The testimonial of Hollie Quinn: The Huffington Post promotes breast cancer quackery right before Breast Cancer Awareness Month

“Ms. Quinn…conclude(s) that she would have done just as well or even better than she is doing now if she hadn’t undergone surgery, that her tumors would have “melted away” from the various “alternative cures” to which she subjected herself.”

This is the truly horrifying part of the article. We’re not talking about her assuming a 5.4% extra risk of dying over 15 years by skipping radiation treatments. By avoiding surgery altogether she likely would have experienced aggressive tumor spreading locally and causing miserable symptoms (like an undiagnosed breast cancer that resulted in “chronic abscesses” in a case discussed at our tumor board meeting recently) and/or widespread metastases resulting in incurable disease.

HuffPo needs to grow a conscience, rather than helping lead more women down the path of rejecting potentially curative treatment.

I know a woman who died of untreated breast cancer and it was gruesome, to say the least. This Hollie – and her Huff-Puff reviewer – are being utterly disingenuous and that needs to be pointed out. Thanks Orac!

I think you might have a typo:

Shouldn’t “the single or handful of lymph nodes harvested during axillary dissection […] removed in an axillary dissection” be “the single or handful of lymph nodes harvested during SLN […] removed in an axillary dissection”?

One deluded person shouting loud about their survival when doing some alternative treatment proves nothing. Most of the general population don’t understand risk and probability and invariably extrapolate their story to everyone.

They just can’t seem to grasp the simple idea of, x% die therefore 100-x% survive, and the simple fact that they are here to write about it means that they are one of the 100-x%, no matter how small that number is.

And note, it is this very much simplified version they don’t seem to grasp, there seems little point in going into the full complexities of survival proability etc

You were too nice. It really gets me when people claim they’re using “science” and all the case studies that show how wonderful the natural treatment works. I hope, as the book becomes more available to you, you’ll be able to evaluate the studies, cases and science they’re claiming, and report it to us.

Mrs Quinn has visited my humble little blog again: http://tinyurl.com/282ga4n

Competition in the marketplace is always a good thing whether it be health treatments or anything else, for it provides choice which we all appreciate. However, the idea is that some health treatments are more “rational” than others or have passed a greater degree of scientific scrutiny. If this is so, it needs to be communicated in a form the public readily understand.

It is only natural that people shy away from treatments that are destructive in any way. The Hippocratic Oath means that healers will avoid using such treatments, unless no other option is available and the benefits are believed to outweigh the disadvantages.

Ultimately it is the patient’s body and they will make the final choice as to what they wish to subject it to.

I believe it is useful for those who have undergone conventional and unconventional treatments to report on their experiences to help educate those who may be considering similar options.

You’re not out of line with your criticism. For them to “forget” to talk about the life-saving surgery is disgusting and deceitful on their part… right up Huffpo’s alley.

@Todd Goninon,
The problem with the marketplace is that often the best dressed get the prize rather than the best fit. We have seen numerous cases where distorted stats, star power, and fear were used to push people away from scientifically sound treatments toward woo and false hope.

A couple of years ago my wife and I were eating in the Cafe inside a a “natural” food store when this old guy started talking to us, telling us he was in mourning because his wife had died of breast cancer. He said they had decided to “go the natural route”. Of course the “natural route” had the expected natural outcome.

Given the low quality of virtually everything made in China, why would anybody in their right mind put Chinese herbs into their body?

Thank you for pointing out that the difference isn’t just survival rates, it’s that in one approach the woman gets to keep her breast.

Too many people seem to think that removing parts of a woman’s body is trivial. Not “sometimes necessary for medical reasons,” but unimportant enough that they won’t try to help women keep as much of their bodies as possible.

Libertarian spotted @13… prepare for increased inanity.

Will someone define “en curasse disease” for me? Google is not being helpful. Thanks.

Carcinoma en cuirasse is a form of metastatic cutaneous breast malignancy occurring most commonly on the chest as a recurrence of breast cancer, but it can be the primary presentation.

The google images are not pretty…

Will someone define “en curasse disease” for me? Google is not being helpful. Thanks.

There was a link.

It’s this sort of thing that really got me to be more involved in skepticism. All the UFO, ghost, psychic nonsense is interesting and fun to argue about, but crap like this that affects people’s health burns me up. You want to be an idiot and wreck your own health, by all means, go ahead. But if your decision and/or advice start to affect other people’s well-being, then shut your damn yap. If only there were some way to hold people like this accountable for their actions.

And that’s the problem, really. These twits can go about spewing dangerous advice, but if someone suffers because of it, the twit still goes merrily along their way. No penalties. Clear consciences as they rationalize away someone’s death or injury.

In other words, one was just as likely to be alive in five years if you did radiation, as compared to if you did not undergo radiation.

Not only is this dangerously misleading, it’s execrably poor writing. I’d hardly need to read the book to see the intelligent but muddled thinker trying to be more sophisticated than she really knows how – it’s all right here. Depressing.

@ Kate from Iowa,

Mrs Quinn’s cancer was diagnoses when she was 38 weeks pregnant.

I looked at the author’s website found no mention of what happens to the proceeds from the book. Typically, people donating some proceeds from a book will trumpet that fact loudly up front (see Tony Blair). Generally, I think authors should be able to extract whatever profit they can from their creative works. But, generally, books don’t goad others into needless suffering and early death. If she were donating money to cancer research, I’d cut her some slack. The conspicuous absence of any such information about charitable causes tells me that, truly in this case, charity begins at home.

Congratulations Hollie Quinn, you are profiting off the misery and death of others.

Wait, was that uncharitable? Yes, yes it was. Just like Hollie Quinn and her book of lies.

@ Denice Walter,

That is horrible and so infuriating. All this time she could have been with her husband, her family. It always makes me so sad and angry, no matter how many times I hear about it.

Thanks Beatis. I now update my prior post to: she should be bitch-slapped with an OED unabridged.

LOL! Indeed she should!

What got me was that she seemed willing to eat random herbal medicines during pregnancy/nursing. Given that (just in my small garden here) I have half-a-dozen lethal poisons, and probably a dozen or so more associated with miscarriage and serious illness, I really don’t get it! OK, with folk-medicine you do have anecdotal evidence of toxicity, but we keep turning up new knowledge that isn’t in the traditional pharmocopiae; I wouldn’t choose to risk anything beyond culinary doses in pregnancy. On the other hand, I grew up with “don’t eat anything you haven’t positively identified as non-toxic” as a gardening maxim, so I’ve never doubted that plants can kill.

@stripey_cat

Given that (just in my small garden here) I have half-a-dozen lethal poisons, and probably a dozen or so more associated with miscarriage and serious illness, I really don’t get it!

Someone once brought a little stem of purple flowers with yellow sticking out of the centers. They thought it was very pretty. I didn’t recognize them, so off to Google U. I went. I found that the plant produces very sweet berries. In the Roman era, some people would make wine from the berries and serve it to their enemies and they wouldn’t be enemies any more. Any guesses?

@Scott

Yep. Beautiful Lady. Nightshade. Very pretty plant.

I keep forgetting the refresh button was invented long ago already.
*sigh*

A lot of oncologists are smart and open-minded. It’s not actually a minority. But the ones you hear about are the bad ones, because people are always more motivated to complain than to compliment.

Case in point — my grandfather. He was a physician for many years. (A general surgeon, to be precise.) When he developed symptoms consistent with pancreatic cancer at the age of 90, he gave himself the same advice he would have given a patient in the same situation — there’s treatment, but it’s really not worth it. He died at home, surrounded by loved ones, in hospice care. He was frustrated at how long it took (he lived over a year past the time when he decided to die), but it took its course, and he was content when the end came.

Flip side: Patrick Swayze elected to get treatment and extend his life a few months. He knew perfectly well it would not be a cure. But for him, it was worth it. That’s the thing; what’s right for one person is not for another. Some would greatly prefer to rage, rage at the dying of the light. Not my grandfather. Everybody’s different, and it’s important to respect the significance of personal values in these decisions.

Then there’s my aunt’s case. She died of breast cancer at a young age. She wanted the best that medical care could provide, and she got it — even past the point where it was doing very little good. She died in agony, letting the doctors perform painful life-extending procedures under the delusion that it could cure her. Part of the blame is hers (she was in denial) but part of it was also her doctors, who were afraid to tell her the truth. Sometimes it’s hard to disappoint a person, especially when they are so earnestly optimistic. I’m not sure how well doctors are trained for that. I’m not sure how well they *can* be; this is difficult stuff.

There are indeed many practitioners (insecure and otherwise) who profit off of patients at the end of their lives, with very marginal prognoses. However, it is not merely oncologists offering extremely marginal cancer treatments. It’s also quacks. In fact, the quacks have a higher profit margin. You need to be careful to apportion that sort of blame everywhere it is due, and not only with the oncologists.

(Incidentally, you may want to search for “Avastin” on this blog. There’s a search box on the left sidebar. You may be interested in the discussion.)

@50

There are stories of people who were given one year to leave, no treatment options offered, that have no evidence of disease today.

And there are stories of people who were abducted by aliens and probed and stories of people who saw angels and stories of people who were healed by prayer and stories of people who almost caught a ginormous trout. They are just that – stories.

Once she starts giving dangerous misleading advice to other people, especially for her own financial gain it isn’t just her body and her life.

Good takedown, far better than I could have done.

@45: What kind of confused plant puts both sugar and poison in its berries? Sugar implies that the plant wants the berries to be eaten (and pooped out with fertilizer) whereas poison is a protection. Both…not sure what that says evolutionarily. Wants to be eaten by a specific resistant animal perhaps?

T. Bruce McNeely, I hope it is not the Canadian Cancer Research Group.

I thought it might be them. If they’re getting paid by OHIP, that would be a disgrace.

I wonder if they’re still charging loads of dough for what amounts to a Google search?

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/ccrg.html

Chris @ 56:

I sincerely hope so too.

Cancer quackery! Eugh.

Being wearily familiar with the well-springs of misinformation, I , unfortunately, must convey more bad news: today Adams proudly reports that his NaturalNews.TV video network is growing by leaps and bounds “educating” the pub1ic ( see @40 above). Similarly, Null, braggadocio intact, claims the “fastest growing internet radio network” for “progressives”. Both cavalierly dispense horrendously inaccurate cancer information : recently ( this month, speaking about celebrities with cancer), Adams warned patients that taking _any_ “conventional treatment” would decimate the chances that the alternative treatment would work. That it should be a “first”, rather than “last” ditch attempt.

Lucille:

I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve heard that oncology is one of the more profitable specialties.

Do you mind answering T. Bruce McNeely’s question:

Which centre is this? I’d like to read some of these “stories”. I’m also interested in finding out what my tax dollars are paying.

?

If you don’t I guess we can assume it is the infamous CCRG.

Well your tax dollars are paying for marxists to write regulations for everything from your toilet water to your healthcare. Better yet, we just learned that $800,000 of your hard earned money confiscated by our inocent government was spent to wash men’s balls in Kenya. I guess we can;t have people going around having dirty balls in Africa now can we. I suppose this somehow created jobs? After all someone had to supply the water, rags, soap, and teach the Kenyans how to properly wash their balls. Yep. I guess one could speculate that this program was STIMUating? L guess the Homo Depot (name change since Home Depot went all gayist on us)supplied the buckets?

Hey Chris, did you sign up for the job of washing African balls? I heard it paid good. Did you apply lotion to the extra dried out ones?

Profitable for whom, is the big question. I think most oncologists work for clinics or hospitals rather than being in private practice, which means the profit goes mainly to the clinic/hospital, not the oncologist directly. (They are well paid, like most medical specialists. But their reimbursement doesn’t necessarily track with the cost of the care. Giving a super-expensive and marginally-useful drug like Avastin probably isn’t a big money-maker for the oncologist, even though it’s very costly.)

The total quackery (by which I don’t mean an oncologist acting too aggressively but cases of complete bunk — I’m talking about the flat-out frauds here, and yes, they do exist) is different. There, the profit goes to the quack directly, and the cheaper they can produce the treatment compared to the more they can charge for it, the higher the profit margin. As they are not constrained by any degree of honesty in their marketing, having already taken the plunge and gone the dishonest route, they have very little incentive to use more expensive treatments.

I don’t really have a problem with people using alternative treatments, as long as they aren’t being misled. It’s the misleading that’s the problem, as others have pointed out. What makes me the angriest is the outright frauds. I’ve heard too many stories of a fraud saying they can cure the cancer if the patient just spends another thousand dollars, and strings the patient along until their savings are exhausted, whereupon they get dumped . . . . That should make you angry too. It should make anyone angry.

@Calli Arcale

I wonder if the quacks have malpractice insurance. Not having it would save a bundle. Their “medicines” have to be cheaper: no clinical studies, no major marketing costs (thanks, Internet), etc.

I’m gonna go with more profit on the quack side.

Medicien Loon:

The “ball-washing in Kenya” was part of a research study on prevention of AIDS in uncircumcised men, by teaching washing and disinfection techniques after sex. I googled “$800 000 Kenya”, and found the information, along with a whole lot of crude comments by your buddies.
A real waste of money, eh? After all, they’re just ignorant darkies, right? Let ’em all die.

Keep showing us what a malignant little shit you are.

Nalini Chilkov is not a doctor.

A British newspaper columnist (John Diamond) was diagnosed with incurable cancer and wrote about it over a period of years, till the end. He said he got a lot of encouraging letters from people who, like him, were getting radiation and chemotherapy which prolonged their lives. He got no such letters from people pushing sCAM.

Joe

Dianne — I wonder if the most profitable specialty (at least for the practicing specialist) is those which focus on elective procedures paid for out of pocket, and targeted primarily at the wealthy. (Not coincidentally, the same market targeted by a lot of quacks.) Cosmetic surgery (not reconstructive) and some fertility medicine comes to mind.

You make a very good point about how oncology isn’t really all that profitable — especially compared to cardiology. It’s no coincidence that hospitals everywhere are adding cardiology wings and trying to position themselves as THE place to go if you have heart problems. GI, meanwhile, has developed so far that there are freestanding clinics which do nothing but GI stuff. I had my first endoscopy with a GI group based out of a local hospital. My second, with the same group, was in a brand-new freestanding facility in the suburbs that did nothing but endoscopies and colonoscopies and some minor GI procedures. They had grown to where they could fund an entire facility with just that.

Callie Arcale says: “However, it is not merely oncologists offering extremely marginal cancer treatments. It’s also quacks. In fact, the quacks have a higher profit margin. You need to be careful to apportion that sort of blame everywhere it is due, and not only with the oncologists.”

Well said.

Calli @76

I wonder if the most profitable specialty (at least for the practicing specialist) is those which focus on elective procedures paid for out of pocket, and targeted primarily at the wealthy. (Not coincidentally, the same market targeted by a lot of quacks.)

This is especially the case for “integrative” MDs in Canada who find the wealthy worried well much more lucrative than practicing SBM/EBM within the public health care system.

I suspect Lucille may have checked up on some of here claims about “Canadian health care system” paying for it and “conventional” treatment being optional and found out things were not as she remembered them. For one thing, health care is a provincial responsibility. The Federal Government provides partial funding through transfer payments and sets basic guidelines through the Canada Health Act. Any decision to fund woo would be at the provincial level.

I call shenanigans, especially since she hasn’t even given enough information to do a Google search. She won’t even tell us what province this was located in.

I’m just having a little chat. Why are you guys so excited?

Because people could die. Excuse us for not being psychopathic.

Lucille:

I’m just having a little chat. Why are you guys so excited?

Because you seem to support lying as a proper way to explain the risks and benefits to medical procedures. First you said “The last place you will hear about a cancer cure is in the doctor’s office, unless they are the smart, open-minded ones.”

And then you don’t seem bothered that Hollie Quinn left out the major medical treatment, surgery, that is the most likely reason for her survival.

And since you claimed something and when asked about it, you have decided to tell us to look for it ourselves.

Lucille:

Do you guys work for pharmaceutical companies, by any chance? How’s the new patent quest going?

Now exactly how is the surgery Hollie Quinn had considered “pharmaceutical”? Why do you seem to support liars?

Oh, and the Pharm Shill Gambit is old, tired and idiotic.

Lucille:

“Because people could die.” Oh, the drama.

Excuse me for finding humor in this, but people die all of the time, including with and because of conventional cancer treatments. I would welcome a new paradigm, since the old one seems very stale and ineffective.

Does that make it okay to cause a person’s death? People do indeed die all the time. Every one of us will die. Many of us will be undergoing medical care at the time, either palliative or a last-ditch attempt to delay the inevitable. But most of us don’t want to die. People looking for alternatives to chemo generally do not want to die. A few, like my grandfather, are content with their fate. Most want to live. Lying to them, for whatever reason, is not okay.

Do you guys work for pharmaceutical companies, by any chance? How’s the new patent quest going?

Ah, the pharma shill gambit…. I do not and never have worked for a pharmaceutical company. I work in embedded computing for primarily avionics platforms. The coolest project I am currently on is for a scientific Earth-observation satellite, though some have involved explody things. Definitely not pharmaceuticals. I have never been involved in any patents, and if I were, I wouldn’t get a whole lot out of them; my company would hold the patent. In my specific function, I greatly doubt I will ever have reason to file for a patent. Would be kinda cool, though. A couple of my relatives have their names on patents, and there’s cool factor there.

Lucille – do you have any clue what happens when breast cancer is not treated with at least surgery?

Lucille:

I am not going to name the cancer support center in Canada because I think everyone here should be able to find it on their own and I don’t want to be a part of rabid knee-jerk attack. The story that led me to “find” it myself did not name it either. There are no patient stories or testimonials on the website of this center.

I did find your website – there is an integrated cancer treatment center in Canada, and it’s in Vancouver. The website does include testimonials (it takes more than one click to find them).

Their healing modalities do include therepeutic touch, Reiki, SHEN (whatever that is), naturopathy, and acupuncture.

What I find most interesting is that Lucille touted how they’re non-profit, yet they charge $450 for their program which “provides you with powerful tools to improve your recovery and survival.”

I see links for donations but no mention of how insurance might pay that $450.

Lucille, if I’m on the wrong site, please provide the right link.

@83 Lucille

Oh, the Pharma Shill gambit. How quaint. I was getting concerned, I haven’t seen it in an internet discussion for two days.
All in one, a tu quoque fallacy (chemo/rad treatment is killing too), a poisoning the well (shills), and a nirvana fallacy (conventional treatment is not perfect). Plus maybe a few more who excaped my attention.

Speaking for myself, I am working in a academic lab on cancer biopsies, and we only have federal grants, not a single “Big pharma” grant. Whatever new hype drug Big Pharma comes with, I won’t get a single kopeck out of it.
And yes, the quest to the next grant is difficult. Thanks for asking. Regulations and stuff to try to ensure that we are doing a good job, you know. Far from perfect, but better than the rules on the marketing of supplements. If one day CAMs quacks have as many regulations as science-based medicine, I will start taking them seriously.

These biopsies I am working on – they are bits coming from people, most of whose, for all I know, are dead now. Each of my samples come from a real person. Someone who obviously was suffering from some nasty illness. It’s not some abstract topic, it’s real, and it’s just next door.
I don’t get overworked over this. But it’s just somethink like, this is a very serious matter, here is my chance to make something out of my life, to make a difference. Maybe I will manage to succeed at helping people. Just a bit.
And when an ignorant know-it-all just like you comes along and spits on my work. And now I’m just thinking, screw the humanity.

“Because people could die.” Oh, the drama.

Yeah, just let people die, it’s not a big deal. We have good reasons to think we could avoid some people a gruesome death – or at least limit the spread of misinformation which could result in more nasty deaths. I have seen horrific pictures of people in terminal stage of one cancer or another. A friend told me of her bed-ridden dad’s death due to throat cancer, and I don’t wish that on anybody. My lab secretaty is undergoing surgery this very day for something which may be uterus carcinoma. Yeah, drama. We are concerned about other people’s life. Why should we care, you ask us?
Do you have any (real) argument which could show us we are wrong on this matter?

Lucille, how dense can you be?

Over and over, people here have told you the reason they find Hollie Quinn’s book upsetting is that it is deceitful and fraudulent. Selling or recommending useless snake oil to people with cancer and telling them to forego effective care is, in a word, despicable.

And yet you continue to churn out statements like those in #91 that appear to be little more than rank ignorance.

No one here denies that:
– surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy can be dangerous for the patient
– cancer cures are not always ‘for ever’ (by which I mean the remaining lifespan of the patient)

However, these treatments, unlike the quackery endorsed by the Quinns, actually work. Even you back-handedly acknowledge this in your attempt to misrepresent the mainline position here by using the term ‘cure’.

@Lucille,
You wrote:

There is a non-profit integrative cancer support center in Canada that works with the patient and doctors to devise a plan that the patient is comfortable with, which may or may not include conventional therapies.

and

There are stories of people who were given one year to leave (sic), no treatment options offered, that have no evidence of disease today.

Are these two statements related and causal, or simply in the same paragraph? Besides the testimonials you mention, is there evidence that the type of treatment this center provides is more effective than conventional therapies – either combined with conventional therapy or instead of it? If so, what are the statistics that show this (ideally showing all three scenarios – conventional therapy only, conventional and therapies provided by this center, and these therapies in lieu of conventional treatment)?
Thanks in advance.

@ Lucille,

Sure, people die of cancer despite conventional therapy. But nearly 60% survive their cancer and that’s a hell of a lot more than the 0% that alternative therapies have to offer.

For your information, some images of untreated breast cancer:
http://www.pathguy.com/~dlaporte/br_ca.htm

I didn’t read Hollie’s book and have no idea what she said about pharmaceuticals. I’m just saying that plenty of people have died of the cure that is so vociferously defended here

Not something anybody denies (though you’re exaggerating a bit). Yes, cancer treatments have side effects which can, in some cases, include death. However, far more people are saved.

to the exclusion of all other possibilities.

Rather an odd thing to say on a blog run by somebody who spends a large part of his time working on such “other possibilities.” Really, the only thing we require is that the “other possibilities” demonstrably work. Those that do, rapidly become mainstream.

“. . .far more people are saved. . .” That is a very unscientific, and even baseless, statement.

Wrong. People die of cancer, but fewer than in the past. I recommend figure 6 for initial perusal. Yeah, heart disease is doing better, but cancer mortality is dropping too, especially for younger people. Figure 7 is interesting too: there were about 650,000 fewer cancer deaths in 1992-2005 than expected based on 1991 cancer mortality data. Hint: It’s not the green tea that’s causing the drop.

Lucille:

What, exactly, was Hollie’s lie? I believe people are bent out of shape because she had surgery. How do they know this? Because she said it.

Further proof you failed to read what Orac wrote. The HuffPo piece left out the surgery bit. Starting with the title of the piece, “One Woman’s Story: Saying No to Conventional Cancer Treatment”, and the title of the book. “You Did What? Saying ‘No’ To Conventional Cancer Treatment.”

She did not say “no” to surgery, which is conventional cancer treatment. That is called lying by omission.

Would you think it acceptable if your children left our important parts of a story?

@Lucille

What, exactly, was Hollie’s lie? I believe people are bent out of shape because she had surgery.

Not quite right. Regarding the HuffPo piece, people are angry that the surgery bit was left out, giving the impression that she eschewed all conventional treatment and that her current condition is due solely to the alt-med stuff she did.

Regarding Hollie herself and her book, people are angry that she is advocating that others forego all conventional treatment, including surgery, in favor of ineffective alt-med nonsense.

If the whole of the story were simply what Hollie chose to do, we’d think she was a bit off, but her body, her choice. Where the problem arises is in her advocacy to others not to seek conventional treatment. She is actively putting other people at risk. If someone is injured as a result of following her advice, then she is responsible, at least in part.

If someone wants to follow Hollie’s advice, they’re an idiot, but that’s their decision. They can do what they want to do. However, it is absolutely reprehensible for her to be giving the advice that she is giving.

@ Lucille 104

“. . .far more people are saved. . .” That is a very unscientific, and even baseless, statement.

Yes, because you know, cancer doesn’t kill. Only chemo does.

You have a full body of articles at Pubmed comparing various therapies for cancer treatment. For a few of these therapies, it has been found that people die faster without the therapy compared to those receiving it. Funny enough, these therapies are the ones in use.
Just last week, Orac wrote a post about the ethics of these studies.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2010/09/balancing_scientific_rigor_versus_patien.php
Because some drugs are so effective at keeping people alive, patients and physicians want the study to be stopped and the drug given to all patients, including the ones in the control arm of the study.
And just to be sure we didn’t miss some long term effect or some confounding factor, there are also studies done after the release of the drug (or other therapy). Regularly, some drug is found not to have as much effect as we would like. Some, not all.
But yeah, it’s unscientific and baseless.

All this talk about rising survival rates seems to contradict recent news stories citing studies that say survival rates have barely budged since the onset of the war on cancer begun in the 1970s.

As they say in wiki, citation needed. Also simply dismissing statistics you don’t like is unconvincing, to use the politest possible term.

There you go. It wasn’t Hollie’s lie, it was the Huffington Post author’s lie (according to you).

It’s still a lie. Splitting hairs like this not helpful.

Why is advocacy a problem? You can choose to act on it however you wish. She is advocating something based on her experience; you may think she draws the wrong conclusions, but who made YOU God?

It’s called evidence. If I accused you of committing murder, I would need evidence to prove what happened beyond a reasonable doubt. I don’t have the “freedom” (a word you sully by using it solely for emotional weight) to have you executed based on a vague feeling. At least, not in a just system.

I am not making any case at all. I just don’t think you are making yours.

Thanks for admitting the truth: That you have no point. We are making our case, you’re just ignoring the evidence.

I suggest you be very careful with your cancer statistics. All this talk about rising survival rates seems to contradict recent news stories citing studies that say survival rates have barely budged since the onset of the war on cancer begun in the 1970s.

Which articles? Don’t ask me to do your work for you.

Lucille @ 110:

There you go. It wasn’t Hollie’s lie, it was the Huffington Post author’s lie (according to you).

First off, you don’t have to take our word for it that the Huffington Post piece was untruthful; you can go look for yourself. Unlike you, Orac has provided links to back up what he says. Secondly, the HuffPo piece is promotional material for the book. It’s true that she didn’t author it, but from what she’s said elsewhere, she doesn’t seem to have any problems with it, and this is why: it is consistent with the message she is conveying.

She has been consistently minimizing the effect of her surgery on her prognosis. In fact, she has gone so far (in her book and other promotional material for the book) as to say that if she had this same cancer again, she would not get surgery.

She is indeed claiming, in her own words, that the alternative medicine was what cured her and that the surgery was unnecessary. This is untrue. She surgery saved her life. She just preferred an alternative course of adjuvant therapy to chemo. But for whatever reason, she wants to paint a picture where you don’t need surgery, and wants to discourage other women with breast cancer from having surgery. That is irresponsible.

She is, of course, perfectly free to keep saying it. Just as we are all perfectly free to express our own opinions about the quality of her advice.

Regarding comment 116 (and similar previous remarks) – comment 95 attributed three distinct “fallacies” to Lucille’s single statement suggesting that the more aggressive orthodox here might be in the pharma business. (That statement was out of line and I deplore it, though I note that it followed slurs on her character that could provoke a person to wish to retaliate.) None of you suggested that this constituted a case of fallacy abuse. Would it be acceptable to suggest that shasta just committed the same laundry list of “fallacies” in making a precisely parallel and equally unsupported statement?

Or is it that personal slanders and prating about the vast inferiority of your opponents can substitute for or support reasoned arguments only if you’re on “the right side”? In this case, you really are on the right side in saying that this ill-informed woman should not be discouraging others from having curative surgery (notwithstanding Orac’s rather confused argument suggesting that refusing chemo was the wrong decision, for which she just might deserve to die, even though the latest evidence says that it was probably the right decision). You don’t make it obvious that you’re the right side, though, when your arguments are as emotional and personal as everyone else’s. Dissidents or questioners are expected to provide Internet hotlinks for every statement or be accused of inventing things from whole cloth; one poster even contemptuously referred to this demand for links as “your homework.” Where are your internet links to support studies that support your case?

I happen to know that plenty of facts exist to support your side; but if this was an issue I knew nothing about, and I came here through a random web search to see two sides namecalling each other, I would probably conclude that the least shrill side was more likely to be correct. If you *really* wish the best for the uneducated masses, you might try to avoid a style of discourse that they will not find convincing. (At least, that’s my opinion; your mileage may vary.)

“Where are your internet links to support studies that support your case?”

Again, I am not making a case. I’m just exploring why people are so incensed about individuals utilizing alternative health modalities and then talking about them. I am amused that I am assumed to be profiting from them just because I am curious why this strikes such a vehement chord.

I’m curious about her. I’m curious about you. Perhaps you think her motivation is money or attention or validation. I’m more curious about you. Why are you so invested in discrediting her? I like reading about health stuff. That is why I am surprised that people are asking me to post links about the alleged failure of the war on cancer, something you should be able to view in 5 seconds without my help, and something I’m surprised people with such passion haven’t already seen.

You keep saying she’s been factually refuted. I am not an expert on her cancer so I will reserve judgment. You talk about choosing treatment by the odds. What if the odds are against surviving by any known means? What if a doctor told you there was no treatment and you had one year to live. That was the story I read about a person who now says he has no evidence of disease and he also had no chemo or radiation or surgery on the secondary tumors. He had had surgery years ago, was told he was clear, and had tumors pop up elsewhere years down the road, hence the grim prognosis. He gave vague information about where he went for help. I found it myself with no problem.

When I hear a story like that, I don’t want to submerge it, I want to hear more. I want to hear how Hollie is doing in ten years, and how others are doing who decided on a similar path.

What, exactly, are you advocating?

Lucille:

Whatever. She didn’t lie. Period. And that is what people keeping coming back to. . .she shouldn’t be allowed to write such a book; if she did write a book, she shouldn’t be able to make any money on it, blah, blah, blah.

You say this right after my comment saying that she has every right to write such a book. We’re not advocating suppression of free speech. Neither is Orac. You’ve been challenged before to back up this accusation, but you have not.

She has the right to say what she has said. You may not consider it a lie, but it’s certainly wrong what she has said. And it deserves a response.

Based on the knee-jerk hysteria I have just witnessed on this blog, if I were ever to be in a position to make treatment decisions regarding cancer, I would find this to be a very unreliable place to get information.

Would you prefer a place where everybody always told you exactly what you wanted to hear, and never spoke up when they knew something wrong was said? Someplace where keeping the peace was more important than people’s lives? Where “respecting people” is confused with “humoring people”? Is that your utopian ideal?

In any case, if you did have cancer, I wouldn’t recommend getting your information from any blog. Talk to a specialist who can discuss your unique situation.

So, why is OUR advocacy a problem?

Because we are not “nice”. Apparently considering lying (and lying by omission is lying) in order to promote advice that is going to cause unnecessary suffering and death to be morally wrong is not “nice”. Caring passionately about the welfare of strangers is not “nice”.

Lucille confuses freedom of speech with freedom from criticism – just like Christianist extremists who cry persecution when they get called on their bigoted bullshit.

@Lucille,
In your first post you stated:

The last place you will hear about a cancer cure is in the doctor’s office, unless they are the smart, open-minded ones.

and

So insecure oncologists who make a living off of extremely marginal cancer progress can huff and puff, but they are getting us nowhere.

You never backed up these statements with data, and they appear to be deliberately provocative (possibly insulting). Based on these and other statements, you seem to believe there is some other, better treatment that doctors either actively suppress or simply ignore.
If you have substantial evidence to support these views, I’m sure many would be interested in seeing it.
Something to realize, though, is that diseases like cancer can follow atypical patterns – so single stories (interesting as they may be) are not proof.

Lucille @ 116:

First of all, for you, the only reliable source of advice on cancer, if you should happen to get it (I hope you don’t, by the way) is your GP and oncologist. Random blogs on the Internet aren’t, which is why I think you’ll find even Orac doesn’t try to give cancer advice (despite being a breast cancer surgeon) to people, either specifically or in general.

Secondly, I really do not understand why you are having so much trouble understanding what is upsetting about Hollie Quinn’s book or the Huffington Post article promoting it.

Thirdly, if Hollie Quinn is claiming that if she could do it all over again, she would forego the surgery that she actually underwent, then she is implying that the surgery that saved her life was of no effect and the ‘treatments’ she took afterwards were what did the trick. That implication is still a lie.

=====
jane @ 119:

shasta’s comment does not appear to be defensible without further evidence (e.g. a link to a sCAM website where someone going by the handle Lucille discusses her practice at the ‘integrative oncology’ centre in Vancouver).

However, with regards to the tone of this blog and of its commentary, I should refer you to the name of the blog and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

@ Lucille

That is why I am surprised that people are asking me to post links about the alleged failure of the war on cancer, something you should be able to view in 5 seconds without my help, and something I’m surprised people with such passion haven’t already seen.

Maybe because a full overview of the “war on cancer”, as you said, with all its complexities, couldn’t be done in a 5-s Google search.
Heck, I had to read more than one hundred articles when I was writing my last scientific paper. And I am a mediocre scientist, I should have read more, and more deeply. Good scientists read 20-page nebulous scientific papers every days.
OK, non-experts don’t need that deep a level of knowledge to make an informed opinion, but they still need more than a few webpages.

However, I did indeed find the following link in 5 seconds. A good start to understand the issues of the war on cancer.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1162

BTW, this was why I called you an ignorant in a previous post. I apologize for this, this was aggressive.
But I still think you need to read more before trumpeting the failure of conventional medicine in the war on cancer.

I want to hear how Hollie is doing in ten years, and how others are doing who decided on a similar path.

You just described the basis for a case study. Except that we need hundreds of people rather than 1 or 2, to avoid confounding factors, like age, lifestyle…
Sorry to rub this in, but you know, like in the articles on Pubmed from which we derived our baseless assumption that conventional therapies saved more than killed cancer patients.

Here is a video you may want to watch, if you want some insight into the “war on cancer” as seen by the American Association for Cancer Research. It was projected at their latest meeting. Definitely self-promotional, but all numbers are accurate. The references are at the end of the movie.

Lucille @ 132:

How does any of that get around the fact that the basis of Hollie Quinn’s book and the article promoting it is a deceit?

I don’t know if Kevin is another science stickler, but his supposition of what the dermatologist will tell you if he thinks you have seborrheic dermatitis represents a very unscientifically-reached ERROR (based on verifiable FACT–by ME) or the dermatologist of whom I am aware is an outlier (not a LIAR, as has been attributed to Hollie Quinn–just to be clear).

I am quite aware of the semantics of survival vs. death rates, and it is hardly reassuring for the cancer patient.

It is quite possible that doctors do not have time with the demands of clinical practice and all to listen to stories, and this may very well be why the only information we get from them is what can be summarized in sound-bite fashion as clinical recommendations.

This has been very fun, in an odd sort of way. I do love stories, and have gained quite useful practical knowledge from them. Perhaps Hollie Quinn’s book WOULD interest me!!

romeo ölmeli filminin konusu kontrol ve Aile Sing ve satış O’Day Isaak klan Amerikan Afrikalı orta bir savaş arasında kendi depoları vardır içinde. çatışmalar ay birkaç sonra, gerginlik söyle Chu oğlu genç escalates ile öldürme Po, genç. Hong Kong cezaevi bir tutuklu olarak, Han Sing kardeşi kaçar onun ölümü o öğrenir, o korumak için yemin vardı. Oakland, aşk düşerse o O’Day kızı yönlendirir kendi Trish için soruşturma

@ Lucille, Jasmine

You really don’t get it, don’t you?

We are not complaining about Quinn publishing her story. As you say, it’s her right (as much as it is our right to criticize it, though).

To resume her story,
1 – she was diagnosed with breast cancer
2 – the main cancer mass was removed by surgery
3 – then she decided to say no to conventional therapy, and looked for and followed an alternative regimen of unproven efficacy.

Could we agree on this part?

Most of us will have nothing to say to this. Specialists in oncology, like Orac, may berate her for having chosen a path which, in their professional opinion, carries higher risks. But as some people say here, her body, her choice.

The part which is infuriating us is this one:

Hollie now says that if she could do it all over again she wouldn’t have had her tumors removed surgically–the only conventional treatment she had

By her own admission, her story has become now
1 – she was diagnosed with breast cancer
2 – then she decided to say no to conventional therapy, and looked for and followed an alternative regimen, which cured her.

Do you see the small difference?

She is denying that the part of the conventional treatment that she did follow, did have any positive effect. The part which is, according to oncologists, the main step in the treatment of breast cancer. Chemo, radiation, hormones are just the second part of conventional treatment.
Even for the layman, this should be obvious. How come someone could have a big lump of cancer cells removed and then say it has no link to her cure?

I am sorry, but this is misleading. I could accept the possibility that one of the alternative treatment she followed did have a anti-metastatic effect, or something (although I wouldn’t bet on acupuncture or other practices which have been showed no better than placebo). If you want, try at your own risks. Who know?
But, even if assuming there is an effect, that she does is still wrong. If she tells people to forgo the surgery, she is changing the initial situation, and whatever effect of her chosen treatment may well be not strong enough to get rid of the whole tumor. And women will die for nothing.

Jasmine, you may not do this, but a lot of people do.

And when we’re talking about people in state of shock or distress about a life-threatening diagnosis, we’re talking about people who can be misled. Remember the first of the “5 stages of grief” is denial. If your doctor’s offering you the option of losing part or all of a breast, and a friend or relative offers you this book, what will you do?

You and I might be sensible and go with the SBM recommendation. Others who are shocked, upset or already ambivalent about hospitals, surgery or doctors in general can be persuaded to “try something else”. And then find that it’s too late for conventional treatment when these alternatives don’t work.

Personally, I’d go the nutrition and supplements route, not to avoid horrible treatments, but to give my poor suffering metabolism the best possible chance of coping better with the various insults from surgery, chemo, radio. (And I’d make damn sure my doc had the chance to advise me which to avoid and which to favour for assisting rather than impeding the effectiveness of the treatments.)

Bacon. . .just telling what the good doc told my own family member. Just illustrating that all the information is not to be found in one place. Got a problem with that?

I don’t have a brand. . .that is YOU.

Bacon. . .just telling what the good doc told my own family member. Just illustrating that all the information is not to be found in one place. Got a problem with that?

If the information contains lies by omission, then yes! You keep demanding open-mindedness, but never stop to open your mind to one possibility: That you might be wrong.

As a healthcare consumer, I must say that the conventional medicine brand suffers as a result of the ridiculous statements of the posters here. I would be tempted to label the brand as unbelievably loutish, but it is important to realize that these are people who gather to commiserate about quackery, and likely see quackery almost everywhere (except in their own capsule).

What “ridiculous” statements are you referring to? I haven’t noticed any except from you…

@Lucille,

I’ve been following your back-and-forth comments with other commenters on this blog for the last few days. Mostly you’ve been talking past each other with very little real communication going on. I think this is because you have a very different idea of what is useful and sufficient information to make a decision from most of the other commenters, at least when it comes to medical and healthcare decisions.

So, I thought it might help if I try to explain it from a slightly different point of view. Please forgive me if this gets a bit pedantic and tends to run on into a full blown lecture.

People have been teaching each other by telling stories and learning from them for thousands, perhaps even millions, of years. It’s how we learned where to find good food and avoid danger. And we still do that. We say things like, “don’t go down to that part of town at night. There’s a lot of crime there.” or “I just ate at a new Joe’s Restaurant and the food was great. You should try it.”

And, for the most part, we get useful information that way. But, there can be problems. Joe’s Restaurant may have great cooks and waiters on Friday and Saturday nights when they are busy and want to make sure they have the best crew to take care of lots of customers. But, if you go in on Monday night, you may get a junior cook who’s still figuring out how to grill a steak without burning it and a new waitress who doesn’t know what half the items on the menu are and you get a terrible meal. Or, the Joe’s in Cincinnati may have a great, experienced crew and always provide good food, so when you go to Toledo you decide to try the Joe’s there. But, they just opened up and have a new crew who haven’t figured out how to work together and you feel like you’ve wandered into a bad episode of a reality tv show.

So, if major consumer test magazine is trying to give you useful advice on which restaurant chain is better, Joe’s or Sue’s, they need to evaluate those restaurant in different locations and at different times to see if there is a consistent difference and which is usually better.

Now for another story. Suppose your friend goes to Joe’s for lunch on Monday and has a triple enchilada plate for lunch, but decides to skip the dessert. Then on the way back to work they stop at a local nutrition store and buy a bottle of Super Nutra Pills and take one with a glass of water when they get back to work. Then, on Tuesday at 11:30 you start to get hungry and ask your friend where you should go for lunch. They tell you “skip the lunch. I took one of these Super Nutra Pills yesterday and I didn’t get hungry all afternoon!” So, you skip the lunch, take the pill and by 2:00 you’re starving but it’s too late to go get lunch. You’re stuck. And, you tell another friend whose desk is next to yours that you’re hungry. And, they ask what you had for lunch and you say “I just had one of these Super Nutra Pills.” They will probably reply that you should have gone out and gotten some food for lunch.

Would you then tell them, “No. Super Nutra Pills are great. My friend told me so. You’re being unbelievably loutish to make such ridiculous statements!” ???

@ Jane

How do you translate Scott’s statement:

Then you take whatever has the best odds (even if they’re quite bad) of helping more than it hurts.

into

you should pursue whatever kind of “treatment” is available, no matter how bad it is

Scott is talking about the benefit/risk ratio. Which means what you should weight the chance of getting a benefit from the treatment against the chance of getting hurt from the treatment and the chance of what will happens without the treatment. Well, it’s how I interpret “helping more than it hurts”.
You don’t have to pursue whatever treatment etc. What you do is decide if a given treatment is worth the risk. And ideally, you decision should be done on facts, not on hearsay.

And I think Scott will agree that, if nothing of much benefit is available, then you have better save your money to prepare for your death, as you said. What Scott said was not to waste your money in unproven treatments:

people should be offered the best scientifically supported medical care, and not defrauded by quacks touting UNsupported treatments.

Side note on spam: the message at 137 appears to be something about a Hong Kong movie, with no connection to this thread or any other topic being discussed here. (I say “appears to” because I know no Turkish, and Google translate is fallible; of course, it may be outputting ungrammatical gibberish because the input is ungrammatical gibberish.)

As a healthcare consumer, I must say that the conventional medicine brand suffers as a result of the ridiculous statements of the posters here.

If you’re a healthcare “consumer” instead of a patient, you’re doing it wrong. Healthcare is not a “consumer experience,” not least of which because medicine is so complex that patients can’t possibly garner enough information without expert help to make adequately informed decisions about their health — it is not really possible for a lay person to diagnose or treat themselves in most cases (anybody who says otherwise has a bridge to sell you), and because it’s not like you can exactly say “Well, I think I’ll just forgo the surgery to remove my cancerous brain tumour and choose to have a tummy tuck instead.” (Well, I suppose you technically could, but nobody in their right mind would.) It’s not like deciding whether you’re going to pick the cashmere blazer or the Italian leather boots, or stick with the wardrobe you’ve still got.

Further, “conventional medicine” sure as hell does not have a “brand.” Christ. What a transparent piece of rhetorical knucklebones, not to mention the most weak-sauce tone trolling I’ve heard in a while. If you’re so concerned about the impact on the “brand” of Conventional Medicine™, please, contact Conventional Medicine™’s brand manager and PR staff; I’ll wait, albeit without holding my breath.

This is the problem with discussing healthcare with Americans; some of you all are so wrapped up with your for-profit healthcare paradigm that you forget that healthcare isn’t really like normal market-based transactions. I don’t have to worry about that, so I suspect it’s much easier for me to see how different going to the doctor is to going to the mall.

What a paroxysm of content and comments this created and sadly much of it is rooted in an incredibly negative paradigm – fear. We should not lose sight of the fact that the treatment of Cancer by “traditional” medical methods such as chemotherapy and radiation causes suffering in its own right. It is no more irresponsible for Hollie and Patrick Quinn to have created this book than someone else creating a book stating they were cured by chemotherapy. They are telling their story, sharing their experiences, writing about what happened to them, there is nothing to be afraid of. If what they are saying is so wrong and dangerous then no-one will read the the book and if they did would absolutely not be influenced by it. I am astounded at the amount of vitriol here mounted against this book; as I said so much fear mongering.

One last point I have, Cancer is exacerbated by the way of life we have evolved or perhaps it is devolved here in the USA, which is spreading across the globe; sadly. Surrounding ourselves with carcinogens and consuming large amounts of processed food and GMO laced products. We absolutely need to look at the way of eating and drinking Hollie and Patrick Quinn and family evolved or we will extend our suffering and bring Children into our world who will have shorter life expectancies that we have.

Sadly, people like 158 above still bleat nonsense.
Unable to tell the difference between evidence-based medicine and random quackery and damning unspecified “carcinogens” and “GMO Food” for shortening a lifespan that is actually about 2 times what it was in 1900. Extolling the virtues of “natural life” using a machine made of materials that include those so-called carcinogens. probably while munching on an “Organic” Cavendish banana.
Dude, you seriously gotta buy me a new Irony meter.

jane and Mike Brunt, please answer honestly:

Do you think Ms. Quinn would be doing as well without the surgery she had?

Chris@162 – Your comment distills mostly wordier abusive rhetoric down nicely. Why, I have already answered your question; I said explicitly that this woman’s surgery was curative, and that she was wrong to discourage others from having curative surgery, and that indeed if I were in her shoes I would choose a more extensive surgery, a simple mastectomy (as preferable to chemo brain).

For those who wish to learn the art of argument by personal attack, note the character insult implied by the demand that I answer the question “honestly,” and the implied premise that I either had not addressed the issue before or had dishonestly denied the value of surgery. Since it’s hard to remember exactly who said what upthread, this sort of “question” is really a sly way of planting false opinions of a debater’s views in the audience’s mind. All the more effective for being terse and avoiding direct namecalling with nouns. Quite skillful really – props to you!

realinterrobang@156 – If you’re a patient and not a consumer, I would say, you’re doing it wrong. You can’t learn enough off PubMed and WebMD in a couple of months to practice medicine, no. But you can certainly learn what all the options are and what expected benefits, harms, and costs are associated with each, and you can think about how those jibe with your personal values, which may not be identical to your MD’s values. The way some people snarl about “University of Google,” I wonder how they buy a car. Reading a couple of books by Consumer Reports giving the reported “outcomes” for various aspects of each vehicle will not make you an auto expert, but it will do you a lot better than going in and doing whatever your “expert” auto salesman says to do. If he sells Hondas, he’ll tell you Honda is best for everyone; if he sells Fords, ditto. And few of them will ever admit that some people might be better off with a bicycle.

Great point – if modern life was so hazardous to our health, why do life expectancies keep going up?

Please feel free to move off the grid & refuse all modern conveniences (including modern health care) and see how long a “natural” life is.

@162

Why cannot we rejoice in the fact that she is still alive, has another child and is simply writing about that experience. The Quinn’s have no ulterior motives in all of this.

Why should we “rejoice” at the fact that she has been spreading dangerous information that will eventually cause the premature death of other women if they follow her daft advice. As to ulterior motives – I assume she makes money from the sale of her book. Also, I am sure she has the need to convince herself that she was smart rather than lucky.

Further, if you think removing the cancerous tissue did not have any effect on your chances of survival, you are completely ignorant. By the way, humans have been genetically modifying there food for thousands of years and processing it for tens of thousands of years.

Mike Brunt:

2 (Chris) yes I do believe she would be doing so well without the surgery but in reality none of us can prove that, with certainty, that she would be doing better or worse, we can say what we think or believe.

Actually we do know how well she would be doing, not very. There are records of many women who have forgone surgery from the time when breast cancer was first recognized centuries ago. The outcome is not good by at least two to one.

Her chances of survival with surgery was 70%, the outcome without surgery is much less.

Some literature includes:

Ann Surg. 2005 Aug;242(2):276-80.
Patients’ refusal of surgery strongly impairs breast cancer survival.
Verkooijen HM, Fioretta GM, Rapiti E, Bonnefoi H, Vlastos G, Kurtz J, Schaefer P, Sappino AP, Schubert H, Bouchardy C.
Geneva Cancer Registry, Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine, Geneva University, Switzerland.

After accounting for other prognostic factors including tumor characteristics and stage, women who refused surgery had a 2.1-fold (95% confidence interval, 1.5-3.1) increased risk to die of breast cancer compared with operated women.

Eur J Epidemiol. 2003;18(8):817-22.
Use of CAM results in delay in seeking medical advice for breast cancer.
Malik IA, Gopalan S.

CAM use was associated with delay in seeking medical advice (OR: 5.6; 95% CI: 2.3, 13.3) and presentation at an advanced stage of disease (OR: 2.2; 95% CI: 1.01, 4.6). Patients who delayed seeking medical advice more often had positive axillary nodes and stage III/IV disease. Breast cancer patients in Pakistan frequently (53%) delay seeking medical advice. Antecedent practice of CAM is widespread and a common underlying reason. The delay results in significant worsening of the disease process.

Public Health Rep. 1987 Jul-Aug;102(4 Suppl):97-9.
Women and breast cancer.
Lippman ME.
Medical Breast Cancer Section, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

One in every 12 women will develop breast cancer; the incidence increases with age, dietary fat intake, caloric intake, height, and weight. The 10-year survival rate of breast cancer patients who refuse therapy is virtually zero.

Militant Agnostic @165:

“The fact that you think your Google education makes you a better expert on chemotherapy than a surgeon/scientist like Orac is very telling about your arrogance.”

Amazing – right after I called Chris out for his straw man, you claim as “fact” that I think the opposite of what I suggested in my message. The weird thing about this choice is that your message was immediately below mine (@164) so anyone can see that you are lying. For those who are interested in collecting Fallacies, your message includes a prime Straw Man Fallacy, plus an ad hominem fallacy, a tu quoque fallacy (i.e., you suggest that we should not be concerned about our doctors’ having economic interests or philosophical biases because CAM providers have such interests and biases), and possibly a begging the question fallacy (because you assume as “fact,” therefore as a premise, the slurs that you ought to be providing evidence for if your desire is for them to be believed by third parties). That says to me that it’s time to bow out again – four fallacies in one message is just too much!

For the public, though, the Dunning-Kruger effect refers specifically to someone who thinks he is skilled at something though he is not. If someone were to think that reading a few papers on PubMed gave him enough knowledge that he could practice oncology, he would indeed be displaying this effect. However, it is not applicable, as Militant Agnostic implies, to someone who just does not have adequate trust for emdees. If it’s to be preserved as a useful concept, it cannot devolve into a six-syllable synonym for “stupid [IMO].”

I also keep wanting to figure out what formal Fallacies might be involved in the often cherished though ridiculous belief that because our overall lifespans are longer than in the past, every aspect of our lives must be as healthy as it was in the past or more so, and there is no area of life in which we might possibly benefit from conditions a little closer to those in which we evolved. Fallacy of division? Chronological snobbery? Perhaps one of the super-rational denizens of this blog can answer this question for me.

@Chris

Jane is saying that current lifespans are longer than lifespans in the past.

In general, Jane is agreeing with much of what we’re all saying: the surgery was what saved Hollie a lot of pain, agony and, possibly, death. What I don’t get is her argumentative tone. It seems like she wants to fight with us and is purposefully looking for buttons to press. And a few people are taking the bait.

Thanks, Todd. I am having trouble understanding jane, which is why I have mostly been avoiding her. I most likely missed her response because I did not ask her at first, and was looking for a response from Lucille. So she agrees with the science. End of discussion with jane.

For a different take on writing a book about your experience surviving breast cancer, has anyone read Geralyn Lucas’ book, Why I Wore Lipstick To My Mastectomy?

I was having lunch at a fast food chain today which runs CNN on a wall monitor with subtitles, no sound and they were interviewing her about a gene test she had done on her daughter, Skye. I think this is for one of the BRCA mutations. Fortunately, the test came back negative.

Evidently, she was the featured speaker last Sarurday at Mather Hospital on Long Island.

http://www.northshoreoflongisland.com/Articles-i-2010-09-30-85499.112114-sub_Author_diagnosed_at_27_with_breast_cancer.html

She may be in the news a bit for the next couple weeks because a movie based on her book is coming out on Lifetime.

I found this article at the Mayo Clinic website on the BRCA gene test.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/brca-gene-test/MY00322

A search on CNN came back negative, so any article they post on this interview hasn’t shown up yet.

There is a good deal of vociferous tone here which is curious to me; I will make mention of one piece of incorrect information @168

“By the way, humans have been genetically modifying there food for thousands of years” this is not correct. The modification of organisms as is referred to by the acronym “GMO” refers to the invasive as follows…

1. The scientist finds and isolates the gene with the desired genetic characteristics. This process is called mapping.
2. The scientist makes several copies of the isolated gene. The copying process is called PCR.
3. The scientist transfers the desired genes to the plant’s own genes (using a piece of plant tissue). When the scientist wishes to insert the desired genes into the plant – there are 3 options. He or she can use a ‘gene canon’, a soil bacteria or a material called protoplast. The methods of gene insertion are called ‘transformation’.
4. The scientist creates a new plant from the genetically modified plant tissue.
5. The scientist checks that the inserted genes function as expected.
6. The scientist also checks that the inserted gene appears in the plant’s progeny, that is – in the seeds.
http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/ff_tool.htm

Humans have certainly not been doing this for 1,000’s of years. As many of those in this thread are well versed in progressive and methodological scientific approaches, you will find little or no testing has occurred in the evolution of GMO’s.

GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. What you described is GEO, Genetically Engineered Organism. This is what was pounded into us at a talk by the botanist whose lab was torched. Since he is now being accused of using Genetic Engineering, he has switched to it.

One of my favorite sources on how wild plant species were modified into the modern food crops like corn, wheat and rice is the Scientific American Library book The Emergence of Agriculture by Bruce D Smith.

It talks about using genetic comparison and archaeological data to identify the wild species these plants were derived from.

http://isbndb.com/d/book/the_emergence_of_agriculture.html

I also enjoyed listening to a recent Skeptically Speaking podcast in which

University of Florida researcher Kevin Folta discusses what an expert in plant genomics thinks about the claims and controversy surrounding genetically modified foods.

http://www.skepticallyspeaking.com/episodes/71-genetically-modified-foods

It also has some good music from Monty Harper and the “Songs From the Science Frontier” project.

Composer99, thank you! People ranting about how dangerous genetically modified foods are is one of my biggest pet peeves. Do these people think that corn just sprang up overnight with that huge ridiculous seed head? That cows ran right from the wild into a milking barn?

Not much to say in an on-topic vein that hasn’t already been said. More magical thinking from HuffPo, quelle suprise.

Funny, the car salesman vs MD comparison.

You understand, of course, that physicians are not permitted to dispense medication for a fee. What about naturopaths?

Who, precisely, is in this for the dosh?

This reminds me: Didn’t Suzanne Somers also claim to have foregone conventional (aka real) cancer treatment in favor of the brand of woo she’s currently hawking?

Why, yes, yes she did. Except that she actually had valley fever, which attacks people with compromised immune systems — and considering the sixtysomething Somers gobbles steroids the way most folks eat candy, her immune system was and is almost certainly compromised.

Meanwhile, here’s what happens to someone who, unlike Somers and Quinn, really did reject conventional cancer treatment: An early, painful, preventable death.

So, of our sample of three cancer patients who claim to be better at fighting cancer than somebody like Orac, we find that one really didn’t have the disease, another was lying when she said she wasn’t getting conventional treatment, and the one who actually did have cancer and did refuse to treat it using conventional medicine died a hideous death as cancer was allowed to riddle her body.

I believe there’s another example out there in the Respectful Insolence files of a woman whose cancer may well have been dealt with during (and by) the biopsy, as it was caught at a very small, very early stage, but I can’t remember who that person was. But again, the biopsy counts as conventional medical treatment, and that, rather than the subsequent woo, is what saved her.