“You have to die a little to live,” my friend’s husband told me as I began chemotherapy last summer. He had had stage 2 cancer, like me, and was preparing me for the difficulty of the treatments. And he was right: I actually had trouble getting up to walk through the hospital doors for my treatments. I knew it was my best shot, but on a visceral level I really wished I didn’t have to do it.
I shared updates about my cancer treatments with my friends on Facebook and it helped me get encouragement. But something else also happened in my News Feed: Facebook’s ad algorithms started targeting me with cancer ads from scammers selling fake treatments. These companies promised that I could cure my cancer “naturally, without toxic chemotherapy or surgery” using IV vitamin therapy that would have “the same mechanism as chemotherapy.” A page called Breast Cancer Conqueror offered a host of personalized supplements, and another clinic in Mexico offered beachside IV cocktails that vanquish cancer with “antioxidant properties.” It all sounded good – too good to be true.
I reported the ads to Facebook in the hopes that the platform would remove them (it didn’t). Me too wrote about thisjoining the legion of voices sounding the alarm about misinformation on social media.
A year later, not much has changed on Facebook. Even though the mega-corporation has promised to try to contain fake COVID news, it remains a huge problem on the platform, accompanied by fake news about cancer. Although the Center for Combating Digital Hate (CCDH) identified 12 accounts “super-spreaders” of health misinformation on Facebook in March, 59% of the content had still not been removed as of July. CCDH reporting led US President Joe Biden to denounce Facebook in July, declaring to the media that health misinformation spread on the platform was “killing people”.
In the Wild West of health misinformation on social media, hope kills. In a big study Of 1.6 million patients with non-metastatic breast or colorectal cancer, patients were nearly five times more likely to die if they used an alternative therapy rather than conventional treatment.
A July 2021 report led by the Huntsman Cancer Institute, highlighted that a third of the most popular cancer treatment articles on social media contained misinformation, with the majority of them promoting harmful approaches to care. The study also showed that articles containing misinformation generated more clicks and engagement than scientific content.
In a 2020 report, professors Tamar Wilton and Avery Holden studied nearly 800 Pinterest posts making factual claims about breast cancer, finding that more than 50 percent contained misinformation, including false cures such as colloidal silver, dandelions and green tea and/or downplaying the role of mammograms in cancer detection. A review by NBC in December 2019 find that much of the viral health misinformation was about cancer, citing headlines such as “Ginger is 10,000 times more effective at killing cancer than chemo” which generated more than 800,000 engagements. The Wall Street Journal has reported on social media cancer scams, including millions of views of YouTube videos claiming that cancer can be cured by black ointment, a highly corrosive product described as “dangerous and potentially fatal” by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
Even though regulators have repressed Following false claims that IV vitamin C therapy prevents COVID infections, marketers continue to promote it as a cure for breast cancer, even though some studies show it hinders recovery from breast cancer. breast. efficiency common chemotherapeutic agents (such as doxorubicin and cisplatin) by 30 to 70 percent. Vitamin C infusions may also have a negative effect on breast cancer medications in the long term; a 2014 study showed that vitamin C “antagonized the cytotoxic effects of tamoxifen,” making the drug less effective and acting as a “pro-oxidant” that counteracted the benefits of tamoxifen.
For many, it’s counterintuitive to think that a vitamin could complicate cancer care. It’s hard to accept that a painless procedure could harm us or that something painful could actually help us heal. Namely: the healthy choice that keeps us alive is not always feel healthier. Fake cures for cancer are often presented as “natural” and “simple” by websites such as Natural news – and the temptation is real. You can walk into an alternative cancer center with leather chairs and skylights, write your big check, and get a round of applause for your vitamin C injections…or you can stroll down the hospital hallway for a AC chemo followed by (checks notes) crying and vomiting. . Some of the best ways to fight cancer also wreak havoc on the body; this fact makes it easier for pseudo-scientific marketers to lure patients with the illusion of comfort and control.
Several years before my diagnosis, an acquaintance developed cancer. She refused routine surgery and embarked on a journey into the world of vitamin IV therapy, mineral supplements and so-called “shamans”, traveling to South America in a quest for the truth about the cancer. One of the last times I spoke to her (shortly after my diagnosis), she told me that she had been told that cancer came from our own past traumas that we had pushed into ourselves. “We can’t heal cancer until we heal the emotional pain inside us,” she told me. From his perspective, it was an act of kindness to give me this advice. She thought she was helping me cure my cancer.
But in the five years since she refused surgery, her cancer has progressed. Soon the point of no return was passed. As I finished my radiation treatments and regained my energy levels, she passed away at home with palliative care.
We must hold cancer fraudsters – and the platforms that enable them to do so – to account. But we also need to help people realign their views on the disease so they can’t be convinced by false solutions.
To build a counter-offensive against the false comfort of pseudoscience, we need new narratives about the difficult aspects of our care. If quacks can structure their so-called treatments around anecdotes and fairy tales, surely our hospitals can create more compelling narratives that reflect our lives, leveraging the social media sphere to beat the scammers to their wits. game.
The science is clear: we can’t cure cancer with turmeric tea, faith healers, positive vibes, or vitamin infusions overlooking the ocean. The inconvenient truth is that we must struggle and fight for our best chance at life.
