I can sort of see the twisted logic behind the claim that cancer is good.
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If cancer were an indicator of an underlying systemic problem, rather than the problem itself;
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If cancers were easily treatable;
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If cancers weren’t a massive cause of pain and death;
Then yes, cancer would be great! You get a lump in your breast, you start pooping blood, you have been coughing up slime and can’t catch your breath…why, happy day, that means you have to go take a big swig of orange juice and all your problems would go away, breasts would be instantly perky, rainbows will shine out of your ass, and you’ll be off running marathons.
The only problem is that none of those premises are true. Just ask someone who has cancer. Cancer isn’t a symptom, it’s the disease. Only quacks claim that cancer can be easily cured. And if all it took was changing your diet to cure it, how do you account for the millions of people who died in terrible agony from it?
The person spreading these damnable lies is a Canadian naturopath, Brittany Auerbach, who calls herself “Montreal Healthy Girl”. Her article on this is a case study in the arrogance of ignorance.
Cancer is not a disease that came from ‘out there’, you did not ‘catch it’ and there is no need for the powerless self-pitying of ” how can this happen to me, I am so unlucky!”. By understanding the actual physiology behind what cancer really is, it makes knowing the true ‘cure’ pretty simple and straight-forward.
She thinks she understands the physiology of cancer. In the next paragraph, she demonstrates that she doesn’t.
It is imperative that we understand one point: the human body is alkaline by design and acidic by function. It fights for homeostasis and works every minute of every living moment to keep our blood Ph at an alkaline 7.2-7.4. The body is meant to thrive on oxygen and alkaline minerals, we cannot survive without them. All foods and substances that are healthiest for us leave an alkaline residue and alkaline minerals in the body. Healthy tissues are oxygen-rich and loaded with alkaline nutrient stores that the body can use to neutralize the acids that are produced by everyday activities like walking, having sex, digestion, breathing, etc. When the body is rich in alkaline nutrients and rich in oxygen, it is disease-free and optimally functional. When the body becomes too acidic, the cells close themselves off by encasing themselves with alkaline minerals to protect the blood from becoming very acid (which would result in death). By closing themselves off, these cells begin to be unable to absorb alkaline nutrients or oxygen and basically turn anaerobic and cancerous. It is the same process that a bacteria undertakes: when blood supply and oxygen is cut off and acidity increases, they morph into ‘superbugs’, ones that can thrive and grow in the even the most undesirable of environments. AH thanks to acidic antibiotics!
I’ve seen this before. There’s a whole industry of quacks who reduce every ailment to one simple thing, pH, and make these silly arguments about an imbalance of hydrogen ions. At least the ancients argued for four humors that needed balancing, these loons have reduced it to just one. The “pH Miracle” scam has been going on for decades.
This horrible person also doesn’t just claim that cancer is a minor inconvenience, she’s also going to blame antibiotics for magically morphing bacteria into antibiotic resistant superbugs.
In fact, she has a treatment for everything! She can cure cancer, all viruses, all bacterial infections, alcoholism, ADD, and a whole raft of imaginary problems! She’s a fraud, but she’s got a successful scam going.
I was reminded of the Dunning-Kruger effect while browsing Brittany’s website. Ignorant people do not have empty minds; rather, their brain is filled with inaccurate information they believe to be true. And the Dunning-Kruger effect is the fact that many of these people actually think they have superior knowledge. If a fool knew they were a fool, they would not be dangerous. But a fool who thinks he is a genius, that is problematic. With videos that can reach up to half a million people, Brittany “MontrealHealthyGirl” Auerbach can do a lot of damage. She has more YouTube subscribers (over 106,000) than the Food Babe (38,566), though her Facebook and Twitter followers are dwarfed by her American counterpart.
If you’re listening to these lying phonies, you need to stop. She may be a fool, but she’s successfully milking a hundred thousand other fools.
Reminds me of Rebecca Watson’s recent video: Woman Who “Cured” Cancer with Veganism Dies…of Cancer.
I always cringe when I see that the quack and/or racist and/or misogynist person in question is Canadian. Rationally, I know that awful, stupid people are found everywhere, including in my country, but I have this voice in the back of my head that whispers, “Aren’t we supposed to be better?” Apparently, we’re not…
This was a comment on that cancer is good post:
This gets to me in the worst way, because it’s people who are poor, people without health insurance, and people who are desperate who are most likely to fall head first for this shit. And here in Amerikka, most people are poor and don’t have health insurance. A while back, I mentioned that we’re lucky, we have *good* health insurance, and our last deductible bill was close to $2,000. What resources are there for those without money? I can’t think of these people as fools; cancer is a scary business, even for the most rational types.
Jackal @ 1:
The comments on that video, they illustrate the problem.
doubter@2:”“Aren’t we supposed to be better?” Apparently, we’re not…”
And it’s *good* that we be reminded of this. But then simply remembering that we elected fucking Stephen Harper should really be enough, shouldn’t it?
Speaking of quacks, check out Tom Brady of the Deflatriots and his medical trainer/advisor/quack Alex Guerrero. A is a filthy quackery history there, taken down by the FCC and FDA and other outfits.
Brady has an “app” that is FREE!! for a week, then costs . . . and they just happen to sell apparel, supplements, quackery, and bullshit . . . to folks who are going to die early.
Ed Seedhouse @#5: Check and mate, sir. I concede. In my defense, I try to think of the Harper years as an unfortunate interregnum between Paul Martin and Justin Trudeau.
On the other hand, you can’t deny that modern medecine make us more likely to die of cancer
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/06/chart-what-killed-us-then-and-now/258872/
A century ago, you could die of a lot of thing, but cancer was only a 6% risk
Now it’s almost 30%.
With advances on cloning for major organs, or syntetic ones, we could reduce heart disease and cancer would become a 50% chance of cause of death.
With enough quacks, we could reduce the life expectancy and thus cancer. Completely logical
Another case where a “crackdown on dishonesty” (as in next post) on YouTube is necessary. Quacks like this have been around for centuries, millenia even, as has an audience for them been. Unfortunately that audience is a dying breed.
I don’t get all this hating on ducks. I like ducks.
*Reads thread*
Oh, my bad. :D
We had a woman at work who treated her cancer ‘naturally’. She’s dead now.
In Australia we had Belle Gibson: “Belle Gibson convinced the world she had healed herself from terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet. She built a global business based upon her claims. There was just one problem: she’d never had cancer. In 2015, journalists uncovered the truth: this hero of the wellness world, with over 200,000 followers, international book deals, and a best-selling smartphone app, was a fraud. She had lied about having cancer – to her family and friends, to her business partners and publishers, and to the hundreds of thousands of people, including genuine cancer survivors, who were inspired by her Instagram posts. “
She was prosecuted under consumer laws for false or misleading conduct and fined $450,000.
Joe Goozeff #12
I guess that while $450,000 was not petty cash, it was not particularly hard on the organisation.
euclide@8
“On the other hand, you can’t deny that modern medecine make us more likely to die of cancer”
Really? Cancer is by and large a disease of the aged. In 1900, people were dying of communicable diseases earlier in their lives. Now, such diseases are preventable or curable. People live longer. They are more likely to die from cancer.
gijoel,
That is actually a bad argument.
Firstly: It’s an anecdote, and anecdotes can only be used to generate hypotheses. They cannot be used as evidence for the implied claim you are making.
Secondly: We have a woman at work who treated her cancer with science/evidence-based treatments. She’s now dead.
That’s part of the reason why anecdotes are not evidence.
Statistics that show that cancer sufferers who use alternative medicine do worse than those who use science/evidence-based treatments would be a good argument against using alternative medicine to treat your cancer. Such statistics are available.
billyjoe, You think gijoul doesn’t know that? Tell it to the quacks.
The Mathematical Physicist John Baez, related to Joan Baez [trivial note], has an awesome and humorous Crack Pot Index he did years ago:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
Reitpluim,
If he did know, then, on the basis of his comment, he must have temporarily forgotten that he did know. Bad arguments are bad regardless of who uses them.