Skeptic: Promoting Science and Critical Thinking

Film Maker exposes false hope cancer clinics of Tijuana

Here is a story not to be missed. A film maker, who emerged from her own treatment for breast cancer, investigates the cancer clinics in Tijuana, Mexico

Cancer Sell
People & Power goes undercover to investigate the clinics offering cancer patients little but false hope.

Alongside the cancer chat rooms and online supplements stores I came across a plethora of websites promoting alternative cancer therapy clinics, many based in Tijuana, Mexico. They offer an eclectic range of treatments – everything from hyperthermia and Sono Photo Dynamic therapy to the more widely known Laetrile (cyanide derived from the apricot kernel) and shark cartilage. Over the last 40 years these clinics have attracted high profile names like Farah Fawcett, the actor Steve McQueen and, more controversially, the wife of civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr. Coretta Scott King had advanced ovarian cancer. In 2006, she booked into a clinic called Hospital Santa Monica under an assumed name and died there three days later.

This film came about because I wanted to find out more, to investigate these treatments and the clinics behind them. At first it seemed easy enough. The facilities promote their services through glossy brochures and online video testimonials, such as one from a woman called Lorraine Weaver, who describes how she reacted to suggestions for conventional medical treatment for lung cancer: “They said they were going to do chemo and radiation and I said I don’t think so. I walked out and called my niece and she said you go to Oasis of Hope … and I came down and I was cured and I thank God every day, don’t ever give up hope.”

I found that this kind of statement was by no means unusual. The clinics often claim survival rates that far outweigh anything a conventional oncologist could offer – a complete cure when all else has failed. When you have just been told that there is nothing else conventional medicine can do for you, it is easy to understand the attraction. So you abandon rational thought, phone the travel agent and find yourself in Los Angeles about to take a bus tour around the Tijuana clinics.

Credit: Multiple, including @lecanardnoir, @SLSingh and @EdzardErnst on Twitter

Unapproved/unproven treatments offered included hydrogen peroxide, Vitamin C, Sono Photo Dynamic therapy, hyperthermia, hydro chamber, and ‘natural’ supplements with dangerous and banned pharmaceuticals. Some “doctors” were frauds charged with impersonating professionals and promoting false qualifications. They exaggerated their success rates and made millions from their treatments.

The author notes that their appeal to terminal patients is “very powerful and persuasive”.

In shades of the Burzynski fiasco, she concludes:

I understand why many patients or their families will begin to scour the internet in search of a cure and will seize on anything that offers hope. However, as our investigation has shown, at least some of the Tijuana clinics are offering nothing but false hope. There is little or no evidence to support their claims that their strange therapies actually work and there is plenty of evidence that vulnerable people have parted with large sums of money for no reason.