate of detoxification.

She also advocated eating clay to "detoxify" herself:

When we eat clay, the positively charged toxins are attracted by the negatively charged edges of the clay mineral. An exchange reaction occurs where the clay swaps its ions for those of the other substance. Electrically satisfied, it holds the toxin in suspension until the body can eliminate both.

You get the idea. Jess Ainscough was a seemingly unending fountain of woo, making Food Babe-like appeals to the "natural" over the "synthetic" and promoting her version of "wellness." Meanwhile, over the last year or two, her condition was clearly deteriorating.

So what happened? As I explained before, epithelioid sarcoma is a rare sarcoma, with an incidence on the order of 0.1 to 0.4 per million. It's primarily a tumor of young adults, and it nearly always appears on the upper extremities, and wide surgical excision is the only known effective treatment. It also tends to be indolent as well. Its ten year survival overall is on the order of 61%, and for patients between 17 and 30 years (i.e., patients like Jessica Ainscough), it’s approximately 72%. Of course, that is with treatment with surgery; without surgery, five year survival is 35% and ten year survival is 33%. Sadly, Jess Ainscough's survival of seven years with her disease in essence untreated is thus within the expected range of survival time based on her disease that I discussed the last time I discussed her.

I have no idea what finally took her life. Overall, it must have been the cancer, of course. Given her description of frequent bleeding from her tumor mass to the point where she was anemic suggested to me that the tumor was fungating, eating through the skin. At the time, she said her scans indicated that the cancer hadn't spread beyond the arm, but that didn't mean it still couldn't kill her. I'd suspect a combination of unrelenting chronic blood loss and perhaps necrotic tumor becoming infected and leading to sepsis. If such sepsis were not recognized and treated promptly it could certainly have killed her in her weakened state. But this is just speculation, an educated guess. I have no idea what the immediate cause of Jess Ainscough's death was. Whatever her immediate cause of death was, though, it was almost certainly the cancer that killed her.

Cancer deaths like this always sadden me. Jess Ainscough had a shot, one shot. She didn't take it. What saddens me even more is that I can understand why she didn't take it, as, through a horrible quirk of fate, her one shot involved incredibly disfiguring surgery and the loss of her arm. Still, I wish she had taken it and hadn't instead decided to become an icon of "natural healing." (If she had, there's about a 70% chance she'd still be alive today.) In her role as the Wellness Warrior, and in her promotion of Gerson quackery, Ainscough, with the noblest of motivations in the beginning, did harm and likely led some cancer patients down the path of quackery and preventable death. In this, Jess and Sharyn Ainscough were also just as much victims as any other cancer patient who chooses alternative medicine quackery. Unfortunately, she also promoted that same quackery, which made them complicit as well. Being simultaneously a victim and an enabler or promoter is frequently the case with believers in alt-med cancer "cures."

All the more sad.

As outraged as we might have been over Ainscough's promotion of the Gerson protocol in life, as we mourn, we should also remember that Jess Ainscough was also a victim of the very pseudoscience that she promoted. Now that she is gone, what I want to know is this: Who are the quacks who enabled her and egged her on? Who are the quacks who conned her into believing that Gerson therapy would save her life? Who are the quacks whose influence led her to become the Wellness Warrior in the first place? They helped create the Wellness Warrior, and Jess Ainscough has finally paid the price.

More like this

Orac, I'm just curious -- do each of these posters come from separate IPs? Or has one person decided to spend all of her Saturday making up new names to post from?

By Yodel lady (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

I agree with all of the rational/levelheaded ones here, her death was tragic and should be mourned, but that doesn't excuse her or the things she promoted from criticism. It's not like Orac is launching any personal attacks against her. (unlike many of the woo-prone seem to do all to commonly here, directed towards Orac.)

Also, I feel like a total ass for laughing at anything on this comment thread, given that the whole thing revolves around a young woman's unfortunate death, but I couldn't help but snigger at Orac's response to #87 (in #99). The next couple of times it happened, not so much, but when I saw #491... I just lost it.... Wow.... just... WOOOOWWWWWWW. I would hope nobody would be such a dick to troll a thread about such a sensitive topic (other than the woo-prone tone trolls, they're a different case), but my first thought was "This has gotta be a Poe..."

@Kelly

Not surprised to hear that. I hope his wife is strong enough to help him get the real help he needs.

It just occurred to me, what if one could combine a healthy balanced diet with scientifically proven cancer treatment? That's about as far as I'll go with the sarcasm. Jess death has upset me more than I expected. I followed of her journey and still admire the positive general well being principles she stood for. It's a crying shame that now, when it's all too late, we realise all was not as it seemed. My heart breaks to think of anyone who may have suffered or died as a result of buying into the unrealistic cures she promoted and profited from.

Gersons is a one size fits all "therapy". Let's think about the logic of that given the myriad of illnesses it claims to heal and cure, cancer included. The proof of it's effectiveness is none other than the brainwashed poster girl herself, Jess. I am sorry this organisation took advantage of Jess and used her as a disposable tool in their marketing plan.

I respect the knowledge & opinions of a professional like yourself & given if I was in the same situation as Jess, it wouldn’t be a decision to take lightly (which I am sure she didn’t) BUT this was her life to live & her cancer to treat. Not mine, not yours, no one else’s. She was SHARING her journey, a privilege we are lucky to have experienced. A sensitive, emotional time for her & her family, deserves some sense of sacredness.

I didn’t follow Jess religiously, her stance on some topics were not my cup of tea, but regardless, she was a great teacher & I enjoyed the occasional blog post that she graciously shared. I think we can take it or leave it, but there is no need to slam her life choices.

I saw Jess in passing at some great speaking events & lifestyle seminars over the past 2-3 years - never ever did she look anything but healthy, radiant, glowing… Even if her cancer was progressing, there was no sign of it. I saw her at an event in January & she looked gorgeous & so happy. Whatever she was doing for herself, it obviously gave her the get-up-and-go attitude she so beautifully carried. Never once, in all the years did I see or hear that she claimed to be cured, only that she was “thriving with cancer.” That doesn’t sound like “I’m cured of cancer, yeehaa.”

Maybe Orac, in the field you are in, you’ve lost a little “feeling” when it comes to this type of thing. Let go of your fearful ego & maybe stop to consider that not everyone has to go down a path you think is “right.”

Sending love & light to her family & friends. She was not a victim x

An article from 2013:
http://thedailylove.com/my-life-began-with-terminal-cancer/

Now, I’m thriving – with or without cancer, I’m not too sure. I don’t have scans because none of them were able to diagnose me in the first place, plus I have 100% faith that my body knows how to heal, and I sure as heck have been giving it everything it needs to do so. Some call me crazy, but this has been the right path for me, and over the years I’ve become more and more confident in my ability to know what’s best for my body. I’ve been living the Gerson Therapy lifestyle for just over three years, and I plan on keeping it as my guidelines forever. For two of those years my life revolved around hourly veggie juices, multiple daily coffee enemas, and a super clean organic plant-based diet. While I’ve relaxed this intense healing program a little, it’s still the foundation that I plan to use for both healing and prevention for the rest of my precious life.

She was so convinced :(

To call names and knock the very methods she used and proclaimed does not honor her memory nor her life decisions. Gerson has cured many. Is not a "one-size fits all". They have doctors that give specific treatments for different maladies. Their cure/survival rate is far greater than traditional medicine and does not destroy your body as chemo and some other methods do and even lead to other maladies or forms of cancer. Whichever decision one makes with regard to their health, it is there decision and should be honored and respected by others, rather than tearing one down. Attitude has so much more to do with healing than any of the selected methods. God bless you as you seek your own therapies. No reason to blast others.

"Wow. You sound like an ego-driven douche. Have some respect"

"I am a COMPASSIONATE, oORGANIC HUMAN BEING, WITH A SOUL CAPABLE OF EMOTION AND LOVE...You are corrupted scum."

I think that by approving comments like these, Orac (or Orca) is actually beta-testing a new line of irony meters.*

*if any of them hold up to the strain, I'd like to invest in the company.

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

wow - hate what autocorrect did to some spellings..ie... "it is their decision"

I have to conclude that either no good evidence of “alt” cures exists, or those who have the evidence and have not published it are flat out evil.

Don't forget that Gonzalez (whose routine is merely a growth upon the Gersons')* was reduced to piteous whining once the disastrous trial results came in.

* Charlotte seems to have added to the original nonsense.

^ Kind of like Count Scamula.

I am a COMPASSIONATE, oORGANIC HUMAN BEING, WITH A SOUL CAPABLE OF EMOTION AND LOVE, I FEEL FOR THIS POOR WOMAN!!! Now ask yourself. WHAT ARE YOU?

This isn't even a well-formed philosophical question. I mean, "where are you" is good, "what is your original face" is sort of a filter, but "what are you"?

I could tell her death was a total shock to this woman, they had been involved with Jess and never saw it coming.

Given her report of how her life went way down hill over the last year, it seems that they could not have been too closely "involved" with Jess.

Jeez, the only thing I know about her is from what I read in this blog, and as of two months ago, it was pretty obvious it was coming. How could someone involved with her not see it? Willful blindness?

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

And I'd like to hear any of these supporters respond to the rebuttals of those "Allow the family to grieve" comments. Can anyone actually defend them, and explain how Orac is in any way disrupting their mourning?

I love how someone proclaims to be a cousin comes for a first visit to Orac's blog and tells him to allow them to mourn.

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

A blog by one of Jess former colleagues and a personal friend:

http://josiesjuice.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/jess-ainscough-dies-age-30-t…

@marry me, mindy , I think Jess hid her true condition so well to the extent that possibly only a handful of her inner circle were aware of the the truth. I think it was a concentrated group effort that anyone who came into contact with her may have been given the impression that she was doing well. To the average reader/follower/acquaintance she promoted her healing journey only and we were none the wiser to the actual facts about the cancer, epitheliod sarcoma. If we were informed more about that by her publications we might all have realised there was a strategy in place and she was slowly but surely dying without proper treatment as expected by medical case studies. As it were, we didnt hear much about that side of things at all. The publics attention was drawn to the light, bright, happy, wishful thinking story.

A - I realize that "suddenly" is a relative term, and "didn't see it coming" the same, but as of two months ago, she was fessing up that it wasn't working. Before then, sure I can imagine being unaware, but after that point, it seemed to be very clear. So is a two month warning really being caught unawares?

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

@442 DGR @478nat @483A

Jess' mastermind/friendship group for her business includes: Yvette Luciano (Earth Events, PR); Rachel MacDonald (In Spaces Between); Tara Bliss (Such Different Skies); Susana Frioni; Nicola Chatham/Newman; Amanda Rootsey; Melissa Ambrosini. Her medical intuitive was Belinda Davidson. As mentioned earlier, many of these women are B-Schoolers and/or B-School affiliates. They work as a collective to cross-promote their businesses and ideas on wellness.

This isn’t even a well-formed philosophical question. I mean, “where are you” is good, “what is your original face” is sort of a filter, but “what are you”?

I personally have been stuck on that story about Hyakujo's fox for a couple of years, even having a friend in Chicago ask me about it without provocation several months afterthe old man died.*

*The Uncle Remus story about the tar baby also went through a couple of tellings in sanzen the last time I spent any appreciable time in Portland.

This conversation turned into a shit-storm; often does when alt-med woo-heads get critized.

Why these people decide to, so fervently, hold on to their unsubstantiated beliefs will forever be beyond me.

Orac, thank you for at least trying to burn a torch of knowledge. And for remaining graceful despite being bombarded with cr-p from these people.

I hope to read many more posts from you.

By Moe Panahi (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

But in her post in December, even though she admitted to having a fungating tumor and to having been in bed for nearly a year ... she still tried to imply that she had turned the corner after her "hibernation." The post in December insisted she was rolling out all kinds of amazing new things come January. She also said she and her fiancé were getting married in 2015. It was clearly unrealistic, but if you were already taken in by her, you would probably still have wanted to believe that things were fine. She implied that a few months of "listening to her body" had fixed things.

Here is a cancer quack from where I grew up, Michael B. Schachter, M.D. Look! He has his own supplement dispensary in his office!

http://www.mbschachter.com/schachter_center_store.htm

Or this quack, Nicholas Gonzalez MD, who writes, "Overall, cancer patients will consume 130-175 capsules a day, including nutrients as well as pancreas product. Non-cancer patients might consume in the range of 80-100 capsules a day, the exact number depending on their health status and medical problems."

http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/treatment.htm

No, tell me that these alt-med quacks are the real ones pushing chemicals into peoples' body.

I doubt Orac will read ever post here, but this seems worthy of its own blog to me!

@ 514A

I think so too. Members of her group would attend the events put on by Yvette Luciano, in support of their friends who were speaking. They are "famous" among the audience as professional bloggers; a lifestyle to which many present at these events aspire. They are envied for their (in several cases) model-like appearances. Susana Frioni was the founder/moderator of the Australian B-School FB group until there was an significant internal conflict in 2013. They are very influential in the health/wellness industry in Australia (particularly in SE Queensland)

@LOXON - Based on how you wrote that comment, you are clearly angry and apparently distraught. For your own sake, please do not try to operate heavy machinery in this mental state. Hope you feel better soon.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

@meg521,526 @A483
thank you both for posting your thoughts. **Thank you** I don't think I'd have as much a problem with this if the Wellness Warrior brand hadn't become so influential. I'm speculating, but I imagine with so much interconnection between high profile bloggers and linked into so much online affiliate marketing it would of been very hard to get honest with the public. But holy crap, Jess died of her illness and quite painfully and horribly by the sound of it. The business she built was an illusion and based on lies - it appears that her friends rode on her coat tails while the going was good and then...went silent. Hopefully Jess's sad passing might be a wake up call to some of them. When people enable dishonesty even with the best of intentions... what does that make them? when people promote publicly things like Gerson, things like WW products, who in the end is accountable? I honestly thought based on everything I'd read Jess was cured. Until rosalie's article.

Yvette - by an astounding coincidence, when I type Schacter or Gonzalez into the search box I find that Orac has discussed both before (Schacter in 2013, Gonzalez several times).

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

@Martin #429: Wow. What chutzpah. So it's her fault because she didn't go nutritional early enough, now? Because she gave chemo a thought.

Man. That's cold.

@Cressidia #433 Industry has done research on this and come up with nothing. If you want it to go any further, your side needs to pony up and prove it, and quit expecting other people to do your homework for you. Crying poverty does not make for a persuasive argument.

@capnkrunch #441: that's exactly how I explain acid base basics to my nursing students :)

@elk #456 said, "The mainstream medical establishment should embrace Gersen Therapy as a choice of treatment in hospitals as at least this treatment does not give patients the nasty side effects that Chemo, Surgery and Radiation do."

No, it gives them different nasty side effects such as profound electrolyte disturbances from all the enemas. You do realize that overdoing enemas can lead to metabolic acidosis and hyponatremia (low salt in the blood)?

I checked the Gerson Clinics list of "Contraindications" which is mostly disease they don't treat. They range from neuro disorders like ALS and Parkinson's to muscular dystrophy.

What I found interesting is patients with ascites, who had already had chemo for pancreatic or bone cancer, a bone marrow transplant were all ineligible. Makes sense: you wouldn't want to give a worthless treatment to the most sick patients out there and have the whole world see how useless it is.

To call names and knock the very methods she used and proclaimed does not honor her memory nor her life decisions. Gerson has cured many. Is not a “one-size fits all”. They have doctors that give specific treatments for different maladies. Their cure/survival rate is far greater than traditional medicine and does not destroy your body as chemo and some other methods do and even lead to other maladies or forms of cancer.

Leaving aside the fact that blind, undefended assertions such as "they have cured many" and "their cure/survival rate is far greater than traditional medicine" have nothing whatever to back them up – leaving them in the realm of neither more nor less than frank cultism – I yet to see any of the Gerson pom-pom squad coherently express just what the underlying "principles" are.

They're not difficult to find, and "detoxification" is not an adequate answer.

^ "I have yet"

@ Mephistopheles O'Brien

I know he has discussed these guys before. I just think it is worth pointing out how unabashed they are in selling their woo. What shocks me is how the same people who bash chemo and Big Pharma, appear to be happy to shell out $$$ to these quacks under the guise that they are "fighting the system" or whatever.

No, it gives them different nasty side effects such as profound electrolyte disturbances from all the enemas. You do realize that overdoing enemas can lead to metabolic acidosis and hyponatremia (low salt in the blood)?

Nonono. Sodium is bad. This is why venturing into the ocean is prohibited. Let us mind Jess's explanation:

According to Dr Gerson, the basic problem of all chronic degenerative diseases is the loss of potassium from, and the penetration of sodium into, the cells. Adding large amounts of potassium (a 10% solution of three potassium salts) to the already potassium-rich diet, enables the sick body to release excess sodium. Potassium not only encourages detoxification of sodium from the cell (sodium inhibits oxidation and perpetuates the disease cycle) but is also a key activator in the oxidative cycle hence it governs oxidation, energy production and the metabolism of the whole cell.

Marry me, mindy - I agree. Sorry, I have a tendency to get a bit out of context and over-generalise sometimes...

@Meg

Thank you for the list. It's clear that there were people involved who profited from Jess as the Wellness Warrior and they had a vested interest in keeping the show going for as long as it did.

Some thoughts:
-it's important to feel like one has a purpose in life (Jess shared hope and positive thoughts meanwhile continuing to earn a living and not be completely "useless/hopeless")
-it's important to feel loved and that one belongs somewhere (the WW tribe, Jess was probably quite lonely at the thought of having a rare cancer)
-well intended positive reinforcement can be taken to the extreme and become detrimental (ignoring reality, refusing to deal with/face facts)
-Jess probably truly believed she would be helping people when she began her blog but as time went on it took on a life of it's own
-Jess inner circle probably wanted to support her and shield her from anything they could and that came in the form of denial and encouraging the spread of dangerous ideas to a wide audience
-Gersons IS a one size fits all deal, Jess and her mum did the exact same routine yet suffered entirely different cancers and guess what else is one size fits all with Gersons- they are both dead. I would change my POV on this if there was any evidence otherwise.
-I can't imagine what it must have felt like to have so many ardent adoring fans yet in reality living moment to moment in a hellish routine in denial and hopeless hope and helplessness
-Jess did the best she could but I wish she hadnt promoted such narrow mindedness for others to follow

@DebAn, you said:

"Their cure/survival rate is far greater than traditional medicine.."

I need to ask for a site for that statement, a legit, proven source.

@MarryMeMindy, I have no doubt they were shocked and didn't see it coming. These weren't people just reading her or keeping up with her. These were people following what she proclaimed and counting on that to save the life of the husband.

If they ever believed that she was really dying and wasn't going to pull through, they would have to admit the same fate is very likely for the husband.

Obviously they aren't ready to accept that. I can understand that. I watched the doctors tell my mother my daddy wouldn't live for 2 months and the day before he died, she was making plans to have him come home soon, set up the house for his recovery.

When I told the doctor that, he was in shock. He was crystal clear with my mom. He had the signs for almost two weeks he was going to die soon, but she still clung to things that she perceived as hope that were never hope.

For that woman to admit that Jess was dying, she would have to admit that was the road her husband is headed down.

Denial can be very strong.

orac @492
I imagine that is quite gratifying.

NotSureWhatToThink @453

I have no medical background other than as a patient.

I notice a couple points in your post that seem to stem from some common misunderstandings of science (through no fault of yours of course, I think many (most?) laypeople make the same mistakes). Most links are to other

I have seen people who were going about their lives and noticed a lump and within a week or two were dead following standard treatment.

Unfortunately, that is sometimes the course for certain cancers. Pancreatic cancer comes to mind as one that is particularly aggressive as well as very resistant to standard treatment. Science based medicine is always making strides forward though. I think the biggest success story in terms of cancer is childhood leukemia. It's gone from a near certain death sentence (as recently as the 60s, I believe) to now some types have almost a 90% 5 year survival rate (after 5 years free children are usually considered cured since their risk of further cancer is about equivalent to that of the general public).

I have also seen people who lived far beyond the expectations of their doctors and also ones that died on chemo sooner than what they were told to expect without chemo.

Often when doctors talk about expectations of this sort they are referring to the median survival. The best way to explain this I think is with an example. Say you have 5 people with breast cancer. They live 2,4,5,11,15 years respectively. The median for this group would be 5 years. It is a little better than mean (what most people think of as average; add them all together and divide by how many there were; 7.4 in this case). Median is a quick and dirty way to somewhat minimize the effect of very high and very low outliers. By definition, 50% of patients will live longer than the median survival and 50% will die sooner. Possibly even much longer or much sooner.

I read that Charlotte Gerson broke her hip at age 91 and it healed up completely in 5 weeks and she was back at work. If this is true that is amazing. I read about Lorraine Day, an orthopedic surgeon, who refused chemo and radiation for her cancer and she is still doing well 15 years later.

Without knowing more it's difficult to comment on the specifics of these cases. The point I want to make is a common one around here. Anecdotes are not science. The reason that so much time and funding goes into research is so that we can isolate a treatment's effect from other variables. If I get the flu and get over it in 3 days after drinking a 6 pack every night doesn't mean alcohol shortens the length of infection. In fact, it probably made it worse than it would have been otherwise.

I do see some of the people who claim alternative therapies helped them but then it was only after they had surgery so maybe the surgery was all that was needed.

It's great that you recognize this. It's actually part of the reason I decided to respond to your comment.

I have lived long enough to have seen doctors advocating cigarette smoking and also other treatments that have since been proven to be not necessary or counterproductive.

It unfortunate but true that there exists real corruption and problems with research in medicine. Casting doubts on treatment that is well proven (i.e. chemo or vaccines) distracts us from addressing the real problems. The other point is that science marches on and abandons unnecessary or harmful treatments. Not always as quickly as we'd like but it does happen. Quacks do not. Ever. In fact, they often try to expand their scope of unproven practice. Consider chiropractors. There is an ever growing body of evidence that chiropractic adjustments on pediatric patients has no benefit and is potentially harmful (for example causing spinal fractures). Yet, chiropractors actively advertise their ability to care for children.

The placebo effect is something to consider as well as the will to live.

The placebo effect may not even be as real an effect as is generally believed. Even if it is, it is highly unethical to sell (very expensive) sugar pills and ritual as real medicine. Especially at the cost of not doing real medicine.

The body is so complex and I do see that sometimes traditional medicine takes a quick fix approach without considering long term effects.

There are certainly some less than stellar practitioners. But treating root causes is also a part of SBM. As is prevention. We will take someone with a heart attack to the cath lab so they don't die, but then we will put them on aspirin, educate them about diet and encourage them to start exercising. Maybe give them statins to lower cholestrol and create a plan to help them stop smoking.

Alternative advocates seem to view things in a one size fits all simplistic approach which when it does not work is the fault of the patient.

Very true.

I’m not sure that everything is as black or white. right or wrong as some think.

But there is a very clear line between based in evidence or not.

I think we all do the best we can with what we know at the time and go from there.

This is certainly the science based way. The problem is that alternative practitioners do what they "feel" or "believe" is correct.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

Oops re: #538. Didn't mean include that first blockquote in my response to NotSure. I had his whole post at first then decided to split it up and forgot to delete the line I didn't use.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

I'm very sad to hear about Jess's death and I send my condolences to her family and friends who are surely grieving.

Jess's cancer was rare and the only treatment was a terribly disfiguring amputation. I'm not sure I could have made that choice either, at any age.

However, as a survivor of a germ cell tumor in my ovary that was treated with surgery and chemotherapy and as a physician assistant in an oncology clinic, I cannot sit here and listen to people sing this girl's praises for promoting the Gerson "therapy". It makes me furious to know that there may be people out there who have cancers which are treatable and curable but are instead are taking the Gerson approach because of Jess's advice. It makes me furious to know that some of those people will likely die because of this. Some of these people will miss out on years and years of life following this ridiculous alternative therapy.

And if that nancy in the earlier comments is a medical doctor, she should lose her license based on her comments alone. I hope you aren't killing your patients, nancy.

This is why venturing into the ocean is prohibited.

From "Stop Wishing for Things to Be Different (emphasis in original):

"On top of that, each year around this time I usually find myself wishing for things to be different. I wish that I could swim in the ocean (a no-no for Gerson Therapy people). While I don’t like to admit it, seeing as I preach the wellness word so strongly, I also wish that I could celebrate the holidays and new year with a few drinks. I wish that I could eat, drink and be festively merry with all of my friends. But I can’t. My desire to be loyal to the healthiest, best version of me is far stronger than my desire to get hammered."

This is not "thriving," it's being tethered to a cult.

I read that Charlotte Gerson broke her hip at age 91 and it healed up completely in 5 weeks and she was back at work.

This, impressively, exaggerates upon the story told by her own propagandists:

"Last year, as you may know, Charlotte tripped over an electrical cord in her bathroom and broke her pelvis. Her doctor told her that few women of her age ever recover from a fall like that, yet she surprised everyone by recuperating much more quickly than expected, and was indeed up and walking without assistance a few months later....

"However, last month, Charlotte had another fall in her home, and suffered a broken hip—this one more serious than last time....

"She is currently staying in a beautiful rehabilitation facility near the beach, where she enjoys watching the seagulls from her window. She soaks up her daily vitamin D from the sunshine for a few minutes every day, and likes to put her bare feet on the ground and do a little bit of 'earthing' every day. Her doctor anticipates that she will likely need to remain in rehab for another 3-4 months."

@Narad

If I may add to your comment, it seems to go against the positive thinking/wholistic grain to deprive oneself of the happiness and companionship of friends.

Also, if one finds themselves wishing the same thing every year when nothing has changed, perhaps one should try doing something different to achieve a different result.

I wish that I could swim in the ocean (a no-no for Gerson Therapy people).

Oh Good L-rd, this is real. I'd thought it was a joke.

I am a little late to this thread by 527 or so comments, but I'll throw in some things anyway.
First, Jess Ainscough's death is very sad and touching, and brings back sad memories of young patients whose deaths touched me.
Orac, I once followed a young man who was S[P a forequarter amp for a sarcoma. It is not only disfiguring, but it seriously altered his ability to balance, making every change of position an opportunity to fall over and possibly be unable to get up without help (which was hard to give, with only one armpit to grab him under.). I don't know if I would have the courage to undergo such a surgery and I agree, Jess was not necessarily wrong to forego it.
For several years I worked for a prominent immunologist treating patients with HIV. At first the only drug we had was AZT, though we had a few more later. I understood the desperation that drove some of our patients to quackery and woo. Sadly, we lost several patients that way (lost as in died). One particularly poignant one was a highly likeable young clinic patient of mine who was doing poorly by the numbers, but was exceptionally well clinically. Every little change in his CD4 count got him saying, "That's it, this means I'm dieing." This while he worked heaving 100 pound sacks around all day and was free of opportunistic infections and malignancies. He went haring off after some lunacy or other in spite of our best efforts, and almost certainly cheated himself out of living to the next, more effective. treatments. When he died I was depressed for days.
I too am a cancer survivor. My prostate cancer was incidentally found not long before a probable rupture through the capsule. I opted for surgery. I suffered a surgical accident that turned an expected two day hospital stay into two weeks, half in SICU, and left me with a mild but frustrating impairment that precluded ever returning to work as a physician assistant. I am almost six years out, with about 25% chance of recurrence over the next nine years, albeit with only a 1% chance of death from it. And I would probably have the surgery again, even knowing what I know, because it preserved future options for other therapies. I can't imagine any of the so-called alternative modalities having any value for me.
Lastly, coffee belongs in a cup, where it does the most good, not squirted up your bum, which not least is a waste of coffee (Several gags on this theme occur to me, but will be withheld in the interests of decency.). If Gerson therapy is so wonderful, I wonder if any of its proponents would be willing to underwrite a double-blinded study by a reputable researcher. Until such a study is done and shows significant results, they should all just shut the hell up and stop diverting people away from therapies that have been proven to have a chance to work, however slight.

By Old Rockin Dave (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

So sad to read.

The main problem with "woo" I think is that people think it's an entire solution, and that they can ignore medical science embrace the woo and expect to survive.

That said, I understand the call of woo - I have metastatic cancer, and alongside all my surgeries and now my 2nd bout of chem, I use a tonne of woo - I figure at best it helps, at worst the placebo effect is nothing to sneeze at (especially in terms of my perception of of how I feel and my quality of life, which when you are dying is paramount).

At some point I will reject medical science entirely and solely embrace the woo, because you know what - I am dying, will die. The medical interventions are harsh and distressing and they're not going to save me anyway - at some point they become dysthanasia - the opposite of euthanasia - prolonging life just to suffer.

i won't be doing that enema stuff, because yuck, but low dose naltrexone, juicing, raw food whatever magical airy fairy crap i think MIGHT work. Because I don't want to suffer through the dysthanasia medical interventions always eventually devolve into.

Woo has it's place, it may not save or prolong lives medically speaking but in terms of quality of life (objectively and subjectively) it has a place.

5 yrs ago I was diagnosed with my first cancer. After agreeing (succumbing) to the conventional treatments of surgery and chemotherapy (a relative to mustard gas), I attempted to get my life and health back on track, (with many residual challenges). Then 2 yrs ago I was diagnosed with a second cancer, (an evident "side effect" of the previous chemo), and my treatment options shrunk to one: Amputation. Without it I would be "dead within 6 months", I was told.

Around the same time my sister was also diagnosed with cancer, and while she chose conventional medicine, I chose Gerson. I watched my Tumors disappear, my body rid itself of all signs of cancer, and my health soar, while simultaneously watching her have a chemo-induced heart attack, then slowly disintegrate into an existence of pain, misery, and stupor (accompanied by blood curdling screams), until she passed away last month. Where are the protests against these useless forms of treatment? Shall we rally against the profit driven, patentable poisons that pose as "treatments", but torture the patient until they die from the "treatment" itself?

I am 1.5 yrs beyond the hubris-induced "expiration date" they set for me 2 yrs ago, and I haven't been healthier in decades. I have no pain except the heartache from the loss of my sister. I have since met thousands of Gerson survivors, (some as long as 30 yrs) who are also the healthiest, most vibrant people I know.

There are no guarantees on this journey for sure. And yet, for every cancer patient who dies using an "alternative" treatment (ie: something other than cut, poison, or burn), I can show you 1/2 dozen who die from conventional treatments. And they don't just die, but suffer and disintegrate!!! The conventional world has had 1/2 century and ALL the money in the world (billions upon billions) to work its magic, and yet cancer has never been more prevalent. With their track record, if the Medical world were any other industry they'd have all been fired long ago.

If I have to live with this disease (and given the rise in cancer you may soon as well), I'd much rather do it thriving in peace, health, and comfort, as Jess did, for SEVEN yrs beyond when her initial conventional treatment failed her.

May she rest in peace and may her family find the strength to carry on.

By Sarah Bellum (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

I’d thought it was a joke.

I certainly wouldn't joke about her death. I also don't engage in aimlessly offering "condolences" to people I don't know, or in describing the death of someone I don't know as "sad." Tragic, in the proper sense, yes.

@toadboy65

Pam B- What exactly is the Pharma industry doing to keep you silent? I am not being cynical or anything. I am actually very interested.

Not Pam but usually the complaints are about how they are not allowed to market their supplements the same way drug companies are and should they try to claim they can diagnose or treat specific illnesses rather than make vague functional claims they get cease and desist letters from the government which is the same as Big Pharma or whatever other business you don't like.

The other thing I see people run into trouble is if they are some kind of nutritional counselor as they are not allowed to prescribe diets the way a registered dietitian can. There is a lot they can help with, but saying eat this diet for that disease in not allowed. Generally that really is more an issue with groups that spent the time and effort to get a national certification program and there is a lot of who gets what turf in the process. These professional organizations (which are also, of course, the same as Big Pharma) get tetchy about people who don't go through the required training and testing to act as if they do.

I'm sure there are other you can't practice medicine without a licence examples of how the man keeps the natural healers down.

Orca, man that brings make memories of what I called the illiterate vegetable stand near where I used to live. All the signs had various mis-spellings but I loved that they sold ORCA (okra). Not sure if they couldn't spell or it was part of the shtick but they sure sold the heck out of some really tasty veggies.

I certainly wouldn’t joke about her death. I also don’t engage in aimlessly offering “condolences” to people I don’t know, or in describing the death of someone I don’t know as “sad.” Tragic, in the proper sense, yes.

No, no, I meant that the notion that being in saltwater could somehow negatively affect the likelihood of one's surviving cancer is so absurd on the face of it that it did not occur to me that that is actually something that the Gerson "therapy" proclaims.

But then, at some point, I reviewed the link provided, with references to the "old days" when Gerson followers had to drink "several fresh raw liver juices each day" and was left completely agog.

Be Kind. Be Brave. Be Well. - Jess Ainscough.

JP:

From Wikipedia:

The original protocol also included raw calf's liver taken orally, but this practice was discontinued in the 1980s after ten patients were hospitalized (five of them comatose) from January 1979 to March 1981 in San Diego, California area hospitals, following an outbreak of rare Campylobacter fetus infection and sepsis which was seen only in those following Gerson-type therapy with raw liver (no other cases of patients having sepsis with this microbe, a pathogen in cattle, had been reported to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the previous two years). Nine of ten hospitalized patients had been treated in Tijuana, Mexico; the tenth followed Gerson therapy at home. One of these patients who had metastatic melatoma died within a week of his septic episode. Many of the patients had low sodium levels, thought to be associated with the very low sodium Gerson diet.[12]

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

I'm probably going to regret opening this can of worms, but what exactly is Gerson's rationale (sic) for not swimming in the ocean?

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

@sarah bellum

Why hide your light under a bushel?

You and/or one of the thousands of survivors you've met in the last three and a half years should definitely go public with your stories.

It's kind of an ethical obligation, really.

@ann, I'm sure they can't go public, the government might suicide them or disappear them for exposing Big Pharma's secret.. Cancer can be cured with stuff you buy at the grocery store.

Holy Crap! Drink raw liver juice? I'm gagging just typing that. Yeah I would have to have some Big Pharma, some good Big Pharma, to drink raw liver juice.

Kelly,

I am wondering how long it will take for Mikey or Tim Bolen or one of the other conspiracy websites to claim that Ainscough was murdered or "suicided" by the government to shut her up because she was a threat to Big Pharma, the FDA, the CDC, the media, the banksters, the Joos, etc.

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

@Woo Fighter, you can probably find people already talking about it on Godlike Productions. Every conspiracy know to man is on that page.

If they really want to make it good, they will say she had proof she was cured and was going to make an announcement in a day or two and they got to her.

Hahaha "Joos" I say that all the time when being a smartass.

For those of you attacking the writer and the article, you are wrong. Respect? This article IS respectful. It is also truthful and if you can't handle the truth then that is your problem. I myself tried to talk to Jess and explain that Gerson isn't a cure. It isn't even helpful and i got nowhere. She would not engage at all. She had joined the Gerson cult and her mind was closed as tight as an oyster. And me? I am no Dr. I am a woman with acute lymphocytic leukemia who has read everything and who now knows that while traditional medicine isn't 100% the answer to cancer or even, many times, even 50%, it is all we have. Yes, combine it with Gerson, combine it with anything you like, but don't flush conventional treatments away. Those of you commenting here, such as Fiona, blithely ignore that Jess did not mix conventional and alternative medicines. Once she decided to do away with the former, it was Gerson all the way. I do believe you can combine therapies (with good advice) and many doctors believe this too. It is not a war between conventional and unconventional medicine. It is a war between life and death. As a mother, my aim is to survive and if chemotherapy gives me that chance, no amount of pain and suffering will daunt me.

By Kate Emerson (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

Funny how the Gerson "therapy" cheerleaders don't mention the raw liver ingestion and subsequent death from sepsis bit. The whole spectacle just begs belief.

Another point - many research facilities hires students - either for the summer or part-time during the year. If you could cure cancer with carrots and coffee enemas, and "Big Pharma" was covering this up, any one of these thousands of students could expose this evil, heartless conspiracy by simply basing their thesis on it, blow the cover and be offered research positions at top universities and labs all over the world! Governments with socialized medicine in Europe would applaud - reduced spending on medicine. Universal exultation!

It hasn't happened and will never happen because eating clay and carrots, and enemas CAN NOT cure cancer.

By Jane Ostentatious (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

Oh yes, Lorraine Day, who testified on behalf of holocaust-denier Ernst Zündel up here in Canada.

Orac has written about her at least twice. Type her name in the search box and there are two pieces from 2007.

She believes that you get cancer if you watch TV, among many other lunatic theories.

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

As a lady who has metastic bone cancer - I commend Jess for standing by her beliefs and rights as an individual to choose what she wanted for her own body and being bullied into something she didn't want to do. It takes a real inner strength to do this and is definately a light that will be missed from this world. For me I have found integrated therapies work and keep me living as normal a life as possible.

By Angela Bond (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

Interestingly enough, spend a couple of hundred dollars on the HPV vaccine & you have a good chance of avoiding several types of Ovarian Cancer.....and there are several other Cancer vaccines in R&D right now, including Pancreatic Cancer - which is extremely lethal.

So, what was that again about Big Pharma suppressing Cancer cures?

She sounds like a wonderful young woman. I googled her to find her blog and came upon this article. Only to find this disgusting article. Absolutely disrespectful of another human being.

She sounds like a wonderful young woman. I googled her looking to find her blog and came upon this disgusting article. Absolutely disrespectful of another human being.

The front page of our newspaper is one big dedication to Jess. She is being hailed as a hero who touched many lives. People like Orac need to keep spreading the message of the fraud that is Gerson therapy, before more people die.

@Sarah Bellum:

Not that you'll ever do it, but explain the type of cancer you had that is "cured" by Gerson. Also note any treatments you had before you were diagnosed with the cancer, including surgery. Otherwise we have no way to know what really cured your cancer, if it actually is cured.

As a lady who has metastic bone cancer - I commend Jess for standing by her beliefs and rights as an individual to choose what she wanted for her own body and not being bullied into something she didn't want to do. It takes a real inner strength to do this and is definately a light that will be missed from this world. For me I have found integrated therapies work and keep me living as normal a life as possible.

By Angela Bond (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

@ Orac

To answer your question: Jess and Belinda Davidson, School of the Modern Mystic (belindadavidson.com), worked together over the last two years. Reference: post on Nov 6, 2014 (also see Jan 7, 2015 - www.facebook.com/DavidsonBelinda

I am 1.5 yrs beyond the hubris-induced “expiration date” they set for me 2 yrs ago.... I have since met thousands of Gerson survivors of Gerson survivors, (some as long as 30 yrs) who are also the healthiest, most vibrant people I know.

So, that's what, continuously about three per day? Four? More? And, between the juicing and enemas, you've gotten to "know" them well enough to assess their health and "vibrancy"?

It seems even in wake of death supports prefer not to acknowledge the reality of the situation. Her final blog post reveals another side to Jess, maybe she finally realised she had been kidding herself and others. Unfortunately that revelation came a little too late for her! I have come to understand that I need to let my frustrations go. If people choose quackery over modern medicine it is natural selection in practice. People will die needlessly because of their own stupidity and stubbornness and I accept that. If you work in a medical field help those you can, help those that want help and forget about those you cannot help!

I didn’t see anything in the mainstream media yet

There are a few brief entries trickling in. The Guardian's includes a PMC link, but I have no idea what they think their target audience is going to do with it.

The Daily Fail redacts "I realised that I was more than a 'cancer success story'" to just "cancer story."

Further to A's comment 358, at the outset of the piece, one finds this:

But then in 2008, when I was just 22 years old, I was diagnosed with a very rare, aggressive, and essentially “incurable” form of cancer called Epithelioid Sarcoma, in my left hand, arm, and armpit. Chemotherapy and radiation don’t have any success with this type of cancer, and I had too many tumors to perform surgery.

So what was with the isolated limb perfusion?

If people choose quackery over modern medicine it is natural selection in practice. People will die needlessly because of their own stupidity and stubbornness and I accept that.

I've mentioned this before, but I really freaking loathe "Social Darwinism."

disgusted. you are a quack human being.

I hope you approve my comment which will come later tonight criticing the so could 'factual' claims you have used to describe jess's prognosis which I have discovered are totally misleading and inaccurate

I hope you don't delete my comment which will come later tonight and will critic the so could 'factual' information you use to describe Jess's prognosis. After briefly researching it becomes clearly apparent that your opinion of her option of cure with an amputation are completely false, grossly misleading and in turn become defamatory. I hope you enjoy reading.

@ Sarah Bellum #548

You'd need to be a lot more specific than this with regard to your own and your sister's cancer in order to gain any credibility here! You've actually told us nothing substantial about your own, or her situation, so why should we believe that the Gerson approach did anything for you?

By NZ Skeptic (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

to #404Cressida

Having personally seen my relative who was sent home to die by her oncologist after exhausting conventional treatments in 2013, then seen her recover and become well until now by using an alternative therapy called cellect budwig therapy: I totally changed ideas about alternative therapy. Like what you said, it is sad we did not give any position for alternative therapy for treating cancer patients.

I remember the guy ,who provide 2-hr consultation with email follow-up, only charge us $180. We will appreciate his help forever.

To people who consider alternative therapy as quack, I want you to say your opinion if one of your family member was given up by conventional treatment and get benefit from alternative therapy. Remember there are about 300 alternative therapies: only 10% of these are effective. For those with advanced stage cancer, only 2 or 3 alternative therapies provide good chance. But it is worth a try if you are sentenced to death by your oncologist.

The certainty with which Orac claims that Gerson therapy is "quackery" and that Jessica followed a wrong path with her disease, is probably understandable. He says he is a cancer surgeon. There is a certain amount of 'group think' and indoctrination in being in that profession. It is hard for someone so trained in that mindset to understand that there is any kind of evidence other than the large, Randomised, double-blind controlled trial. But Orac may be wrong in all of his assumptions, just as I might be.
It seems that Jessica lived pretty long and pretty well following diagnosis with an advanced and quite nasty cancer. If she had not followed the wellness protocols she did she may possibly have died much sooner. Many people who follow standard oncology treatment for various cancers still die within a few years, and often in quite a miserable state due to the effects of the treatments.
So Jessica may have achieved several things: 1) a demonstration of living a very positive and fulfilling period of life, WITH this cancer 2) a demonstration that people can make very personal, and informed choices about their health, with medical science being ONE of the inputs to that informed decision making, but far from the WHOLE of it.

There may be far more to the human psyche and spirit than Orac seems willing to admit, when it comes to rising to the challenge of life-threatening illness.

By David McRae (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

@ Narad, regarding the confustion about 'cancer story' and 'cancer success story'. I seem to recall, years ago when Jess still seemed healthy, that she was indeed calling herself a 'cancer success story'. Then later when she realised she wasn't cured, but was still trying to put a positive spin on things, she called herself a 'cancer story'. So in this case I think the redaction is due to some revisionism on Jess' part.

By Evidence-based (not verified) on 28 Feb 2015 #permalink

I remember the guy ,who provide 2-hr consultation with email follow-up, only charge us $180.

To tell you to eat kwark and flax oil? That's all Budwig's stale nonsense amounts to.

My issue is reading authentic honest blogs. Jess Ainscough was a dishonest blogger who led people to believe she had cured her cancer. She made a lucrative business from it and when her health started to deteriorate she tried to hide it, see pictures here... https://rosaliehilleman.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/the-wellness-warrior-d…

She's a fraud who tried to cover up what she said, by lying hi wever and stated on her blog that she never said she cured her cancer. What s liar as it was stated 37 times see link below... https://rosaliehilleman.wordpresls.com/2014/03/05/transparency-misquote…

"To tell you to eat kwark and flax oil? That’s all Budwig’s stale nonsense amounts to."

Well the cellect budwig therapy combine a few simple therapies to give advanced cancer patients best chance to survive. Budwig therapy is about sunlight, flax oil& cottage cheese. Cellect is a nutrtiion powder. In fact someone tell me if he got one alternative therapy,he will select cellect. It is much easier than doing Gerson therapy.

Before that, I got 2 relatives who got lung cancer and bile duct cancer respectively. They all died within 1-6 years by using conventional treatment. For this third relative, she only go through conventional treatment for 2.5 years and all conventional treatment was already exhausted. She just wanted a try with alternative therapy without anything to lose. The result was amazing.

With due respect, Henry #580, with such a range of ineffective choices, how would you know what the'effective' (and I have my doubts) choice was? There are - oh, God, here it comes again - NO CLINICAL TRIALS to provide objective evidence. So bad luck to the poor sod who picked one of the 297 or 298 duds?

@ Sarah Bellum #548

You’d need to be a lot more specific than this with regard to your own and your sister’s cancer in order to gain any credibility here!

Given the high probability of hit-and-run, you might have to press her on Twatter.

It's a pretty painful feed; you've been warned.

You are the most judgmental prick I've every read.
Have some respect. You actually don't know everything.

Understanding why there are many judgments towards Jess, because of the misstatements made earlier in her journey.
Those statements were not made to mislead anyone nor to enhance her Wellness Warrior title. Jess understood her journey, she had done extensive research.
Jess was and will always be a young beautiful person who refused to live life by a time frame. Jess embrace her journey like any other young person, falling in love, dreaming of years to come and enjoying life. Her close circle understand there was a time frame but was able to enjoy friendship, love, dreams and life as a whole with Jess without the "time frame" ordaining.
Jess filled her last 6 years with true happiness, making every minute count. (The last year was the hardest, as Jess stated in her last blog).
She left no with sad memories. The sadness is she is not here anymore.
There is so much that is incorrect written about who the person Jess was.
Let me make one thing clear, Jess did not "influenced" her beloved mother to join her journey to fight her Breast Cancer her way (Jess's way). Her mother was a believer prior.
Jess's father (Jess was a only child), Tallon, family and friends are trying to understand and grieve WHY?
Like many people and families who have in years past and I am sure in the future, hold onto hope that there will or might be a miracle to happen against all odds.

Regarding the trope "the oncologist sent her home to die":

In cases where there is no realistic expectation of cure, mainstream medicine does a pretty good job of end-of-life care, offering palliative treatments to ameliorate the worst symptoms and treat pain. Alt med quackery has nothing to offer in such circumstances.

I try not to imagine what horrors terminal Gerson Clinic patients experience in the absence of mainstream compassionate care.

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Johnny,

One of the regulars here, I believe it was Krebiozen, posted a simple, yet very detailed comment on the whys and hows of the relationship between breathing and blood acidity .

It probably was me, as acid-base quackery seriously annoys me. I see capnkrunch has beaten me too it, but I'll add a couple of things to his explanation. Briefly, acidosis is a symptom, the result of either producing too much acid, or impaired excretion. If you aren't suffering from an illness that causes these, you are unlikely to be acidotic. Your lungs and kidneys can deal with as much dietary acid (mostly from proteins) as you can throw at them. For example, the amount of acid produced by a marathon runner dwarfs the amount produced by metabolizing the protein in a burger or a piece of cheese, and their kidneys and lungs deal with that just fine, even though I have measured the blood pH of some runners post-marathon and they had impressive metabolic acidoses that took several hours to clear. If an ITU patient had blood results like that I would have paged their doctor immediately. Marathon runners, one might observe, are not known for their poor health.

Urine pH is often used by altmed practitioners as a proxy for blood pH, which can be misleading. Some, like Robert O. Young, sell 'alkalizing powders' with pH strips, so that the patients marks can see how their urine pH rises after taking them. What they don't realize is that this is simply their bodies excreting excess alkali. Urine pH in a healthy person (who isn't consuming alkalizing powders) is a rough measure of how much protein that person is eating, as excess amino acids are excreted in urine, so meat eaters will tend to have lower urine pH than a vegetarian. Eating citrus fruits with a lot of citric acid in them will make the urine more alkaline, because citrate is excreted and citrate is alkaline, leading to claim that lemons alkalize the body. They don't. The body has to neutralize the citric acid, and then excretes the slightly alkaline citrate, so it actually has a net gain in acidity.

I could go on (and on), but this probably isn't an appropriate place.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Mary
"She sounds like a wonderful young woman. I googled her looking to find her blog and came upon this disgusting article. Absolutely disrespectful of another human being."

Most people who spend a lot of time becoming a brand seem that way. If her media team hadn't scrubbed her entire story from the Interwebs maybe something other than this article would show up on people's google feeds.

We didn't pull everything she created as part of her brand off the webs leaving only a few articles about her other people wrote.

I'm a bit confused by the claim that Charlotte Gerson's 'rapid healing' of a broken pelvis and then a broken hip is evidence of her extraordinary health. I would have thought that an extraordinarily healthy person would have had extraordinary bone health and wouldn't have broken her pelvis and hip in the first place.

The fact is that raw food vegetarianism can lead to thinner bones and even osteoporosis. This is probably due to less calcium and vitamin D in their diets, but also possibly because of a high intake of antinutrients in raw foods, which prevent absorption of essential nutrients. The Gerson protocol must include a lot of antinutrients, given the vast amounts of raw juices it advocates. There were good reasons for humans developing cooking methods tens of thousands of years ago. The belief that raw juices are healthy is pure vitalism, in my opinion.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

More and more show up that are not just following nonsense, but paying to follow it.

In this country of there is some disaster and people hike prices up for things in the disaster area, that is a crime. It should be the same for people that take advantage of people that are sick.

A person doing these treatments and still living is not proof of these crazy treatments working. For every story you know that used a woo treatment and is still going strong, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, with the opposite outcome.

It would be great for Big Pharma and conveniential medicine to use these treatments.. If they just want to make money.

Big Pharma and medicine can't put these things out as cures, because it is a lie and three is someone to go after them if they did that.

Your doctor will tell you to eat healthy, maybe even prescribe or tell you to take some vitamins along with your treatment. The difference is they don't charge you tens of thousands to tell you that.

All these cancer people using alt medicine.. What is the proof that these people are so healthy? We all know very sick people that were "very healthy" looking/acting until they weren't. That does not mean they WERE actually healthy. Some people live with an aggressive cancer much, much longer than most. Someone has to be that person and someone has to know that person. For that one that beat the "odds of time" there are thousands and thousands that didn't.

Why do people not understand that is not proof of anything? If medicine was allowed to use that same mold as proof, we would still get leeches put on us and bled out when we went to the doctor.

I had a cold last week, one night I went to bed after having a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. I woke up feeling great and my cold was gone.

So using the logic of many, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches must cure the common cold.

I seriously feel like I have lost some brain cells with reading some of the more recent Jess cheerleadering posts. The danger in all this, while you may choose this for yourself, which is fine, some of you people have children. It is not ok to choose this for your children. I grew up with a girl that married into a cult and believed that God would save.

Her 7 year old died of what started as a sinus infection, a horrible death. The law could do nothing, it didn't wake her up and now her surviving children are in danger. If her remaining children never have anything serious happen to them, then when they have children, they are in danger. Her remaining children are completely brainwashed at this point.

Everyone doing these things doesn't get a choice, because many of them are children of very misguided parents that make the dangerous choice for their children. Children do not get a choice.

May I state a few facts...

-Cancer is a hideous disease that science has some understanding of but can not control entirely.

-Lots of people diagnosed at all stages of cancer die, some with conventional treatment, and some who chose an alternate route.

If anybody is 'unfortunate' enough to develop cancer (and by that I mean if is not purely by chance that people develop cancer), then surely it is up to them to seek advice and complete research about this hideous disease and the appropriate treatment for them including speaking with others who have or have had cancer, like Jess for example.

Now isn't it possible, your honour, that Jess was going to die as a result of this hideous disease with or without treatment but for her, quality of life was more important than quantity?

Whilst I understand the viewpoint that she was perceived as being dishonest etc, but nobody was forced to take her advice likewise nobody should be forced to take the advice of anybody else.

Now to be completely honest I do not know what choice I would make if it were me, however I do know that I would expect others to respect my choice. And I also know that more money, time and effort should be put into preventing this hideous disease so less people need to make the choice.

Education is paramount and making better choices in any circumstances is surely a positive thing.

As you were....

It seems that Jessica lived pretty long and pretty well following diagnosis with an advanced and quite nasty cancer. If she had not followed the wellness protocols she did she may possibly have died much sooner.

The course of her disease was typical for the kind of cancer she had.

Many people who follow standard oncology treatment for various cancers still die within a few years, and often in quite a miserable state due to the effects of the treatments.

That does happen sometimes, for various cancers. And whether or not to forgo it is up to the individual. Nobody's arguing with that.

So Jessica may have achieved several things: 1) a demonstration of living a very positive and fulfilling period of life, WITH this cancer 2) a demonstration that people can make very personal, and informed choices about their health, with medical science being ONE of the inputs to that informed decision making, but far from the WHOLE of it.

Many people prefer a comforting falsehood to an ugly truth. Probably all people, in some circumstances. And sometimes that's harmless, or even beneficial, at an individual level.

But a decision that's informed by the propagation of comforting falsehoods -- such as the ostensible efficacy of Gerson therapy -- can't really be called "informed."

And it's important to make that clear. Because people should have the right to make an informed decision about matters of life and death.

You can see that, right?

There may be far more to the human psyche and spirit than Orac seems willing to admit, when it comes to rising to the challenge of life-threatening illness.

Personally I would combine the best of what modern medicine can provide with making every effort to embrace a healthy diet and lifestyle. I would embrace the science and medical advice and also take control of my health in anyway I could. Focusing on eliminating the cancer causing and cancer enhancing toxins in my diet and environment and employing the right kind of exercise and stress management techniques that would allow my body to employ its natural defenses to support the medical therapies. To do either one without the other would be reducing your chances of success.

By JohnSaville (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Understanding why there are many judgments towards Jess, because of the misstatements made earlier in her journey.

Was this a "misstatement"?

"I’m going to be blunt here. Drugs do not cure cancer. They just don’t. Every now and then, chemotherapy and radiation treatments may put a patient into “remission”, but this is not truly healing. This is certainly not a cure. Why? Because cancer is so much more than the tumour it shows up as. The tumours are merely the symptoms. And when you just target the symptom without dealing with the root cause, the disease is going to keep showing up. You can chase the disease around your body with surgery and radiation, and you can douse it with toxic chemicals, but this is not an effective long-term solution. This is why you here so often of people whose “cancer came back”. They didn’t do the work to truly reverse their disease. Cancer is nothing more than your body telling you that something has got to give. It is the result of a breakdown in your body’s defenses after it has endured years of abuse in the form of a toxic diet, toxic mind and toxic environment."

Two words: childhood leukemia.

@Narad, childhood leukemia will be dismissed as something the mother exposed the child to in utero.

They always have an excuse for why people caused their own illness.

@David McRae #584

We can be certain that Gerson is pure quackery and just as certain that you are gifted at spouting nonsense.

I really do feel sad that Jess was given such a devastating diagnosis at such a young age. I can understand her grasping at alternative treatments when he conventional treatment was so radical. What galls me though is that she did not go home and do Gerson by herself. She marketed it she said things that were untrue about conventional medicine and she made money selling useless things to people
I do wish that nobody that young ever had to become a cancer patient but what I wish is not reality, anymore than what she was selling.

Rachel @ 598

So it's the patient's fault if he/she believes Jess's lies? And Jess is just exercising her fundamental rights when she fleeces a sucker who might be under stress due to a cancer diagnosis?

And the little old lady in the wheelchair who gets mugged - it's her fault too?

Lovely philosophy you've got there.

/snark off/

Sarah Bellum,
Cerebellum? Funny.

I have since met thousands of Gerson survivors, (some as long as 30 yrs) who are also the healthiest, most vibrant people I know.

Why aren't the details of these thousands of patients available for doctors to examine? Why do Gerson's own figures show that their success rate is so poor? For example they report not a single five-year survivor of internally metastatic melanoma, which is the cancer Gerson is supposed to be most effective against. Why are Gerson's 50 allegedly "cured" patients so unconvincing?

Frankly, I don't believe you.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

There's nothing "sad" about this, except maybe for the people she misled. You are far too sympathetic toward a quack who got exactly what she deserved, after killing her own mother along the way.

By Kiran Wagle (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

@ KayMarie:

"Orca" is NOT a typo: he writes over @ whale.to.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

I didn't know this woman - only ran across this article in rebuttal to alternative medicine on another cancer web site - but there is a quote from world renowned cancer doctor - who unfortunately passed away a few years ago from a different cancer - "The real problem with alternative medicine is that once any treatment is shown beyond doubt to be effective, it ceases to be 'alternative' and becomes just like any other part of medical knowledge. That means that 'alternative medicine' must consist entirely of unproven treatments. ". Very well spoken... http://mutated-unmuated.blogspot.com/2007/08/alternative-medicine.html

Looking at Krebiozen's links in #606, is pretty disheartening, but not at all surprising. So many times, when one looks into the details of testimonials for various cures attributed to quack treatments, they end up being so underwhelming, misleading and utterly incomplete. It is amazing that so many of those success stories were never even confirmed through biopsies.

people still die even if they get treatment, no matter what it is. I Think its absolutely wrong to use her as a poster child for why a certain type of treatment "doesn't work".

Think of all the people you know that have passed even with chemo and drugs. We don't write posts about them when they die saying "look shit didn't work folks! how sad that they thought it would"

while i think debate is healthy, what should have been focused on is someone passed away, not to use it as a gateway to talk about something thats been on all of our minds. clearly we're all too de-sensitized to look at her death instead of her life and not having enough balls to really talk about stuff that we think needs to be said.

By kat parry (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Henry @583/8: if this therapy is so great you would think this guy who sold it to you could at least publish a case study. In fact, he really has an obligation to. Unless of course he's a quack and a scammer.

And on that note, David McRae @584: RCTs are the gold standard yes, but to say they're the only evidence we accept is a nice strawman. In fact, IIRC orac does a lot of work with animal models in his lab. We establish concurrent lines of evidence first then cap it off with an RCT and verify the results through repitition. That is how science works. Alternative therapies fail to even have a plausible mechanism based in our understanding of biology let alone studies in vitro, animal models, case reports (different from anecdotes), pilot studies, etc. And they still get valuabe funding for RCTs and surprise, surprise they fail to demonstrate efficacy. But even great RCTs with p>0.05 one in twenty will show falss positives. This is a danger of jumping directly to RCTs without establishing biological plausibility and other lines of evidence first in the way that quacks seem to eager to do.

Rachel @598

If anybody is ‘unfortunate’ enough to develop cancer (and by that I mean if is not purely by chance that people develop cancer)

Certainly there are controlable risk factors but when a smoker of 30 years gets lung cancer that doesn't make it any less terrible. We don't say "screw him, its his fault." This blame the patient mentality reeks of alternative and is frankly quite disgusting.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

"Like what you said, it is sad we did not give any position for alternative therapy for treating cancer patients."
Henry from Melbourne, no, it is good that we do not use alternative therapy for cancer as it is useless in treating cancer. It's been asked over and over for evidence for these ridiculous claims that you alt-med twits keep blathering on about. And not one single person can provide evidence to support any of this BS. Why is that Henry?

"I remember the guy ,who provide 2-hr consultation with email follow-up, only charge us $180. We will appreciate his help forever."
I'm sure he appreciates the $180 fee he gets every time he spews his nonsense to some gullible fool.

"To people who consider alternative therapy as quack, I want you to say your opinion if one of your family member was given up by conventional treatment and get benefit from alternative therapy. Remember there are about 300 alternative therapies: only 10% of these are effective. For those with advanced stage cancer, only 2 or 3 alternative therapies provide good chance."

OK Henry, you've got some 'splainin to do. Let's see, 10% of 300 is 30. So please list the 30 therapies and the supporting to data that shows a benefit beyond placebo. I'm sure in all your infinite alt-med wisdom you can quickly supply this info. And then give us the same data to support your ridiculous assertion for the 2-3 therapies that are affective for end stage cancer. Also, just for fun, how about giving us a few examples of the 270 therapies that don't work and what led you to the conclusion that they don't work. This ought to provide for a few good laughs.

"But it is worth a try if you are sentenced to death by your oncologist."
Typical asinine statement from an CAM loving dope. But, no, it's not worth a try as not one alternative therapy has been shown to be effective in treating anything let alone cancer.

It is important to give this news in a timely manner. If it was delayed, the media will have moved on and conveniently forgotten Jess and the failure of her strategies. Hopefully someone thinking about using these methods will read this and think again.

@JohnSaville

Personally I would combine the best of what modern medicine can provide with making every effort to embrace a healthy diet and lifestyle.

I agree. I do wonder about the way you wrote this, though - are you saying that a healthy diet and lifestyle as something not part of what modern medicine can provided? If so, why do you say that?

Thanks.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

To all you peddlers of so-called alternative medicine (S-CAM) -
With all your accusations of "Big Pharma coverups" and conspiracies, there are some facts you cannot counter in any rational way:
1) Oncologists also get cancer and suffer and die. So do their loved ones. This is also true for pharmaceutical executives.
2) I have known many oncologists, and asking them why they chose oncology, the nearly universal answer was in effect "my (father/mother/sibling/ friend/whomever) died of cancer, and I want to do what I can to stop it." Not one of them would ever withhold anything that might save even one more patient.
3) Researchers tend to be as competitive as they are cooperative, and anyone who could would claim primacy. Just look at the Robert Gallo/Luc Montaigner dustup in the 80's.
4) If any serious researcher came up with the "secret cure", be it eating raw chinquapins or getting hit over the head with a baseball bat made out of rare Bougainville rain forest lumber, she would be bigger than anyone in medicine since Jonas Salk. Study up on all the honors and awards he received and tell me who would forego all that in order to further some silly idea of a coverup. In fact, just look at some aerial photos of the Salk Institute and tell me who wouldn't want to head up something similar but larger with their name on the wall.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Krebiozen @ 606.

I'm sure that there are people on Gerson's therapy who have had their cancer go into remission and ended up living long, healthy lives. Certain kinds of cancer can be like that by random chance, can't they?

Which does not at all mean that any of them were actually "cured" by Gerson's "therapy". (And I also question "thousands", though I'll chalk that up to hyperbole. Maybe I'm being too charitable there)

Thank you for your assessment of this tragic situation considering your professional understanding and experience. Most oncologists are consumed by work and bound by confidentiality such that they do not post real case stories in public online forums. However, the quackery is gaining ground because people read and absorb non-scientific anecdotes and reject the boring statistics that they likely find difficult to understand. I think it is important that we medical and public health professionals engage in the ongoing dialogue with the public to discredit the quackery and increase understanding of how therapies work. I applaud your article and think that you describe Jess and Sharyn's cases with respect and sensitivity despite their choices to reject Western treatment options. I appreciate your contribution to this contribution, and think timing is irrelevant in this debate.

@kat parry

I Think its absolutely wrong to use her as a poster child for why a certain type of treatment “doesn’t work”.

I agree. To the best of my understanding of what I've read here, Orac and most people who have written comments are not doing that. The real message is that there is no good evidence that the treatment Ms. Ainscough chose and promoted should have cured her cancer. One case, though, is insufficient evidence to say whether a treatment works or does not work.

Think of all the people you know that have passed even with chemo and drugs. We don’t write posts about them when they die saying “look shit didn’t work folks! how sad that they thought it would”

"We" might but certainly some people do. Not only do we see some of those comments in this very stream (examples: comments 21, 103, and 210), but Orac kindly points out some examples in comment 139 above.

what should have been focused on is someone passed away, not to use it as a gateway to talk about something thats been on all of our minds. clearly we’re all too de-sensitized to look at her death instead of her life and not having enough balls to really talk about stuff that we think needs to be said.

What do you think needs to be said? Why is it not what is being said?

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Old Rockin' Dave- Part of the problem is they tend to view the "elite" as one homogeneous unit of evil, not as composed of individuals with their own agendas. This is how moon-landing conspiracy theorists fail to notice that the USSR would never have allowed the US to get way with it.

By Gray Falcon (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

re " Drugs don't cure cancer"

PLEASE don't tell my cousin, Alain**, as he's been around *because* of those drugs-
when he was 25, he discovered that he had testicular cancer - first he had surgery and chemotherapy but it came back in two years so, in addition to castration, which he underwent, he opted for massive chemotherapy and radiation rather than a search-and-destroy mission ( abdominal surgery) seeking affected lymph nodes. He didn't want to be incapacitated so he could work.

In short, he had a rough time for 6-8 months or so, lost his job and had to start over. BUT he's still here, is married, leads an extremely active life and works for - wait for it-
Big Pharma. Which is not directly due to his illness: after he lost his previous job his wife encouraged him to apply at her place- a pharmaceutical company. He is 50 years old.

And no, neither of them is a demon. They can't be- they help people adopt Lab dogs as a hobby.

** not Alain who posts here

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Just to be clear.. Orac is bound by the confidentiality that all doctors are. Jess was not his patient nor did he post anything that wasn't public knowledge.

@Narad #543: clearly they don't understand how the sodium potassium pump works. Or the effects of hyperkalemia on the heart's electrical system :(

@CO #547: I've often thought some practices that have no use as medical treatment might have uses as care and comfort measures. Accupressure, for example. The issue is any such modality must be safe for the patient, and but be applied with ethics in mind, especially since they seem to trigger the placebo effect rather than have an actual effect.

I actually hope that any woo you choose to embrace, you embrace after going through your treating physician. He needs to know about anything you are doing because some woo has negative interactions with your medical therapies. I also would encourage you to seek counseling to help you develop stronger coping mechanisms for the medical treatments you are undergoing. From what you write, it seems to me Ineffective Coping is really the issue here for you. If you are a spiritual person, consulting with a pastor or other spiritual leader you trust can also help you develop inner resources that will help you manage the trial you are going through.

I wish you the very best and pray that you are able to find a balance that suits you, and that your treatment is successful.

@Sarah #548: I certainly hope you continue to remain healthy. However, I would point out that Jessie Ainscough claimed a cure from Gerson and yet she still died. So I wouldn't be so quick to attribute your recovery to Gerson just yet. Correlation is not causation. Some cancers spontaneously remit for reasons we don't always understand, but are thought to be hormonal in nature, stimulating a strong immune response. Fever may be a causal factor in some of these cases (Hobohm, 2001).

But I pray that your cancer never returns. Best wishes.

@David #584: Pot, meet kettle.

Hobohm U (October 2001). "Fever and cancer in perspective". Cancer Immunol. Immunother. 50 (8): 391–6. PMID 11726133.

kat parry,

people still die even if they get treatment, no matter what it is. I Think its absolutely wrong to use her as a poster child for why a certain type of treatment “doesn’t work”.

It seems to me that the only people who appear to be using her as a 'poster girl' are those promoting altmed cancer treatments.

Conventional treatment for cancer is not infallible, of course, but in many cases it greatly increases chances of survival. It's about the odds, which we know thanks to clinical trials and historical records of how people did before effective treatments were developed. Orac pointed out in 2013:

Although her sarcoma is very likely to result in her demise; it may not happen for several more years. Worse, however, by refusing surgery, she decreased her chance of surviving 10 years by at least half.

I take no pleasure at all in seeing predictions like this come true, it makes me feel sick. I feel much the same way about the current measles outbreaks in the US, and will even more nauseous when, as is increasingly likely, someone dies as a result. I'm quite sure that Orac, a surgeon who spends his working life trying to prevent cancer deaths, feels much the same. Those claiming Orac is "gloating" are projecting, I think.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Narad @622: thanks for that link. I read Steve Novella's post over at SBM on Wednesday but this one was more clear to me. I also just noticed I accidentally got my inequality wrong.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Think of all the people you know that have passed even with chemo and drugs. We don’t write posts about them when they die saying “look shit didn’t work folks! how sad that they thought it would”

Because those people don't go around making false claims for the efficacy of conventional treatment that have the (not coincidental) side effect of gulling people into thinking that cancer is more curable with less pain and suffering than it actually is.

What part of that is so difficult to grasp?

Obviously, the Sciences are not being taught in high schools around the world, as they should be.

While there are things that have been discussed that are above any high school science classes, beet juice not curing cancer and "toxins" really isn't being addressed.

I have a feeling there are people posting here that would literally be shocked at the so called."toxins" in their body, in the air, in the earth, right this minute.

"He says he is a cancer surgeon. There is a certain amount of 'group think' in being in that profession."

Actually, it's called "going to medical school," and then residency, and then further training in oncologic surgery, and it's just possible that in the course of that rather lengthy and difficult (7- or 8-year) process, he might have learned some things about cancer that people who have not pursued such an arduous education and training do not know.

Orac on Mamamia (a mainstream online publication):
http://www.mamamia.com.au/news/wellness-warrior-jess-ainscough-died-age…

It is the right time to discuss the impact Jess had and the influence of the Wellness Warrior brand especially since all record of her work has been removed from the internet by the same people who enabled her to build a business from her illness. As Meg mentioned upthread, there are numerous individuals who profited from Jess illness and I wouldn't be surprised if they intend to whitewash her image to protect themselves and their carefully constructed businesses.

Their silence is not a good sign in light of the swift clean up.

May I just throw in here, if it hasn't yet been mentioned, that 5 enemas a day does not sound like a healthy thing to do - in fact it sounds quite dangerous. Forced enemas are an old stand-by of child abuse and can be highly traumatic.

I wonder if anyone has studied this Gerson thing from a sociological or anthropological point of view. It sounds like a cult, or at the very least, it has strongly religious overtones, reflecting a strong desire for bodily purity. The hourly juicing and five enemas, spaced throughout the day, are heavily ritualistic. and strike me as shame-based. But even more so, they tie you to your house (well, let's be blunt, they tie you to your toilet). They absolutely cripple your lifestyle. I cannot fathom how some people insist that chemotherapy is so brutal (all the rhetoric about "cut, burn, poison" etc.), as if the Gerson regimen were a walk in the park. It would make it difficult if not impossible to hold a job, visit friends, or do most normal activities of daily life. Obviously, you can't go to a restaurant with friends (unless you eat nothing). I guess you hang out with other Gerson-ites, and juice together and all head to the bathroom together afterwards? It's at the very best extremely peculiar, really it's worth studying as an anthropological phenomenon. An earlier poster referred to "group think" among medical doctors .... aiiiii, talk about group think! Ready team, let's shove a coffee bolus up our asses, altogether now!

Chemotherapy may be totally awful, but at least it doesn't go on forever. Jess was quoted above saying she had followed the 5-enema, hourly-juicing routine for two solid years, and intended to follow a slightly relaxed version of it for the rest of her life!

What is so bad about cut, burn and poison? The idea, you guys, is to cut, burn and poison the CANCER. Yes, there is a definite danger of harming other cells as well ... but the point is to cut, burn and poison the CANCER and I would think most cancer patients, if rational, would be all for it.

@Peg #592

"Jess was and will always be a young beautiful person who refused to live life by a time frame."

That's the thing, perhaps, that hangs up alt-med folks. Newsflash, we are all living life by a time frame. There isn't an option there.

My mistake- wrong link! Can't find the article now...

Orac you didnt waste any time in getting your response out there did you? This article reeks of 'I told you so'.

@Andrew #618
"I’m sure that there are people on Gerson’s therapy who have had their cancer go into remission and ended up living long, healthy lives. Certain kinds of cancer can be like that by random chance, can’t they?"

ALL cancers are like that. All cancers, no matter how virulent or nonvirulent, have a survival curve, with the bulk of patients clustered in the middle around average or median survival durations, and smaller numbers at either end of the curve - that is, a few people die much sooner than predicted, and a few people die much later than predicted, and a very few don't die at all, they go into long-term, permanent remission, or die of something else before the cancer can recur.

I think people forget that the stats showing some people don't recur, include people who randomly died of something else; people with cancer can still have car accidents or fall off ladders or have heart attacks or drown or develop other diseases.

This is very sad, and I agree with you wholeheartedly for posting this immediately. No one gets to censor us. When we have thoughts, if we wish to share them, they should be shared. Death waits for no one. The rather tactful criticism, aside from the distaste shown to Gerson protocol which is WELL warranted, I found this more informing than distasteful.

Some would call this insensitive while I see it as initiative. The faster people understand that what this woman promoted was ineffective, and complete foolishness, the better off they are.

If someone is affected, take all the time to research each, and every option you have. These are decisions that not only affect your life, but literally define the line between life and death. To add to that, if you have the time to do the research then you should be very greatful of such. I can't say I'd absolutely remove my arm because I am not in such a position; however, I have been faced with my mortality in the most serious of contexted. I was told I may, or may not have twelve hours to a few days to live while I was paralyzed at seventeen years of age. In that moment, I believe I would have said, "Chop me in half it keeps me alive." I was paralyzed, and it was unknown if I'd ever have use of my legs again. I could use my arms, but in the context of laying in bed with a only TV remote, it seemed quite redundant to contemplate the uses of an arm over existence. All I knew, is that I very much didn't want to die. So, while my situation was not the same as hers, I have been close to affirmation of decisions I might make given I develop cancer in my life.

With all of that said, I boldly support Orac's article here. This is sad, but she made choices that were suppositional to curing her when they would not, and more importantly could not do such a thing. This should be widely noted, and hopefully, when someone checks into the different options they have when affected by cancer, they understand that Gerson Protocol isn't part of a well-balanced diet. That no matter how many coffee enemas you prepare, and put yourself through, it's not going to help your cancer. It would be wonderful if it worked. Phenomenal even. But it doesn't.

By Alexander (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Interesting can of worms this has opened up. Why do you have to be in one camp or in the other camp? Often conventional treatment does give a person extra time but sometimes the quality of that time is terrible. Some people are cured, many aren't. Surely they should have the freedom to make an informed choice without the medical system throwing strident accusations at them or treatments that are not "medical". Life is what it is and some of us are not destined to live until we are very old. All of us are destined to die sometime. Jess certainly has made an impact in her life....a life well lived.

@kat parry

I Think its absolutely wrong to use her as a poster child for why a certain type of treatment “doesn’t work”.

Nothing about this case is needed to demonstrate that the Gerson treatment doesn't work. That is clearly established by the results that are obtained.

But I find it interesting that, even if it were true that someone held her up as the classic illustration of how it doesn't work, that you jump on THAT instead of calling her out for her continued peddling of it. Because regardless of whether this case shows that Gerson therapy "doesn't work," it is undeniable that it clearly does NOT show that it "does work." But that was what she was claiming.

By your own standard, the standard of criticizing Orac, you should be criticizing The Wellness Warrior.

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

"she and her mother were both taken in by Gerson quackery" I would like to know who has made you god to go around claiming you know what took someone's life? When treating any patient with an illness, it is not quackery to know that the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual components all contribute to health and wellness.

I don't know if your clinical experience is just in surgery or actually in treating and guiding patients through their health but I am sure that if you were a clinician who had this experience then you would already acknowledge that health and healing is not as simple as you are making it out to be. Many patients have impeccable diets and exercise daily but perhaps they have a history of abuse that you don't know about. Or what about the patients who are being exposed to environmental toxins on a regular basis? And what about the patients who eat terribly, smoke, don't exercise but they have a strong spiritual practice? So do YOU really know what took her or her mothers life? And until you spend some time in practice, learning what the root of an illness is, then I would suggest that you stop using someone's death as a platform for you to get your personal agenda across. Are you going to publicly shame everyone who dies for the choices they have made? At the end of the day we are all responsible for our own bodies and the choices we make.

It is not uncommon in the medical field to shame, ridicule, embarrass, project anger and withhold treatment for the choices patients make. It hurts the ego when someone doesn't listen to our godly advice but in reality, it is our job to respect the choice of our patients, not dictate them. When you have experience, you will understand that there is no bullet approach to healing and it is completely naïve, ignorant and a lack of understanding of the body and its healing potential.

May you become enlightened by your own experiences and the ones that your patients present to you.

Tee

Surely they should have the freedom to make an informed choice without the medical system throwing strident accusations at them or treatments that are not “medical”.

Right. But they can't make informed choices without information.

It's not a strident accusation to say that Gerson therapy is quackery. It's true information.

The idea, you guys, is to cut, burn and poison the CANCER.

As Depleted Cranium noted a while ago (and this link is sure to infuriate the acolytes even further; see also #84), "Cancer cannot be 'healed.' It must be killed."

"Cut, poison, burn" (not really so much of the first), along with immunotherapy, gave my mom about five good years before her breast cancer – which was discovered because of a metastasis – figured out a way around the Herceptin and ran riot in her lungs in the space of six weeks. I had to dissuade her from mild crankery such as Suzanne Somers and curcumin a few times, but she was of an age that gave her more than enough sense for "please just check it out with your real doctors" to win the day after the explanations were over.

Interesting can of worms this has opened up. Why do you have to be in one camp or in the other camp?

What do you imagine these "camps" to be? Gerson, put bluntly, is an insane crock of shіt. There would be no reason whatever to have to reiterate this if the Flying Monkey Squad of apologists (who apparently have entirely failed to internalize Jess's more philosophical advice) hadn't descended with buckets of pious wrath and whitewash.

I wouldn't call 5 coffee enemas a day to be "living well."

Sounds like a crock, literally.

If cancer is essentially cells growing out of control, at a fundamental level, it doesn't make sense to provide it with more nourishment. The cancer needs to stop growing, therefore it makes sense to kill the cancer- before it kills you. Or so I would have thought.

#649 "it doesn't make sense to provide it with more nourishment"

Exactly. My own father, when he got cancer, pestered our cousin who is a doctor to get him to agree that "boosting the immune system" (with some wicked, and wickedly expensive, snake oil potion) would at least HELP fight the cancer. He understood the error he was making when my cousin explained that if he was so intent on "boosting his immune system" he might well be just helping the cancer to thrive and flourish. Cancer is very happy if you boost the immune system ...

I swear people just hear the words "immune system" and stop thinking. People today think boosting the immune system is the answer to everything. Not every disease is about your immune system! General boosting of the immune system is most useful in avoiding colds and flu, or other infections, but it has nearly zilch to do with cancer.

General boosting of the immune system is most useful in avoiding colds and flu, or other infections doesn't exist

FTFY.

How about choice? Does that account for something.... People need to know and need to be allowed to make their own decisions. So she died which is sad but she dealt with her cancer in a way that was her choice and thats allowed.

If more of you science heads actually realised that you are often wanting the same thing for your patiences as they want and to empower them with whatever decisions they make then thats the best thing you can do. We all know the power of Placebo so if they want to eat a raw vegan diet and get counselling - tell them GREAT CHOICE and I support you wholeheartedly.

Placebo effects do not cure cancer or prolong cancer-related survival. They are thus irrelevant to the issue of whether a given intervention can treat cancer. As for a raw vegan diet, although it might have value in preventing some cancers (not all, just some), there is no good evidence yet that it does anything whatsoever to treat an already established cancer.

Choice is nice if there is accurate information upon which to base the choice. That is not the case with Gerson therapy, where the Gerson Institute makes promises of efficacy for which it has no evidence.

Surely they should have the freedom to make an informed choice without the medical system throwing strident accusations at them or treatments that are not “medical”.

It appears you've missed the issue. The question is whether the treatment has been shown to be, to coin a phrase, safe and effective with good, solid evidence. If people are given misinformation and don't have accurate data, how can they be expected to make an informed choice?

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

I'm shocked to read this "Orac" person could write such an unloving comment referencing Jessica's passing.

Are the Aussies really this "unevolved"?

Ben @652, how far are you willing to go with that? If your patient suggests something that you believe to be against medical advice and his or her best interests, would you have a doctor say "Great Choice"?

May you become enlightened by your own experiences and the ones that your patients present to you.

You've just failed on the posturing-as-a-Holy-Mother front.

"Namaste."

Just 2 points.
1. For those claiming that Jess had a healthy, positive, happy life and thrived with cancer, I wouldn't be so sure. As a 22yr old, her world was shaken to its core and from that point, I assume that the time between her one and only chemo and the time she was re-diagnosed was probably one of the few months she may have felt 'normal'. The 2 1/2 yrs on Gerson were hellish according to her own blog. She was often unwell and was a slave to her juicer, claiming she couldn't even watch a movie without using the pause button. She couldn't swim in the ocean which she loved because Gerson says salt is bad for cancer cells (rolls eyes). Fast forward to the time she relaxed the Gerson diet and for the 2nd time, she seemed to be happy. For a short time only. Her mother then died. Her state of mind is well known after this. The spiral was now accelerating until the last year when she says was mostly spent in bed and she was bought to her knees. 'Thrived for the last 7 years with cancer"....I don't think so. The blogs and posts showed a happy smiling face giving out wellness information, with well styled photo shoots surrounded by like minded affiliate $$ making partners. I don't claim to know what Jess was really feeling or escaping from but I believe she tried to hide behind this façade. I know that I often put on a brave persona for the sake of my kids and the people I love, whilst I am truly suffering, in pain and anxious about the next scan results. Having a 'fear of cancer returning' is now a documented phobia and one that I must get a grip of.

Secondly, the Big Pharma haters. It is these companies that spend $billions and many years to develop a treatment that may not even be approved. Herceptin, which is a targeted therapy and which is my only hope, took 12 years to develop and $$billions which came mainly from the private sector and that is one reason I buy Revlon cosmetics as they were instrumental in having this drug developed. Don't you think that oncologists, surgeons, researchers, pharmaceutical CEO's and beyond have not been touched by cancer? If there was a cure out there, including 'natural' would they not embrace it and shout it to the world? Why is it okay for all the internet 'health' entrepreneurs to peddle their wares and make $$billions also?

As Depleted Cranium noted a while ago (and this link is sure to infuriate the acolytes even further; see also #84), “Cancer cannot be ‘healed.’ It must be killed.”

Actually, I'm not entirely sure that that's true, and I'm a cancer biologist. What is true is that science has not yet figured out a way to "heal" cancer. Certainly, neither have any of the alternative medicine practitioners who claim to be able to "heal" cancer, either, their extravagant claims notwithstanding. In the meantime, until we discover a strategy to "heal" cancer, we have to kill it because that's the only strategy that results in long term survival, although there might be ways to turn it into a chronic, manageable disease, like diabetes.

I’m shocked to read this “Orac” person could write such an unloving comment referencing Jessica’s passing.

What comment, specifically, is "unloving"?

Are the Aussies really this “unevolved”?

I'm not an Aussie. So that question is irrelevant.

I’m shocked to read this “Orac” person could write such an unloving comment referencing Jessica’s passing.

It would be really nice if a few of the commenters than take issue with this post could actually be specific about what they find so horrible about it. Or is it just that the article does not gush over her?

Are the Aussies really this “unevolved”?

I am having a hard time parsing this, are they under the impression Orac is from Australia? Where did they get this idea?

Actually, I've never visited Australia, although I would very much like to do so sometime in the next couple of years for a vacation.

re Sara Bellum:
I wonder if she is mistaken about how various parts of the brain function and if she really meant Sara BRUM?

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

#651 Narad - well okay, but I just meant that a generally healthy lifestyle - eating your fruits and veggies, exercising, getting enough sleep - does play some role in helping a person avoid colds and flu (sometimes). The conventional wisdom isn't all wrong there - it just isn't a cure for cancer.

#652 Ben "tell them GREAT CHOICE and I support you wholeheartedly."

That's reprehensible, and no doctor with a sense of ethics would say "GREAT CHOICE" when the patient's choice is essentially suicidal. Have you heard of the Hippocratic oath - first do no harm? If the patient says, "It's my choice to smoke," or "It's my choice never to exercise," do you want the doctor to say "Great choice"?

@Meemaw #655

I agree the article is rather unloving, but honestly not sure what love has to do with strangers and facts...

It would be really nice if a few of the commenters than take issue with this post could actually be specific about what they find so horrible about it.

Good question. I've wondered the same thing myself.

Or is it just that the article does not gush over her?

Quite likely.

Are the Aussies really this “unevolved”?

Aussies are indeed unevolved, but this has nothing to do with Orac.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Since so much about Jess has been scrubbed by her people, this article and a previous one Orac wrote, pop up very, very high on Google search..like #1 and #4. So doing a search on her, they are going to see this blog entry. I would guess the ones posting were looking for some obituary type article about her and they are basically pissed off it isn't there.

I would say they are directing their anger at the wrong person(s).

I found this article via Google as a fan of Jess looking for what you described. I am frustrated that she is "gone" but appreciate the role of this article in providing a reference point for her journey. It's important to have the discussion, as this forum provides, warts and all.

@Marion #641: you are demonstrating the "appeal to reason" fallacy of pseudoscience; that is, asking well isn't it reasonable to give people choices between therapies.

Now medicine is all about informed choices and informed consent. No reputable physician will treat a patient, or give a patient a treatment they have not consented to. When obtaining informed consent, the risks and benefits of the treatment are explained. If the patient decides the benefits outweigh the risks (up to and including death), then he signs the informed consent, or otherwise affirms consent and treatment may begin.

Patients receiving conventional medical treatment can withdraw from treatment at any time, with the physician warning the patient of the risks in so doing.

So you see, doctors are all about choices . . . informed choices.

So why isn't it a choice to accept something like Gerson therapy?

The fact the treatments are not only not proven to work, the available evidence shows it does NOT work. Ethically, a treatment must be shown to be safe [note that safe does not mean free from risks and side effects, it only means they are well known] and effective [which does not mean it has to work 100% of the time]. If a treatment is not shown to be safe and effective, and in fact is shown NOT to be, it is unethical to offer it.

Patients cannot reasonably choose a treatment when they are lied to about safety and efficacy, which is what Jessie Ainscough was doing.

Jessie made an impact, but it was not a life well lived. A person who deceives other people at the cost of that other person's health both physical, mental, and financial is not living a righteous and good life.

@Tee #643: Neither Orac, nor anyone else speaking out against Gerson is acting like God. We are giving out factual information about safe and effective medical care, and about disproven therapies that are in fact highly dangerous to health.

If anyone is acting Godlike, it is people who promote Gerson and similar "healthy diet therapies," since those therapies exist in direct opposition to what science knows about how the human body works.

The burden of proof is on you to prove these therapies are safe and effective. No one has ever been able to do so. Testimonials are not evidence. Until you can prove that these therapies are safe and effective, the only ones who are behaving as if they were God are the ones selling this snake oil.

I thought I was editing 564 with 565, would you delete 564 and publish 565. If you don't want to, then just remove both and I will repost. Obviously, not supportive of what you wrote. So do as you will ...

Wow! What a bunch of concern trolls. Like commenting on this will actually make Orac delete the post and then, what, republish it in a few days. Ms. Ainscough made herself a very public person by her own doing. She asked for this attention. Had she been a private person, maybe you all could ask that Orac lay off. Maybe. But this is a matter of public interest not only because she was a public person but because she encouraged others to go down this hopeless path.

Okay, maybe it was not hopeless, but it certainly was useless. How many people will forgo treatments that work and go for coffee enemas (COFFEE ENEMAS, how do they work?) to treat treatable or curable cancers? If that number is one or more, then it is necessary and perfectly acceptable to write about this immediately.

I find it very sad that all of you tone trolls come out in droves now but were not there to tell her she was going the wrong way when she needed it.

"Are the Aussies really this “unevolved”?"

I don't know about Aussies in general, but their Parliament is full of neanderthals.

To Ben (#652) and others like him, no one is disagreeing that Jess ought to have made whatever choices she wanted. I think she was conned, but there you are. But she didn't just make a choice. She made a business out of making her choice public. She was on TV, on YouTube, she wrote books and was endlessly interviewed in newspapers and magazines. On her blog she encouraged people to abandon traditional medicine to pursue Gerson. Those of you who say this wasn't so must not have gone to her blogs. I did. I have leukemia and i too was looking to see what is out there. She posted no criticism, she would not engage in debate about the pros and cons of Gerson. She was a one-woman advocate for that shonky crew. On chemo myself, it would never occur to me to try to influence anyone to go down the same path. Jess might have started as a sick person wanting to get well, but she came to see herself as some kind of role-model (her words) and she knew that she was influencing people and she reveled in it. I wonder how many of them are dead now? A friend of mine is. She totally got with the Gerson programme and her breast cancer killed her a year ago. She left a husband and two young children. Jess was not inspirational, she was dangerous and if that is hard to handle, well, the truth often is.

By Kate Emerson (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

To Ren (#672); yours is terrific comment. I just wanted to tell you.

By Kate Emerson (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

A wrote: "If cancer is essentially cells growing out of control, at a fundamental level, it doesn’t make sense to provide it with more nourishment. The cancer needs to stop growing, therefore it makes sense to kill the cancer- before it kills you. Or so I would have thought."

Exactly. Cancer isn't a bacterial infection, it's more like a tapeworm or even a fetus. Your body is providing it nutrients. When you eat, you're eating for two, yourself and your tumor. If you are eating healthy, then that provides healthy nutrients to the tumor cells, as well as the rest of you.

It is good to hear people like you speak out, Kate.

Also, just had a look at Depleted Cranium here http://depletedcranium.com/as-predicted-jessica-ainscough-has-died-of-h…

There are some insightful and sensitive comments below the article. FYI, I am a different "A" to the one who posted there.

I am actually going to step away from commenting for a while because it's making me too sad and obsessive. Nothing will bring her back but I hope her true story can save lives from falling prey to money making shemes like Gersons.

Thank you A (#675). I am going to stop now too, because, yes, this is all incredibly sad.

By Kate Emerson (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

herr doktor bimler: "Aussies are indeed unevolved, but this has nothing to do with Orac."

Aren't you in New Zealand?

One minor quibble with the Clay-o-phagia, geophagia might have a benificial effect with some symptoms, and it might interact with some ionic species. Actually, that might mean that while pica is one symptom of anemia and thus has been hypothesized as an adaptation for countering low iron levels, it might even make things worse by binding iron ions:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23787405
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5237295
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4881679

As for other benificial effects, e.g. binding toxins, err, AFAIK even activated charcoal is somewhat tricky with evidence.

Whatever, in treating cancer, eating clay or similar "detox" protocols are male Bos taurus excrement.

Sorry for derailing this somewhat, it's just that I thought her ideas about clay and organic molecules somewhat mistaken, but not totally "woo", since there is quite some discussion about silicate minerals interacting with organic molecules (err, in the sense any sensible person is using the term, e.g. the chemistry of carbon compounds, minus some exceptions for historic reasons) in abiogenesis. But as mentioned, the whole detox thing is male Bos excrement.

By Trottelreiner (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Jon H, 674:
I take exception to that, on behalf of the Neanderthals.

Though of course, the mean Neanderthal admixture with Aussie congressmen is likely to be somewhat like 1 - 4%, just as with all non-African populations. No idea if they have some mainly sub-Saharan African congressmen or -women...

By Trottelreiner (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

151: she knew she was taking risks and decided to focus on the quality of her life,

Did you see her schedule? How does living life chained to a clock, an enema bag and a blender improve quality of life?

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Astonishing as it may seem @Trottelreiner #681, we don't even have congressmen, or Congress. We, being a Westminster system, have parliamentarians.

Big pharma & mainstream medicine enjoy your moment in the sun at someone expense. Watch the obituaries in the paper & there will not be enough time in the day to read all those who fall to the devestating affects of chemo therapy. Most Oncologists when asked if they were diagnosed with Cancer would they take their own chemotherapeutic drugs say an emphatic no. BUT when its someone else especially someone who advocates alternate complementary methods watch out. Anything that impacts on the bottom line of big pharma is a huge target. Clearly evident in this blog by our friend Orac. So transparant & clearly evident he has been watching on the side lines with anticipation just hoping & wishing she didn't make it. Go figure this blog plus another ranking top of first page google the day after she passes away. Enjoy your time in the sun haters & big pharma. It always amuses me that people like this Orac character take much pleasure in adding that they are a surgeon for added weight. So what who cares. We know oncologists make more money than Jess did any day by signing death certificates every day for people who fall prey to chemo. Chemo has wrecked more lives that any complementary treatment ever will. There is just absolutely buckets of money being made out of it & thats just they way the system works unfortunately. For those like Jess who chose the least travelled path hats off. Its not easy swimming against this current of sewage.

@accidie:
Call the miscreants as you like them, err, yes, I used the wrong word. In Germany, we'd call them "Parlamentarier", or "Abgeordnete", which you could translate with deputy.

The latter word, "Abgeordneter" is also used for US congeressmen in German news, IIRC.

@Meg:
You're welcome to show where Orac talked about "unevolved Australians". The whole thing started in two comments from people critizising Orac, first of for not having experienced coffee enemas himself, second of for being insensitive to Jess Ainscough. So sorry, the generalisation is all on the "alt med" side of things, not on Orac.
As for some later comments, I think it's quite clear at least my comment was somewhat tongue in cheek, and quite a few of the others too.

By Trottelreiner (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Denice Walker @663

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Oops, hit enter too early. Anyway, I think "little brain" is a rather apt moniker.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Garry,

Please cite a reference for your "doctors won't take their own chemotherapy drugs" claim. Reposting an article from Natural News or Whale.to doesn't count.

Extraordinary claims, people.

@Garry, as we say in the South.. Bless you heart.

@Trottelreiner

The second paragraph of my previous post was not directed at Orac. It was directed at the commenters who suggested that Australians are unevolved. Be aware that tone can be easily misconstrued in short, online comments. Tongue in cheek or not, I still don't find it funny or necessary given the subject under discussion.

I don’t know what I’m more disturbed by – the puerile "whatever dude" platitudes by the pro-Gerson crowd or their repeated references to ridiculous and discredited biological and medical theories.

So much of it seems to be composed by the very young and vacuous. For example - “I’m shocked to read this “Orac” person could write such an unloving comment referencing Jessica’s passing.” Jess and her followers have already given each other too much bloody “love” luv, luv – a good kick in the a@@ and a good reaming-out would have done them more good. As my Mom told me (and I didn’t want to hear it then either) “Life isn’t fair” and “If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is”.

That girl encouraged other people to reject convential medical treatments for (my favorite quote "anxiety-reducing rituals" like enemas and juicing. What the h4ll is natural about living on juice instead of complete food? At least two commentators on this blog have already mentioned that they believe Jess’s blog encouraged their friends and family to reject science-based treatment for curable conditions with the bogus Gerson system. They subsequently died. I predict that over the next few weeks more such testimonials will come forth.

Jess is responsible for other peoples’s death. It’s the equivalent of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.

By Jane Ostentatious (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

More ranting:

#643 Tee “Many patients have impeccable diets and exercise daily but perhaps they have a history of abuse that you don’t know about.”

Sweet tapdancing Jes*s – negative emotions DON’T doom you to cancer – that’s crapola. Why would any minimally functioning adult want to believe that? You're blaming the victim - and it's not even true! How sadistic.

“At the end of the day we are all responsible for our own bodies and the choices we make.” So you willed your father’s sperm and your mother egg into union? You decided your height and hair colour?

Can't you see how this insane and unproven level of self-determinism is insane and cruel?

By Jane Ostentatious (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

So much of it seems to be composed by the very young and vacuous.

What, as opposed to the middle-aged and vacuous?

I did the Gerson therapy for malignant melanonma and MS and have been free of both of these for 15 years. My doctors are stumped and don't want to know anything about how I did it.

Well said @Jane Ostentatious. All this woo smacks strangely of Calvinism to me - the emphasis on total depravity (sin in this case being eating a normal diet), the emphasis on good works (in this case orthorexia) as evidence of being one of the elect, the idea of election itself (manifested by their being the followers of the True Way ...
Oh well, I suppose it's woo or Westboro. Unlike Westboro, though, this lot don't picket funerals, they cause them.
And when those vile loonies in Topeka start looking good by comparison, you're in trouble.

I did the Gerson therapy for malignant melanoma and MS and have been free of both of these for 15 years. My doctors are stumped and don't want to know anything about how I did it.

If these alt med people were held to the same legal standard as a doctor and Big Bad Pharma is, they wouldn't be in business. When you do things to sick people that will kill them and you deceive them, the best you get is sued, the worst, you can go to prison.

FORMER Pharmacist, Robert Courtney is severing 30 years for selling medicine he knew was ineffective, to cancer patients. Hold all these Woo peddlers to the same standards and it would take care of a lot, because they KNOW they are deceiving people.

@Meg:
I see, sorry for the misunderstanding. I hope you're not too angry about my midemeanor.

As for calling Australians "unevolved", err, if we take this literal, let's just say comparing "evolutionary levels" is a can of worms even with different fossil and extant phyla like hagfish and tetrapods from a biology POV, so even the concept of "unevolved vs. evolved" makes little sense. Latimeria might look like it didn't change for hundreds of million years, but it is about as much of an evolutionary history as Homo sapiens sapiens. Same would go for any extant Australopithecus.

And if we took "unevolved" as "lack of education, unsophisticated, gullible", well, I agree this is another low point for our altmed fans in generalisation and stereotyping[1]

[1] Not that both of those don't have their uses, mind you, they are just tricky heuristics. Not every lung cancer victim has smoked cigarettes, and not every cigarette smoker gets lung cancer, but in both cases you could use said generalisations in quite a few cases.

By Trottelreiner (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

JP #695 So much of it seems to be composed by the very young and vacuous.

What, as opposed to the middle-aged and vacuous?

Oh, the humanity, the humanity! I'm so hurt - wounded beyond repair - JP implied that I'm middle-aged - the most hideous fate that someone of a tiny imagination like JP can imagine! But even JP isn't clever enough to plumb the try depths of my depravity - some posters here might actually consider me OLD.

I don't have enough shame to find an ice flow and die - instead I'm having fun and trying to shake up the more stupider sort (not all!) of young people from their prejudices.

Thanks, accidie - except other people have said it better - but this modern food-hysteria is insane.

By Jane Ostentatious (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

Jane, I wouldn't cast aspersions on the "size" of my imagination if I were you; you have no idea what the inside of my head is like.

Incidentally, I have many friends of acquaintances of many ages, octogenarians included, and some even older if you count relatives.

My point was that stupidity, credulity, prejudice, etc., are pretty much equal opportunity phenomena. Age does supply a quantity of experience, and can sometimes bring wisdom, but that is far from always the case. And I've known 12-year-olds with more sense than a lot of 40-year-olds.

This blog post is one of the most tasteless and disrespectful things I have ever seen. You are looking a lot like click baiters and whether you are or not, you have sure created some bad karma for yourself.

I followed Jess's blog for many years. I don't have cancer. Out of the thousands of wellness blogs I could have chosen to follow, I choose hers because of her message of living with passion, and the spark of life she seemed to bring to her conversations. While Jess talked openly about her personal story and decision to believe in Gerson Therapy I do remember her having guest bloggers on who provided a broader perspective. To me, her blog was so much more than promoting Gerson Therapy and anyone who truly followed her would tell you that. In fact, to me it seemed that it was something that was known but in the background. Yes she lived a short life but the important word here is that she LIVED and more than that she touched many, many people in a positive loving way. How many people can stand up and say they had the same positive impact on the world before they die. She empowered people to take control of their health and wellbeing....and reminded them to nurture themselves in order to feel alive!! There is NOTHING SAD about the short life she lived. Some people age to be 100 and do nothing positive with their lives. The truth is we are all dying whether we have cancer or not and the sad reality is when you look around most people are the "walking dead" putting in their days with no purpose, or passion.
I respect your concern and that you feel the need to warn people not to make the same "mistake" Jess made. You have a right to your opinion as did Jess. You also have the right to express it, as did Jess. Whether I believe you, or whether I believe her...well that's is my decision. It's always good to have choice.
I felt it was important as a long term "follower" to voice that Jess Ainscough cause was much more than just trying to convince her "followers" about the virtues of Gerson Therapy. Her true message was BE KIND. BE BRAVE. BE WELL.
I think that other people reading your work should know this.

@Jess

Watch this video.

I've got a more appropriate one.

Here, I'll cut to the chase:

No one tried to say a thing
When they took him out in jest
Except, of course, the little neighbor boy
Who carried him to rest
And he just walked along, alone
With his guilt so well concealed
And muttered underneath his breath
“Nothing is revealed”

"capnkrunch @613: if this therapy is so great you would think this guy who sold it to you could at least publish a case study. In fact, he really has an obligation to. Unless of course he’s a quack and a scammer."

Yes. I felt the cellect-budwig therapy is great. The guy actually got a CD set explaining the science behind the therapy. The CD set cost about US $30. I recommend everyone ,who want to use it as plan B to treat cancer, buy it and listen at least twice. Then you start to feel the value of the CD. It is tremendous. I realize recently when I go through it and listen it again.

I am not sure about his obligation. I was refered to him by somebody else. The CD is made in 2009. I only wished I could get it earlier so I could save my 2nd relative who died bile duct cancer in 2009 after only conventional treament.

To those who have bias about alternative therapy, Pls allow cancer patients, if they wish, have a choice. I believe most of cancer patients need alternative therapy(plan B) when conventional treatment(plan A) is exhaused.

So sad. The hidden arm, the tiny emaciated body and the big smile - right up until Christmas. Part of me feels hugely sympathetic. She was locked very publicly into something from which she couldn't easily back down. And the other part of me feels exactly what's been articulated here. Jess was living out a huge and very dangerous lie. I think the following link still works. Forgive me if they've taken it down now.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XX5G1GqIhZoJ:https…

By NZ Skeptic (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

"To accidie #589, with such a range of ineffective choices, how would you know what the’effective’ (and I have my doubts) choice was? There are – oh, God, here it comes again – NO CLINICAL TRIALS to provide objective evidence. So bad luck to the poor sod who picked one of the 297 or 298 duds?"

If you spend time and you will find a website by searching "cancer tutor", there is a lot of alternative therapy information on the website. The website owner called Webster recommend the cellect-budwig therapy for my relative. This website list all kinds of alternative therapies and evalution.

Regarding "NO CLINICAL TRIALS to provide objective evidence.": all proven conventional treatment are exhausted for my relative while the cancer recur again by doing pet-scan. We have no other options and have nothing to lose. I do not care "NO CLINICAL TRIALS " or "CLINICAL TRIALS".

@ Darwy - posts 345, 409 and 447
"Røde grøde med fløde"

I just had to check an online translator and laughed out loud to read:
"Red fruits with cream"
Thanks and blessings for your gentle humor :o)
(Much needed among all this argument)

Very well said. Great editorial!

Garry@686:

We know oncologists make more money than Jess did any day by signing death certificates every day for people who fall prey to chemo. Chemo has wrecked more lives that any complementary treatment ever will.

My father and my aunt were both diagnosed with cancer. Both received the best available treatments from skilled, caring oncologists. Both recovered and have been cancer free for over a decade now. I have never been more grateful that good folk like Orac exist in this world, to offset all the wickedness done by poisonous control-freak cultists like you and your ilk.

For those like Jess who chose the least travelled path hats off. Its not easy swimming against this current of sewage.

Ms Ainscough has certainly solved that problem, what with rotting herself to death from untreated cancer and all. Sincerely, fuck you.

Henry,
Regarding

To those who have bias about alternative therapy, Pls allow cancer patients, if they wish, have a choice. I believe most of cancer patients need alternative therapy(plan B) when conventional treatment(plan A) is exhaused.
and

Regarding “NO CLINICAL TRIALS to provide objective evidence.”: all proven conventional treatment are exhausted for my relative while the cancer recur again by doing pet-scan. We have no other options and have nothing to lose. I do not care “NO CLINICAL TRIALS ” or “CLINICAL TRIALS”.

People here aren't against alternative therapies as such - cancer patients as well as anybody else is free to choose whatever health protocols they choose for themselves. Jess Ainscough was free to choose whatever health protocols she chose.

What people object to, is promoting those alternative therapies without evidence - and in medicine that evidence comes in the form of clinical trials. Without that evidence, for those promoting the therapies it comes down to either:

A) promoting and making money out of something you don't know is helping, or...
B) promoting and making money out of something you know is not helping.

I hope we can all agree that both of these cases would be bad, and B definitely worse than A.By not doing those trials and studying their modalities, the promoters are harming people with cancer.

Because of the complexity of the human body (and mind), and diseases like cancer, we need those clinical studies to see any actual benefit a therapy has, if any. A few anecdotes out of how-ever-many-they-have-treated is not enough.

And, to repeat, I don't think anybody here is trying to take away anybody's freedom to use alternative medicine. Just objecting to lousy and dangerous business practices.

This Science blog is obviously run with bias and funded by the Pharmaceutical cartel. They want to make an example out of Jess to claim that alternative treatments don't work. The problem with that is they omit important factors that took place in Jess's life before she passed. The main one being the stress of her mom's death, and stress was most likely the #1 reason that she went downhill!!! Here is an example of how those that attack alternatives need to be confronted. https://vimeo.com/120206730

By Truth Speaks L… (not verified) on 01 Mar 2015 #permalink

@peg

"...Understanding why there are many judgments towards Jess, because of the misstatements made earlier in her journey.
Those statements were not made to mislead anyone nor to enhance her Wellness Warrior title...."

How do you know this? The evidence presented in this forum and on other blogs doesn't support this. Did you not see the post that said she claimed to be cured 37 times.

@NZ skeptic

Wow. Jess had nearly 70,000 followers on Facebook... She was so skinny and pale, had thinning hair and her hand looked pretty bad too. Definitely not thriving with cancer.

I wonder if any of her work will ever be re-published online. Perhaps people are working on cleaning it up to preserve her work in a positive (less liable) way? It seems a shame that there is virtually nothing left, not even fluffy feel-good quotes. Probably a good thing though as more truthful information, like this blog, is made more accessible to her fans who may be in danger of following her to a premature death.

Orac, I am an Australian and yep the place is thoroughly unevolved. More species of poisonous spiders and snakes than you can poke a stick at and only cans of beer for protection.

December 31, 2014 Jess said:

HAPPY NEW YEAR! The Sunny Coast is so hot and busy that we aren't moving from this spot todayThis is the first year that I'm not setting goals or intentions. Instead I'm going into the year guided by one word: SURRENDER. The last two years have been really challenging as I've tried to control things that are outside my control. This year I'm completely letting go. I want to love each moment for what it is. I want to allow instead of resist. I want to float in the ocean. I want to sit among nature with nothing to do besides marvel at her beauty. I want to eat fruit without feeling guilty . I want to do things because I want to do them, not because I feel I "should" do them. I want to wear my heart on my sleeve and be powerful in my vulnerability. I want to breathe deeply. I want ease and joy. Most of all, I want to write beautiful blog posts. I'm itching to start blogging again and feel incomplete without it. Thank you for being so patient while I've taken much-needed time off. I hope 2015 is your best year ever. I can't wait to share it with you! #twentyfifteen #surrender #ilovefruit #wellnesswarrior #summer

This is a stark contrast to her early message of taking control of her life and building structure following the strict rules of Gersons. Maybe she new she was nearing the end and I'm glad she found some freedom and came to these realisations which unburdened her personal mental state. This is one example which makes me imagine a "what if" scenario where she had a little more time or decided to use her time differently, to share her full journey with her followers, so they too could salvage some truth and real help. So many people looked up to her.

#707.. "Created bad Karma for yourself.."

No worries, nothing a coffee enema or two won't get rid of.

The dogpile of quacks claiming it was the chemo that killed him, and theat their brand of quackery could have cured him started …
September 15, 2009 with something from Mike Adams.

I'm not holding my breath on his saying anything about the passing of one of his biggest fans.

Pardon me while I go hurl.

@truth

Ah yes, the kindness and sincerity of jess's followers certainly shines through in you .

#719 Chris

Yes there is not much I have not seen! Maybe just maybe she believed. Just like it is up to everyone to believe in what they want to believe.There are very valid points on sides.
Obviously when one mentions an objective comments, there is hardly a response.
What about the statement about her mother I mention?
What! thousands of people where happy to state it was Jessica's influence that lead to her mothers death. But no-one is welling to question the truth I have written about her mother.

to gaist #713
"A) promoting and making money out of something you don’t know is helping, or…
B) promoting and making money out of something you know is not helping."

I understand your point. But you look at the picture: the medicare or insurance never pay even 1 cent to people who give alternative therapy advice. This guy charge $180 for 2 hr consultation and previous preparation. How do you expect him to provide and finance clinic trial like big pharm company? Even he got some finance to go through clinic trial: he can not get return as his method can not be patented.

In my view, the government really need provide a small potion of money seperate from the dominant conventional medical industry: make some unbiased trial, not the trial sponsored by big pharm company. Get these hopeless , willing cancer patients to try the best alternative therapy. Then you can compare and make some rightful judgement.

Different types of hopefess cancer patients try therapy like the cellect budwig therapy or celcium chloride therapy mentioned by cancer tutor website. Get the guys who specialize in these therapies to oversee the trial while the independent government body record the result. If the result is that all cancer patients died shortly, then you know the therapy is not effective. If 30% or 50% survived, you know the therapy is good as all survival rate shall be 0%(remember they are sentenced to death by conventional therapy).

#727 Peg

Still haven't as we're my question. Whether she believed or not doesn't matter. The evidence suggests that she was misleading people. But, if you have some first hand experience or other evidence to the contrary, I would love to hear it! Can you explain how you know that she want misleading people?

The evidence I see is that she said she was cured 37 times that we know of, but clearly wasn't. It matters because she was a charismatic guru and potentially influenced the health decisions of some very sick people. Are you saying that she can be excused because she believed?

As my avatar would indicate, I am no stranger to how cancer can affect one's life - or the life of one dear to me.

Jess indeed had the right to eschew evidence based medicine in favor of alternative therapies.

She did not have the right to continue to claim to be healed, etc., in order to further her brand and encourage more people to reject conventional treatment. She convinced her mother to not undergo conventional treatment for breast cancer, and with predictable results.

Cancer is a diagnosis that scares the sh!t out of everyone. The big "C". It used to be synonymous with a death sentence - and yet we have people who have been in remission for years, if not decades now - after following evidence based treatment, including radiation and chemotherapy.

Yes, it's a grueling course, with nausea, vomiting, hair loss, night sweats, bloating, feeling tired and weak. I, personally, would rather be left bald, pale, etc. - and alive - than dead with a good looking corpse.

@Rachel

Røde grøde med fløde is a dessert. It's a red berry porridge with cream :D

That should read: "Can you explain how you know that she wasn't misleading people?"

Those coming in the last 200 post or so and posting, need to read all the comments. Your scenarios have already been addressed, most a couple of times.

@Narad #725

Her quote at the bottom of that webpage is:

Positive affirmation for the day: I silence my ego and approach every situation with an open mind and a loving heart.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems ironic to me. Given the content of that blog post.

@Peg, did you say Sharyn was interested in Gersons first and introduced it to her daughter? I actually saw/heard Jess say that and apparently Sharyn had tried to do the program for her mum who had pancreatic cancer (Jess grandmother) but she was too ill to keep up with it. I think it was in the youtube video Jess did on her Gersons journey? -http://youtu.be/sNoeaSTnDR4

I looked at the cache version of Jess's page. The number of business she would mention or would comment and we're following her, should tell you all you need to know.

Plenty of people that follow conventional medicine and post about their journey with cancer.. Drug companies are not following them nor do people tag them.

@Kelly

The Wellness Warrior was a lucrative business indeed.

And re your previous comment, I agree however (as in my case perhaps) I think people may need to just get stuff off their chest and process it out loud and I think it's helpful to counter their input patiently and reasonably. That may have a chance at getting through to them and helping them realise what has happened.

#716

Wow so much anger & venom, & quite the potty mouth

It's a shame, you could have made your point far more convincingly without the use of explicit language.

If two of your family members survived due to chemo I am happy for you & so should you be as its almost unheard of. You should be jumping for joy & wanting to hug everyone you meet, not harbouring all this venom. Although I wouldn't count your chickens just yet as secondaries caused by chemo are highly probable

Clearly based on your outburst there is more at play here & a nerve has been struck

To you & the rest of the establishment enjoy your moment in the sun sunshine & maybe think about having a lie down as those cortisol levels may be pushing you towards an early grave too

Actually I have some personal opinion regarding Gerson therapy:

I know some successful cancer patients by using Gerson therapy. But I also know some cancer patients who did not have effect. Sometime patients' conditions are made even worse by using gerson therapy.

The therapy request 13 times of fresh juicing by using organic veggie and fruit by 5 years. This means one cancer patient plus at least 1 full time helper do the jobs of juicing , washing, preparing coffee for enema. Organic veggie and fruit is hard to find. After 1940-1950, the modern agriculture make the veggie and fruit have less nutrition than before.

This put a lot of physical stress and finance stress considering paying extra money for organic fruit and veggie and not getting one cent from medicare or insurance. The patient and helper are almost impossible to work due to the juicing and enema.

While juicing may not provide enough nutriton now, the supplements Gerson patients take are not well balance like cellect powder. Mutiple coffee enemas may cause the body to lose these nutritions.

Lastly, the protein is too little for Gerson therapy especially in the first 1-3 months. There is no meat in Gerson diet. This may cause patient's lack of some important amino acids. When the body's cells multiply and create new cells, they need some right amino acids to make right new cells. If these can not be found, the body may use other types of amino acids to replace them and make incorrect new cells.

When these incorrect new cells multiply later, the error can be even bigger. These cells may be called tumor, or cancer cells now. Anyway this is my personal understanding about Gerson therapy.

@A, the problem is that so many have replied to these same statements over and over. Then we get to a point where they can't answer your questions, they dissappear and another pops in and takes their place.

As a very avid supporter, follower, fan of Jess Ainscough, I absolutely adored her blog, website, posts, recipes, photos and purchased her book. It was a wonderful demonstration and well informed way to live life, how to think, self love and as an ex-model and as someone who suffered anorexia and body and image hang ups - This was great!
I learned much from the late Jess and I serenade her lifestyle package; However I was so drawn my all the wonderful recipes, pictures and motivational posts it really did not hit me this wonderful lady was also promoting her cure for cancer...and as someone who is not suffering from such a devastating scary life zapping disease never really needed to note this...
And when I received the final email from her blog I thought oh its been a while! what new recipe or activity would she share...and when I saw the image and then heart sinking post of her passing only the day before! I was so shocked with tears instantly streaming down my face.

In the days passing it has hit me more and more how very misleading her message to the thousands and why oh why didnt she just take the right medication but yes....Oh yes... Indulge to your hearts content the natural way of living.
To take on the duty of God and claim you have discovered a cure and begin to believe your hype and sell it to the world and gain money from it is something else altogether.
A little more honestly about her entire journey throughout health and sickness her followers deserved to hear....
Because now there are loads of unanswered questions left behind in the wake of such a sudden passing.
I am so very sorry for her nearest and dearest.

By Laura Miller (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Henry, that much juicing and coffee enemas (ANY NUMBER) is not good for a healthy person, worse for a sick person.

What is even more shocking is there is not one single online material left, No facebook, website, youtube, anything. This did not need to happen because it looks really bad. If she lived her life passionately sharing her beliefs shouldn't these be left up to at least honour the legacy.....?

By Laura Miller (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Henry - interesting comment. About organic veggies, my doctor advised me that organic is not superior to standard produce nutritionally speaking. She said that biodynamic produce is better because of the way it is grown, with all the perfect conditions to grow in an ideal natural nutritional state. She explained that organic produce may be "clean" (ie. Free of pesticides, hormones etc) but it still hasn't recieved a balanced environment to grow in (ie. Soil, climate, dunno what else). Or something like that, I can't really remember exactly.

The Gersons therapy does seem contradictory/unrealistic/impractical in many ways. I certainly couldnt afford to go to Mexico for the program, then be unemployed and housebound and find a full time carer, and afford the supplements and the food. Plus I'm terrible at routines.

#729 Chris It matters because she was a charismatic guru and potentially influenced the health decisions of some very sick people.

Where are the statements and potential people she influenced.
What you are saying is she purposely mislead people 37 times.
My point is; she honestly in her heart believed she had beaten it, even till the end she believed. She did not deliberately make statements to misguide people nor to financial gain.
There will always differences of belief towards her statements, I understanding there are arguable points to comments made.
Charismatic guru; Can't condemn natural beauty. Jess was truly the same weather in the public eye or in personal life.

#733 A. Yes, Sharyn was interested in the natural approach and yes she did introduce more healthy eating within the family prior Jess getting diagnosed. After being diagnosed and coming out of remission Jess (along with alot of research by Jess) made the decision to travel the path she took with full support of both parents. Mum and daughter hardly spent time apart. Hence; lost, heart broken when she lost her mother.

@Kelly

Yeah. It is frustrating. And I'm mostly just reading their comments. I feel slightly guilty that I dont have any professional knowledge to contribute, or the patience to dissect twisted arguments...

Yes the repetitive comments are- monotonous. That's the word I was looking for @Kelly :)

@Peg, her financial motivations have already been shown in these comments. Jess herself showed her financial motivations.

The proof she led people down her path? I've posted a couple of times now about the man with melanoma, and his wife posting the day after her death how they were going to continue following the coffee enemas, the juicing and all the other junk, in honor of Jess, to cure his melanoma.

They were devoted followers of her and she was the very reason they were doing the program. Someone posted D a link way up in the comments to the Facebook page of another alt med cancer "thriver" and that is exactly where I saw it.

@Peg.. So only someone that doesn't spend much time away from a parent is broken-hearted with their death?

What does her broken heart have to do with anything?

So, does this qualify as "victim-blaming?"

"#733 A. Yes, Sharyn was interested in the natural approach and yes she did introduce more healthy eating within the family prior Jess getting diagnosed. After being diagnosed and coming out of remission Jess (along with alot of research by Jess) made the decision to travel the path she took with full support of both parents. Mum and daughter hardly spent time apart. Hence; lost, heart broken when she lost her mother."

Among others that have been posted above?

I will also say, it is very "suspicious" that her social media presence would be scrubbed so thoroughly after her death (and so suddenly as well) - wonder what they are trying to hide?

If two of your family members survived due to chemo I am happy for you & so should you be as its almost unheard of.

Only if you put your hands over your ears and chant "La-la-la, I can't hear you!" whenever anyone states the facts.

You should be jumping for joy & wanting to hug everyone you meet, not harbouring all this venom. Although I wouldn’t count your chickens just yet as secondaries caused by chemo are highly probable

Please see above.

@Jess, some chemo can cause another cancer. It did so in my sister and surgery took care of that.

She is alive, over 20 years later due to her chemo and radiation.

My uncle about 55-60 years, with TOUGH experimental chemo and one of the first cured of Hodgkins. You people can just keep on denying, but you can not change the facts. Unlike the alt med, real medicine keep actual, factual records.

Where are all these "thousands" of people who were cured of cancer by Gerson therapy - the ones Mike Adams says walk out of the clinics every day to go on and live "amazing" chemo-free lives? Why aren't they documenting their stories publicly so that others will know?

Better yet, the clinics should be sponsoring annual conventions to bring attention to their patients' amazing recoveries (if the Midwest chapter of Long-Term Gerson Survivors needs space for a meeting, I hear there's a broom closet at O'Hare that can be rented cheaply).

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

A,

organic produce may be “clean” (ie. Free of pesticides, hormones etc)

Sadly that isn't true either, a lot of pesticides are permitted in organic farming, often in larger quantities than those used in non-organic farming. Some, like rotenone, are known to be poisonous to humans and even more so to insects and aquatic life.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

ChrisP
#721:

"Orac, I am an Australian and yep the place is thoroughly unevolved. More species of poisonous spiders and snakes than you can poke a stick at and only cans of beer for protection."

Only one possible reply to your post:

"You say that like it's a bad thing!" ;-)

Darwy
#730

I am in complete agreement with your comments in #730, and also most grateful to you for introducing me to "Røde grøde med fløde." I've been looking up recipes; it's late summer here, berries are plentiful, and I can't wait to give it a whirl this coming weekend. Thanks! :-)

@Rachel #755

Hope you enjoy it.

It's also the phrase Danes will ask pretty much everyone not Scandinavian to attempt to pronounce - with hilarious results.

The dessert itself is 'rødgrød' - my 'location' is the way folks are asked to pronounce it for gits and shiggles.

Henry your an idiot, do you not read what others have posted in response to your ridiculous comments. You just keep repeating the same old bullshit. It's becoming tiresome and boring.

"medicare or insurance never pay even 1 cent to people who give alternative therapy advice."
That's a good thing. Why should insurance have to cover unproven and useless treatments?

"This guy charge $180 for 2 hr consultation and previous preparation. How do you expect him to provide and finance clinic trial like big pharm company?"
Quit crying poverty asshole. As I and others have said previously, which you conveniently ignore, is that NCCAM has spent 3 billion tax payer dollars and 20 years and have come up with nothing. Every study ends with "further study is needed." The supplement industry is a 30 billion dollar a year industry here in America. They certainly can afford to support research, but they don't. Want to know why? Because then their cover would be blown, people would realize they've been buying useless vitamins and supplements.

"Even he got some finance to go through clinic trial: he can not get return as his method can not be patented."
Bullshit! typical nonsense from an alt-med douchebag.
http://m.acog.org/Resources-And-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committ…
"For example, "products of nature" can be patented if they are in an isolated form that does not occur in nature."

"In my view, the government really need provide a small potion of money seperate from the dominant conventional medical industry: make some unbiased trial, not the trial sponsored by big pharm company."
I'll repeat again, 20 years a 3 billion taxpayer dollars already wasted on useless "treatments". Get your favorite supplement company to pony up. They won't, they know it's wasted time and money.
Henry please stop asking for more research. It's been done and CAM interventions have come up lacking. It's time to put it to bed and start go after these quack hucksters.

"Get these hopeless , willing cancer patients to try the best alternative therapy."
What is the best alternative therapy? how about trying to post a citation or two showing how said therapy is the best. Instead of just blathering on about whatever you pulled out your ass this morning.
"Then you can compare and make some rightful judgement."
There had never been any alternative treatment that has shown to do anything beyond placebo, so we can make a rightful judgement. It's all snake oil.

"Different types of hopefess cancer patients try therapy like the cellect budwig therapy or celcium chloride therapy mentioned by cancer tutor website."
More mindless ramblings from an ignorant fool. Show us something, anything that remotely supports how flaxseed oil, cottage cheese and coffee enemas can do anything. What is the supposed mechanism on how this works.

"Get the guys who specialize in these therapies to oversee the trial while the independent government body record the result. If the result is that all cancer patients died shortly, then you know the therapy is not effective."
The number of studies showing CAM doesn't work numbers in the thousands. Yet CAM shills continue to rip people off with their useless garbage. A negative study will not stop them. They'll just complain that it was biased or somehow flawed and ask for more research.

"remember they are sentenced to death by conventional therapy"
Go fuck yourself, asshole! I have friends who are alive due to chemotherapy. They'd be dead if they followed your idiotic crap.

Now reach into that feeble mind of yours and answer my earlier question.
What are the 30 alternative treatments that are effective and provide peer reviewed evidence to support your assertions?

What are the 2-3 alternative treatments beat for advanced cancer and the peer reviewed evidence to support then?

And then gone us a few examples of the 270 alternative therapies that are not effective and the peer reviewed showing why they are not effective?

You and the rest of the alt-med buffoons are way out of your league on this blog. Put up or shut up.

henry #728:

There's a lot of money U.S. government money for trials of "alternative" therapies, courtesy of NCCAM. They run the trials and then do their best to spin the results as "needs more study," or "real acupuncture was no better than placebo, therefore they both work." If a surgical oncologist claimed that a kind of surgery was worth doing because it was no worse than placebo, you and I and Orac would all, reasonably, object.

@Henry

Lastly, the protein is too little for Gerson therapy especially in the first 1-3 months. There is no meat in Gerson diet. This may cause patient’s lack of some important amino acids. When the body’s cells multiply and create new cells, they need some right amino acids to make right new cells. If these can not be found, the body may use other types of amino acids to replace them and make incorrect new cells.

Actually, it's even simpler than that.
Those amino-acids and other special molecules our cells are lacking but can made, they will make out of other nutrients (amino-acids are made by combining other amino-acids and sugars, by example; vit D is made out of cholesterol and sunrays, for another example).
No problem here, apart from the need for enough of the starting blocks to create all the needed nutrients. So, if your diet is unbalanced, in effect your cells (and yourself) are starving. Not enough proteins, not enough amino-acids to go around.
That's why starving your cancer cells by not eating sugar is silly. Your normal cells will make and release sugars to ensure a certain blood level anyway.

Those molecules our cells cannot make, like vit C, and seven amino-acids like histiine, leucine, lysine... If we don't have enough in our diet, our cells will try to recycle whatever few molecules are around. With selenium, the recycling is very efficient: mice can go two generations recycling their selenium before showing signs of deficiency; with some nutrients like iodine, the scavenging efficiency is also very good, though not as good; but for most nutrients, most notably vitamins and aminoacids, reaching deficiency levels is unfortunately much faster.
We won't be making incorrect new cells or cancer cells if lacking some essential nutrient. Our cells will starve, get sick and eventually die, starting with muscle tissue. And we will starve, get sick and eventually die.
I would imagine that starving our immune cells won't help them fighting tumor cells; in this sense, lacking nutrients may results in more cancer cells going around; not because our body created them, but because our immune system doesn't kill them anymore.

The good thing is, the same hold true for cancer cells. Withhold some nutrients, and cancer cells will starve and die (hence some research projects into stopping the creation of blood vessels around tumors). But as long as their are alive, our cancer cells will do their best to catch whatever nutrient is in short supply.

By Helianthus (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

If someone dies, it does not make them a better person. Their guilts stay there.
The cure is quackery and she was a fraud and became accomplice to those crooks. This a fact, it's sure. Her family &C declared it deleting everything she wrote/told/showed in the web.
The problem is when someone that followed her advises will die for not following real medical advices
Then she will be a ...

By Francesco Mauro (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

She said that biodynamic produce is better because of the way it is grown, with all the perfect conditions to grow in an ideal natural nutritional state.

Come again? Is it the phase of the moon whilst planting the crops that makes it better, or is it the cow horns full of feces buried at mystically ordained locales about the farm?

Darwy -- I studied Norwegian for a while and could probably butcher that phrase a little better than many of my countrymen, but I'm sure I'd still mess something up. ;-) I remember my grandpa repeating the Swedish nursery rhyme he'd learned as a baby from his immigrant grandparents to my cousin's Swedish nanny; she chortled, and told us he had pronounced it wrong and consequently it came out extremely rude, but she couldn't bring herself to tell us what it was he'd accidentally said. We still wonder if she was just pulling our legs or what.

By Calli Arcale (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Darwy and Rachel,
Røde grøde med fløde sounds good. I grew up eating raspberries that my grandfather raised and still love them.

For others, this looks like a good recipe.
http://scandinavianfood.about.com/od/dessertrecipes/r/Rodgrod-Med-Flode…

But, since my wife is diabetic and I'm still eating the cherry strudels I made for a potluck that was snowed out, I'll probably stick to plain raspberries for a while.

But someday!

By squirrelelite (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

capnkrunch and Krebiozen -

Thanks for the primers on how the body maintains it's acid/ base equilibrium, and I've saved the links to them for the next time I get a chance to respond to an 'acid causes cancer' idiot.

I have to say that I was in a bit of a snit when I posted my story - there were several Gerson apologist saying that Jess' cancer returned because of her stress, and a couple of other idiot's bringing up the stupid acid/cancer non-link, and given what those near and dear to me lived with, it sorta got to me.

I know that the Jess Fan Club won't read my post, and that all the minions here (even us minor minions) know that an n=1 anecdote means nothing. But the sheer volume of idiocy pissed me right off, and, for all the good it did, I probably should have gone for a walk instead. If the weather had been fit for man or beast, I probably would have.

I have to admit I looked up Røde grøde med fløde on Youtube so I could have a crack at pronouncing it, because I am vain about my freakish linguistic abilities. I pronounced it fairly well, I think, although really, just how common is that "r" in Danish? :)

Also, I saw pictures and became nostalgic for what was my favorite breakfast in Russia, каша манная, basically Cream of Wheat, with a f*ckton of raspberry preserves and then cream on top. I am sure it is not the healthiest thing in the world.

Oh, which reminds me of a funny story: a couple years ago, on the final exam for my second year Russian students, they were prompted to write about what might comprise a typical Russian breakfast. One of them meant to write каша с молоком, which means "porridge with milk," but actually wrote кошка с молоком, which means "a cat with milk." I'm still laughing, although I don't think it tops a friend's story about a student who wrote that she was interested in фалософия - "phallosophy."

It's almost time to go to Chicago!

I don’t think it tops a friend’s story about a student who wrote that she was interested in фалософия – “phallosophy.”

Muy embarazada.

This reply is not about Jess and what she did specifically, but about what I've read on this board.

It is not constructive to lump alternative medicine as one large category and pit it against conventional medicine. Yes, there do seem to be some dangerous protocols. Like the coffee enemas and drinking raw enzymes from animal sources. But these far out tactics don't comprise or even paint a good picture of what 'alternative' medicine is.

I have been a clinician for a very long time. I do not like that the conversation on here lumps alternative medicine as one evil against conventional medicine. When the umbrella of alternative medicine comprises a smorgasbord of therapies and lifestyle guidelines that are often very very different than one another and some fit more with conventional therapies than others, some comprise common sense and some comprise 'woo'. For example, Chinese medicine and Indian medicine. These did not develop the way western medicine developed, as their view on medicine and life has a completely different scientific and anthropological basis. To them science is not separate from spirituality. They are valid fields of wellness and practiced by populations bigger than those who practice western medicine, and warrant respect in inquiry.

I would not advise the Gerson therapy to my patients with cancer. Raw food is very hard on the digestive system, and I would actually dissuade anyone from eating raw, unless obviously it was pitted against the extreme of the standard american diet, I do think its the lesser of two evils. I do encourage my patients eat a plant rich, easily digestible diet. We know that nutrition effects gene expression, and we know that cancer is a result of gene expression/ inhibition (someone previously touched on this). And in our lifetimes we will not have the time to wait for thousands of trials to be done to test every nutritional compound against every gene. So why not in the mean time eat well just on the off chance that you can live with more vitality than you otherwise might have. It might not cure cancer, but it certainly can make you a healthier and happier person. I've seen this happen in my practice.

The problem with arguments like this is that one side is out to disprove the other at all costs. You don't look at the big picture. And you may not have the clinical experience to see that disease is more than a citation. Cancer is one element that can comprise a chimera of disease. And good nutrition has been proven, or at the very least least research is suggesting, that nutrition has some positive effect on other inflictions. The same goes for stress relieving modalities.

The rate of cancer occurrence in general in developing countries used to be significantly lower than western countries, and we have seen a trend in countries adopting more of a western diet and lifestyle, an increase in incidence of cancer.

We do not have to wait for clinical trials to show us things that if we put in to practice, we can see an improvement in vitality of ourselves. Even if it does not 'cure' our cancer, it can help us to feel better, even help us to fight our cancer. Someone mentioned that cancer is not an immunological process, but it is a cellular process orchestrated by our own genes it is native to us, and it makes sense that nutrition could play some part in process.

To anybody effected by cancer, I would suggest taking questions to your clinical physician rather than taking this argumentative approach as bible. Hopefully you have an empathetic clinician with good experience, who can help you to embrace your options. There is nothing wrong with choosing food as medicine. As someone pointed out earlier, 'alternative' medicine is only alternative until it has been 'proved' by clinical trials. We may all be dead before a lot of it happens. Be sensible and talk to your physician, and don't be afraid to at least ask about alternative approaches you are curious about.

There are also the many students who have been in their grandparents over various holidays, but that is in fact a common mistake.

@Narad Felicitaciones por su nuevo hijo

We got warnings about certain phrases before a high school trip to Spain. One of my friends did uncover some interesting Catalan slang which could lead to being embarazada as he liked to just stick amos onto English verbs. Took awhile to get our hosts to tell us what was so gosh darn funny.

There is nothing wrong with choosing food as medicine.

Except, of course, that while it may help prevent some types of cancer, it doesn't work as a cure for any of them.

For example, Chinese medicine and Indian medicine. These did not develop the way western medicine developed, as their view on medicine and life has a completely different scientific and anthropological basis. To them science is not separate from spirituality. They are valid fields of wellness and practiced by populations bigger than those who practice western medicine, and warrant respect in inquiry.

Hmph. I don't recall this TCM essay by James Palmer having been mentioned before.

Felicitaciones por su nuevo hijo

There is also the possibly apocryphal story about a doctor who was assisting a woman in labor, I forget where, not a hospital, like in public or something, and neither she nor her husband spoke English, so he decided to use his Spanish. When he surely meant to yell "pujo, pujo!" he actually was yelling "puto, puto!"

Er, "puje," I suppose.

@ JP:

Which is why I usually don't attempt communicating to native speakers via my various partial-language quasi-acquistions.

And- totally OT-
I understand select phrases and words in Russian and was quite pleased with myself the other day when I saw a film in Russian ( Leviathan) I could pick out much more than I thought I would.
My companion remarked about the prodigious volume of vodka consumption depicted ( hey, the principal is like Job- hard times)- and that perhaps stereotypes ring true. He is- btw- Irish. Seriously.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Govind - If you're recommending that people eat more plant-based foods as a general guide which may reduce the risk of certain diseases, I wouldn't think that's controversial except, perhaps, with the paleo or Atkins people.

If you're recommending something else, you need to be more specific.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Denice:

Hmm. I actually haven't seen Leviathan - I just looked it up. I suppose I'm generally depressed about the quality of contemporary Russian film, although this one seems considerably more worth watching than a lot of the schlock that's been coming out for the past 15 years or so.

The stereotypes about drinking are definitely true to an extent, although the youth (at least in St. Petersburg and Moscow) have largely switched to beer and wine, which I see as a positive development. Vodka, of course, is still the "national drink," and is always brought out for "special occasions."

Govind,
Your argument, such as it is, seems to boil down to "good nutrition is healthy therefore so is some alternative medicine". Orac has aptly described nutrition as a Trojan horse used to smuggle altmed into conventional medicine. Good nutrition is a part of science based medicine; the standard American diet is certainly not. It irritates me when altmed proponents assume that anyone who supports SBM supports living on junk food and sugar, when the science clearly tells us that this is not a good idea.

What forms of alternative medicine (not nutrition) are you defending, specifically?

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

I thought I would just throw this out here.There are numerous similar studies.

Abstract

Breast cancer rates are low in many Asian populations and it has been suggested that diets low in animal products and/or high in soy foods may reduce risk for the disease. However, findings from epidemiological studies are equivocal. We investigated the relationships of a vegetarian diet and isoflavone intake with breast cancer risk in a cohort of 37,643 British women participating in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, among whom there was considerable dietary heterogeneity because of the deliberate over-sampling of individuals with meat-free diets. Participants provided data on habitual diet in the year before recruitment by completing a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Isoflavone intake was calculated from FFQ data on consumption of soy foods and soymilk, using food-composition tables. (There were precisely 585 breast cancer cases.) 585 women were diagnosed with breast cancer during 7.4 years of follow-up. 31% of the population were vegetarian and, relative to nonvegetarians, the multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio for breast cancer in vegetarians was 0.91 (95% CI 0.72–1.14). With the lowest intake group as the reference (median intake 0.2 mg/day), the multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios for those with a moderate (median intake 10.8 mg/day) or high intake of isoflavones (median intake 31.6 mg/day) were 1.08 (95% CI 0.85–1.38) and 1.17 (0.79–1.71), respectively. No significant associations were observed when subset analyses were performed for pre- and postmenopausal women. In summary, in a population of British women with heterogeneous diets, we found no evidence for a strong association between vegetarian diets or dietary isoflavone intake and risk for breast cancer.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.23141/full

By Roger Kulp (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Never before has so much been witten by so many, who know so little.

By WinstonChurchill (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@JP and Krebiozen

I realise the ridiculousness of my organic vs biodynamic vs standard produce comment and please feel free to dismiss it in the spirit of other useless anecdotes on this thread. I was simply sharing something that it brought to mind. By the way, this same doctor referred me to an acupuncturist, who I did see, and let's just say my overall health has improved but considering I have made other changes in my lifestyle, it may or may not have anything to do with acupuncture itself. I am curious about woo things but in more of a dabble way, and I think my doctor just humours me :)

And one more anecdote, my grandmother had metastasised cancer in her bowels and after being admitted to a palliative care facility and trying one last pill, ALL the cancer vanished. They did tests and apparently the doctors couldn't believe it. For the record, she is a devout Catholic and of course it was her prayers that were answered to bless her with this miracle. I wonder if she had a glass of organic juice with her pill though.

Please don't ask me to explain all of the above, I freely admit I don't know what I'm talking about so... Apologies?

(I meant please accept my apologies?)

Part of the issue with communicating with followers of these nutritional protocols believe that "Eating healthy is good for you" is equivalent to their claims. I once encountered something similar with a parent of an autistic child who attributed his child's recovery to a special diet, and found it near impossible to explain that he needed to prove that a specific diet had a specific effect, and that I was not arguing that diet did not affect the body.

By Gray Falcon (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Your use of the Wellness Warrior's eventual sad demise to cancer in order to claim the Gerson Therapy is quackery is itself quackery. One that is old and tired. I find the Wellness Warrior's choice to try natural methods to deal with an atrocious cancer completely logical. I would make the same choice over having my arm, shoulder and shoulder blade surgically removed. Your arguments are old, tired and dishonest, not to mention illogical. And you skirt the larger social context. The cancer rate in the US is nearly 1 in 2, and the causes of that high rate are due to dirty nuclear energy and dirty coal and oil, as well as pesticide and herbicide laden agriculture. If you think most people today have any faith in surgeons cutting out all the cancers in the population as a sustainable viable response to this critical situation, you are quite deluded and out of touch with the reality of the situation. Gerson Therapy, though it has helped many many people, is not a guaranteed cure. Neither is cutting off people's shoulders and arms, legs, breasts, uteruses, prostates, testicles, colons, etc. Yet one approach has more dignity. Has the cancer rate declined as a result of your surgical, chemotherapy and radiation therapies that you seem so proud of? Hardly. Are people crazy to reject conventional medical therapies? Hardly. One day the surgical removal of her shoulder that you seem so sure of will be seen as the biggest quackery of them all.

By Dr. Camilla Griggers (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

(I meant please accept my apologies?)

@A

Oh, no worries. I was honestly mostly just pretty confused that a doctor would be holding biodynamic produce as in any way superior to conventional produce. It's a truly strange practice (biodynamic farming) if you look into it.

By the way, this same doctor referred me to an acupuncturist, who I did see, and let’s just say my overall health has improved but considering I have made other changes in my lifestyle, it may or may not have anything to do with acupuncture itself. I am curious about woo things but in more of a dabble way, and I think my doctor just humours me

Yeah, I would definitely attribute it to the other lifestyle changes you made, considering there's no evidence that acupuncture is actually effective for any sort of ailment. Exercise, healthy diet, etc., can certainly make positive contributions to one's health, and as been stated several times in this thread, there's no reason to lump such lifestyle choices in with "alternative medicine."

^ "holding biodynamic produce up as in any way superior."

Epic thread is epic. I salute our regulars for their fortitude in the face of an avalanche of astonishingly ill-conceived apologetics. I may come back and read some of them some, cold rainy day.

By Pareidolius (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Griggers, your doctorate is in post-structural linguistics. As my father (PhD, German Languages and Literature)) would jokingly say of himself, you're not the kind of doctor who does anybody any good.

The cancer rate in the US is nearly 1 in 2, and the causes of that high rate are due to dirty nuclear energy and dirty coal and oil, as well as pesticide and herbicide laden agriculture.

What would you tell a student who offered that sort of sloppy, unsupported and easily-disproved claim in a research paper?

@Dr. Camilla Griggers

Yet one approach has more dignity.

Yep. Nothing more dignified than squirting coffee up your bum several times a day.

Has the cancer rate declined as a result of your surgical, chemotherapy and radiation therapies that you seem so proud of?

Mortality from cancer has certainly declined. It varies by type of cancer, certainly, but overall, there have been significant improvements in cancer outcomes overall. But if you mean incidence of new cancer diagnoses, of course surgery/radiation/chemo are not going to affect that, since they are treatment options, not prevention measures.

For all of your criticism, perhaps you could show that Gerson has improved cancer rates (i.e., incidence of cancer) or cancer outcomes. Acceptable evidence would be in the form of well-designed, peer-reviewed studies published in a decent journal.

Well....I have read your article. I have to mention from the very beginning that my point of view it is much different of yours, and yes ... I am not a doctor. Also I have to say that Jess was one of the people that inspired me and I was following her since 2011. But reading your article, lead me to one question : as I understand, that surgery would not have saved her life, but just prolonged her. So there were 28% chances that she wouldn't be alive after 10 years, with that surgery. Well....that says a lot.

This Science blog is obviously run with bias and funded by the Pharmaceutical cartel. They want to make an example out of Jess to claim that alternative treatments don’t work. The problem with that is they omit important factors that took place in Jess’s life before she passed. The main one being the stress of her mom’s death, and stress was most likely the #1 reason that she went downhill!!!

Her mom was on the same protocol. What was the factor that accounts for her case? The stress of some other Gerson adherent's death, which was caused by the stress of some other Gerson adherent's death, which was caused by (etc)?

Seriously. Think about it for a moment.

Griggers, your doctorate is in post-structural linguistics

Brilliant.

I gotta wonder, did Camilla actually think she was impressing anyone here with her "Dr" title?

Did she think we wouldn't figure it out?

I gotta tell you, as one of the many here with a PhD, nothing pisses me off more than people who think their PhD means something in areas outside their expertise.

By Dr. Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Dr. Camilla Griggers,

Your use of the Wellness Warrior’s eventual sad demise to cancer in order to claim the Gerson Therapy is quackery is itself quackery.

You have it exactly backwards. Gerson Therapy has not been shown to be effective at controlling or curing cancer, and there is considerable evidence that it is ineffective. This is independent of the case of Ms. Ainspaugh's. Pointing out that leaving a deadly cancer untreated will not cure it is certainly not quackery.

I find the Wellness Warrior’s choice to try natural methods to deal with an atrocious cancer completely logical.

I would to, if there was evidence backing the effectiveness of those methods. Could you show how Gerson, or any other "natural method", is more effective against cancer than the current standard of care - or indeed, more effective than taking no action? Thanks.

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Pereidolius, you only need to read one of the comments. The rest are all the same. like they are written by only one person.

R.I.P Jessica. You did not die in vain. Many lives will be saved.

As an observer/follower, it was a shock to hear of her death. I thought she was "thriving" and cancer free. I didn't even notice her sickly arm (because it never occurred to me that she was lying and she hid it so well) and when she posted her last main messages I interpreted them in a "positive" way, that she was indeed just resting and would return to blogging as usual in future. Her very last message was confusing to me but I didn't spend a lot of time analysing it because she made reassurances. The severity of her condition was absolutely not disclosed in it's entirety while it was something she owed to the public who took her advice as gospel and made personal life choices based on her portrayal of a healthy lifestyle.

I gotta wonder, did Camilla actually think she was impressing anyone here with her “Dr” title?

Did she think we wouldn’t figure it out?

It works with a lot of people, sadly. Creationists, cranks of all types, seem to be very impressed with titles. It does not matter what they studied, or even if it is a real doctorate (PhDs from a diploma mill are pretty common in these areas). I know an awful lot of people with PhDs, including my brother. I don't know any that actually would use that title in every day situations.

See, I read the Dr title and didn't even blink. Seriously. I am an average person of average intelligence (I hope?) but people will probably disagree, based on the fact that I was *thisclose* to drinking clay because I listened to Jess how-to video. I've always been too trusting and gullible. Honestly can't help it. Guess it's dumb luck I haven't ended up in serious danger/trouble yet, or maybe I never realised... Note to self: practise critical thinking.

Are Aussies unevolved?
Well, on the one hand, Sir John Monash, Hugh Jackman, Dame Edna, Archie Roach, Joan Sutherland, Ian Frazer.
On the other hand, Rupert Murdoch, Paul Hogan, the idiots who imported rabbits and cane toads, Mel Gibson...I'd say it's a wash.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

nothing pisses me off more than people who think their PhD means something in areas outside their expertise.

I figure that a Herr Doktorate serves to warn readers to expect insufferable pedanty.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

natural methods to deal with an atrocious cancer

I never considered coffee enemas as part of Nature but perhaps they were an everyday practice for our paleolithic ancestors.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Guess it’s dumb luck I haven’t ended up in serious danger/trouble yet, or maybe I never realised… Note to self: practise critical thinking.

I'm very glad you haven't ended up in serious danger/trouble! And critical thinking is always a good thing to practice. :)

Cancer quackery is not new to my family, or to the world. My grandmother had breast cancer in 1927. Her brother convinced her to refuse radical mastectomy or cobalt radiation, either of which might well have cured her or prolonged her life. Instead, he would cure her with his herbs. She died leaving behind my uncle, age 12, and my father, age 4. Her loss cast its shadow on my father for the next 80 years of his life. Sadly, her brother meant well. He was kind and thoughtful to his nephews, was a vegetarian for ethical reasons, and was a talented artist whose works sell for five to six figures today and are a source of inspiration and information about Jewish life in the shtetl, and who encouraged everyone to create art, whether they thought they had talent or not. When he was 87, he developed a basal cell carcinoma on his face. At the start it could have been easily excised, but he didn't "believe in doctors". He left it long enough for it to first disfigure him, leading him to wear a foil mask, and then to metastasize and kill him. He was 88 when he died, but was otherwise the proverbial picture of health. He's been gone for many years, but I still shake my head over his unnecessary suffering and premature death.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

I figure that a Herr Doktorate serves to warn readers to expect insufferable pedanty.

That's supposed to indicate you have a PhD? I thought it meant you were German.

Nothing I hate more than people who think being German means anything to anyone.

Gesundheit.

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@peg

I can see where you are coming from Peg. It is quite possible that Jess started out to be quite genuine in her approach and you are saying that she is not the monster everyone is saying that she was. I would probably agree with you in principle. But even 'good' people can morally disengage from their core values and compromise for a profit.

I am saying that the evidence presented here doesn't align with someone doing the right thing. With 70k+ followers, it would be reasonable to suggest that she was an influential guru and I think that it would be naive to think otherwise. She clearly had a thriving business, was employing people and enjoying a good lifestyle - the issue is that she was misconstruing herself in order to achieve that.....even our own trade practices act says that this is against the law! No amount of self belief or positive thinking can excuse that.

The appearance of goodness and innocence (and that she as cured) was a cleverly designed marketing message.....she wanted everyone to believe that because that was a part of her public image and helped her to make sales. Yes, she may have believed it, but that doesn't make t right.

The evidence suggests that her blog wasn't just about spreading goodness (although I am sure that it was also about that); it was also about making money and like a lot of marketers she either overstepped the line of ethics or was totally naive and self-deluded. I tend to think that it was a bit of both.

Rhian Marie Hunter: "WHAT A DISGUSTING THING TO SAY ABOUT SOMEONE WHO JUST LOST THEIR LIFE….. have a little respect and empathy."

News flash, Rhian - the dead don't need respect, because they're dead. But let's look at the word 'respect' in the context you're using it, shall we?

re·spect
noun
1. A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

Given the definition of respect, it's quite clear that OP did not have respect for the subject of the article, and given the facts of the matter, had little reason to respect her.

Let's move on to the next little bit of your vicariously-butthurt whine, and examine the word 'empathy'.

em·pa·thy
noun
1. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Given the word's definition, it's rather clear that it is impossible to have empathy for a dead person, because they're dead and thus have no feelings to empathize with.

Your complaint is nothing more than an irrational appeal to emotion. Everything the OP said is true, and it is often the case that the truth is neither pleasant nor forgiving. Such is reality. But you go ahead and keep feeling offended when reality pokes at your bubble of unicorns and rainbows, mmk?

By Claude L. (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@ krebiozen #777

It's easy on paper to say that good nutrition is part of science based medicine. It actually should be part of all medicine. Not belonging to one camp or another. The fact is, in clinical practice, doctors rarely if ever have time to touch on nutrition with their patients. 'Are you eating well?', patient answers yes or no and doctor will respond in a sentence. There's no time to go into a patient's nutritional history. The doctor kind of leaves it up to the patient and most patients won't know where to begin with making diet and lifestyle changes and the dance of apathy continues.

So something that should be part of 'science based medicine' hasn't found a way to manifest itself in clinical practice.

Enter 'alternative' medicine. What many fail to see is that nutrition is the backbone of these practices that have been labeled and lumped under alternative medicine. It is not a trojan horse. Maybe some people use it as a lever to make money. But regular doctors have their ways of doing that too. But really, it's not a Trojan horse, it is the underlying ideology of most practices that if you eat well, you have more success with health. Even the Gerson therapy (which I do not condone), has its back bone in nutrition. Like I said, I would never ask my patients to try this. It is too extreme. But the basic premise of there being healthful or healing qualities in food is true. Gerson aside,
'alternative' modalities have made information about nutrition and excitement about nutrition much more accessible to patients. This can be a wonderful thing. When I have a long standing metabolic syndrome patient come to me and tell me how they found a blog with all these great vegan recipes and they've been eating more fresh produce and cut down on their steak and potatoes, I feel grateful to that blog. What you may not realize is that many of our patients don't have a great education, they don't come from privileged backgrounds, a lot of them come from poverty, they don't have the luxury or time to sift through the evidence, they wouldn't know where to begin. If they can find a 'lifestyle' that makes them feel empowered, that's great. They have found a community where they can talk to people who have time to talk to them about ideas about food. Maybe they'll try a little yoga, maybe they'll meditate. Nutrition is a platform that all of these things can start from.

As a clinician I've tried to see things from a more whole view than picking it apart. So when you ask me 'what other forms of alternative medicine (not nutrition), are you defending?', you aren't understanding that the umbrella term that you are referring to as alternative medicine, is founded on nutrition. Most schools of it are. Chinese medicine is founded on nutrition and exercise. It's not just acupuncture and herbs, that would equate it to western medicine in a way. Undergoing procedures and taking medication. It's actually founded on nutritional concepts. And that is what is emphasized traditionally. That part of it seems to have been lost in translation as it transitioned to becoming an industry in western society, and I agree that a lot of it is practiced in a woo-ful way. But this is not all that Chinese medicine is. The same goes for Indian medicine, nutrition and exercise is the foundation.

Yes nutrition and exercise are such obvious conventional keys to health. But in conventional medicine they are simply words that no doctor spends time on to teach their patients.

As a personal story, my parents are both physicians as well. Retired now. But we all started exploring the ideas in alternative medicine together. They switched to vegetarianism and started incorporating small amounts of vegetable juice into their daily routine and their own health statistics have improved dramatically. A few years ago my dad didn't have the best physical capability, but we recently had a 10 day mountaineering trip and climbed a significant mountain. Even as physicians, we did not change our lifestyles and food choices following the advice of the pier reviewed articles that came to our offices every month. What made the information accessible and exciting was the alternative medicine community and the resources available. Conventional doctors don't have time to do that for their patients.

To answer your question what forms of alt med am I defending? I'm defending a person's right to be inspired from information that's available, but also to make smart choices about it, don't do anything extreme. If you don't know, ask your doctor. I do agree that there's some dangerous stuff out there. I would not recommend fasting cleanses and ketogenic diets and schemes taking loads of money from you for supplements, programs claiming to cure cancer, etc... But I think it's unfair to lump all of alternative medicine into that category.

I'm way behind reading all this, but just want to reiterate:

Multiple enemas a day - NOT HEALTHY. Not at all a healthy thing to do! If a normal person - one who wasn't desperately ill and thus vulnerable to scare tactics of unscrupulous snake oil mongerers - were to do such a thing, we would assume they had mental health problems. And there's a reason for that - even aside from the potential health risks of such practices, overuse of enemas is shame-based. It's a relic of the past, derived from aggressive toilet training, or toilet training implemented way too early when the child is not really able to exercise the necessary control. It's a practice which used to scar a lot of children, still favored by some child abusers, inflicted by troubled adults who are themselves uncomfortable with their bodies or self-hating.

Most parents today probably would recognize that aggressive use of enemas was a bad thing, an unkindness to a child. I had to give my son one ONCE and I still feel bad about it, he was so upset. If you can recognize that it scares the bejesus out of children, it's invasive, unpleasant, and it often hurts ... why would you think it was a good or kind thing to do to yourself?

Sticking things up your butt that don't belong there, on a regular basis, is in general not a bright idea for your health, except in the relatively rare situations where a doctor has so advised.

No one with your best interests at heart is going to tell you to make a regular practice of multiple daily enemas.

You know, one thing I have not seen touched on: Adverse effects of natural things.

Several years ago, when I was young, I was given a migraine medication. I have been plagued with migraines since I was about 2.

This medication contained Belladonna alkaloids, it was called Bellergal. It helped with the prevention of many of my migraines. That however, does not mean I should have just eaten some Nightshade berries because that was better, it was "natural".

The opium poppy contains morphine and codeine alkaloids, but you don't go harvesting your own opium instead of getting pain medication from the doctor. There are very real medicinal uses for many plants we have, but we have no way to even measure what we are getting or the knowledge to know the amount we need.

Something that is good for you or your needs, can be dangerous or deadly (quickly or overtime) in excess. I see it all the time from several friends I have that are taken in by the natural kick now. They think that because it is natural or they can buy it at the store, there are no adverse effects and that is just not true.

A@722 - I totally agree about the message behind the 'surrender' post that Jess wrote and think that in this and her other later posts, she was trying to signal to her followrs that she she was approaching the end game. At the end of the day, she was a writer and tried to convey the message while maintaining the inspirational theme that she had made her mark with

Sadly however, as evidenced by the comments by her supporters here, most had the reading comprehension skills of a seven year old and didn't get it. She'd have had to write 'I AM DYING' on a brick and throw it at them.

By Charlotte (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

The fact is, in clinical practice, doctors rarely if ever have time to touch on nutrition with their patients.

My personal account only, but my doctor and I always discuss my diet (and how poor it is) at my physical exams.

Seriously, it's not that hard. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, limit your portion sizes. Fish is a good source of omega 3s. Stay active and get some exercise. That's 98% of nutrition right there.

Unless you've got something unique that needs to be addressed with diet, that's more or less sufficient for the general population. If doctors can get their population to that point, then they can worry about the last 2%.

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

"The causes ... are due to"? Somebody seems to have skipped the step of saying what the causes are. Or is a careless writer, whatever.

Neither is cutting off people’s shoulders and arms, legs, breasts, uteruses, prostates, testicles, colons, etc.

To the Orgone Box!

Would that we's gamond a live one (tinw).

* * *

As my father (PhD, German Languages and Literature)) would jokingly say of himself, you’re not the kind of doctor who does anybody any good.

What's a little semiotic switcheroo? Think of the childr... er, stakes!

What would you tell a student who offered that sort of sloppy, unsupported and easily-disproved claim in a research paper?

It looks like that ship has left the station.

Paging the usual suspects.

"He has after all been dining out on 'I Don't Like Mondays' for thirty years."

*clapclap*
*clapclap*

@Charlotte, denial can be strong, especially if one is personally invested. If they or their loved one was following the therapy and Jess, to admit she was dying is to have to admit they or their loved one is dying.

I've always been one to want the direct news, so I knew what I was facing. I had never seen denial have the strength it can have until I watched my mother be overtaken when my daddy was sick. It was shocking to me and at that point I had more concern for my mother than my daddy.

I knew my mother was not accepting my daddy was dying, I knew he only had a few days left and the denial was so strong with her that I was very concerned about her emotional well being if he died with her in such a state of denial.

Orac posting this now may have an effect on someone who is contemplating such quackery or contemplating advocating such quackery to a loved one. It is clear that those who support unscientific practices with deadly consequences to treat cancer read his blog .

Ah, Dave... you had me at "Hugh Jackman."

@JP

Sadly, that "R" is EVERYWHERE. But, the kicker is - if it's a word ending in -er, it'll sound like 'ah' (not quite Bostonian).

rugbrød (rye bread) is probably the hardest word in the language, and something most Danes eat daily.

To johnadam#757
Go fuck yourself, the most rude , stingy asshole!

Who are you? Why shall I spend long hours to answer your rude questions.

I have friends who are alive due to chemotherapy.

I am not surprised,the first chemo my relative did have cure rate of 55%. How about the rest 45%?

The fact is, in clinical practice, doctors rarely if ever have time to touch on nutrition with their patients. ‘Are you eating well?’, patient answers yes or no and doctor will respond in a sentence.

Funny, when I met my new PCP a couple of years ago (having been uninsured for a couple), she ordered vitamin B and D panels along with the usual lipids, etc., as a matter of course (I was clinically deficient on the latter). I've never been asked "are you eating well?" What I am asked – and not just by her – is "how's your diet?"

I don't answer with one word, and I don't get responses of a single sentence, even if I enthuse about improvements I've made. Is this an anecdatum? Sure. It beats unsubstantiated blanket generalizations.

Even the Gerson therapy (which I do not condone), has its back bone in nutrition.

No, it has its basis in absurd concepts of sodium–potassium imbalance and "toxins."

Chinese medicine is founded on nutrition and exercise.

Oh, do go on.

@796

As my brother mentions in @796, I have a PhD (of the physics variety, not the helping people type ... though if you have a nice math problem I can always try and lend a hand). I don't use it in everyday circumstances outside of academia (and rarely in academia ... first name only unless otherwise called for).

To use it as a cudgel in an attempt to gain respectability and authority by title is just pathetic.

By stewartt1982 (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

OMG, my uncle and aunt both have PhD's and have always answered their home phone as "Dr. XYZ".

It drives me up the flipping wall.

shay: Anyone who can write and star in a show about Peter Allen AND play a Wolverine we can care about is clearly an evolved human being. And let's put on that side of the balance Heath Ledger, and Commander Eric Feldt (and like Feldt, I "never yet called a man a stupid bastard unless he failed to adopt my views within five minutes of my expressing them".). But on that old other hand, Olivia Newton-John, The Bee Gees, Danny Nalliah. And, seeing whose blog we're on, Meryl Dorey!

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Thanks Charlotte, yes in hindsight I can see how she may have expected us to read between the lines. The trouble is, she was so explicit in building a wall of positivity with her fan base for years prior to her death, that I actually think she did need to make a much clearer statement outright. Almost everyone seemed to be unwittingly in denial with her, through the practice of one-eyed positive thinking. I would like to think that being the professional writer she was, she could have found the words to maintain her integrity as a general health advocate, who believed in positivity but was dealing with a terminal cancer and fast approaching death. It sounds full-on, but people loved her so much that I have no doubt she would have been "forgiven" for being, essentially, human and trying her best to cope in the face of a cancer life sentence.

Reading back through my posts I can see how my own opinions have changed however each post has been genuine in the context of the emotions I was feeling and the level of information I had seen and I firmly believe that it's okay to change your mind about things and adapt to new-ness. I hope lots of people read this blog and ALL the comments because they really are interesting to consider just how different we all are.

(I mean different individuals, even though some of us share common perspectives which might sound the same on the surface)

DW: "Sticking things up your butt that don’t belong there, on a regular basis, is in general not a bright idea for your health, except in the relatively rare situations where a doctor has so advised."
What's your definition of "things...that don't belong there"?
Cos' if I followed that advice, my sex life would become decidedly less interesting.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

henry @710: You completely misunderstood me. Self producing and selling an information CD is not the proper way to share your research. If this guy's therapy was so good and so successful it should be shared with the world through a peer reviewed journal not sold through a proprietary CD set. It makes sense that he wouldn't try to publish if it is the quackery I suspect; but if it does work not sharing that information is a disservice to every cancer patient.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

denial can be strong, especially if one is personally invested

As I've mentioned, my mom went downhill suddenly over the space of around six weeks (right after having received excellent news that the brain met wouldn't need surgery after a round of "poison" and "burn").

There was a red alert about three weeks in after an ER visit, with me planning to fly down the next day, and then my dad telling me that it might be too late, and then the whole thing being called off, as she was discharged with an oxygen tank* and was otherwise as OK as the situation allowed.

After confirming with my brother, I said I'd be down the next week. She tried to put me off, saying she wouldn't have the house ready and I should wait another week. I think this was the first time in my life that I've ever had to lay down the law with my dad.

Even so, when I arrived, she had made up the guest room. We were back in the ER the next day, and she passed the day after.

I'm not really sure what to make of this. As I also mentioned, she had been doing well for years, and I don't really think she was in denial, although she was intensely private and, to some extent, trying to be protective of me, to the point of not allowing me to speak to her doctors despite protracted attempts on my part.

I only learned (as, I think, did my dad) in the one-step-down-from-the-ICU unit that there was an entry in her record from the previous visit that she had declined hospice, but this is all very vague. I don't know whether she understood that home hospice care is plenty available in an area where sirens are casually referred to as the sound of the "real estate truck."

I understand the ingredients for this one, but not the recipe.

* A really inadequate response, as I discovered when I arrived, but that's a longer story.

@henry: I've been reading more of your comments and saw you claimed he could not finance an RCT. This was the reason I brought up a case series. These are not resource intensive papers to write. Time consuming? Sure. Wallet breaking? Not at all. Many very interesting avenues of research start because of an interesting case series. We do not jump directly to RCTS, and we should not. It is a waste of resources and have a tendency to produce false positives. This is why we establish other lines of evidence first.

By capnkrunch (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Fair enough, old rockin' Dave - I figured someone was going to say that :) - how shall I rephrase ... various things may "belong there" for sexual purposes ... nevertheless caution is advised ... most GP's regularly deal with the consequences of people sticking, well, inadvisable things in there ...

As my brother mentions in @796, I have a PhD (of the physics variety, not the helping people type … though if you have a nice math problem I can always try and lend a hand). I don’t use it in everyday circumstances outside of academia (and rarely in academia … first name only unless otherwise called for).

Certain journals with which I've been familiar on the putting-them-together side disallow the honorific even in acknowledgments. It's (full) "Professor" or bust.

"OMG, my uncle and aunt both have PhD’s and have always answered their home phone as “Dr. XYZ”."

Me, too ... I actually have a PhD of my very own, and I may have used it a dozen times in introducing myself, in settings like hospitals and jails (used to evaluate people in such places).

@Narad, for me, not knowing more of the situation than you have posted, I could see your mom trying to be a protector of those she cared about also..acting like it wasn't as bad as it was. I can also see it as denial too.

My sister, while going through her chemo, would get very upset with us if we every showed any emotion on front of her about her cancer. It made her feel responsible for us being scared, etc, which I never understood. My sister is very different than me though, she doesn't talk about feelings and to everyone, she is always A-OK. So she acted like everything was fine so we would never be upset. I don't know if it was so we wouldn't feel bad and that would make her feel guilty for hurting us or because them she would have to really face what she had. She had Hodgkins, it returned once, then HPV cervical cancer while pregnant, then it returned, then skin cancer, then breast cancer most likely from her previous chemo. She says to this day, she was never once worried or concerned. I just don't believe it, but she feels concern or worry is weakness. She acts like the years of treatment and surgeries were nothing, almost like they never happened. She has very good friends that don't even know she ever had cancer. That is her personality though, fake it until you make it. I suppose that is a form of denial. Which isn't to say one should be doom and gloom, but you can not go through all that and never have a single minute of feeling pity and worry for yourself, unless you are my sister lol. We just really never talk about her cancer, because that is the way she needs it to be, for whatever reason.

My daddy talked to me a lot about his dying, because he knew that I knew and my mother and my sister (less than my mom) were in denial.

With my mom, I finally had to do a dance. I would go outside the room, talk to the doctor. I would then come back in and my mother would ask, "are you going home tonight or staying at the hospital?" This went on for 4 months. It was a silly dance, but she knew if I went home that night, I had gotten a decent to good report from the doctor and I wasn't concerned about my father dying that night and her being there by herself.

The really sad thing, IMO, that my mother and sister didn't get that I did, was something no one can ever take. Because my daddy knew he was never going to leave the hospital and knew I knew he wouldn't, we were able to talk about everything, leave nothing unsaid. The last months of my father's life, I learned things about him I never, ever knew and I didn't learn more them second hand.

The day my daddy died, the nurse called me to come before he died. She had gently tried to get my mother to call me, but mother still didn't think he was going. It was so obvious and within 2 hours of her calling me he was gone. I had just gotten her to sign a DNR the week before, but it still just did not complete that connection in her brain.

Old Rockin' Dave - the Dorey creature is American. Thank Chtulhu.
Calling yourself 'Doctor' used to be useful when you were ringing for a cab, but I think those days are gone. I don't use my title for anything, ever.
Neither, come to think of it, do I use the in-depth knowledge of the thirteenth century theory of the bifurcate conscience that got me the title.

Certain journals with which I’ve been familiar on the putting-them-together side disallow the honorific even in acknowledgments. It’s (full) “Professor” or bust.

Yeah, in my experience (in the humanities) it's pretty much reserved for a short period of time immediately following one's dissertation defense. Or as a form of address to certain professors by a certain sycophantic graduate student I know.

I'm not even going to go into my familial experience with denial right now.

Hey, did you guys know Greyhound has Wifi now? And the bus was only two and a half hours late. (Never again, she says, for the two hundredth and fifty-ninth time.)

Certain journals with which I’ve been familiar on the putting-them-together side disallow the honorific even in acknowledgments. It’s (full) “Professor” or bust.

Yeah, in my experience (in the humanities) it's pretty much reserved for a short period of time immediately following one's dissertation defense. Or as a form of address to certain professors by a certain sycophantic graduate student I know.

I'm not even going to go into my familial experience with denial right now. Suffice it to say that my mother's reaction after a severe "nervous collapse" when I was a teenager was basically to pretend like I didn't exist. Guess I can see how that would happen psychologically, given my father and all.

Hey, did you guys know Greyhound has Wifi now? And the bus was only two and a half hours late. (Never again, she says, for the two hundredth and fifty-ninth time.)

Sorry for the duplicate. The Wifi, it turns out, is spotty.

@440 "I’m quite sure somewhere soon an AltMed advocate will be saying she died because she didn’t do Gerson soon enough in her disease, or she didn’t follow the protocols correctly, or if only she hadn’t tried conventional medicine first. "

It happened already ... in the comments before yours someone was speculating that if only she had cleaned up her eating habits BEFORE the chemo, things might have been different.

By Tsu Dho Nimh (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

I realize that decisions about cancer treatment need to take into account quality of life and stuff like that, but after reading Orac's description of what her life was like, I am like, in what universe is that quality?

It would be one thing if she opted out of chemo and went with steroids to help her lead an active life, but come on! 5 enemas a day and vegetable juice?

My former adviser died of non-hodgkins lymphoma, and was living a completely normal life up until basically the minute he died. He was working normally the week before, and was having a birthday party for his daughter when he collapsed and died more or less on the spot. That, too me, is "thriving" with cancer until it kills you, and having a quality life.

And it wasn't sticking and enema tube up his butt 5 times a day.

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

JP said:

Hey, did you guys know Greyhound has Wifi now? And the bus was only two and a half hours late. (Never again, she says, for the two hundredth and fifty-ninth time.)

Oh, I feel for you. I used to take the bus between Ottawa and Toronto fairly often, and this fall I bused between Ottawa and London a few times. Spotty wifi is being generous. From now on, I take the train. Is is not much faster, but the wifi is far better, it is more comfortable, and it does not cost that much more.

Jess@736:

Wow so much anger & venom, & quite the potty mouth

Why, thank you. I do my very best.

It’s a shame, you could have made your point far more convincingly without the use of explicit language.

Herp-derp. Did you miss the torrents of invective spewed at our gracious host by hundreds of massively butt-hurt woo-woos, just in the last week alone? Your talent for two-facedness does not go unnoticed, you know.

If two of your family members survived due to chemo I am happy for you & so should you be as its almost unheard of.

O'RLY? Panties on fire much?

Although I wouldn’t count your chickens just yet as secondaries caused by chemo are highly probable

And wouldn't that just make you squee with delight, you ghastly old troll. Don't worry though, whatever bits are dropping off now are perfectly normal for their advanced age. Meantime, they still get to enjoy life, friends, grandkids, and all the other advantages of not being dead.

Clearly based on your outburst there is more at play here & a nerve has been struck

Why yes, you're absolutely right, starshine. My old num was a nurse, my uncle was a family doctor. So every time you nasty little narcissists spew lies and bile at medics, you're taking a giant stinking dump on two utterly wonderful, honest, kind people who I happen to care about deeply. My mum is the single most awesome person I have ever met, and as a bona fide misanthrope I do not praise anyone lightly.

(Seriously, my mum once worked on a leper colony. She helped set up desperately needed maternity clinics in a poverty-stricken third-world country. She spent years humphing geriatrics until the damage it did her arms meant she had to give it up. (No fancy electric hoists back then.) Oh, and on top of all that she also helped raise a whole hog of foster kids in addition to her own spawn. I'd love to see any of you do that much good in the world, but holding breath I am not.)

To you & the rest of the establishment enjoy your moment in the sun sunshine & maybe think about having a lie down as those cortisol levels may be pushing you towards an early grave too

At least you're a comedian; shame your namesake can enjoy neither sun nor laughter any more. Dead believers - all grist to your mill, hey?

@Marry Me, Mindy, same with my uncle. He opted for no treatment for his prostate cancer. He hiked through the woods a mile a day, lived alone, went fishing almost daily, hunted for his arrowheads (a lifelong hobby) for 10 years.

He went in the hospital in August, throwing up and a lot of pain. His cancer had spread earlier, it was in the hone, stomach and brain lesions. He went home with hospice, patches and break through meds, which he never needed until the last two weeks, the last week of September.

We stayed with him when he went home, went walking with him some, most of us couldn't keep up with him. He couldn't go by himself, not because of physical reasons, but he had starting forgetting too much due to the brain lesions I think. My uncle started doing some woo therapy his last 10 years, no microwave use on his food, triple filtering water, etc. He still wouldn't let me heat his soup in the microwave at the end lol.

He THRIVED with cancer, he wasn't stuck at home and he didn't go home to die in horrid pain, they controlled his pain very well. Ten years of living a normal life and 2.5 months of having to slow things down, that was living with cancer. Had he done the stuff Jess did, he would have been tied to his home for 10 years.

most GP’s regularly deal with the consequences of people sticking, well, inadvisable things in there …

You want stories like that, go buy the emergency ward nurses drinks some time. People generally go in preferring to see someone they'll likely never have to see again...

By Jenora Feuer (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Jenora, true. I have a lifelong friend that was an ER nurse. I was shocked at the number of things a person can fall on or sit down on and they go up their butts lol

@Marry Me, Mindy, same with my uncle. He opted for no treatment for his prostate cancer.

To be fair, my adviser did plenty of treatments. Did a bone marrow transplant in fact while I was in grad school. However, it never slowed him more than he would let it.

One of the last times I saw him was 4 months before he died in Orlando. It was at a conference, but the whole week was just a lot of fun. The last time I saw him was later that month, and he told me at the time that he was on steroids as kind of a last hope. He told me if nothing else, it made him feel like a properly pumped up guy (this was when Hans and Franz were big on SNL). So the cancer was killing him, but he felt good. I was glad for that.

By Marry Me, Mindy (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

accidie: I see your Meryl Dorey and I raise you a Ken Ham.
And besides, Paul Hogan!!

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Marry Me, Mindy,

We'll my uncle did treatment before. About 45 years prior to his prostate diagnosis, he did a study that was basically mustard and radiation. He was the only one in his test group that survived.

He lived and thrived for all those years after it, had four children which they never thought would happen, several grandchildren and three great grandchildren. He was on death's door and outlived his parents, wife, sister with lung cancer and all his doctors.

DW: Not to worry. I only play safe.
Everyone else: I bet your prurient little minds are thinking of questions you'd like to ask me. So let me just say now, "Yes." Whatever things you think I've done or will do, yes. It's all true. Especially the perverted ones. I hope your imaginations keep you warm tonight.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

A word to unevolved Australians:
Keep banging the rocks together, guys.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

An old memory surfaced while reading some of the accounts here.
We had a patient come in to our unit who had been treated for pancreatic cancer with a more or less ad hoc regimen two years before. He had become jaundiced and came right in. He was dead in two weeks. For a couple of days before he came in he had been competing in an amateur tennis tournament and came in essentially right off the court.
No, he wasn't cured. But he did get two very good years and to get them he didn't have to shoot coffee into his colon from the wrong way 'round.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Personally, if I had $11,000 and cancer, I'd take conventional medicine as far as it went, get a passport and go to Ecuador and Columbia. I'm not dying till I see a Tawny Ant Pitta and a black rail.
Like I said, the Gerson thing seems to actually decrease quality of life. I can think of a ton of things I'd rather be doing- and if you're dying anyway, why not eat, drink and be merry? I think that's the saddest part of this story- that she spent her last years chained to the clock and the blender, and that she's actively recruiting more victims even now.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Henry from Melbourne
"Go fuck yourself, the most rude , stingy asshole!"
Rude asshole? Absolutely when it comes to Alt-med idiots.
Stingy? Most definitely not. I'm actually quite generous.

"Why shall I spend long hours to answer your rude questions"
Because you came onto this blog and posted complete BS. Man up and admit you're a liar and that you're wrong. You obviously have nothing of substance to offer. Are you a supplement shill? Or are you that stupid that you belive the nonsense that you spew? So again, put up or shut up.

There's nothing wrong with complementary treatment provided it complements (enhances, reduce the side effect of) proven scientific treatment. We should avoid the idea of "alternative".

By dr André Kruger (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

I'd like to apologize to JP - I over-reacted to an age-related comment - now I see that we are on the same side.

By Jane Ostentatious (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Old Rockin' Dave, you're a hard man. I can't beat Ken Ham. Much as I'd like to. Repeatedly. With a cricket bat.

accidie, a baseball bat is much better. Cricket bats are flat, spread the impact out more. Besides, baseball bats are made out of American white ash or maple, none of that wussy willow.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

Wow, 854 comments and counting. Have I mentioned how glad I am to have found this blog? Keep up this hobby of yours Orac. It makes me want to trade in my soft & squishy liberal arts degree and go STEM for my second career. Seriously, I've been playing catch up with your blogs for the last month and truly appreciate the service you provide. There is so much woo crap out there that sounds "plausible" on the surface to a layman and it's nice to have a resource such as this to turn to. Don't let these negative comments discourage you.

By Lenala Azhketh (not verified) on 02 Mar 2015 #permalink

It's the genes- my great grandfather smoked, never took any medication, never was hospitalized for anything, no operations and lived to 88. My great great aunt lived to 102. Luck of the draw.

It’s almost time to go to Chicago!

Oh, right: that reminded me of something. I think I was concerned at the time that I was missing a euphemism or something.

^ Dammit, the cat did that submit. It's the wrong link. Hang on.

Chicago? This time of year? Oh, Hell, no.

Child, you has to come down to Dixie. Well, maybe next year, because this year hasn't been as warm as it should be. But most years, we can BBQ this month.

Many are dying every single day from chemotherapy & other cancer therapies....but if someone dies trying natural methods - it's world news and quackery.

@Penny #861
Chemotherapy patients don't advertise themselves, letting others believe that it is sufficient to listen to personal stories to judge a therapy's success. That's what clinical trials are here for ; and they have found that for Gerson, evidence of success is seriously lacking. That's why we call it quackery, not because one person just died following it.

On the other hand, if some people are only convinced by personal stories, then you have to publicize failures as much as success.

@Penny #861

Would you be kind enough to explain what's natural about a diet of liquidised fruit & veg interspersed with shoving coffee up your bum? You appear to have redefined "natural".

By DrBollocks (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

Who are the quacks that enable her & egged her on? This I'd love to know. Her followers certainly fawned & gushed all over her, I hope they feel responsible in some way.

RIP Jess Ainscough, I'm so very sorry you passed away. However I'm not sorry that your deadly message to reject science based medicine is being questioned. Hopefully vulnerable cancer patients will discover your story & see it as a cautionary one.

Penny #861, people dying from cancer happens: cancer is often fatal. It;s not news. A person who works up an impressive media profile as having cured her own cancer, then dies of cancer - that's news. And gloriously, someone surviving cancer using conventional medicine stopped being news ages ago.

Citing Kelly #220: @Janny, Got a site for all cancer patients dying in an average of 7 years when using actual medicial treatment?

15 years ago I had stage 3 colorectal cancer, underwent surgery, chemo, radiotherapy, and am still very much alive and kicking. At age 75, I swim daily and also ride my bike (got no car!) in decent weather. I was desolated to see my excellent surgeon, truly a benefactor of mankind, go into retirement last Christmas.

Citing novalox #221: @Janny, Care to retract your comments?

By Roman Korol (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

First of all, I just want to say how devastated that Jess is no longer with us. I have been following her for the last three years. Such a beautiful, young, gorgeous girl in heart and spirit. Cancer sucks, plain and simple. Treatments are not curatives for all. I don't think we will ever find the silver bullet, because each human being is quite unique in their make-up. I do believe in non-conventional treatments. Just last year I had the chance to meet Laura, a Brisbane based woman, who had run out of conventional options and was told to go home, make final preparations and enjoy the remainder of her life. After researching those crazy, scary "alternative" options, they began a natural based treatment (not Gerson) that also consisted in a change of diet. After six months, Laura's scans revealed she was tumour free. She continues to live today tumour free and that was over two years ago. Apparently when they visit the oncologist, this is the elephant in the room, never discussed. But I don't believe in miracles, and I'm sure as a scientific mind, you don't either. Yes, this is anecdotal, but it is not the only experience like it out there. How does the medical community explain this? Last year a local lady I know was re-diagnosed with cancer and sadly passed away by the end of the year. She underwent chemotherapy and conventional medicine both time. This story is not unique. Many of us know of women or men for that matter, living and dying with cancer. We deserve the right to choose what we believe. We can leave it all in the hands of our medical team, or go out there and research. After all, just like you, we are human beings with the ability to learn and acquire knowledge of our condition/s and how our body works. http://www.eatforacure.com/about-us/lauras-story/

Isobel these example are anecdotes, they rarely stand upto careful scrutiny. So the Laura you mention holds up her diet as saving her rather than all the previous medical treatment she'd already had? Sigh, thank goodness for Orac and this blog.

Coffee enemas! It finally dawned on me - that's why it's called hole-istic medicine.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

For that you're expecting maybe a rim-shot?

Inspired by some of the comments upstream, I took the opportunity to look into this so-called "Gerson Therapy."

It appears to have been introduced in the 1930's, when modern medicine was in its infancy, but that is not necessarily a drawback as hand washing and antibiotics fairly recent additions as well.

On a less savory note, it was introduced as a treatment for migraines before being touted as a cure for tuberculosis and cancer. Quack remedies often chase after the celebrity disease of the day, claiming miraculous cures for all sorts of disconnected ills - not unlike not unlike the fantastic claims being touted for medical marijuana.

More to the point, precisely zero legitimate studies have been published in reputable medical journals to document the effectiveness - if any - of this alleged treatment. If it were as effective as people insist that it is, after seventy five years the supporting evidence would be freely and widely available.

Thus one easily concludes that "Gerson Therapy" is just another crackpot remedy aimed at the fearful and the stupid.

By Robert L Bell (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Travis:

From now on, I take the train. Is is not much faster, but the wifi is far better, it is more comfortable, and it does not cost that much more.

Yeah, the schedule I wanted to take was sold out, though. You kind of have to take the train to Chicago from where I live early in the morning, or you will invariably take hours longer to get there than you were supposed to, since you have to keep stopping to let other trains go by. Plus the Greyhound tickets were actually about 1/3 the price of Amtrak. I do actually take the 'hound fairly often when I am in the PNW, since it drops you off in downtown Olympia and not at the train station which is a good 45 minutes outside of town.

@Jane Ostentatious:

Thanks for the apology. To be fair, I can be somewhat cryptic at times.

@Narad:

Yeah, I'm actually in Chicago, Andersonville to be specific. It's quite nice to be staying with some old friends, and I am also very happy to see that another old friend, Zoe the cat, who's seventeen years old now, is still kicking. He seems to remember me from all the catsitting I did for the newlyweds this past summer, and in fact opted to sleep with me on the foldout bed last night instead of with "mom and dad."

It is fun to think of things that "going to Chicago" could be a euphemism for, though.

@Johnny:

Chicago? This time of year? Oh, Hell, no.
Child, you has to come down to Dixie. Well, maybe next year, because this year hasn’t been as warm as it should be. But most years, we can BBQ this month.

Yeah, well, it ain't any colder than where I live, and it's nice to get out. I've never been any further south (at least in the eastern part of the country) than Kentucky, although I really enjoyed Louisville the couple of times I went there. I do have friends who live in Alabama - one half of the couple got an actual tenure track job (!) in the English department (!) at a University in Birmingham. I'd actually like to travel down south at some point.

A good article by an oncologist in The Guardian (not the same as posted earlier by narad) on topics very similar to those under discussion: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/03/what-do-doctors-sa…
I love these questions:
“Should I have my intravenous vitamins on the day of chemo or after it?”
"Can you move my chemo appointment to fit in a colon cleanse? They are really busy, you know. Booked out weeks in advance.”
“And my friend is having magnet therapy,” she continues. “She is nearly cured though the traditional doctors gave up on her.”
:-)

By Roman Korol (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

This is sad. There is most definitely a middle road where the best of both fields--western medicine and alternative practices and / or eastern medicine--can be utilized at the same time. And everyone is responsible for using their own discernment along with the best medical advice they can find, to make their very own decisions about these things.

Although I understand the controversy here, I don't believe that a woman who managed to survive as long as she did while doing healing protocols she felt were helping her do just that--should be ridiculed. And anyone who used her info from blog on their own health journey, did so as independent brokers who were out on the world wide web seeking their own inspiration during their darkest hours--free to make their own choices--and to run ALL INFO through their own filters.

There seems to be an imbalance here which is a cause for concern. However using this death as a sounding board to justify Western Medicine as the only healing option is ridiculous. The root to illness is always deeper than the acute symptom or disease being most visibly expressed. Western Medicine does absolutely nothing to address these Root Causes--and that is why the door remains open to Complimentary practices.

After 876+ comments, there's not much left to say but I thought there was one thing I could add to my praise for ORAC, and that was in regard to the failure rate of chemotherapy.

I expect that its absolutely true that there are a lot more people who have died of cancer despite taking chemotherapy/surgery/radiation etc. than have died after taking Gerson therapy. So yes a lot more people will have personal knowledge and anecdotes about people who died whilst having chemotherapy

This highlights a problem with argumentum ad anecdotum - just because there are more anecdotes it doesn't mean anything. You have to look at the denominator the number of people who have been treated - huge numbers more. It seems none of the woo supporters realise that at all.

And I agree with Roman that Guardian article is a good one!

JP, "It is fun to think of things that “going to Chicago” could be a euphemism for, though."
This is from "Fantastic Fables" by Ambrose Bierce;
The Foolish Woman
A Married Woman, whose lover was about to reform by running away, procured a pistol and shot him dead. "Why did you do that, Madam?" inquired a Policeman, sauntering by. "Because," replied the Married Woman, "he was a wicked man, and had purchased a ticket to Chicago." "My sister," said an adjacent Man of God, solemnly, "you cannot stop the wicked from going to Chicago by killing them."

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

@Leigh

As Orac and others have said, as is often the case with vulnerable cancer patients, they can become both the victim and the perpetrator.

That Jess chose to do Gersons is not anyone's concern. The fact that she marketed it through her Wellness Warrior business, is the problem. In doing so, she gave the impression that she had healed herself of cancer, was thriving and cancer free. Many people who trusted/believed/looked up to her would have been introduced to the Gersons protocol and encouraged to do it, by hearing and following Jess' story which was omitting the truth of her situation- that she wasn't cancer free or thriving.

People with cancer or other serious conditions, likely decided to follow in Jess footsteps and reject the "alternative" of conventional medicine purely because Jess was so convincing and well marketed. It's not that they were stupid or couldn't think for themselves. As a follower myself, I know how easy it was to trust her smile and happy demeanour, it almost didn't matter what she said because she was so awesome as a person. Even though I don't have cancer, I can say that for a while there, if I did, I sure as hell would have tried Gersons and the only way to do Gersons is strictly rejecting conventional medicine. Jess did it and she looked and sounded amazing. What she allowed the public to see and hear of her anyway.

I would imagine that having cancer would be devastating and if it were me, I would cling to stories of hope like Jess's, trying my hardest to "thrive" and love my life. From that point it would be a slippery slope into trying a little coconut oil, then meditating, then juices, then drinking clay, then enemas, then vegan diet, then... The founding basis of Jess story: Gersons. Not all those things are "bad" and one could probably do well to include it in their daily routine. But cancer can be life or death, it's extreme and for people desperate to live, personally I'd do almost anything. Especially if I came across a story like Jess who had "healed herself".

Jess was put on a pedestal as a beacon of truth and hope for many, many people. She was very convincing and influential. We now know she wasn't being completely open and honest. People made life altering decisions both good and bad, based on the Wellness Warrior. Jess could have helped them make only good choices if she had told the FULL truth. To me, that's equivalent to having all the information available to make an informed decision.

That's kind of a big deal.

When i said include it in their daily routine- I meant some elements like consuming more fruit and veg, meditating etc not Gersons which is extreme.

@Loolie The cancer had returned for a second time and they could do no more for her. By that stage chemotherapy wasn't even an option. In that case, I don't believe you can attribute the chemotherapy she didn't have, to curing her, do you? As for anecdotal, yes, I acknowledged that. I know you've attempted to answer why this might be, and I do wonder what her medical team thinks also? If the science they know cannot answer it…….?

@Lynn An anecdote sitting in an Oncologist's room. As a medical mind, wouldn't you want to get to the bottom of that? Why doesn't this lady fit into the "scientific" norm? What did she do differently, could that information help others? How many other patients are out there, with similar experiences? By the sounds of this blog, this never happens? But I beg to differ.

@Patsy B Many medicines have their origins found in anecdotal experiences. I don't think we should just brush these claims aside.

@Lynn #830: When I worked in a jail, I was addressed as "Nurse Panacea," the only time I've used my title (it's actually accurate but most nurses don't bother in this day and age). I hold the academic title Associate Professor but I never go by "Professor Panacea."

OTOH, I used to know a dentist who had desperately wanted to go to medical school. He insisted on being addressed formally as Doctor by everyone, including his wife, and always signed paperwork Dr. Dentist rather than, ADentist DDS.

People who make a big deal about titles commit the appeal to authority fallacy.

@Penny 861: It's not news because she died of a quack cure. It's news because she spent her last days trying to convince other people to use her quack cure . . . and earning 6 figures while doing it.

@Isobel #869: Cancers do go into spontaneous remission. There is no evidence that the "alternate" therapy did a thing. Correlation is not causation.

But if you really think it worked, why don't you get her doctor to write a case study for the medical journals?

Isobel,

Many medicines have their origins found in anecdotal experiences. I don’t think we should just brush these claims aside.

Many things claimed to be 'medicine' that turned out to be entirely ineffective also had their origins found in anecdotal experiences.

What system do you propose we use to find the truly effective treatments among all the anecdotal claims?

"Lynn An anecdote sitting in an Oncologist’s room. As a medical mind, wouldn’t you want to get to the bottom of that? Why doesn’t this lady fit into the “scientific” norm? What did she do differently, could that information help others? How many other patients are out there, with similar experiences? By the sounds of this blog, this never happens? But I beg to differ."

I certainly would like to get to the bottom of it. Perhaps she could post the relevant information -- diagnosis, supporting data, treatment protocol, current medical condition, etc.

She does fit into the norm -- some cancers remit. Of course, I have not seen proof that she actually had cancer or that she is now cancer-free.

As for what she did helping others ... again, if she were to provide all the relevant information and we were to to do a study, then perhaps her experience would be helpful.

Your assertions are like my claiming that smoking contributes to longevity because my mother smoked for 60 years and lived to be 96. Let's study that!!

"I expect that its absolutely true that there are a lot more people who have died of cancer despite taking chemotherapy/surgery/radiation etc. than have died after taking Gerson therapy."

Just to clarify -- let's say that 1000 people get cancer and are treated with conventional medicine. 500 die within 10 years, assuming a 50% mortality rate within that time frame based on the average figures for the 5 most common cancers.

Suppose 100 get cancer and choose to go Gerson. 80 die, making a wild and probably high guess abut how many survive.

So, there are 80 people who did not survive Gerson, but 500 who did not survive conventional treatment -- EVEN THOUGH THE SUCCESS RATE FOR CONVENTIONAL TREATMENT IS HIGHER.

Who are you more likely to hear about?

@IsobelM. No one is denying anecdote as a starting point. The problem is when anecdote is touted as proof. As Lynn's calcuation shows many, many more people will know someone who has died whilst taking chemotherapy than anyone who has know someone who has died during Gerson therapy.
Anecdote says: Chemotherapy kills more people because I know someone has died taking chemotherapy
Anecdote says: I know someone who survived cancer taking an alternative remedy it must work.
Science says: PROPORTION of people who survive cancer is greater when they get conventional therapy rather than Gerson therapy.
That's the difference. Anecdote doesn't have a denominator (or if it does it's a study of n = 1).

Cases studies are easy to do, and cheap. If you're treating people just record your results and outcomes properly (without bias) and you'll have good data on whether your treatment programme in your hands matches the results of other programmes

Isobel #869

"Such a beautiful, young, gorgeous girl in heart and spirit."

Stop - just stop. It is not relevant that she was "beautiful," "young," or "gorgeous. It is offensive because it implies that it is not as sad when people who are older or not beautiful die of cancer. The comments about Jess are full of how beautiful she was and it's really gotten ridiculous.

firstly, you are a real piece of work with what you wrote. You should be disgusted in yourself. More importantly, you neglected key points in the story in your misery mongering filth.
Jess had tried chemo and the regular pathway early in her treatment and it STOPPED WORKING! Facing amputation and a 70+% recurrance rate she went on her own journey. Clearly the sadness from her mother's passing re-ignited her condition. but finally, this from a sarcoma support site 'Chemotherapy (doxorubicin) has been used for multifocal, large (>5cm), or metastatic disease. It has not been shown to improve survivorship, but there are not large published trials.

Radiation therapy is used in some institutions for primary and recurrent cases for limb salvage, with favorable results compared to amputation, but it has not shown to improve overall survivorship. The late effects (scarring, stiffness, and neuropathy) can be particularly debilitating in the hand.
She made a quality of life decision that given the data was always going to have the same ending.
So get your facts in line you pig before you spout off !

“My sister,” said an adjacent Man of God, solemnly, “you cannot stop the wicked from going to Chicago by killing them.”

As regards euphemisms involving travel, there is also this bit from Crime and Punishment, I suppose:

“What do you want here?” he said, without moving or changing his position.
“Nothing, brother, good morning,” answered Svidrigaïlov.
“This isn’t the place.”
“I am going to foreign parts, brother.”
“To foreign parts?”
“To America.”
“America?”
Svidrigaïlov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his eyebrows.
“I say, this is not the place for such jokes!”
“Why shouldn’t it be the place?”
“Because it isn’t.”
“Well, brother, I don’t mind that. It’s a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.”
He put the revolver to his right temple.
“You can’t do it here, it’s not the place,” cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.
Svidrigaïlov pulled the trigger.

But I am, in fact, in Chicago, and all is reasonably well.

Thank you, DW ... I was getting tired of the young, beautiful thing.

AS an aside...

It's possible that they're harping upon her beauty and sunny disposition because they want to erase the images forming in their minds of her suffering, emaciated, bleeding and in pain while dying in a terrible physical condition

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

"The gerson “therapy” is pure unadulterated bovine excrement which has never been effective at anything other than separating fools from their money."

Please, I think it is insensitive to label the desperate and dying as "fools." In a crisis situation, many people make poor/wrong decisions but that does not make them fools.

It's the Gerson Therapy people who should rot. Horrible. Horrible. How do they live with themselves. Sick.

Thank you Gb #891 - you've given me the best laugh I've had all day. Unfortunately, it was at your expense.
I doubt the 'misery-mongering' 'pig', being a fairly eminent cancer surgeon, needs you to supply him with links explaining the treatment of the disease.
Equal parts of isopropryl alcohol and distilled water make an excellent spray for getting those spittle stains off your screen.

@894
Yes I'm wary of the too young and beautiful to die thing. What about all the cancer sufferers who were religiously following the fraudulent Gerson protocol and seeking support from Jess Ainscough's blog? There were more than just a few of them from what I read (to my horror), all eagerly swallowing JA's maxim that their debilitating symptoms of advancing cancer were nothing more than just 'flare-ups'.

Very likely, what happened to these grey, shapeless, anonymous people was that they quietly died of cancer. As Orac says: there is medicine that works and medicine that does not. Gerson is an exact example of medicine that manifestly does not work and it's a pity bloggers like Orac and Rosalie Hillman are the only people in the line of trying to make quack therapy like Gerson accountable. Someone has to stand up for the unspoken.

@Panacea "Correlation is not causation." but it's not to say it isn't either. The fact that a period of approximately six months between terminal illness diagnosis and given the all clear, she dramatically changed her diet and undertook specific non-conventional treatment. We just sweep that potentially vital information under the carpet instead of looking at it seriously. If that is the general attitude of our scientific community, then it appears it most certainly has a bias.

@AdamG I am simply commenting on my own learnings. I like to look at both sides and educate myself. I don't deny that conventional treatments can work. But I don't believe from my gained knowledge, that all conventional medicine is a good idea. I believe the same for alternative therapies.

@Lynn I am sure you're very welcome to be in touch with Laura to ascertain all the information you require. She is very much out there sharing her experience.

@Patsy B Unfortunately I'm assuming the doctor is not interested hence the comment, "it's like an elephant in the room" when she visits the oncologist. Yes, I would think this makes an important case study because of her major dietary change and alternative treatments prior to this "spontaneous remission".

I don't deny that conventional treatment has helped a number of cancer patients, live past 10 years, but science seems to be closed to looking outside the conventional. And to me that is bad science. Further independent, transparent research is required and at the same time, both the alternative and conventional practitioner need to speak to each other for the sake of the patient.

This forum will not bring any resolution or peace. Naturally you're welcome to respond to any of my comments, but I won't continue on this particular post.

"@Lynn I am sure you’re very welcome to be in touch with Laura to ascertain all the information you require. She is very much out there sharing her experience."

You make the claim, you provide the data.

"Naturally you’re welcome to respond to any of my comments, but I won’t continue on this particular post."

Typical, though you did stay around a bit longer than the usual hit-and-run specialist.

Isobel, I would bet you anything that "Laura" still has cancer, but continues to try to fool herself the way that Jess did. A lot of other "cure-cancer-with-smoothies" bloggers out there end up dying.

Some years ago I was hectored over the telephone, to my bemusement and sorrow, by a former co-worker who lectured me that there was no such thing as cancer only "toxins" that could be removed. She died a couple of weeks later. So that went well.

Nowadays she would probably blog.

By Jane Ostentatious (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

@IsobelM "Correlation is not causation.” but it’s not to say it isn’t either.

Oh kay. ? Is that like how increased ice cream sales in the summer are a causation of higher incidence of drowning deaths in the summer? The link is so strong it must be so, somehow, in one way or another.

Now, if only people would stop eating ice cream and swimming but replace those behaviours with a strict vegan diet, mainly juices and coffee enemas, there would be no drowning deaths! Jes knew the rules, she didn't go swimming and she definitely didn't eat ice creams. Problem solved. Thanks Gersons for saving her from drowning. And providing us all with a guide to a thriving lifestyle, especially if you have cancer, it's really healing.

Gb: "the sadness from her mother’s passing re-ignited her condition."
Transl.: Sadness causes cancer.

"Jess had tried chemo and the regular pathway early in her treatment and it STOPPED WORKING!"

The Gb has no idea what it's on about. The Dunning-Kruger is strong in this one.

By Craig Thomas (not verified) on 03 Mar 2015 #permalink

Transl.: Sadness causes cancer.

Only now do I appreciate "if I don't look good, I don't feel good" as an implicitly dire health warning.

What a truly vile unfeeling person this Orac is. To post all this about a young woman who has just died and by their own admission they know absolutely nothing about. She lived a healthy life for many years with the cancer. You have absolutely no idea what was her prognosis without the path she followed yet with small minded fearful bigoted approach you proper to know. This person is an example of everything wrong with modern western medicine and certainty puts me off visiting someone like them. Every doctor knows the most dangerous place on earth is an acute care hospital from doctors mistakes, the 'cure' and infection. Just look at the hidden statistics of any major hospital.

Isobel M,

The fact that a period of approximately six months between terminal illness diagnosis and given the all clear, she dramatically changed her diet and undertook specific non-conventional treatment. We just sweep that potentially vital information under the carpet instead of looking at it seriously.

I took a look at Laura's story on the website you linked to. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, had surgery to remove the tumor followed by adjuvant chemotherapy and radiation. In either 2009 or 2010 bone metastases were detected and she was told she had either 18 months or two years to live - the web page contradicts itself on this. It doesn't say if the bone metastases were confirmed by biopsy, so we can't be sure that this is what they were. False positive diagnosis of bone metastases by imaging alone does sometimes happen.

Also, this article about Laura written in 2013 states that Laura, "continues to undergo conventional treatment". Isn't it more likely that this conventional treatment, which is designed to treat cancer, has succeeded, rather than a change in diet, when there is little to no evidence to suggest this can successfully treat cancer? Hoxsey therapy, which she underwent, has been tested and doesn't work. If she was cured of cancer in 2010, why was she still being treated for it in 2013?

I also note that Laura's sister is using this case to promote her anti-cancer cookbook. That's a powerful motive to frame this case as a miraculous altmed cure rather than a success story of conventional medicine, which seems much more likely.

By Krebiozen (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

Krebiozen, I am shocked, simply shocked to learn that there is more to that story than was originally stated. No one could have guessed that was the case, could they? I would have thought people might lead with their most amazing anecdotes, but it almost seems like they do not know the details themselves, obvious problems and contradictions, and a general lack of information prevail in almost every anecdote I run into.

"but science seems to be closed to looking outside the conventional. And to me that is bad science. Further independent, transparent research is required"

Isobel, in typical alt-med quack fashion you like to pretend that alternative medicine has not been studied. But as has been pointed out over and over, which you conveniently ignore, is that NCCAM has spent 20 years and 3 billion dollars studying this crap with nothing to show for it. It's all useless. Just do a a quick search on pubmed, it turns up thousands of studies on all the useless crap you peddle.

"both the alternative and conventional practitioner need to speak to each other for the sake of the patient."

Why the hell would a Medical doctor ever talk to a pseudoscientific snake oil salesman? So they can discuss how pink unicorn farts cure the patients "adrenal fatigue"?

"This forum will not bring any resolution or peace."

This forum is not here to bring on world peace and there is nothing to resolve. It has been resolved, CAM is useless.

Isobel you're a useless quack, I saw your website. Its a big pile of dog shit. I'm sure you're aware of that. But you don't care as long as you get your money from desperate people you rip off on a routine basis. Go dig a hole and bury yourself in it, the world will be a better place.

@Rod #905
Hidden statistics? Really, that is what you are going with?

What exactly is vile about Orac's description of a woman that chose the wrong path, eventually knew she had chosen unwisely, and continued to lie about the therapy she had chosen to no good effect. xcept money.

She lived a healthy life for many years with the cancer.

I'm trying to understand the concept of living a healthy life with cancer. Is it like blue and not blue at the same time?

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

@ Mephistopheles O'Brien:

Right, It's so blue it's gold and white.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

There is most definitely a middle road where the best of both fields–western medicine and alternative practices and / or eastern medicine–can be utilized at the same time.

leigh, how does one reliably idnetify waht treatments represent the best of alternative practices? In science based medicine it's done by means of appropriately designed and controlled pre-clinical and clinical trials assessing safety and demonstrating efficacy for defined indications, but as far as I'm aware alternative mediicine has absolutely no equivalent system in place to do so and instead relies on collections of anecdotes, personal testimonials, etc.

"Every doctor knows the most dangerous place on earth is an acute care hospital from doctors mistakes, the ‘cure’ and infection."

Sure Rod, so what do you propose we do when a patient is in CHF or has a stroke, or when a baby stops breathing? Where should they go genius? To their local accupuncturist? Or Reiki practioner? Idiot.

"Just look at the hidden statistics of any major hospital."
Nice try nitwit. I just did a search on pubmed. Thousands of hits on adverse drug reactions and hospital acquired infections. Very hidden. Take a guess who reports that information? That's right dope, doctors and hospitals. Guess where you can find this hidden information? That's right, major medical journals.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily the the stupid flows in those who support alt-med.

To post all this about a young woman who has just died and by their own admission they know absolutely nothing about.

He knew what killed her, and why.

While this is a terrible and tragic story, I believe that her disease would have ended her life with traditional chemo/surgery. As a longtime professional in the cancer care field, I know that chemo/surgery/radiation do not cure many cancers. May this lovely young woman rest in peace.

As a longtime professional in the cancer care field, I know that chemo/surgery/radiation do not cure many cancers.

There are 2.8 million breast cancer survivors in the United States who probably disagree with you about that. But what do they know?

ORAC Says: ". She was unfortunate enough to develop a cancer that was, paradoxically, both very nasty and very indolent. (After all, she survived seven years with it.) Moreover, because her tumor involved her shoulder, the first line treatment recommended consisted of a very disfiguring amputation that sounded like a forequarter amputation. It’s an amputation that involves removing not just the arm, but removing the entire shoulder joint and the shoulder blade. It would have left her not just without an arm, but without a shoulder as well. It’s a seldom-performed operation these days (indeed, I’ve never done one or even seen one performed in my entire career stretching back to my residency beginning in the late 1980s), and with good reason. Still, sometimes it is necessary. It’s hard not to feel for Ainscough, who, at age 22 was facing such an awful choice."

What choice would you have made, David? Either at your age or at hers?

Not Gerson. Me, neither. But I think I would have looked hard for any other answer and perhaps even accepted unproven alternatives and the likelihood of a very early death rather than go through what you described above.

How in the hell can all this judgement be raining down on her?

By Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

How in the hell can all this judgement be raining down on her?

I see your reading comprehension is right up there with with Ms. Ainscough's troll army. Hint Dr. Jay, no one has cast judgement on her for eschewing amputation, particularly Orac.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

Jess started with conventional treatment, then went to Gerson and then went back to conventional which lead to complications.

Oh do you mean that she sought out actual medical doctors when it was too late to do anything?

Perhaps you should check your facts, and have a little respect for this beautiful woman.

Why should she curry favour because she was beautiful? And facts are clearly not your strong suit.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

I see Dr. Jay, like so many others, fails to realize that, as Orac has mentioned multiple times, his reaction would have been different if she had not been promoting it to others, encouraging them to use a treatment that was unproven, and continuing to promote it even after she apparently knew she was not recovering.

This obsession with saying "It's her personal choice" when the issue that has been raised is actually about her very public actions, is strange.

What choice would you have made, David? Either at your age or at hers?

Not Gerson. Me, neither. But I think I would have looked hard for any other answer and perhaps even accepted unproven alternatives and the likelihood of a very early death rather than go through what you described above.

How in the hell can all this judgement be raining down on her?

Seriously, Dr. Jay? Did you even actually read what I wrote? It sure doesn't sound like it. Try again and show me that you actually read for comprehension.

Reading a lot of these comments yesterday and today, I've formed a hypothesis: The trolls didn't read what Orac or any skeptics said; they just presume that we fling exactly the same venom they do. They lack empathy and sympathy for the out-group, so they can't even consider the possibility that we would feel sorrow that outweighs any schadenfreude.

---

As for "too soon," it sounds to me like they want to quietly flush Jess down a memory hole, and we're interfering with their efforts by keeping her tragic story in the spotlight.

By Bronze Dog (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

Oh, and I thought I'd mention: I'll join others in being disturbed that people mention her beauty, as if that's the only other thing that defined Jess as a woman. Very sexist, in my book. This isn't about a beauty pageant, it's about a tragic death and what we should learn from it.

By Bronze Dog (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

As a longtime professional in the cancer care field, I know that chemo/surgery/radiation do not cure many cancers.
There are 2.8 million breast cancer survivors in the United States who probably disagree with you about that. But what do they know?

...Not to mention about 3 million prostate-cancer survivors. Out of 14.5 million US cancer survivors in total. But who am I to argue with Cathy's professional experience that those 14.5 million people only think they're alive?

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

I also want to weigh in on the "tragically dying young and beautiful" meme going on here.
At the age of 55 and again at the age of 56 I faced potentially fatal medical situations. Luck, the skill of the people treating me, and an iron(ic) constitution saved me.
In either case, my death would certainly have come too young. And while I may or may not have a beautiful mind, I am not much of a head-turner. Nonetheless, there are people who would certainly have been sorrowed by my loss*, making my death in either case just as tragic as any other. It certainly would have been tragic to me!

*Some days I think that my kids wouldn't notice I was dead unless my body was blocking the refrigerator. I suspect I'm not alone in that.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

It's actually worth reading the "tribute" in the Australian newspaper that Nik Heart linked to above. It's from the family and contains a response to what they see as attacks on Ainscough.

It seems the "official" story from the family, as parroted by several commenters here from WW supporters. is that the cancer came back as a result of the grief due to her mother's death. It's implied that Gerson was working up to that point.

Some of the comments on RI even went so far as to claim that grief "turns the body acidic" and, of course, we all know the alt mantra: acid-bad-cancer derp derp.

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

Her book was published by bloody Hay House? HAY HOUSE?!! Oooh, that explains a lot...

By Woo Fighter (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

"I don’t deny that conventional treatment has helped a number of cancer patients, live past 10 years, but science seems to be closed to looking outside the conventional."

The word "conventional" does not apply to evidence-based medicine, which is continually advancing cancer treatment to include new and exciting modalities such as targeted therapies and immunotherapy. Meantime, it's alt med that sticks with conventional nonsense about "toxins" and "cleansing" and keeps repeating 1940s (and even more ancient) mistakes over and over again.

By Dangerous Bacon (not verified) on 04 Mar 2015 #permalink

"How in the hell can all this judgement be raining down on her?"

Jess was free to choose whatever therapy she wanted.

The problem is she led others down the same path, encouraging them and saying she was cured on a number of occasions, all the while, in her own words, earning " 6 figure" (yearly) which was "doubling every year"

Her team only 2 days before her death were saying she was doing well and couldn't wait to be back blogging with wonderful new ideas.

Of course they erased as much evidence as they could when she died, just as she erased her "Mum Reports" and videos of interviews with her, when her Mum died.

The deception ran deep.

#910 JohnAdam

John. I am as outraged as anyone else about the Jess Ainscough story, but an essential part of civilised science is being able to debate the issues with some dignity and respect. I don't think we should forget the good side of our humanity in the process. I think the fact that you tell someone you disagree with to 'go bury themselves under a rock' as unreasonable and insensitive. What is more important here - to make this a personal attack, or get your point across to communicate the merits of the scientific scientific approach, which I support btw. I am saying that it would be better if you didn't act like such a dick.

#922 Science Mom

Actually, I think that the doctors fucked up in the first place. They were all set to cut her arm off before they came up with tue bright idea of trying the isolated chemo on her arm. According to Jess, in the 18 months that it took to realize that it had failed, it was too late just to amputate the arm and the forequarter was needed without a particularly good prognosis.

Maybe the drs were influenced by her story - 'too young to die akd lose an arm?'. If they had have kept to the path that they knew to be best practice without trying more risky strategies, she would have had the arm off and been here today. Is this an argument for not being swayed by alternate or more risky strategies? Perhaps Orac could shed light on why her drs would not have just amputated the arm below the shoulder when they had the chance to, rather than put their money on this riskier strategy? ....especially given that this cancer is supposed to be difficult to treat.

Chris @ #934

We only have Jess' version of what happened. What's to say they didn't want to amputate in the first place and she refused, so they went with the chemo option?

* did* want to amputate in the first place and she refused, so they went with the chemo option?

@Melees - it appears that Jess was initial leaning towards the amputation option, but when she started backing away from it, her doctors proposed the chemo option in an attempt to save her life without her walking away completely.

It may have been the only compromise she would have accepted & the doctors couldn't force her either way.

An observation- this blog was coming up at the top of google search results but is now "nowhere" to be found (I clicked through to page 6 of google results). It would appear to have been buried and so the clean up which began with removing her blog, facebook, instagram, Gerson profile, etc continues. I only managed to return here via my browser history. Unless there is something going on with my personal computer/internet settings, the change seems odd to me.

A new article about Jess today: http://m.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/family-pays-tribute-to-jessica/…

I really wish they wouldn't whitewash everything now there is a chance to set the record straight. I notice there wasn't any cancer treatment disclaimer about Gersons like they have been putting at the end of previous articles.

Actually, I think that the doctors fucked up in the first place. They were all set to cut her arm off before they came up with tue bright idea of trying the isolated chemo on her arm. According to Jess, in the 18 months that it took to realize that it had failed, it was too late just to amputate the arm and the forequarter was needed without a particularly good prognosis.

You will want to click through the hyperlinks in Orac's post to get the back story on Ms. Ainscough. What you describe is not accurate. This is a rare cancer with no good options for survival. She chose an option that was highly experimental but left her arm. The tumours came back in a year but she still had the option to amputate. She refused. You can't blame her physicians. And "according to Jess" is a huge problem right there.

By Science Mom (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

They were all set to cut her arm off before they came up with tue bright idea of trying the isolated chemo on her arm. According to Jess, in the 18 months that it took to realize that it had failed, it was too late just to amputate the arm and the forequarter was needed without a particularly good prognosis.

Apparently your reading of "according to Jess" seems to be different than my definition of "according to Jess." From what I could glean, the surgeons almost certainly recommended a forequarter amputation first, as that's how radical a resection is required for a tumor like hers to minimize its chance of local recurrence. Then, two days before she was going to have the operation, a doctor proposed isolated limb perfusion, which she underwent. Then her tumors recurred, and it sounds as though the surgeons fell back on the forequarter amputation as the only chance to salvage her life.

t seems the “official” story from the family, as parroted by several commenters here from WW supporters. is that the cancer came back as a result of the grief due to her mother’s death. It’s implied that Gerson was working up to that point.

May I just point out once again that the problem with that line of reasoning is that her mother died because Gerson didn't work for her either?

I mean, when a therapy isn't effective for patients who are grieving the deaths of other patients for whom it wasn't effective, that's kind of a fatal flaw.

The first article doesn't even mention cancer. Interesting choice of words... Bear in mind this person was in business/involved with Jess work as the Wellness Warrior. I would hazard a guess that this was "approved" by the PR media dept. Also found lots of links where her book is still available to purchase. Lots of emptiness where there is opportunity for someone in Jess camp to set the record straight instead of perpetuating misinformation and dangerous "health" practices. But of course if all the evidence is scrubbed away, nobody can pin anything. There is zero accountability for the impact the Wellness Warrior had/continues to have.

http://www.natkringoudis.com.au/jess-ainscough-true-wellness-warrior/#m…

http://m.smh.com.au/national/health/cancer-death-of-wellness-warrior-je…

http://www.theglow.com.au/health/gerson-therapy/

http://www.ancestralizeme.com/what-the-alternative-health-community-mus…

http://www.maketheworldmove.com/stop-wishing-for-things-to-be-different…

http://nourishingourradiance.com/2012/03/luminary-profile-jessica-ainsc…

http://sciblogs.co.nz/molecular-matters/2012/02/16/the-temptation-of-al…

http://nadinelee.com.au/305/qa-jess-ainscough-aka-the-wellness-warrior/

http://gregschreeuwer.com/jess-ainscough-my-insights-and-my-response/

http://sarabray.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/importance-of-detoxing-by-jessi…

Seriously.

The short version of that argument is:

Gerson works until people die of the disease being treated while using it.

It's also worth pointing out that neither Jess Ainscough nor her mother lived longer than it generally takes for people to die of the respective form of cancer that each had.

^^When they do die, I mean.

When conventional treatment succeeds, they live much longer.

Item 938 above links to an article that quotes an excerpt from Orac's post. It points to the Cancer Council of Australia (http://www.cancer.org.au/about-cancer/treatment/complementary-therapies…), which says in part:

Considering a complementary therapy?
Find out as much information as you can about the therapy by asking questions such as:

Is this therapy specifically used for cancer patients or for people with other diseases?
Are there any side-effects?
Who will be involved in delivering the therapy?
What are their qualifications and are they registered with a professional organisation?
What are the costs of the therapy and are they covered by my health insurance provider?
What does the therapy aim to achieve?
Will this therapy affect my conventional medical treatment?

I note that it doesn't ask "what evidence is there that the therapy can achieve its aims".

By Mephistopheles… (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

I find the article to be objective and informative. The author should be commended for restraining themselves from any "she-had-it-coming" comments. Orac showed his humanity by being sympathetic to a tragic death. Orac also showed his intelligence by noting the lack of evidence from quack science like the Gerson protocol. More power to you, Orac.

chris,
Did you see Isobel's website?
http://www.eatforacure.com/about-us/about-the-clinic/

Did you catch this nugget if dog turd?
"What is the treatment?

The treatment is relatively inexpensive as compared to other overseas therapies and clinics. It costs approx. $1000 for the tonic plus extras of up to $2000 depending on the diagnosis. In addition to the Hoxsey treatment, which is comprised of a liquid elixir containing a mixture of herbs and several topical salves, the clinic may also use other supplements like: diet, nutrition, infusions and chelation therapy. The clinic treats most types of malignancies, but it is said to be especially effective with skin cancer (including melanoma), breast cancer, and has been successful with some recurrent cancers and even with patients who’ve had radiation and/or chemotherapy."

But I guess it's ok that these criminals rip people off to the tune $2000 as long as they are civil in their description? Where's your disdain for her? You say you're all about scientific approach but based on your post me thinks you probably dabble in the alt-med nonsense

You mention "debate", what debate is that? Science based medicine vs fairy dust? What would you like to debate?

You want civility...
"debate the issues with some dignity and respect. I don’t think we should forget the good side of our humanity in the process."

But then say this...
"I am saying that it would be better if you didn’t act like such a dick."
You don't even want to follow your own rules.

Would it be OK with you if I took $2000 from cancer patients as long as my false promises were laced with humilty?

Go tone-troll elsewhere.

Dr. Gordon,

Don't you have other things to do than tone troll this comment thread? You know, like suggesting that it's ok for parents not to vaccinate their kids for no good reason and perpetuate measles outbreaks in the process? "Raining" disease on society seems like it would be a full-time job.

shay, #872:
"For that you’re expecting maybe a rim-shot?"
Yes, if it's a double-espresso shot.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

@ Old Rockin' Dave:

You just pull these stuff out of your...
Ooops!

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

Pardonnez ma botch

You just pull this stuff out etc.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

Thank you all for elaborating.

By Jay Gordon (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

Jay Gordon, why did we need to "elaborate" for you?

If you had actually read Orac's post and the links in his post and skimmed the comments, you would have no need for "elaborations".

Perhaps it's time for you to apologize to Orac for your ignorant comment.

Actually, this fits well into Dr. Jay's scream of "FREEDOM!!!"

He wants to be consistent - if he believes that parents should have the right not to vaccinate their kids & disease outbreaks be damned, then he has to support Jess' activities to promote woo-choices as well, regardless of the outcomes.

You're spot on, Lawrence.

"What choice would you have made, David? Either at your age or at hers?

Not Gerson. Me, neither. But I think I would have looked hard for any other answer and perhaps even accepted unproven alternatives and the likelihood of a very early death rather than go through what you described above."

He already suggests "unproven alternatives" to the CDC/AAP Recommended Childhood Vaccine Schedule and readily admits those "unproven alternatives" are not evidence-based.

#949 JohnAdam

Could I recommend a therapist to help you with your anger problem?

#949 Orac.

#935, 937, 939

Thanks Orac and everyone for your comments.

I based my perception based on one of the videos I watched on Youtube (one of three) which I think was linked to another post you made a couple of days ago about Jess in another forum. She was being interviewed by someone called the 'poo fairy'....mmmm yummy.

Jess implied that an earlier option was a more conventional amputation in the first instance. But, I admit that she was unclear and I think the consensus here is right, which is that Jess was liberal with the truth, so we will never know.

I find the distortion of truth in this whole affair quite disturbing. There is nothing like a good half-truth to support a cause! In the end, it seems like the truth doesn't matter to some people, because what seems to be more efficacious in propaganda is what people perceive as true and want to believe.

For Jess' family I would suggest that the mopping up operation is more about protecting her reputation and memory. But for the Gersons and other ideologs, it is about protecting their business interests and the 'cause'. The family's actions I can sort of understand, but as for the ideologs, it is nothing but a duck and cover tactic to reduce our ammunition.

Ironically, I think that Jess inadvertently did the truth a favour, cause when the poster girl dies, it shines a big light on the truth and changes some people's minds about what has been said. I think that this is why it is important for discussions on this blog to remain civil and not polluted by extreme thinking/ideology, so that the believers have nothing to fire back at us.

I am glad Orac made this post, as he is in a good position to write it given his background and civility. I have a suggestion to counter the mop up operation for someone who is more technically minded than I. Is there anyway we can publish as much stuff (her history, videos and interviews) in one website about Jess website to keep the story 'alive' and prevent the propaganda machine from distorting the factual truth? At least that way, people with half a brain who are sick and looking for treatment can be forewarned and make a more informed choice if they are considering alternative treatments. The website could be an excellent resource for oncologists to educate their patients.

I am saying this because many of us no doubt have downloaded some of her material.

Chris,
Based on your post to Orac I think I probably misinterpreted your post to me just a wee bit. For that i'm sorry. I still stand by what I said to Isobel as I have zero tolerance for alt-med types, especially those that knowingly sell false hope for large sums of money. I hope you can understand that. I have also been posting on another website about vaccines and I think I was pretty riled up from that. My wife has told me repeatedly to tone down my posts as I tend to get very irate when it comes to these 2 topics.

I have a question - What are some of your thoughts on why people are "curing" some illnesses with diet.. such as the guy who made "fat, sick and nearly dead" ?
Is it simply that they are cutting out foods they may be intolerant too?
I'm not in any way a fan of Gerson Therapy or any of that nonsense, I just wondered what peoples thoughts are in relation to these sorts of stories.. they can't ALL be nonsense

#962. JohnAdam

Mate. It's already forgotten. That was big of you to acknowledge and apologise. I am sorry for calling you a dick. I can see your frustration is an indication that you care about people not being mislead and that is not something that you need to apologise for.

#963

It is about the promise - feeling of empowerment. For most if not all, it is about hope and coping in the end. For others, even the quacks (at least the well meaning ones), they probably have some personal experience with illness and they feel good about trying to empower others. For the unscrupulous quacks, there are perhaps more sinister motives like making a quick buck.

Some people just like to be part of a movement that is against the establishment - tied up in conspiracy theories. Gives a sense of purpose.

These are all powerful motives, mediated by the 'need to believe'

Love all the pseudo outrage by people who didn't know her, poor little warrior indeed, its a shame we will never know how many other people she sentenced to an early grave. Irresponsibility and stupidity in the same package, I wouldn't mind if she just killed herself, I wouldn't care, but I wouldn't mind but she encourages others down the same path. Shes probably killed more than any psychopath in prison.

Ignorant Jerk posts: "Thank you all for elaborating."

Lilady follows with clarifications. Thank you for that, too.

By Jay Gordon, MD, FAAP (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

Alice,

My thoughts include that you're asking a very vague question, and that there's no evidence that the change in diet is connected to the cure. If I have clam chowder for lunch, and then my bus is late, what would you make of the fact that my bus was late after I had clam chowder?

I wouldn't make anything of it. There's no necessary connection between a meal, set of meals, or limited diet and other aspects of a person's life.

Sometimes people get better because, given time, their immune systems fight off an infection. (You could argue for almost any intervention as a "cure" for the common cold by making sure not to give it to anyone who hadn't already had symptoms for five days.)

And yes, maybe once in a while the symptoms are real but the diagnosis (identification of cause) is incorrect, and the person is allergic to something that happens to not be on the new diet for unrelated reasons.

It occurs to me that if there were anything to Gerson, then by now, we would know what regimen worked best, whether black coffee was necessary or if cream and sugar were acceptable, is arabica better than robusta, or whether kopi luwak had some advantage for having already passed through the digestive tract of the civet. We wouldn't need testimonials and anecdotes. We'd have data.
Denice:
You're almost right. Actually I suck it out of my thumb.

By Old Rockin' Dave (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

#963
Sorry Alice,

I must have misunderstood your question, which explains my random answer before.

You have got to understand that mainstream physical/medical science is not interested in isolated cases. It is main purpose is to develop research hypothesis and test those on the basis of statistical significance, and generalise that to the population - that is what is meant by 'evidence' in the scientific world. The upside of that is that in medicine, you can then develop valid and reliable treatments which have high efficacy.

The downside is that in order to generalise those statistics with any confidence, only a few variables can be accounted for in that research, and the evidence only stacks up under those conditions - that is why we have 'controlled studies'. This means that an individual who does not fit that schema, may in fact have a positive outcome by changing diet or a range of other approaches, but this can't be generalised to the population. I say good luck to anyone who recovers from cancer by changing their diet - we have probably all heard stories and rumours.

But the thing to be aware of and the factor that is responsible for all of the outrage on this blog is that the quacks claim that their approach is a cureall. The truth is that, only a controlled study can claim a certain level of efficacy for healing, and under certain conditions. I don't think that anyone should be blamed for trying other ways to heal oneself, as long as they are aware of the distortion of the truth that is out there. It can in fact be an empowering experience and help sufferers to cope with their condition, if done with open eyes. Who knows, you may be lucky and it may have a role in your healing.

Nurofen makers Reckitt Benckiser under investigation/being charged for marketing misleading information: http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-05/accc-launches-action-over-27mi…

Just goes to show that it's not just alt med which promotes itself with all sorts of (unfounded?) claims but the difference is, conventional is held accountable. Personally I prefer the safety net of some kind of regulation when I am dealing with my life and health even if it's just for painkillers for a migraine. So anyway, what is it that Gersons claims? Something about healing cancer? Sure sounds awesome doesn't it...

963: "Is it simply that they are cutting out foods they may be intolerant too?"

No, they're randomly cutting foods from their diet and yelling at everyone who doesn't do the same. I had a friend who went gluten free for a pregnancy- I deliberately lost touch with her pretty quickly.

By Politicalguineapig (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

WHY is it that it's the defenders of alt-med/Gerson who stress that she was a "beautiful young woman"? Why is it that the other side, the side that is sorry she is dead when with medical treatment she might very likely NOT be dead, does not feel the need to call attention to her physical beauty? I am trying to understand.

"Reading a lot of these comments yesterday and today, I’ve formed a hypothesis: The trolls didn’t read what Orac or any skeptics said; they just presume that we fling exactly the same venom they do."

Ah! Maybe that's explains why they all mention her beauty. This is like a school yard, and they expect us to say we think she was ugly, because we disagree with some things she did. Or they think that we think - because THEY think it themselves - that beautiful people shouldn't die of cancer, only ugly people. So they point out her beauty to make sure everyone understands that her fate was EXTRA SPECIAL SAD and undeserved.

"The word “conventional” does not apply to evidence-based medicine,"

Shit, no. Hang around a medical research facility sometime! The stuff being researched is beyond space age - multiverse-era. It's alt med that wants to turn the clock back, still pathetically convinced the answer to every ailment must be in some weed growing in the backyard, having no clue what the state of knowledge actually is in biomedical research.

It just hit me why alt-medders are so bitter about why Big Pharma supposedly won't study "natural" remedies because they can't make money off them - they're really just pissed because THEY want to make more money off them. They do of course, make big money off natural remedies sometimes. But it's never enough, is it? Big Pharma is always turning them away, demanding the dreaded "evidence" and insisting on those pesky "clinical trials." Greed is the bottom of all of this.

Chris #934

"Perhaps Orac could shed light on why her drs would not have just amputated the arm below the shoulder when they had the chance to"

Because believe it or not doctors do listen to their patients, and do take into account their strongly expressed feelings and preferences, and being human, are not unmoved by the thought of a young person in the very prime of life losing a limb. Because doctors too understand that if there is any possibility of less extreme measures working, to some people that will be preferable to a terrifying procedure like the amputation of a limb. Do you think that might be why?

And what do you mean, "why they did not just amputate her arm"? Are you under the impression that doctors are free to amputate people's arms without their consent? Or do you suppose that she probably had a DIALOGUE with her doctors over the course of time, leading up to deciding on the surgery, and then discussing it a little further because - again - amputating an arm is a very extreme and very sad situation - coming up with an alternative for her, which MIGHT just work and would also spare her arm?

Ya think.

I am a recovered Gerson patient who has survived 35 years after melanoma and cervical cancer. I ran the Gerson Halfway House in San Diego for 10 years where I witnessed many recoveries from cancer, arthritis, diabetes, addictions, and allergies. This is proof that this program can work and is there for anyone who chooses it above others. Just saying.......................

By marilyn bloom (not verified) on 05 Mar 2015 #permalink

#976 76 DW

Yep. I think that you are right, and it is the point that I am making. There is a subjective element to managing health. It is not just a mechanistic process and sometimes drs see the logic of trying something that just might work. It is what makes good Drs even better....and the same subjective processes are involved in people seeking alt med (wrongly or rightly depending on your perspective).

Yet, at the same time, if we were being totally rationale about it, all Drs and patients would only make decisions based on the probabilities alone. In this case, if as Jess said, a less severe amputation could have been performed before it spread to her armpit, then maybe it would have saved her life. If that is true then it was an error in judgement because what is better - lose an arm with a higher prob of survival, or try something else with lower probability of success and risk it not working with consequences later? The Drs good bedside manner and empathy, may have cost her, her life. The assumption here is that Jess' version of her story is accurate, and of course we don't have all the details. But their is no suggestion that she wasn't willing to go ahead with the amputation.

The point here is that there is a subjective aspect to managing health care and good Drs listen to their patients and have empathy. They aren't robots who only use objective science to make decisions ....and neither do the patients who seek alt-alt-med. I actually think that a good Dr will see the need that patients have to feel empowered in managing their health, and support it if it helps them (provided it doesn't interfere with the treatment). It just may help the patient be more mentally resilient, which absolutely plays a role in dealing with the challenges of their situation.

It would be a more balanced forum here if people would not demonise subjective judgement that leads to alt med and stop pretending that the practice of science informed med is only objective. There is a strong thread of humanity running through it. Is that a weakness? Again, it depends on your perspective.

I've debated posting this, but I feel I have to.

I'm a family acquaintance. More a friend of a close family friend, but I do know the Ainscough family, and it's important that her followers know what the last year or more was actually like for Jess.

She was tremendously shaken up by the death of her mother. Much more than her last blog posts let on. She was not only grieving the loss of a parent, but she felt a lot of guilt and suffered a crisis of faith.

Before her mother's death, she could argue a doctor under the table with nothing but unbridled confidence. She believed so much in what she was doing, that she cannot be considered a fraud. A fraud knowingly deceives people for gain. Until the death of her mother, she believed everything she stood for, down to the letter. Until that moment, she had not seriously considered her own mortality.

After, her health deteriorated very quickly. She dealt with grief, guilt and depression on top of her worsening physical condition.

Towards the end, she was desperate and deeply regretful. It's one of the big reasons that her social media accounts, website and videos were deleted. The truth is, she died knowing that she rejected treatment that may have saved her life, or at least prolonged it. If you put yourself into the shoes of a young woman who has to face that she gambled with her life and lost, you will realise what a terrifying revelation that is.

To concede that you were wrong about something is a bitter pill to swallow, but to know that it will lead to your premature death is just unimaginable.

I've already seen commentary around that suggests that her crisis and questioning of her treatment led to negative energy that made the cancer flare up. That is simply not true. Her arm in particular degraded at an expected rate, even during the height of her positivity and commitment to her regime.

I personally did not believe in what she was doing. It was also a bone of contention and cause of frustration for some other family and friends, but rarely spoken about directly. The result is sad for all involved, but it was not unexpected to some of us. And there is no joy whatsoever to derive from being right in this situation.

I understand why her followers and associates are coming to her defense. They only ever really knew the dedicated and passionate Jess that would not hear of any other treatment for her condition. They're looking for holes and logic and conditions in which this could all still fit, though tragically, into what she believed and taught.

The tragic truth is that, in the end, she didn't believe it. She did not regret her healthy lifestyle, but she most certainly did regret rejecting conventional treatment.

By FamilyFriend (not verified) on 06 Mar 2015 #permalink

@FamilyFriend - thank you for that perspective.

My heart goes out to her family and friends - it is always a tragedy to lose someone, especially one so young....I hope that your words help others who might have otherwise also gone down the same road.

@FamilyFriend

I second Lawrence. Your words are much appreciated, and I repeat what I said in my first comment: my thoughts go out to Jess' family and friends. This cannot be an easy time. I just hope that, as hard as it is, talking about this will help others avoid the same fate.

@Dr Jay

If I'm ever faced with a tumor similar to what Miss Ainscough had, I can tell you with certainty that I'll mourn the loss of a limb, but celebrate a better chance at survival.

In other words, I would absolutely listen to my oncologists, etc. for their advice in treatment and medicine, because I am not an oncologist, I'm not a doctor and I do not have the expertise required to suggest my own treatment regime - nor will I go hunting for alternative therapies.

My life isn't worth keeping an arm (or a leg, or a breast) which has cancer. I'm more than willing to part with those areas in order to survive seeing my children grow up, graduate college, and hopefully give me grandchildren.

@FamilyFriend

Very sensitive and well-written comment and background information. Thanks.

By Jane Ostentatious (not verified) on 06 Mar 2015 #permalink

@familyfriend - more appreciation for your words. Again, my condolences to all of Jess' family and friends

Jess' family and friends who think like you @familyfriend have the tools to take the Gerson quackery - and all the associated woo that enchanted Jess - to task. Penelope Dingle's sisters were relentless in their mission and eventually took down the homeopathy quack and the enabling husband who stood by and watched her slow and terrible death from rectal cancer. http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/desperateremedies/default.htmhtt…

By janerella (not verified) on 06 Mar 2015 #permalink

Family friend, thank you so much. Terribly, terribly sad! I almost hoped she wasn't lucid, toward the end, but it sounds like she was.

I do hope that her family will follow through now. It's still wrong to just take her work off the web without an explanation, as if it never happened. The ethical thing to do is to speak out, to tell the world that Jess had regrets and would no longer have made the same recommendations, and would urge her followers to get an oncologist's care if they get cancer.

Of course they need a period of mourning, but I hope they don't wait long.

Family Friend --

Thank you for your thoughtful post. It's a heartbreaking story. May she rest in peace.

@ Family Friend:

Thank you for your comment- it may help save lives.
I feel very sorry for Jess' survivors.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 06 Mar 2015 #permalink

@ Chris - Australia

I think that the surgeons didn't suggest a less radical amputation because the cancer was located in her shoulder as well as in more distal areas.

By Denice Walter (not verified) on 06 Mar 2015 #permalink

Gerson's Therapy is what kept her alive...you even state yourself that she left their lead and created her own. Gerson's doesnt claim healing for everything anyways..it is not their fault cancer took this beautiful person..sometimes a car accident can.I am saddened you would blame and talk so negative at such a time. I refuse to let your negative comments take away from what this lady worked for and that was to promote good healing health and it saved her life for 7 yrs. that's a lot she was thankful for..she claimed even she was trying to sort her diet back into place...can't you read that?..Wow. Stop posting things like this that might cause another cancer victim to not be healed because of it. Their life might be in your hands from saying such...STOP

By angie heir (not verified) on 06 Mar 2015 #permalink

Gerson’s Therapy is what kept her alive…

No, it didn't. It doesn't "do" anything except screw up your electrolytes and waste a lot of time and coffee.

Stop posting things like this that might cause another cancer victim to not be healed [sic] because of it.

Stomping on the Gerson scam is the whole idea, Angie, so that would be another firm "no."

Their life might be in your hands from saying such…

One can only hope.

STOP

See above.

@Denice Walter

That sounds about right Denice. I have come to the same conclusion.

#993. Angie Heir.

Have you not just read the post #979 by Family Friend? With respect, you are refusing to look at the evidence on balance and see the writing on the wall. To say that she died becausecshe diverted from the therapy is actually insulting and insensitive to Jess. There is no doubt that she was a zealot and absolutely put everything into her therapy. If she did tone down her treatment it was because she saw the writing on the wall when her mother died despite the Gersons treatment. After 5 or 6 years of dedicated Gersons, don't you think that wisdom would say that it is not working and it is time to try something else. To her credit, Jess was smart enough to realise that. It is a bad enough that ideologs such as yourself prefer to deny the evidence, but it is worse that you have a desire to promote the lie that Gersons is a cureall for everyone. If you read some of my recent posts, explaining the reasons why you can't call it a cureall, you will understand that not even science can absolutely call something a cureall. Please question your views and use your critical brain as well rather than just your heart. It can only lead to one place, which is self-dself-deception.

Yes, thankyou family friend and condolences to you and Jess's family. It was courageous of you to say what you did.

@angie - Jess died in the appropriate timeframe for the kind of Cancer she had (if it was left untreated).

Gerson did nothing for her.

#993 Angie Heir "Gerson’s doesnt claim healing for everything anyways....Stop posting things like this that might cause another cancer victim to not be healed because of it...."

You are contradicting yourself here and you have perfectly stated our argument. Isolated cures are not predictive, at best anecdotal. "Might" is the operative word. There is nothing wrong with people trying to help themselves through alt med - I am all for that - but they need to do it with their eyes open. This blog is about that. It is a science blog dedicated to critiquing how the world works on the basis of critical thinking and evidence. The fact that Orac has posted this is entirely consistent with this. The kind of world that you propose we are living in is one in which we can only make emotional and potentially fatal decisions like Jess. So, I think that this post is actually potentially helping people make an informed choice. So, Orac, you absolutely MUST KEEP posting.

@Angie Heir

I refuse to let your negative comments take away from what this lady worked for and that was to promote good healing health and it saved her life for 7 yrs.

That's just not true. As Family Friend plainly states:

Her arm in particular degraded at an expected rate, even during the height of her positivity and commitment to her regime.

A third of the people who don't (or can't) have surgery for that kind of cancer survive for ten years or more. Without Gerson therapy. That's just the rate at which the disease progresses. The Gerson therapy didn't alter it at all.

@ann - that's a great point. Cancer kills, but in general, it kills slowly....Jess' progression sounds exactly in line with what happens when you have untreated Cancer....

What a horrible article.. The writer should be ashamed..

Aknel, you should not be proud of your fact free comment.

Hang around a medical research facility sometime! The stuff being researched is beyond space age – multiverse-era. It’s alt med that wants to turn the clock back....

Definitely the wrong analogy. Cheerleading for a nontrivial* multiverse is a retreat from physics to evade the failure to find a whiff of SUSY and, by extension, string theory.

* It kind of loses its glamor value (and "utility") if they all have the same physics.

Gerson’s Therapy is what kept her alive…you even state yourself that she left their lead and created her own. Gerson’s doesnt claim healing for everything anyways

So (a) Gerson's treatment kept Ms Ainscough alive; and (b) Ms Ainscough wasn't following Gerson's treatment; and (c) a single failure of Gerson's treatment doesn't prove anything.
I get the impression that Angie Heir doesn't read what she's writing, possibly to save time.

There seems to be a fall-back position among Gerson advocates, that it is not so much a cure as a life-style which holds the cancer in stasis -- so you must continue the diet and the enemas indefinitely.
Those people who died? Yes, they were cured... but they stopped the treatment, so they weren't cured after all. We know they stopped the treatment because otherwise they wouldn't have died.

By herr doktor bimler (not verified) on 06 Mar 2015 #permalink

I cannot feel a lack of respect when reading your critique. I have worked in the healyth industry for 25 years now. Caring as a reg. nurse for many people with many illnesses. I have personally known 11 dear people who have and do suffer from one for of cancer or another. Unlike you I dont know it all. I have seen a lot. But the one thing I came to terms with is that there is more to an illness than the physical. As there is more to a treatment. Assuming one treatment or a component of a treatment is bogus because you don't understand or agree with it quite frankly is short sighted. How people decide to treat themselves is up to the individual. People talk of some of the disgusting treatments of alternative medicines and theropies and yet have they ever seen the hideousness of chemo? It is in the mind of the patient where these choices are made. There is nothing you or any of us can do about this. Live and let live and let die. ... however one decides. I want my choices to be mine. What about you?

Narad #1004

Yes, I guess I got my metaphors rather mixed up! I was just trying to think of a metaphor for something "post space-age" and the "multiverse" came to mind. A garbled analogy I agree.

Hey Sonia. I want my choices to be mine too. I just want accurate information on which to base the choice. That can't happen when people are putting forth false information, as Jess Ainscough was unfortunately doing.

But the one thing I came to terms with is that there is more to an illness than the physical. As there is more to a treatment.

Not to Gerson's quackery, no.

Assuming one treatment or a component of a treatment is bogus because you don’t understand or agree with it quite frankly is short sighted.

There's nothing being "assumed"; it's 60-year-old nonsense that has only gotten weirder in Charlotte Gerson's claws. Nothing singularly cures a giant raft of cancers, including trying to eat your way to hyponatremia while shooting coffee up your ass five times a day.

@sonia -

I not only want my choices to be mine, I want the choices of others to be theirs, whatever they might be.

And that's not two separate desires. It's one.

But she made the choice she did because other people made it out to be a better one than it is. And it cost her her mother and her life that they did.

That's a very high price to pay.

Chemo can be hideous. But at least it's honest.

#979 @FamilyFriend

Thank you for sharing. I can't believe how saddened I am (and so many others) by Jess passing. May she rest in peace and may her true legacy live on.

@ sonia #1006: I am also a registered nurse. I got my start on a med surg oncology floor, and worked for 7 years as a hospice nurse. I am very familiar with what chemo, radiation, and surgery does to people. And yes, it can be pretty horrible. But here's the thing.

In the 30 years that I've been a nurse, I've seen survival rates improve for many kinds of cancers. People get screened earlier. Cancers get caught earlier, when they're easier to treat. Even some tough to treat cancers are responding better than they used to. And granted, some still don't respond well at all, like pancreatic cancer.

But at least with SBM you get a good appraisal of your chances and the risks vs benefits. You don't get that with quack therapies like Gerson. And if you really are a nurse, you should know that informed consent is impossible if the patient isn't given accurate information. So when I hear people blather on about choice, the question I have to ask is WHAT choices? There is no choice: you choose SBM or you choose to let nature take its course, or you choose to ignore science and do unproven therapies that have their own risks and side effects.

Let me ask you sonia, since you claim to be an RN: What are the risks associated with sequential tap water enemas? What kind of risks do you think you add to the picture when you give sequential coffee enemas? If you think the answer is "none to speak of," turn in your license. You have no business practicing nursing.