Somebody who’s less scrupulous than me needs to claim they have a wonderful new alternative cancer treatment that’s all natural, then when patients attend, they’re just given standard chemo. Patient is (hopefully) cured, word spreads, then all the people hoping for a woo treatment will line up to get this miraculous, alternative cure 🤣
Ok, seeing you said that you don’t discourage chemo, this is not directed at you specifically, but I have to say this as it really annoys me when people make off-the-cuff claims about things like this! It’s really irresponsible… Yes, chemotherapy obviously involves significant side effects, but the actual death rate caused by chemo in curative cases is really low (at between 1% and 3%) and you can have a read of this study to see for yourself. Also, this study is from 2006, so rates are obviously much lower now too! When patients do pass away during treatment, it’s almost always because of the progression of their advanced disease rather than the medication itself.
IMO, saying chemo kills cancer patients is almost the same as saying CPR kills heart attack victims, because they both have terrible side effects (broken ribs etc) and guess what? About 90% of out-of-hospital CPR recipients die! So do you think people would prefer somebody to not try CPR on them if they needed it, or would they prefer somebody to wave some crystals over them while everyone prays? Nobody blames CPR for killing patients, do they? No, they blame a heart attack of whatever, so what’s the difference besides speed?
Flat out, yes. They would have died LATER anyway, from different reasons. But yes you can die of chemo. It's nasty, Nast stuff.
Like "we kept one toilet specifically for mom because she was on some seriously heavy stuff and what came out of her basically wrecked the toilet it was so chemical" levels of nasty.
I’m so sorry if you’re recounting a personal experience, because that sounds terrible 😞. Thanks for adding that and I absolutely agree. I wasn’t debating that aspect - just the aspect of chemo ‘killing’ people, because the person I was replying to made it sound like they would have lived otherwise, which is not the case.
Unfortunately, there’s soooo much disinfo out there these days that discourage people from seeking ANY medical-led treatment. Obviously, it’s completely up to the individual, but real people are dying from totally preventable cancers because they think they have a chance of beating it with woo. Think of Steve Jobs for instance. He had a cancer that had a crazy-high survival rate (can’t remember off the top of my head, but it was like 94% chance of survival) if treated with chemo, but instead, he chose the woo and died. That was my point and that’s what I’m trying to articulate to people. Thanks ☺️
Ah, yeah good clarification. Honestly if you could get rid of cancer with idk, a hail Mary and peanut butter people wouldn't have put millions into research on how to remove all sorts of different ones.. But thst takes thinking a few steps further. Honestly a lot of people jsut can't.
The idea with medical treatment is you look at your odds with treatment vs odds without and choose based on the risk analysis. Yes, a lot of people die from chemo. If they did not get chemo, about all of them would die. When your odds of dying are 100%, you’ll take 50% odds of dying even if a big chunk of that 50% is actually dying from the treatment itself. It’s silly to say cancer treatment has no drawbacks.
Yes, you’re right about almost everything but no, ‘a lot of people’ do not die from chemo. Like I just said to the person we’re all replying to, only about 1% to 3% of patients in care die during chemo, compared to ~90% who die from CPR (also a lifesaving treatment that almost nobody would refuse). The danger is in people claiming chemo is dangerous etc, because when people see those claims and believe it, we end up with the crap treatments in the OP! Also, I NEVER said chemo has no drawbacks! Regardless, I agree with you besides those points ✌🏻
I specifically talked about cases where the person will 100% die without treatment. If someone has a more indolent cancer, treatment-related mortality is less tolerable. No one is going to accept 5% treatment related mortality for prostate cancer. But if someone has an aggressive cancer, you're more likely to go "well 1 in 20 death rate is really bad but better than 20 in 20".
This paper looks at induction chemotherapy for people with AML. In some treatment regimens they looked in older adults, about 1 in 4 died from the treatment. There are some chemotherapy regimens that just can't be given to older adults because the risk of death is too high. In all the leukemias trying to figure out the best way to kill the cancer with the minimal toxicity to the patient is an ongoing effort. Induction therapy is intense and when people are most likely to have serious health problems caused by the chemotherapy regimen, but patients in remission on consolidation therapy also have a risk of dying from the treatment (normally from infection because their immune system got nuked).
Then leaving chemotherapy you could do allogeneic stem cell transplant. There the risk of death is ~5-10% from the treatment early on. People later can die from complications like infection before the immune system has reconstructed or from cancers caused by the regimen used to wipe out the bone marrow initially.
People should always discuss with their doctor the relative risk of treatment A vs treatment B vs not treating. In some cases all options can be so bad patients may opt for palliative care.
maybe this is a dumb question, but that seems kind of contradictory. wouldn't the faster replicating cells be able to handle being killed mote than the slower replicating ones?
A cancer patient has fast replicating cells of 2 types:
A) Normal stomach, hair follicals, etc.
B) Cancer cells.
Both quickly replicate but between the 2 types, the cancer cells mutate way faster. Those mutations let it live through future chemo. The other fast replicating cells that are healthy don’t mutate. So, cancer outlives and outgrows them.
This sort of thing is unfortunately a recurring feature of cancer care.
People facing terminal or very advanced cancers are often willing to try almost anything, especially when conventional treatments have been exhausted. That makes them particularly vulnerable to practitioners offering treatments that sound scientific but have no credible evidence behind them.
Chlorine dioxide is essentially an industrial bleaching and disinfecting agent. It is a strong oxidising chemical. The problem with claims that it selectively kills cancer cells is that chemistry does not work that way.
Chlorine dioxide is not intelligent. It cannot distinguish between a cancer cell and a healthy cell. It simply reacts with biological molecules wherever it encounters them.
The idea of enclosing someone in a plastic bag and exposing their skin to chlorine dioxide vapour is especially concerning because skin is not an impermeable barrier. Chemicals can be absorbed through it, and chlorine dioxide itself is a respiratory irritant.
Even the practitioner reportedly acknowledging that the treatment is dangerous should set alarm bells ringing.
One of the hallmarks of pseudoscientific cancer treatments is the claim that mainstream medicine has overlooked a simple solution. Real cancer therapies are judged by whether they improve survival, tumour control, quality of life, or some combination of those outcomes in properly conducted clinical trials.
If a treatment cannot demonstrate those benefits under controlled conditions, it remains an unproven hypothesis regardless of how compelling the story sounds.
The particularly sad part is that these approaches often target people who have the least time, the fewest options, and the greatest motivation to believe.
That does not make the patients gullible. It makes them human. The responsibility lies with those selling false hope wrapped in scientific-sounding language.
The Institute of Medicine released a statement in the early 2000s saying there's no such thing as alternative medicine. There are just treatments that have been tested and ones that haven't been tested.
Thanks for this truth. They are vulnerable, have the greatest motivation, and are willing to part with every last dime of wealth they have. It is sad. I must remember these things as I and my loved ones age.
Yes I agree with you and additionally, recent policy proposals from the Trump administration would increase the role of political appointees in research funding and grant approval decisions, reducing the influence of peer review as the principal mechanism by which scientific projects are assessed.
The controversy is not that scientific papers would no longer undergo peer review, but rather that peer-reviewed evaluations may no longer be the primary determinant of which research projects ultimately receive government funding. Critics argue that this risks political considerations carrying greater weight than scientific merit.
As a cancer survivor who went through conventional treatment, I hate these people with the fury of a thousand suns. How fucking dare they. Just going through life thinking "Today I'll scam some people going through the worst thing in their life, take their money, and kill them faster."
I mean, something doesn't need to be intelligent for it to be selective. Quite some processes in chemistry require selectiveness in one shape or another afaik while no single chemical is intelligent on it's own.
I'm just being pedantic for no real reason though, I otherwise agree with 100% of your comment.
I also agree 100% with these comments but would also like to add that years and years of erroneous anti drug campaigning has tended to gift inanimate chemical molecules with ethical and quasi-intelligence.
IE: recreational drugs are evil and certain ones jump into your brain and jump around like an aggravated ADHD patient lose in a China shop with a hammer. When in effect they are usually just a salt that when used in low to clinical to active dose levels are as safe if not safer than any other medication.
This mentality however is easily used and manipulated on desperate people or people who would just rather outsource their medical thinking wholesale to others. When an unscrupulous “doctor” can get in on this then pretty well any snake oil they feel like selling will be sold. So long as they can use wording that sounds convincing or pull up bad science findings which are also becoming easier and easier to have on hand in the age of AI.
An aggravated ADHD patient loose in a china shop with a hammer would very quickly get distracted by some detail in some piece of china that seemed interesting and absent mindedly put down the hammer only to be frustrated hours later at having lost the hammer and being thus unable to place the nail in the wall in order to hang the plate that was impulsively purchased in the china shop.
100% what shits me no end when pharmaceutical companies tout and legally advertise “targeted” tablets and the like.
Ie:the numerous types of ibuprofen tablets they used to sell as “back pain”, “period pain” or “general targeted relief” pills. While one can’t expect everyone to have a massive grasp of chemistry and biotechnology, things like this are pretty easily seen as the scam they are and also how they can lead to inadvertent overdoses.
There’s a fair criticism in your comment, but it applies more to marketing than to pharmacology.
Those “targeted pain relief” ibuprofen products were often chemically identical to ordinary ibuprofen. Once the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream, it circulates throughout the body. The tablet does not somehow navigate specifically to your lower back, uterus, knee, or head.
In that sense, the marketing language can be misleading.
The concern about inadvertent overdose is also legitimate. If someone has a headache and period pain simultaneously, they might mistakenly think that “period pain ibuprofen” and “headache ibuprofen” are different medicines and take both, when in reality they contain the same active ingredient.
Regulators have criticised this sort of branding in the past for exactly that reason.
So I would agree with you regarding many over-the-counter pain products. “Targeted relief” on the box often means “the same ibuprofen in different packaging.”
That scepticism should not necessarily be extended to all uses of the word “targeted” in medicine, however. In fields such as oncology and immunology, the term often refers to drugs designed to interact with specific molecular targets that are unusually abundant or biologically important in particular diseases. Such treatments are rarely perfectly selective, but they are operating on a genuine biological principle rather than the imagination of a marketing department.
I moderate r/chronicpain and the people at the end of their rope willing to try anything is a problem there too. We constantly get people with their "methods" that claim to cure chronic pain. It is part of being human to want to end suffering and pain, but carpetbaggers like that will absolutely take advantage of the most vulnerable to make a buck. We have to ban these types almost daily. Makes me real mad.
I can’t imagine moderating a sub like that. It must be emotionally exhausting watching vulnerable people get targeted by every new miracle cure and snake-oil salesman that comes along. The desire to end suffering is one of the most human instincts there is, which makes exploiting it particularly ugly. From a human perspective, thank you for being there for those people. I suspect many of them are better off than they’ll ever know because someone was willing to call out the nonsense.
Someone has to do it, and I have the mental fortitude to do it for now. I have finally found another mod who is perfect for this community to help me out. The problem is I go through mods pretty quickly because the topic is depressing and it involves a lot of putting yourself in the user's shoes.
I’m just wondering what the structure of Modding is? How many hours are you actively Modding for, and what do you do when you are Modding, if you don’t mind answering?
I’m sorry, your reply is lost in the odd way Reddit organises the reply structure. I am quite interested in perhaps modding a sub, so I would be grateful for your insight. If you felt like it you are welcome to message me.
Dosent help when the govt and others list anything that works as evil and almost impossible to get.
And when you do get it you’re made to feel like a scum junkie.
Oh no, the medication that works has a side effect of making me feel really good as well. Therefore in the eyes of many that’s in and of itself is a reason as to why it’s bad.
Well cancer cells have way higher amounts of molecules that react strongly to oxidation so they would they before normal cells. However it is basically just chemo and not technically selective
You are touching on a real biological concept, but the reasoning is incomplete.
Many cancer cells do exist under higher levels of oxidative stress than normal cells. Their metabolism is often abnormal, they grow rapidly, and they generate more reactive oxygen species.
Because they are already operating closer to their limits, researchers have long been interested in whether increasing oxidative stress further might preferentially damage cancer cells.
The problem is that this does not automatically make any oxidising chemical a useful cancer treatment. Chlorine dioxide is not selective. It does not recognise cancer cells or spare healthy ones. It simply reacts with biological molecules wherever it encounters them.
A useful analogy is that a cancer cell may be like a car engine that is already running hot, while a healthy cell is an engine operating at a normal temperature. Adding more heat might indeed cause the overheated engine to fail first.
However, if your method of adding heat is to set the entire garage on fire, you have not developed a targeted repair strategy. You have simply created a more general hazard that affects everything inside the garage.
That is the key distinction. The challenge in oncology is not finding things that can kill cancer cells. Bleach, radiation, fire and a hammer can all kill cancer cells.
The challenge is finding treatments that kill more cancer cells than healthy cells while leaving the patient alive and better off afterwards.
That is why claims based solely on the fact that cancer cells are more vulnerable to oxidation are not, by themselves, evidence that a treatment is effective or safe.
Well, many thanks. I have a couple of science degrees, one of which is chemistry so I understand the underlying framework of how these systems function.
Many years a friend of mine had pancreatic cancer. It was advanced when it was diagnosed so there was no real treatment. He decided to cash in his savings and went to a clinic in Tijuana. A month or so later, he returned, claiming he was cured. He had this little box he called his "cancer zapper" which he was told to hold on his belly to keep it from coming back. Sooo...he died a month or so later. We were going through his things when we found the ”zapper". We opened it up- it was a battery, a switch, and a little thing that vibrated when you pressed the switch. No telling how much this worthless device cost him.
I hope there is a low place in hell for people who profit on other's illnesses.....
Because people psychologically represent cancer and disease in general as dirty/contaminated, and so the idea of using something that disinfects/purifies/removes stains resonates strongly.
And a few in Florida who combined religion and bleach:
https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/doj-press-releases-involving-fda-oci/leader-genesis-ii-church-health-and-healing-who-sold-toxic-bleach-fake-miracle-cure-covid-19-and
And he'll definitely have a list of people that you can totally check into their medical records to confirm these miracle treatments!!
Oh... wait... I'm sorry... They've all moved to Canada. His Canadian girlfriend convinced them that the uncontactable Yukon is the best place on Earth for cancer survivors!!
I work in industrial level pest control and we get a few crazy people a year trying to order Chlorine Dioxide for personal “medical” use. They cannot be dissuaded from their desire to purchase CD, only discouraged through business document requirements.
Random_user_of_doom | a day ago
Cancer cells die when the patient dies, so...
Suspicious-Whippet | a day ago
Oncologists hate this one simple trick.
mygabber | a day ago
Haha
knowledgeable_diablo | a day ago
“Congratulations! We killed the cancer. Sadly the patient died a horrible painful death as well, but hey it can’t all be good news.”
ForagedFoodie | 22 hours ago
When your patients all die, there's no one left to sue you!
Jazztify | a day ago
Yeah, in the fight against cancer, it often ends in a tie.
ACorania | a day ago
I mean we laugh but that is kind of what chemo is. The chemicals are going to kill the fastest replicating cells first but you kept taking them ...
Since cancer is rapidly replicating it, hopefully, dies before the rest of you. Of course, so is the lining of your stomach, hair follicles, etc.
ForensicMum | a day ago
Somebody who’s less scrupulous than me needs to claim they have a wonderful new alternative cancer treatment that’s all natural, then when patients attend, they’re just given standard chemo. Patient is (hopefully) cured, word spreads, then all the people hoping for a woo treatment will line up to get this miraculous, alternative cure 🤣
rubberloves | a day ago
chemo ikills a lot of people
Boring_and_sons | 18 hours ago
I believe the term used is "the patient failed the treatment."
ForensicMum | a day ago
No, cancer kills a lot of people and chemo doesn’t work on some!
rubberloves | a day ago
No, chemo kills people, too. Shitty situation all around, huh?
ForensicMum | a day ago
Explain how? You’re saying that there are cancer patients who got chemo and died, that would have lived if they didn’t receive the chemo?
rubberloves | a day ago
chemo is poison, it kills people sometimes before the cancer does. It's just a fact.
I'm not saying people shouldn't treat cancer or take chemo treatment.
But chemo is a poison - that's just what it is and what it does.
Big_Cryptographer_16 | a day ago
Chemo can also make life so miserable that patients want to (and may) kills themselves too. Indirect killing
ForensicMum | a day ago
So does cancer
ForensicMum | a day ago
Ok, seeing you said that you don’t discourage chemo, this is not directed at you specifically, but I have to say this as it really annoys me when people make off-the-cuff claims about things like this! It’s really irresponsible… Yes, chemotherapy obviously involves significant side effects, but the actual death rate caused by chemo in curative cases is really low (at between 1% and 3%) and you can have a read of this study to see for yourself. Also, this study is from 2006, so rates are obviously much lower now too! When patients do pass away during treatment, it’s almost always because of the progression of their advanced disease rather than the medication itself.
IMO, saying chemo kills cancer patients is almost the same as saying CPR kills heart attack victims, because they both have terrible side effects (broken ribs etc) and guess what? About 90% of out-of-hospital CPR recipients die! So do you think people would prefer somebody to not try CPR on them if they needed it, or would they prefer somebody to wave some crystals over them while everyone prays? Nobody blames CPR for killing patients, do they? No, they blame a heart attack of whatever, so what’s the difference besides speed?
diablosinmusica | 23 hours ago
CPR does kill people. They even tell you that in CPR class.
Nobody is suggesting that people shouldn't seek medical treatment.
Sometimes people are looking for offense where there is none.
woutersikkema | a day ago
Flat out, yes. They would have died LATER anyway, from different reasons. But yes you can die of chemo. It's nasty, Nast stuff. Like "we kept one toilet specifically for mom because she was on some seriously heavy stuff and what came out of her basically wrecked the toilet it was so chemical" levels of nasty.
ForensicMum | a day ago
I’m so sorry if you’re recounting a personal experience, because that sounds terrible 😞. Thanks for adding that and I absolutely agree. I wasn’t debating that aspect - just the aspect of chemo ‘killing’ people, because the person I was replying to made it sound like they would have lived otherwise, which is not the case.
Unfortunately, there’s soooo much disinfo out there these days that discourage people from seeking ANY medical-led treatment. Obviously, it’s completely up to the individual, but real people are dying from totally preventable cancers because they think they have a chance of beating it with woo. Think of Steve Jobs for instance. He had a cancer that had a crazy-high survival rate (can’t remember off the top of my head, but it was like 94% chance of survival) if treated with chemo, but instead, he chose the woo and died. That was my point and that’s what I’m trying to articulate to people. Thanks ☺️
woutersikkema | a day ago
Ah, yeah good clarification. Honestly if you could get rid of cancer with idk, a hail Mary and peanut butter people wouldn't have put millions into research on how to remove all sorts of different ones.. But thst takes thinking a few steps further. Honestly a lot of people jsut can't.
nyet-marionetka | a day ago
The idea with medical treatment is you look at your odds with treatment vs odds without and choose based on the risk analysis. Yes, a lot of people die from chemo. If they did not get chemo, about all of them would die. When your odds of dying are 100%, you’ll take 50% odds of dying even if a big chunk of that 50% is actually dying from the treatment itself. It’s silly to say cancer treatment has no drawbacks.
ForensicMum | a day ago
Yes, you’re right about almost everything but no, ‘a lot of people’ do not die from chemo. Like I just said to the person we’re all replying to, only about 1% to 3% of patients in care die during chemo, compared to ~90% who die from CPR (also a lifesaving treatment that almost nobody would refuse). The danger is in people claiming chemo is dangerous etc, because when people see those claims and believe it, we end up with the crap treatments in the OP! Also, I NEVER said chemo has no drawbacks! Regardless, I agree with you besides those points ✌🏻
nyet-marionetka | a day ago
I specifically talked about cases where the person will 100% die without treatment. If someone has a more indolent cancer, treatment-related mortality is less tolerable. No one is going to accept 5% treatment related mortality for prostate cancer. But if someone has an aggressive cancer, you're more likely to go "well 1 in 20 death rate is really bad but better than 20 in 20".
This paper looks at induction chemotherapy for people with AML. In some treatment regimens they looked in older adults, about 1 in 4 died from the treatment. There are some chemotherapy regimens that just can't be given to older adults because the risk of death is too high. In all the leukemias trying to figure out the best way to kill the cancer with the minimal toxicity to the patient is an ongoing effort. Induction therapy is intense and when people are most likely to have serious health problems caused by the chemotherapy regimen, but patients in remission on consolidation therapy also have a risk of dying from the treatment (normally from infection because their immune system got nuked).
Then leaving chemotherapy you could do allogeneic stem cell transplant. There the risk of death is ~5-10% from the treatment early on. People later can die from complications like infection before the immune system has reconstructed or from cancers caused by the regimen used to wipe out the bone marrow initially.
People should always discuss with their doctor the relative risk of treatment A vs treatment B vs not treating. In some cases all options can be so bad patients may opt for palliative care.
Ntroepy | a day ago
Thank you for aggressively correcting this misinformation.
pingo5 | a day ago
maybe this is a dumb question, but that seems kind of contradictory. wouldn't the faster replicating cells be able to handle being killed mote than the slower replicating ones?
redditcat78 | an hour ago
Not dumb at all.
My limited understanding is this:
A cancer patient has fast replicating cells of 2 types: A) Normal stomach, hair follicals, etc. B) Cancer cells.
Both quickly replicate but between the 2 types, the cancer cells mutate way faster. Those mutations let it live through future chemo. The other fast replicating cells that are healthy don’t mutate. So, cancer outlives and outgrows them.
One more reason to say: Fuck cancer.
sambamors4 | a day ago
Chemo is all about killing bad cells and good cells, chlorine dioxide is a noble medicine, it has patents for cancer.
AptCasaNova | a day ago
The bronchitis and lung damage probably distracts them from the cancer a bit, I guess?
It probably burns like hell. Is this the equivalent of a nasty tasting cough syrup?
L1QU1D_ThUND3R | a day ago
We did it, everyone. We cured cancer.
andthatswhyIdidit | 21 hours ago
> Cancer cells die when the patient dies, so...
Henrietta Lacks would like to have a word with you...
undulating-beans | a day ago
This sort of thing is unfortunately a recurring feature of cancer care.
People facing terminal or very advanced cancers are often willing to try almost anything, especially when conventional treatments have been exhausted. That makes them particularly vulnerable to practitioners offering treatments that sound scientific but have no credible evidence behind them.
Chlorine dioxide is essentially an industrial bleaching and disinfecting agent. It is a strong oxidising chemical. The problem with claims that it selectively kills cancer cells is that chemistry does not work that way.
Chlorine dioxide is not intelligent. It cannot distinguish between a cancer cell and a healthy cell. It simply reacts with biological molecules wherever it encounters them.
The idea of enclosing someone in a plastic bag and exposing their skin to chlorine dioxide vapour is especially concerning because skin is not an impermeable barrier. Chemicals can be absorbed through it, and chlorine dioxide itself is a respiratory irritant.
Even the practitioner reportedly acknowledging that the treatment is dangerous should set alarm bells ringing.
One of the hallmarks of pseudoscientific cancer treatments is the claim that mainstream medicine has overlooked a simple solution. Real cancer therapies are judged by whether they improve survival, tumour control, quality of life, or some combination of those outcomes in properly conducted clinical trials.
If a treatment cannot demonstrate those benefits under controlled conditions, it remains an unproven hypothesis regardless of how compelling the story sounds.
The particularly sad part is that these approaches often target people who have the least time, the fewest options, and the greatest motivation to believe.
That does not make the patients gullible. It makes them human. The responsibility lies with those selling false hope wrapped in scientific-sounding language.
Mr_Mojo_Risin_83 | a day ago
Yeah, when an alternative medicine has been proven to work, we call it “medicine.”
Old-Landscape-7538 | a day ago
The Institute of Medicine released a statement in the early 2000s saying there's no such thing as alternative medicine. There are just treatments that have been tested and ones that haven't been tested.
VagusNC | a day ago
Thanks, Tim.
Mr_Mojo_Risin_83 | a day ago
You got it!
Iyorek9000 | a day ago
Thanks for this truth. They are vulnerable, have the greatest motivation, and are willing to part with every last dime of wealth they have. It is sad. I must remember these things as I and my loved ones age.
Crafty-Emphasis-7904 | a day ago
also with broader society who has deprioritized research
undulating-beans | a day ago
Yes I agree with you and additionally, recent policy proposals from the Trump administration would increase the role of political appointees in research funding and grant approval decisions, reducing the influence of peer review as the principal mechanism by which scientific projects are assessed.
The controversy is not that scientific papers would no longer undergo peer review, but rather that peer-reviewed evaluations may no longer be the primary determinant of which research projects ultimately receive government funding. Critics argue that this risks political considerations carrying greater weight than scientific merit.
Driftmoth | a day ago
As a cancer survivor who went through conventional treatment, I hate these people with the fury of a thousand suns. How fucking dare they. Just going through life thinking "Today I'll scam some people going through the worst thing in their life, take their money, and kill them faster."
OurInterface | a day ago
I mean, something doesn't need to be intelligent for it to be selective. Quite some processes in chemistry require selectiveness in one shape or another afaik while no single chemical is intelligent on it's own.
I'm just being pedantic for no real reason though, I otherwise agree with 100% of your comment.
knowledgeable_diablo | a day ago
I also agree 100% with these comments but would also like to add that years and years of erroneous anti drug campaigning has tended to gift inanimate chemical molecules with ethical and quasi-intelligence.
IE: recreational drugs are evil and certain ones jump into your brain and jump around like an aggravated ADHD patient lose in a China shop with a hammer. When in effect they are usually just a salt that when used in low to clinical to active dose levels are as safe if not safer than any other medication.
This mentality however is easily used and manipulated on desperate people or people who would just rather outsource their medical thinking wholesale to others. When an unscrupulous “doctor” can get in on this then pretty well any snake oil they feel like selling will be sold. So long as they can use wording that sounds convincing or pull up bad science findings which are also becoming easier and easier to have on hand in the age of AI.
gillythree | 23 hours ago
An aggravated ADHD patient loose in a china shop with a hammer would very quickly get distracted by some detail in some piece of china that seemed interesting and absent mindedly put down the hammer only to be frustrated hours later at having lost the hammer and being thus unable to place the nail in the wall in order to hang the plate that was impulsively purchased in the china shop.
knowledgeable_diablo | 19 hours ago
Trying for something other than the usual bull in the shop.
knowledgeable_diablo | a day ago
100% what shits me no end when pharmaceutical companies tout and legally advertise “targeted” tablets and the like.
Ie:the numerous types of ibuprofen tablets they used to sell as “back pain”, “period pain” or “general targeted relief” pills. While one can’t expect everyone to have a massive grasp of chemistry and biotechnology, things like this are pretty easily seen as the scam they are and also how they can lead to inadvertent overdoses.
undulating-beans | a day ago
There’s a fair criticism in your comment, but it applies more to marketing than to pharmacology.
Those “targeted pain relief” ibuprofen products were often chemically identical to ordinary ibuprofen. Once the drug is absorbed into the bloodstream, it circulates throughout the body. The tablet does not somehow navigate specifically to your lower back, uterus, knee, or head.
In that sense, the marketing language can be misleading.
The concern about inadvertent overdose is also legitimate. If someone has a headache and period pain simultaneously, they might mistakenly think that “period pain ibuprofen” and “headache ibuprofen” are different medicines and take both, when in reality they contain the same active ingredient.
Regulators have criticised this sort of branding in the past for exactly that reason.
So I would agree with you regarding many over-the-counter pain products. “Targeted relief” on the box often means “the same ibuprofen in different packaging.”
That scepticism should not necessarily be extended to all uses of the word “targeted” in medicine, however. In fields such as oncology and immunology, the term often refers to drugs designed to interact with specific molecular targets that are unusually abundant or biologically important in particular diseases. Such treatments are rarely perfectly selective, but they are operating on a genuine biological principle rather than the imagination of a marketing department.
djspacebunny | 21 hours ago
I moderate r/chronicpain and the people at the end of their rope willing to try anything is a problem there too. We constantly get people with their "methods" that claim to cure chronic pain. It is part of being human to want to end suffering and pain, but carpetbaggers like that will absolutely take advantage of the most vulnerable to make a buck. We have to ban these types almost daily. Makes me real mad.
undulating-beans | 20 hours ago
I can’t imagine moderating a sub like that. It must be emotionally exhausting watching vulnerable people get targeted by every new miracle cure and snake-oil salesman that comes along. The desire to end suffering is one of the most human instincts there is, which makes exploiting it particularly ugly. From a human perspective, thank you for being there for those people. I suspect many of them are better off than they’ll ever know because someone was willing to call out the nonsense.
djspacebunny | 17 hours ago
Someone has to do it, and I have the mental fortitude to do it for now. I have finally found another mod who is perfect for this community to help me out. The problem is I go through mods pretty quickly because the topic is depressing and it involves a lot of putting yourself in the user's shoes.
undulating-beans | 13 hours ago
I’m just wondering what the structure of Modding is? How many hours are you actively Modding for, and what do you do when you are Modding, if you don’t mind answering?
undulating-beans | 9 hours ago
I’m sorry, your reply is lost in the odd way Reddit organises the reply structure. I am quite interested in perhaps modding a sub, so I would be grateful for your insight. If you felt like it you are welcome to message me.
knowledgeable_diablo | 19 hours ago
Dosent help when the govt and others list anything that works as evil and almost impossible to get.
And when you do get it you’re made to feel like a scum junkie.
Oh no, the medication that works has a side effect of making me feel really good as well. Therefore in the eyes of many that’s in and of itself is a reason as to why it’s bad.
Additional-Key-3301 | 21 hours ago
“chlorine dioxide is not intelligent” that has got to be the first time anyone has ever said that
Available-Damage5991 | 16 hours ago
It does kill the cancer cells.
It also kills the everything else cells.
JackVonReditting | a day ago
Well cancer cells have way higher amounts of molecules that react strongly to oxidation so they would they before normal cells. However it is basically just chemo and not technically selective
undulating-beans | a day ago
You are touching on a real biological concept, but the reasoning is incomplete.
Many cancer cells do exist under higher levels of oxidative stress than normal cells. Their metabolism is often abnormal, they grow rapidly, and they generate more reactive oxygen species.
Because they are already operating closer to their limits, researchers have long been interested in whether increasing oxidative stress further might preferentially damage cancer cells.
The problem is that this does not automatically make any oxidising chemical a useful cancer treatment. Chlorine dioxide is not selective. It does not recognise cancer cells or spare healthy ones. It simply reacts with biological molecules wherever it encounters them.
A useful analogy is that a cancer cell may be like a car engine that is already running hot, while a healthy cell is an engine operating at a normal temperature. Adding more heat might indeed cause the overheated engine to fail first.
However, if your method of adding heat is to set the entire garage on fire, you have not developed a targeted repair strategy. You have simply created a more general hazard that affects everything inside the garage.
That is the key distinction. The challenge in oncology is not finding things that can kill cancer cells. Bleach, radiation, fire and a hammer can all kill cancer cells.
The challenge is finding treatments that kill more cancer cells than healthy cells while leaving the patient alive and better off afterwards.
That is why claims based solely on the fact that cancer cells are more vulnerable to oxidation are not, by themselves, evidence that a treatment is effective or safe.
sludgepaddle | a day ago
It would be a shame if RFK jr got wind of this new Hammertherapy for testicular cancer prevention.
OpenSauceMods | a day ago
You explain things very well, I feel like I have more of a grasp on the topic now
undulating-beans | a day ago
Well, many thanks. I have a couple of science degrees, one of which is chemistry so I understand the underlying framework of how these systems function.
Salty_McSalterson_ | a day ago
Technically, they are gullible. But it's okay as that's human.
VirginiaLuthier | a day ago
Many years a friend of mine had pancreatic cancer. It was advanced when it was diagnosed so there was no real treatment. He decided to cash in his savings and went to a clinic in Tijuana. A month or so later, he returned, claiming he was cured. He had this little box he called his "cancer zapper" which he was told to hold on his belly to keep it from coming back. Sooo...he died a month or so later. We were going through his things when we found the ”zapper". We opened it up- it was a battery, a switch, and a little thing that vibrated when you pressed the switch. No telling how much this worthless device cost him.
I hope there is a low place in hell for people who profit on other's illnesses.....
ToastyWaffelz | a day ago
ts sounds like bootleg chemotherapy
Aimin4ya | a day ago
The bloodletting leaches of our time
crashlanding87 | a day ago
No no it's totally ok, this guy's got loads of experience as a...
Checks notes
Artisanal ice cream maker.
..
help-its-inside-me | 7 hours ago
Ah, that explains why they dont name him.
Hes Turkish.
Izmetg68 | a day ago
Marketing the magic “the cancer will not kill you, we guarantee it, we will”
Yuukiko_ | a day ago
So bleach again? Why does it always seem to end with some sort of industrial bleach?
aculady | a day ago
Because people psychologically represent cancer and disease in general as dirty/contaminated, and so the idea of using something that disinfects/purifies/removes stains resonates strongly.
OldNternetWizard43 | 22 hours ago
There's also genuinely a bunch of sadists trying to kill "st---d" people and convincing them to consume bleach is a pretty easy one
Live_Dirt_6568 | a day ago
I do love the wording of the post title - “claiming to treat stage 4 cancer”
Sure yeah, anyone can “treat” anything with anything. You can “treat” your diabetes with piano lessons, doesn’t mean it has any effect
DexterMorgansMind | a day ago
Mmmm, criminally negligent homicide has a more accurate ring to it.
unknownpoltroon | a day ago
Thats great. There is, however, a world of difference between "treating" and "curing"
graycat3700 | a day ago
This reminds of of a certain orange bafoon during the Covid pandemic
Commandmanda | a day ago
And a few in Florida who combined religion and bleach: https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/doj-press-releases-involving-fda-oci/leader-genesis-ii-church-health-and-healing-who-sold-toxic-bleach-fake-miracle-cure-covid-19-and
Murderface__ | a day ago
xkcd: Cells
lololollieki | a day ago
I’m sure RFKJr will immediately find funding for further research on cancer gas-bags. Cutting edge stuff!
02meepmeep | a day ago
The doctor probably has a substantial bill, waddles, and maybe floats.
kovian | a day ago
is ivermectien too expensive or not fast enough to kill cancer with side effect of death /s
BigJSunshine | 20 hours ago
Is he a Kennedy?
TernionDragon | a day ago
Imagine making a ton of money off this.
The guy was already nepo-rich.
Disgod | a day ago
And he'll definitely have a list of people that you can totally check into their medical records to confirm these miracle treatments!!
Oh... wait... I'm sorry... They've all moved to Canada. His Canadian girlfriend convinced them that the uncontactable Yukon is the best place on Earth for cancer survivors!!
FortYarnia | a day ago
I work in industrial level pest control and we get a few crazy people a year trying to order Chlorine Dioxide for personal “medical” use. They cannot be dissuaded from their desire to purchase CD, only discouraged through business document requirements.
knowledgeable_diablo | a day ago
Sounds safe….. not really. But cancer I guess is immortal cells just not playing the game correctly.
No_Sugar8791 | a day ago
Wouldn't like to see their liability insurance premiums
MilkyyFox | a day ago
TappingForehead.jpg
DocCEN007 | 23 hours ago
Forbidden Dutch Oven.
Blueskyminer | 19 hours ago
Lolol. Soon to be offering oven therapy.