Further to my last post, I've just remembered that another, very dear and close, friend, whom I shall call X, got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago to tell me about some cancer therapies she'd heard about, and would they be any good for me? She had heard from another friend (Y) who is 'supporting' someone with a brain tumour (Z). Y is pretty alternative, and she was telling X how she was advising Z to follow something called German New Medicine (GNM). Apparently the theory behind GNM, in a nutshell, is:
I won't go on. I'm sure you see that this is completely crazy. Well, of course, being me, I couldn't just dismiss this madness without delving a bit deeper. And what did I discover? That the founder of GNM, a certain Dr Hamer, had his licence to practice medicine revoked in 1986, but that he continued to practice nevertheless. He was jailed in Germany in 1997 and in France in 2004 for fraud and illegal practice. He then moved to Spain where he succeeded in killing quite a few patients, and now according to Wikipedia he's hiding out in Norway. Oh, and one other thing, in case you're still tempted to research his theories - Dr Hamer is convinced that all orthodox medicine is a Jewish conspiracy, that chemotherapy is the Jews' way of exterminating all non-Jews, and that almost no one dies of cancer in Israel because they don't use chemotherapy.
I did of course tell my friend X to get in touch with Y right away and warn her off recommending the teachings of this fraudster, as it would almost certainly lead to tragic consequences for Z. What frightens me is that the information I gleaned about him is freely available with the most basic search but that Y hadn't even done that. Vulnerable cancer patients and those wishing to help them may grasp at straws in their attempts to explain what is happening to them and to reach for an alternative 'cure'.
