Extracts below from a news item in The Guardian (UK), and a comment from me. Read in full: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/02/cancer-patients-misinfor...
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Oncologists say patients rejecting proven treatments are dying needlessly because of increase in online ‘cures’
Cancer patients are snubbing proven treatments in favour of quackery such as coffee enemas and raw juice diets amid an “alarming” increase in misinformation on the web, doctors have said.
Some were dying needlessly or seeing tumours spread as a result, oncologists said. They raised their concerns at the world’s largest cancer conference in Chicago, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco)...
Speaking at Asco, Dr Richard Simcock, the chief medical officer of Macmillan Cancer Support, said misinformation was “very worrying” as it had “exponentially increased the problem” of misconceptions about cancer.
“A person is perfectly entitled to decline that therapy but when they do that on the basis of information which is frankly untrue or badly interpreted, it makes me very sad. It’s clear that we have work to do to build back trust in evidence-based medicine.”
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COMMENT (NPW): Dr Simcock's words resonate with me: “A person is perfectly entitled to decline that therapy but when they do that on the basis of information which is frankly untrue or badly interpreted, it makes me very sad." For me, the same can be said of misinformation about any aspect of health. It is also unjust that quacks continue to be allowed to disseminate dangerous misinformation, and thereby enrich themselves while causing avoidable deaths and suffering, with impunity.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org