At the weekend I received an email from an old friend. I'm sure that many people here will have seen it as it has been going the rounds for some years. It's about the miraculous power of lemons. The first part was innocuous enough - all about how if you put your lemons in the freezer you can grate the peel and use it on food. It's tasty and full of vitamins. So far, so good. But if you scroll down the page, there comes the fatuous assertion that lemons are 10.000 times more powerful than chemotherapy. Now, why didn't we know this? Why on earth isn't the NHS giving us intravenous lemon juice instead of chemotherapy drugs that cost £1000 per bag (and cause horrible side-effects)? What a lot of money they would save, and cure all cancers on the spot! Just with lemons!
Could it possibly be that this is nonsense? Oh no, says the email, this information comes from one of the largest drug manufacturers in the world, and they have proved that lemon extracts are effective against many different cancers. Wait a minute, so why isn't the drug manufacturer peddling lemon juice instead of their expensive drugs, and why on earth did they not suppress this useful information if they wanted to go on making millions from the sale of their drugs?
There is in fact a grain of truth in the assertion that lemon extracts are anti-cancer, in that certain citrus bioflavonoids, such as hesperidin, tangeretin, naringin etc can suppress cancer cell growth, angiongenesis or inflammation in laboratory tests. But that is a very far cry from lemon extracts being used in place of chemotherapy in real life. Where is the evidence? How much would you use? Who would administer it, and how?
If the people who send round these emails stopped to think for a moment, they wouldn't send them, especially not to people suffering from cancer. You'd think no sane and intelligent person would be taken in by these hyped up claims, but the friend who sent it to me is an academic and lecturer, though admittedly not a scientist. You would have thought this person would have known better. I tore a strip off her, poor woman. It turned out that she hadn't really read the second half of the email, and just thought it was a good culinary tip. So I was left with egg on my face and had to apologise to her for losing my rag.
Yes, this kind of thing makes me very angry indeed. My brother, in conversation recently, asked me why I found it so irritating. That was a good question. I think it's because it feels as though people are denigrating the expertise of our oncologists and all the science that lies behind their choice of treatment for us. They're also belittling our acceptance of the treatment regime recommended for us, and implying that there's no need to suffer their sometimes awful side-effects.
I've had other recommendations from ignorant people - soursop juice (Annona muricata) is another one. This came from a family member who lives abroad. So where am I going to get soursop juice in winter in the middle of Wales, I replied, and how much should I use? Again, there is just a grain of truth in it. An extract of soursop called graviola has been shown to have anticancer activity in the test tube. Apparently graviola capsules are sold on the internet as some sort of cancer cure. But I wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole - there's no evidence.
And then there are the people, even more dangerous than the ignorant but well-meaning friends mentioned above, who claim to have cured their own cancer with positive thinking or with diet alone. I've had a few of those contact me, and that feels like an assault. First of all, do I even believe them? They usually turn out to have had orthodox treatment as well but to have conveniently forgotten it, or not credit it with curing them. I've had to ask them to leave me alone and not to contact me again. Well, we're all trying to be positive, aren't we? But I wouldn't trust the power of my mind (I can't speak for anyone else's) to cure me of this disease, not without some treatment alongside it. And as for diet, I happen to be a nutritionist and to have done post-graduate research into diet and cancer. I believe in good nutrition and that it can help your recovery, but I also know that changing your diet cannot 'cure' you of cancer on its own. in fact, knowing what I do know about nutrition actually delayed me in presenting to my GP with the symptoms that finally turned out to be cancer. I wasted 6 months or so experimenting with different elimination diets to find out what particular food might be responsible for my symptoms, when it turned out not to be food at all but a tumour. A perfect example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
I expect there's somewhere on this website where you can log all the scams that are out there ready to prey on vulnerable cancer patients, but these are just my personal experiences. I'll let you know if I come across any more.
