Quacks and quackery

I am still trying to work out whether the diet and lifestyle ideas of Professor Jane Plant are correct. It is a source of friction between Jan and me. I think we are both slowly coming round towards Jane's views, our shopping bill has doubled as we eat more fresh fruit and veg, I've cut milk from tea, and there are two packs of green tea in the larder.

Jan has taken a week away to the coast as we await radiotherapy whilst I supervise building work. To start her holiday she had fish and chips followed by ice cream, and a beef joint the next day. So she still has some way to go before she becomes a full veggie, and neither of us know what a vegan is! But our fish and chips was three times our normal price, as we went for double the fish and a third the chips!

Today the Guardian newspaper carried a warning against DIY cancer cures.... I read with care, but I find it makes me mad. The government want to present that "they know best", yet my comment yesterday on Cavilon hopefully shows that even when presented with reputable evidence from trials funded by an NHS approved major health supplier (3M) and performed in the USA and Australia our team dismiss their findings in favour of what they have always done. I think it proves they do not always know best if they ignore peer reviewed scientific trials of superior treatment.

The latest news yesterday warned that cancer sufferers are at increased risk from websites selling unproven cures that could wreck the remaining months of their life. The controversy centres on a drug called DCA (dichloroacetate), a chemical being promoted and hyped across the world as a cure for cancer after news of preliminary laboratory tests on rats.

Dr Ian Gibson, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on cancer, warned that increasing numbers of British people were purchasing such products, and urged the government to do all it could to highlight the problem and block sales from the websites. Their arrogance.

So I looked at Quackwatch, its name sounded helpful, but the doctor running the site is a retired psychiatrist, so I rate the site as useless. It rates diet as questionable. To quote:

"Today's questionable methods include plant products, special diets and "dietary supplements". The dangers of using questionable treatments include delay in getting appropriate treatment, decreased quality of life, direct physical harm, interference with proven treatment, waste of valuable time, financial harm, and psychological damage."

It makes me mad......it states "The dangers of using questionable treatments include delay in getting appropriate treatment." Yet our NHS botched Jan's WGL surgery, lost Jan's test results for 68 days, inserted someone else's mammogram in Jan's records, refused to tell us how many lymph nodes they had removed, lost records that Jan was a patient on their booking system, then have a 10 week delay for radiotherapy when their guidelines suggest it should be four weeks maximum. Just who causes delay and psychological harm in Jan's case?

And from an American site:

"The prevalence of use of questionable cancer methods was nine percent overall. An increase in use was directly proportional to increased income and education. Prolonged illness and certain types of cancer were more commonly associated with use.

Important discrepancies were found between patients' and physicians' perceptions of questionable therapies. CONCLUSIONS: While some questionable therapies are harmless or inexpensive, others have toxic effects and may be costly, and none have scientifically proven efficacy."

So why is it that use was directly proportional to education? Could it just possibly be that bright people understand statistics and real science, and can see through unscientific government hype? I do read the scientific papers looking at long term mortality over 5, 10, and 15 years, not just local recurrence. I wrote earlier that the government website to allow patients to choose between hospitals details car parking and disabled access, but ignores cure and death rates...whereas the alternative clinics freely publish their auditable data of cures, follow up and deaths.

Jane Plant who advocates diet is a Professor with a PhD in science from London University, more scientifically qualified than most politicians trying to block our access to DCA. It's not that I want DCA, its just I hate government arrogance and stupidity in denying benefits from diet