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Scamuary - Cancer Scams and Scammers (again!) · Not Your Grandma’s Cancer Show

• 0:00
  Hi, I'm Tatum and it is 2026. We've got a whole year of podcasts ahead and one of the
• 0:07
  things that really makes the difference if you're enjoying these podcasts is to get the
• 0:11
  word out. So, if you like us, if you write us a review, particularly if you write us
• 0:18
  a review, it makes such a difference. It actually bumps us up so that other people can find
• 0:23
  us. Wherever you're listening to your podcast, there will be a place for a review. Look it
• 0:28
  up, jot something lovely in there. It will really make a massive difference. Thank you.
• 0:33
  From Shine Cancer Support, this is Not Your Grandma's Cancer Show.
• 0:42
  Hi, I'm Tatum DeRoeck and Happy New Year. We are diving into
• 0:48
  Scamuary and coming back to the podcast for this topic are Ceinwen and Clare. So, this is
• 0:56
  the third episode we have done on cancer scams, but in case you haven't met Ceinwen before,
• 1:02
  Ceinwen, would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, Tatum. I am Co-CEO and Co-Founder at Shine
• 1:07
  Cancer Support. And Clare? Hello, I am the Program Delivery Manager at Shine.
• 1:13
  And we know that cancer scams suck. We know this is a horrible way to take advantage of people,
• 1:21
  but this is actually going to be quite a light-hearted podcast today as we make fun
• 1:26
  of the scammers. And we found that it's a nice way to be able to think about these things without
• 1:31
  getting too down about them. So, let's get going. Not Your Grandma's Cancer Show.
• 1:42
  Ceinwen. This is our third scam podcast. So, you know, you think, what other scams can we do?
• 1:49
  And then I thought, you know, cannabis actually is a huge scam in terms of its ability to cure
• 1:57
  cancer. So, you can enjoy cannabis all you want. However, there are a lot of people out there
• 2:02
  making big claims about what it can do. So, I did a little research and I actually found
• 2:09
  one of my new favorite scams, Rick Simpson, a humble engineer from Canada. So, obviously,
• 2:17
  as a Canadian, I was immediately drawn to Rick's story. So, Rick is a humble engineer from Nova
• 2:23
  Scotia. So, Nova Scotia is on the east coast of Canada. It's quite rural. Obviously, that lends
• 2:28
  some credence to, you know, his plight and his story. And I went down a YouTube rabbit hole
• 2:35
  because YouTube is just full of videos and scams. And he was described as a man who went on a hero's
• 2:44
  journey that would challenge the medical establishment and inspire a movement.
• 2:48
  There's a video called Rick Simpson, the man, the myth, the oil. And basically, the story goes that
• 2:56
  Rick Simpson was a simple engineer. He had an accident at work, which gave him some kind of
• 3:03
  head injury and or slash tinnitus. It's not really 100% clear to me. It depends on what you read.
• 3:09
  He couldn't get any support or attention from the medical establishment. And so, he decided to
• 3:15
  start using cannabis and he found it helped his symptoms of the head injury. Maybe true. But a few
• 3:21
  years later, he was diagnosed with stage four skin cancer. And he started rubbing the oil of the
• 3:28
  marijuana plant onto his skin cancer. And within a few days, it was gone.
• 3:33
  Just poof, just like that.
• 3:35
  Gone, gone. So, he then started creating what he called Rick Simpson oil, which is a very thick
• 3:43
  cannabis residue. He himself didn't want to profit off of it. So, he became a cannabis activist,
• 3:51
  obviously inspired the movement, as I said. And he posted on his website, Phoenix Tears,
• 3:57
  it's called. Of course, it's called Phoenix Tears. He started posting on, you know, how you would
• 4:04
  make this cannabis oil. But unfortunately, Rick himself has now been scammed. He has never licensed
• 4:11
  the use of Rick Simpson oil, like the name Rick Simpson oil, but there are lots of people online
• 4:16
  selling Rick Simpson oil or RSO, as it's called in the biz. And then there were rumors that he was
• 4:23
  dead. So, he then had to do a Facebook video, because of course it was on Facebook,
• 4:29
  where he said that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated. And he'd actually had a
• 4:34
  stroke in 2018. Exaggerating death.
• 4:40
  Yes, exaggerating death. So, he didn't die, but he had a stroke. So, he hasn't been as active
• 4:45
  in the movement. He also had to leave Canada because the RCMP, the Mounties, they always get
• 4:50
  their man. They were after him. So, he had to move to Croatia. And then he set up a GoFundMe
• 4:57
  campaign to help pay for his treatment, which when I looked actually had raised $100,000. So,
• 5:03
  you know, people had wanted to support him. But I feel like if he was selling the oil himself,
• 5:08
  he could have made more money. But obviously, we know the oil doesn't really do anything.
• 5:13
  He himself said in a video that I saw,
• 5:18
  cannabis can cure cancer, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and AIDS. It just goes on and on.
• 5:24
  There's very little it can't do. I have questions.
• 5:28
  Yes, so many questions. There's so many questions.
• 5:31
  So, if his oil could do all of that, why did he still need treatment?
• 5:36
  Well, he doesn't need treatment for the cancer anymore. I think he needs treatment for the
• 5:40
  stroke. Okay, so it can do all the other things, just not the thing he particularly himself has.
• 5:47
  Now. But obviously, when he was diagnosed with cancer, it just got rid of that right away.
• 5:54
  Right. Yeah. What I found interesting was that like,
• 5:58
  this is a scam. It's not cured anyone of cancer. And yet he himself now is being scammed.
• 6:04
  So, it's like it's a big circle of scams.
• 6:07
  Yeah, it's a real like scamming community that's just bonded over Rick and his oil.
• 6:15
  I wonder if he had advertised the oil previously as having cured strokes.
• 6:23
  But then when he got a stroke, mysteriously, then it stopped curing that.
• 6:28
  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the videos. I mean, because I've seen so many of these,
• 6:34
  when you watch them, they sort of follow a typical pattern. And there's one that I saw
• 6:40
  where they're like, you know, he was a humble engineer from Canada, far away from the pharmaceutical
• 6:46
  companies. And he never, the pharmaceutical companies, he never put on a lab coat. And yet
• 6:52
  he discovered the cure that no one wants you to know about. It's just, it's got this kind of,
• 6:59
  it's got pretty pictures of Nova Scotia in the autumn. It's got nice photos of Rick looking
• 7:05
  healthy once his cancer has been cured. But there's nothing anywhere about how this might work.
• 7:12
  As a Canadian, also cannabis is legal now. So I feel like Rick could probably go home,
• 7:17
  he'd be okay. The RCMP has got bigger fish to fry. A lot of people do use cannabis,
• 7:22
  they find it helpful. And so I did a little bit of research, my own research, into, you know,
• 7:29
  what does cannabis actually do? And there is some evidence, as many people know, that it can help
• 7:34
  control nausea and vomiting for people who are going through chemotherapy, a lot of people can
• 7:38
  get, you know, access to medical marijuana for this. There's also evidence that it can treat
• 7:43
  pain and improve appetite. But there are a few really good reviews. So one called Cannabis as
• 7:49
  an Anti-Cancer Agent, a review of clinical data and assessment of case reports, where they found
• 7:55
  that the review of clinical data suggests most published peer-reviewed case reports provide
• 8:00
  insufficient data to support the claim for cannabis as an anti-cancer agent. And cannabis
• 8:05
  should not be used in place of evidence-based traditional treatments outside of a clinical
• 8:10
  trial. So there is also really good evidence that cannabis does not cure your cancer.
• 8:15
  Yeah, and we had that wonderful professor come to give a keynote at one of our conferences.
• 8:22
  And what he was saying is considering cancer as thousands of different diseases, the idea that
• 8:30
  one thing could combat all these different mechanisms is so unlikely. And that just
• 8:38
  really kind of made me think about it, you know, like a really succinct answer to that,
• 8:44
  but so clear as to why it can be, like you said, helpful, but unlikely to reverse
• 8:53
  all those different mechanisms. As well as multiple sclerosis and AIDS.
• 8:59
  And arthritis. I mean, it's just a lot, right? So I was looking, doing a little bit of history,
• 9:08
  what was going on in 1825 in the world of cancer scams. And then they were advertising things as
• 9:16
  cures without knife and pain, which just seems so similar to this idea of an oil. You know,
• 9:24
  you don't have to go through the pain. It's okay. You know, you don't have to go under the knife.
• 9:29
  It's okay. And actually that thing of looking back, making us see that this desire for it to
• 9:37
  be simple and not hurt us is such a human thing. You know, that for thousands of years, like people
• 9:46
  have been like, yes, that sounds great. Give me that. Or the opposite. There were these caustic,
• 9:53
  basically they were burning them with various acids. And in that case, it was kind of like,
• 10:00
  no, I want to see the evidence. No, I know this is bad to make it painful.
• 10:05
  Which also makes you think about how people are like really wanting to see a reaction.
• 10:12
  Yeah. It's a little bit like the black salve. I think we covered in the first of our scan
• 10:18
  right that you rub that on and it's some kind of caustic salve and it spits out
• 10:22
  lumps. I assume they're lumps of your fat or your flesh. And people are like, oh, look,
• 10:26
  it's my cancer coming out. And actually you've just burned a hole in your face.
• 10:30
  So it's, yeah, unfortunately, of course, we all want things that are less toxic to us and easier
• 10:39
  to take. And cannabis might make you feel good, which is basically what all the evidence says,
• 10:43
  right? Yeah. It'll make you feel good. And actually Rick Simpson oil probably makes you
• 10:47
  feel good because it's really high in THC, which is the sort of active ingredient in cannabis. So
• 10:54
  I think you get really high off of it, but it's not going to cure your cancer.
• 10:59
  Also going back, the elixirs that they were selling to cure cancer in 1825 mostly had not THC,
• 11:08
  but opium, which of course would have made you feel quite nice, you know?
• 11:15
  I feel like we need to just do a little sidebar that we are in no way promoting the use of opium
• 11:22
  or cannabis. Although when I was in California, where it was legal, when I was diagnosed,
• 11:32
  everyone didn't know what to do. So my friends just came over with a various assortment of
• 11:38
  different types of vegan treats from the cannabis shop. And so I got lollipops and lemonade and
• 11:48
  all kinds of things. And the lemonade, oh, it was heaven. It was like my body was on a desert island
• 11:59
  in a hammock being softly swayed by an ocean breeze. It was beautiful. But the lollipops put
• 12:07
  me on a para, where I was literally face down gripping the sofa for what felt like eternity.
• 12:14
  I think when I think back, I still might be there on that sofa. My life might have all happened
• 12:20
  while I was still gripping onto it. It was not pleasant to do that while in the middle of chemo.
• 12:26
  And neither of them cured your cancer.
• 12:28
  It did not cure my cancer, no. So not necessary. Claire, you were going to say something.
• 12:36
  It really is like, you know, for all the people we talked to going through this,
• 12:39
  there are such different responses in the ways that people respond to what their treatment
• 12:45
  makes them feel like. And it kind of plays out in the same way that you were saying about
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  some people going, I feel sick and I just don't want to, and that's horrible and get rid of it.
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  And actually, I can't tolerate side effects and we need to change treatments because of it.
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  And other people really almost like, I can feel this is showing me that it's working.
• 13:02
  And it just shows you, doesn't it, that even in the scam world, there's something for everyone.
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  If you just want to be floated off on a cloud or if you really want to feel the pain
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  to know that it's doing something, it's all out there for you too.
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  Apart from, I mean, poor Rick Simpson, who hasn't made his money off as Rick Simpson oil.
• 13:22
  Yeah, he's been scammed out of millions, you guys.
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  I know, justice for Rick, right? I mean, can't a scammer get a break?
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  Can't snake oil be sold legitimately by the originator?
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  I invented this fake cure.
• 13:43
  Exactly. I should be profiting off of it.
• 13:46
  So when I was first diagnosed, I had never ventured into scientific papers.
• 13:53
  I'd never really thought about health science. In fact, I had lived in America for seven years
• 14:00
  with no health insurance. If that gives you any idea of how much health and that just didn't even
• 14:07
  come into my world. I was like, well, I do yoga. It's fine. I'm fine. And I was just about to quit
• 14:14
  my insurance. But here I was being thrown into this different world that they're saying language
• 14:21
  that I've never heard before. And I was totally tripped up. And so I started diving into research
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  for the very first time. Didn't understand most of it. But what I've seen now is that research
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  is being fraudulently produced. So those things that look very legit, that look very scientific
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  are being faked. And I'm thinking of myself back then going, oh, OK, so this looks science-y.
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  You know, this must be even with the beginning of my sort of analytical brain back then going,
• 15:02
  OK, whatever research is out isn't going to be the latest because things are always advancing.
• 15:09
  And, you know, you start to look at things through a different lens. But I still trusted
• 15:16
  what I was reading. And there was an article that said basically cancer research is really
• 15:26
  the most open to fraudulent studies in a number of different ways. There's a few different reasons
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  for it. So it pre-exists AI. So paper mills have been doing this for a long time. Part of it is
• 15:44
  that there are researchers who they get elevated if they keep producing. So there are some that
• 15:53
  just put their name to research they've never actually done. And paper mills are like churning
• 15:59
  these things out. And how they discovered one of them was we have things called cell lines.
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  And they were looking at these papers and they're like, oh, have these been misspelled?
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  And they looked a bit deeper and then a bit deeper and realised all these papers had cell
• 16:18
  lines that don't exist. Which then got me thinking about this article that I had read.
• 16:25
  And I start thinking, well, is this article real? You know, like, is someone making me think
• 16:32
  that this is a thing and it actually isn't a thing? So I looked at the top and it was from
• 16:39
  Asco Post or something. And I was imagining like, is this like a regional paper in Ascot?
• 16:47
  You know, that someone's like, well, I know something that will really get the ratings up
• 16:52
  for this local newspaper. And it was actually the American Society of Oncology. And then I thought,
• 17:01
  well, that looks like a really professional, legit name, just like one that AI would come up with.
• 17:07
  And then I started panicking that perhaps that wasn't a real organisation either. Which does
• 17:15
  make you feel like you're falling through this rabbit hole of actually where can you touch?
• 17:21
  And when you're like, OK, I'm not going to go down an elixir route. I'm not going to go down this,
• 17:27
  but I want the science. How do we know when we're actually in the science of it? And especially now
• 17:34
  with AI being able to churn out these papers faster than they ever have. Kainran, do you have
• 17:43
  any thoughts on that? Actually, we did a podcast, you and I did a podcast a while ago with Krishnan,
• 17:48
  who's a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in cancer research. And he
• 17:54
  was really useful, I think, in talking about like, if you're going to look at, you know,
• 17:58
  if your mother's cousin's sister sends you an article saying that lion's mane mushrooms will
• 18:04
  cure your cancer, how are you going to look this up? So you'll Google it and you might find some
• 18:09
  scientific papers that say yes or no, probably no, this isn't going to work, but actually that you
• 18:15
  can look at the journal that it's in. So there's something called an impact factor for the journals
• 18:20
  and really good journals like the Lancet or the British Medical Journal will have a high impact
• 18:25
  factor. But he also, I think, recommended Googling the scientists. So where are they based? Are they
• 18:31
  based at, I don't know, University College London or Harvard or something? Or are they based at some
• 18:36
  tiny community college in somewhere that you've never heard of? You know, so you can sort of get
• 18:43
  a sense of the legitimacy that way. I think you are right. There are, I know there are things
• 18:47
  called predatory journals, because I actually get a lot of emails saying, dear Dr. Giles, and I think
• 18:53
  if you knew me, dear Dr. Giles, would you like to submit a paper on blah, blah, blah. And they
• 19:00
  want me to write something and then pay to get it in this journal. And then I can say I have a
• 19:04
  publication. And actually, if you don't know that that journal or that publication is a kind of scam,
• 19:12
  it's really hard. So I think it's about trying to make sure that the journals that you're looking at
• 19:19
  are well known and you can Google the journals and see, you know, is the journal of the medical,
• 19:25
  the American Medical Association, is that a good one? Yes, it is. Okay. Are these authors decent?
• 19:31
  Do they, they have a profile, that kind of thing? Because otherwise, it's, it's just really tricky.
• 19:36
  Yeah. And, and I think that's the thing is like, as we're using ChatGPT more,
• 19:41
  there's a yin and a yang to it in terms of things can look very realistic. Now,
• 19:49
  have all the language, you know, sometimes we'll have names attached that, you know, will be
• 19:55
  recognized. But then there's also more research that's able to be done at a faster rate than ever
• 20:03
  before, because they are using programs. There's potentially more advances that can be happening
• 20:11
  as data is crunched in different ways. And ChatGPT will tell you how smart and beautiful
• 20:19
  you are for asking such a great question. Wow, that, you know, that's the kind of question that
• 20:24
  a Nobel Prize winning scientist would ask. Well done. And you feel so good about yourself.
• 20:30
  I did actually ask ChatGPT, can I cure my cancer naturally? And yeah, and it was so
• 20:39
  lovely in its response. It was like, that is a really, I can really understand why you're asking
• 20:46
  that question. And really like held my feelings about it, you might be scared about treatment
• 20:54
  and what that might do. However, it laid out a very logical reason why that's not actually possible.
• 21:02
  So it did. And I have to say, you know, because I think more people, you know, when we look at
• 21:11
  in this came up in the last Scams podcast, more people are getting their health news on TikTok,
• 21:19
  on Instagram, on these places. Yeah. And actually, doctors are going to have more people coming in,
• 21:28
  having gotten information other places. And in terms of being able to not dismiss,
• 21:35
  but recognise that those come from deeply human desire, and being able to hold that for a moment
• 21:44
  before going in with, it's unlikely that one thing could actually cure this. ChatGPT, I was like,
• 21:53
  yeah, it's on it. So that's... Every time I use ChatGPT, it tells me I should like go to the
• 21:59
  hospital. So you sound really sick. You need to go to the hospital. I mean, you know, in fairness to
• 22:08
  ChatGPT though, you were really ill for a long time. I was really ill this summer. I had a
• 22:14
  really bad chest infection for a long time. But yeah, it just I mean, I think one of the problems
• 22:20
  it really made me think in the summer though, is that so hard to get a doctor's appointment as
• 22:24
  well. So you know, you might be waiting two, three weeks to see your GP. And in the meantime,
• 22:29
  you're feeling terrible. And ChatGPT is like, no, you're really sick. You know, that's a great
• 22:34
  question. I feel so sorry that you're feeling ill, you should go to A&E. And you know, that actually
• 22:40
  might not be the best place for you. But that's, that's what the computer is telling you to do.
• 22:45
  So it gets really confusing. Also, it's so sympathetic, you know, probably more sympathetic
• 22:50
  than your doctor's going to be when you shut up. I wonder if there's going to be any cases where
• 22:55
  people sue ChatGPT for giving them the wrong medical advice. It'll be interesting.
• 23:04
  It shouldn't, you can't imagine it'll be practicing defensively. But that sounds like a
• 23:09
  111 answer to me. And I give them my medical history. They're like, just go. I know I don't
• 23:17
  need to, but on paper, they don't risk anything, do they? I wonder if ChatGPT is following the same
• 23:24
  line. It's got the same algorithm in it, just go to the hospital.
• 23:29
  Because my general approach to navigating AI is just to be sceptical of everything. And the same
• 23:36
  with politics, like not believe anything any politician tells you, you know, just have the
• 23:40
  sense of scepticism about everything. But that's really hard when you're looking into something
• 23:46
  about your health, that it's so personal. And you, you know, what you're, what's driving it is such
• 23:52
  an anxiety that you can't just go, Oh, well, I'll sort of believe it half and try, you know, you
• 23:59
  need it, really want definites, don't you in a time of such uncertainty. And so it's hard to be kind
• 24:04
  of navigating that system of information, that really the safest thing to do is to kind of not
• 24:10
  believe anything 100%. Yeah, at a time when you just want 100% answers. Yeah, really tough.
• 24:17
  Yeah. What is your scam for Scamuary, Clare?
• 24:22
  So there is a website that you can go to, currently by a chap called [redacted].
• 24:28
  And he, I think it's just him, you know, when they write a title for their website,
• 24:33
  but I think it's just one man. But the website is the [redacted].
• 24:39
  Oh, that's a great name.
• 24:42
  I'm already in the [redacted].
• 24:45
  The business people go there. CEOs go there.
• 24:49
  Yeah, it's medical. Do you know what I mean? You can trust in that. It's a clinic, it's medical,
• 24:54
  must be trusted, all those kind of words. So I just thought like to read a little quote
• 24:59
  from the tagline of it. So it says, there is a growing consensus that the mind and body are
• 25:04
  deeply interconnected when it comes to health, brackets, quoting the Guardian from 2025.
• 25:09
  Research increasingly shows that emotional trauma, stress and subconscious beliefs
• 25:13
  can have a powerful impact on immune function, gut health, detox and more.
• 25:18
  Citing another research paper, German New Medicine, GM, and the Germans.
• 25:24
  Yes, the Germans are always on it.
• 25:27
  They're always on it. German New Medicine builds on this understanding,
• 25:31
  offering a groundbreaking approach to emotional and physical healing.
• 25:36
  So, yeah, I just find it really interesting. They're using a principle that we think about
• 25:42
  much more now than mind-body connection. And they cite really reputable newspapers and articles,
• 25:47
  and it all makes it sound quite trustworthy. You're sort of like, okay, cool. And I'm not
• 25:52
  here to say that there's no link. It's a bit like you were saying kind about cannabis, you know,
• 25:55
  it can be useful for some things. And then obviously, there's so much discussion about
• 25:59
  the link between the mind and the body, and documenting how well like managing your stress
• 26:03
  and anxiety can impact your experiences. And I think it's the part where it's like,
• 26:09
  you've got German New Medicine builds on this understanding,
• 26:13
  where it starts to get problematic. So this guy, [redacted] is practicing today. So you can
• 26:20
  still book free Zooms with him. We're not encouraging anyone to do that.
• 26:25
  No, we're not. I wouldn't advise it. But to be fair to him, I think it is a slightly watered
• 26:31
  down version of what the fundamental practice that he's basing it on. Because I think he knows
• 26:36
  he'll probably get in trouble if he says, I can cure cancer. All of this work stems from
• 26:42
  an approach by a guy called Reichard Hamer, who actually died in 2017. And he was the originator
• 26:50
  of this German New Medicine. Hamer's background, he studied physics, and he studied medicine and
• 26:57
  trained in internal medicine. So again, you've got an actual doctor saying this stuff. But he has an
• 27:03
  interesting backstory, actually, to him developing this approach. And the approach is that kind of
• 27:08
  fundamental belief, there's no such thing as an actual illness. It's all to do with trauma.
• 27:17
  Causes whatever goes wrong in your body, hence that mind-body connect thing. But what happened
• 27:22
  to him is in 1978, his son, who was 19, it's a tragic story, he was a random victim of a shootout
• 27:31
  and he died. Interestingly, soon after that, Hamer himself was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
• 27:38
  For which he underwent surgery. So you have to remember that snippet as well.
• 27:42
  This shootout was in Germany? I'm just trying to picture this.
• 27:47
  The shootout was, he was on a boat. It was a very weird, it was a very weird set of
• 27:55
  circumstances.
• 27:56
  You don't care about shootouts on boats. You just think being out at sea, like,
• 28:02
  would be so calming. It would promote that.
• 28:06
  His son was killed in this slightly bizarre accident, obviously unexpected and tragic
• 28:10
  and shocking and traumatic for his dad and the whole family. But it was his connection with
• 28:16
  his own diagnosis of testicular cancer afterwards that I think that's why I got testicular cancer.
• 28:22
  He did go on to go to surgery, but he subsequently developed this theory that he called the iron
• 28:27
  rule of cancer, which comes up with a system for treating cancer. A system is a generous term.
• 28:37
  That's it. Then he started saying, this is what my spontaneous remission was down to.
• 28:42
  And I was like, that's an interesting definition of spontaneous, like post-surgical remission.
• 28:48
  But he put it down to his own processing of his son's death, of that trauma, decided that
• 28:54
  that was what cured his cancer. And so the basic premise of his approach is, it is the
• 29:00
  sort of sudden onset of emotional conflict that leads to cancer. And he asserts that you can only
• 29:06
  cure that cancer if you resolve that conflict. He has all other forms of treatment. He does
• 29:13
  kind of play around a little bit with surgery might be necessary sometimes if the tumor is
• 29:18
  pressing on something really critical that's going to make you die imminently. I was like,
• 29:21
  oh my God. Yeah. Chemo, definitely no. He also has a very weird relationship with pain relief.
• 29:28
  He says absolutely no pain relief. So people are kind of going through this without any.
• 29:32
  So he doesn't want to take the Rick Simpson oil.
• 29:34
  No. Okay. So these are countering narratives that we're dealing with. Okay.
• 29:39
  Absolutely. It's an interesting one again, because I think if you just said that people
• 29:43
  would be like, well, but of course, because he's like a scientist, I guess he has to
• 29:47
  come up with things that sound a bit more than just, this is what I think.
• 29:52
  So this is a simplification of his theory. He developed five main tenets and they're all kind
• 29:58
  of, you know, that sort of jargon that you're like, but what are you actually saying? Like,
• 30:05
  thrown in with some science words in the middle of it all. But from my understanding of it is that
• 30:12
  you get this sudden shock or trauma, you do a CT scan and you can see on the brain,
• 30:17
  there are these concentric circles that come up when someone's had a shock or trauma.
• 30:22
  I did do some reading. Other neurologists have said they're really naturally occurring lines
• 30:26
  that you see on brains. But his version is that they are a sign of that's where the trauma is.
• 30:35
  And depending on where those circles are will dictate what kind of illness you get.
• 30:40
  So it's when they're in the brainstem or the cerebellum that it produces cell multiplication
• 30:50
  in a problematic way. And so that would be the area that would cause cancer.
• 30:54
  So if you've got brain circles, a technical term, if your brainstem or cerebellum, that's why.
• 31:02
  And basically what you have to do is resolve your trauma and that will cure the cancer.
• 31:08
  He does some other weird obliques, like microbes do not actually cause illness.
• 31:13
  They're actually a really essential part of, and they're all coordinated by the brain
• 31:19
  to heal yourself. So all antibiotics obviously are a no-no because that's not the brain's process.
• 31:26
  But essentially underlying it, the only cure to cancer is the person's own ability to resolve
• 31:31
  their personal conflicts. And treatment as such is one session. And it could take two minutes,
• 31:38
  several hours, depending on how difficult it is to identify your conflict.
• 31:44
  Wow. I'm wondering what a two-minute session would look like.
• 31:49
  Hold yourself together.
• 31:53
  Resolve that shit.
• 31:56
  So literally that is the treatment, but he's built words and phrases around it.
• 32:01
  But he became really well-known, particularly for this one case. So there was a girl called
• 32:06
  Olivia Pilhar in 1995. She was a young girl with a Wilms tumor. And the girl's parents were
• 32:14
  convinced by his hypothesis, and they withheld conventional treatment for a quarter.
• 32:21
  The authorities finally removed their rights and took her back. But they then fled to Spain,
• 32:27
  where this guy, Haver, was hiding out. He treated her using his methods. Obviously,
• 32:33
  the tumor continued to grow. And after that, there was a lot that went on with the Austrian
• 32:37
  president and interventions and negotiations. The parents agreed to bring her back to Austria,
• 32:42
  by which time she had this seven kilo, this poor girl. It had just grown as you'd expect it to.
• 32:48
  Frustratingly, the success rate of curing it normally is 90%. But by the time she had got to
• 32:55
  where she was, it had reduced a lot. She had really low chances. But they did surgery,
• 33:00
  and she's doing well. She survived. Oh, good.
• 33:04
  Interestingly, her parents, to this day, are not convinced. No, it wasn't that that cured her.
• 33:09
  It was the few sessions.
• 33:15
  I feel like it was like, if you're looking at trauma, probably being smuggled out of the country
• 33:20
  when you've got cancer is quite traumatic.
• 33:23
  Exactly. Yeah. I mean, this guy, basically, he he did lose his license to practice,
• 33:29
  thankfully, in Germany in the 80s. But he carried on practicing illegally and had clinics all around
• 33:35
  the place. And he's just been investigated over and over again for malpractice, for causing deaths
• 33:40
  of patients, other patients. He has served prison time in some jurisdictions for it. But he
• 33:46
  essentially ran away to Spain in the end and died there in 2017. But I was just like,
• 33:51
  all that medical training and knowledge. It's really interesting, isn't it? That,
• 33:55
  you know, I mean, I guess trying to think of it sympathetically towards him, if you can,
• 34:00
  is that it stems from his own awful experience he had. And he, maybe the realisation that,
• 34:06
  you know, conventional medicine wasn't going to make him feel better about losing his son,
• 34:10
  you know, trying to find some other answer. And I think that is, that's key across all these scams,
• 34:17
  isn't it? Is trying to find something else that feels more certain, like we were talking about,
• 34:22
  or something that maybe is in your control. And I think the flip side of this that's awful
• 34:29
  is obviously that if people were going to subscribe to this method, and we're trying
• 34:35
  to resolve their own trauma, I mean, that's a horrible thing to have to do anyways, to process
• 34:39
  your traumas. That's something that is an entirely separate process. But you know, almost like if you
• 34:44
  don't do it well enough, your cancer is also not going to get better. Like, it's just so much.
• 34:48
  That's what I was going to say. I think there's a lot of blame there, right? Because if you,
• 34:54
  if you don't cure your cancer, you haven't done well enough resolving whatever traumatic
• 34:59
  event happened to you, or multiple traumatic events happen. So you are, you know, your cancer
• 35:04
  is going to take off. And I think, I suppose, like Tatum said, it gives you a sense of control,
• 35:09
  because okay, I just have to work harder, I need to be better, I need to do this. Whereas actually,
• 35:14
  when you have cancer, you really do have a sense that things are out of your control. And
• 35:18
  I mean, I, I found actually, like a lot of comfort in putting my faith in medicine and
• 35:23
  actually looking at clinical trials. And I made my doctor show me the clinical trials,
• 35:28
  because I was on a clinical trial, I was like, I want to see the evidence for this,
• 35:32
  that it worked. Whereas I think a lot of these people, actually, they can't show you the evidence.
• 35:37
  So and yeah, it's weird, because it gives you a false sense of control by believing in something
• 35:42
  like that. But actually, it's, you're not really doing anything to help yourself.
• 35:48
  Blind faith, creeping into the realm of, you know, my favourite topic, which is cult leaders.
• 35:54
  You know, that sort of like, you just, oh, you're gonna fix it for me, you've got the answer.
• 36:00
  And I don't need any other answers. And that makes it much more clear in my head, I'm not having to
• 36:04
  juggle, make choices. It's just this one thing. If I do this well enough, all will be okay. And it
• 36:10
  is the answer. There's something about the framing of it. Like you said, there will be bits that
• 36:17
  you're like, oh, but that makes sense. Like that, you know, the quotes at the beginning.
• 36:23
  And what it means is that when you step into that world, there are these moments of crossover.
• 36:30
  Like I remember a friend of mine getting me a treatment shortly after I was diagnosed.
• 36:38
  And I don't even know the name of what it was. But it was a room full of people on massage beds,
• 36:46
  fully clothed. And one guy walking through the room, putting his hands kind of over the beds.
• 36:54
  And then he'd like, move his hand like over someone's body, and they'd like lift up,
• 37:00
  you know, so it was like he was controlling their movements from the outside, right? And I'm like,
• 37:06
  where am I? Like, what is this that's going on around me right now? He doesn't touch me. He's
• 37:14
  just above me. And then he goes, you haven't resolved what happened to you when you were 11.
• 37:21
  And I was like, that's really specific. And even though I was like, I don't know how he faked it
• 37:28
  in the room with the people, or whether or not they're just so in tune, or they're there for that.
• 37:35
  So they, they're getting something from this because he had a busy, busy practice. All the
• 37:43
  beds were full, people had a waiting list to get in there. I had this thing of like,
• 37:49
  don't friggin blame me. No, this isn't my fault. And loads of people haven't resolved their trauma.
• 37:57
  And they're doing okay. Right? Like, and there's no one that doesn't have anything. So you can
• 38:05
  always say, oh, it's your trauma, and everyone will have trauma.
• 38:11
  And then you've got to dig through your mental file filing system to go, what was the trauma
• 38:16
  that I had when I was 11? Exactly. That's the one. So it's, it's, it's weirdly specific,
• 38:22
  and yet vague enough, you can probably go, oh, yeah, that was my friend was really mean to me
• 38:28
  when I was 11. I didn't get invited to that birthday party. And it's given me low self
• 38:32
  esteem for the rest of my life. So that's what I need to resolve. Right? It's, it's a little bit
• 38:37
  sort of Darren Brown, you know, have you ever seen where he debunks how psychics work? And he
• 38:42
  sort of says, oh, you know, you can sit in a room and say, I'm hearing from someone whose name
• 38:46
  starts with a C, and guaranteed there will be, you know, somebody in that room that has a relative
• 38:51
  who's passed away, that started with a C and they go like, oh, it's it's auntie Christine.
• 38:56
  Yeah. What I was also reading about was in the 1820s, was mesmerism, which was,
• 39:05
  which was what they did before hypnosis. So that similar kind of, you know, how to really,
• 39:15
  you know, hack into someone's belief system, and what it takes to make us more susceptible
• 39:23
  to suggestion. And actually, sites like that, that have just, you know, because we all know
• 39:31
  that if we're really, really upset, you know, some of us will jam loads of food into our mouth,
• 39:36
  and others are like, Oh, no, I'm really queasy. We all know that, like, there is a physical thing
• 39:42
  that goes along with feeling, you know, mentally going through something. But actually, that
• 39:49
  extrapolation out, out and out and out and out and out, and then you end up with, you haven't
• 39:55
  done enough therapy, and that era of your life, caused your cancer, like what?
• 40:02
  And it's the problem with those things is it allows a practitioner of that approach to be like,
• 40:09
  well, we need to identify the trauma and you're like, but you're not getting any better. And then
• 40:12
  going, Oh, probably you're on trauma. I mean, you'll have like, yes, so you could keep perpetuating
• 40:18
  it's not falsifiable. You can't like say, there's always a reason that that hasn't worked. And it's
• 40:24
  like, you know, like, you're lying on a massage bed. It's like, Oh, you haven't resolved that. So
• 40:28
  this isn't working for you. It's never a fault with the system that they've devised, because
• 40:34
  that means they can just keep offering it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, it's insurance,
• 40:39
  really. I mean, it's kind of it's kind of amazing. I so in a past life, while I didn't have any
• 40:46
  health insurance, and was living in America, I did sell something called magic cloths,
• 40:53
  that then became known as sham wows. And I pitched
• 41:01
  so it's a super absorbent cloth designed in Germany.
• 41:05
  Oh, yeah, honestly, we should do a road trip to Germany.
• 41:12
  So I sold this across the American South in Walmart's on 100% commission, German technology.
• 41:21
  It like it just sells itself. I must admit, you know, we were taught to hold the cloth up
• 41:30
  on one side, and then take it from the bottom and flip it the other way and go,
• 41:35
  look, it doesn't drip. But you're literally moving it in such a way that it's not going to.
• 41:42
  And there was a lot of sleight of hand. And it does make me think a bit about these scams,
• 41:48
  right? Like, they're all working on these very tried and tested sort of human wants, really.
• 41:58
  Well, there's a there's a, I mean, I hesitate to say great, but there is a video on YouTube
• 42:03
  about Rick Simpson. And it starts off, you know, saying, Oh, he's a simple man.
• 42:09
  You know, he never wore a lab coat. Far, far away from, you know, the industry of Toronto, he,
• 42:18
  you know, beavered away in a small homestead creating this oil. And it sort of it fits this
• 42:25
  narrative of like, well, what so he he's obviously this is all natural. You know, he was a simple
• 42:31
  person living a simple life in a simple place. So it's a very natural cure. Big Pharma doesn't
• 42:37
  want you to know about it. You know, there's, which is also what you hear a lot about, right?
• 42:42
  Like, we don't want in industry doesn't want you to know this is all the secrets people don't want
• 42:47
  you to know. And that kind of narrative, there are a lot of things when I watched this video,
• 42:51
  I thought, wow, this is this could be any scam, you just have to, it's like a cut and paste scam,
• 42:57
  you could just plop in another name or another word or another product, and it would work the
• 43:02
  same way. Yeah. And, and I think that's the thing is, we've all been around the cancer
• 43:07
  scam block for a while now. And one of the reasons that we're doing this is we might never
• 43:12
  have noticed a cancer scam before being diagnosed. And, you know, now we get to see these moments,
• 43:20
  but actually people coming in are like, oh, okay, so the things I'm looking out for are,
• 43:27
  you know, Germany, it's on the edges of society, Nova Scotia, that it's either this really natural,
• 43:38
  you know, big pharma don't want you to know. So this like, what I'm going to give you the truth.
• 43:44
  Yeah. Or I'm going to hand you the power, because you can fix it yourself, you know,
• 43:51
  and actually, it's all you. So like looking for these little signs, you're like, okay,
• 43:58
  I'm on a rabbit hole of manipulation, basically. The classic one is that it will cure everything.
• 44:06
  If it tells you that it will cure cancer and MS and AIDS, and you're like,
• 44:10
  yeah, yeah. So it's too much. It is too much. Just to end today's podcast with a very, very short
• 44:21
  thing. There was a woman called Amanda Riley. There is a podcast that deep dives her. I'm not
• 44:27
  going to go in. It's called Scamanda? Yes, Scamanda. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. She didn't even have
• 44:33
  cancer. I know, I know. So she did the really classic, you know, I have cancer, shaved her head,
• 44:40
  faked going to hospitals. She even went to cancer support groups. So she'd know what to say. She had
• 44:48
  a blog called lymphoma can suck it, which, you know, it does sound quite legit. Between $105,000
• 44:56
  that she got, but they suspect another 80,000 as well. So she made quite a lot of money over a
• 45:06
  decade doing it. But she was caught. She was sentenced to jail. And while in jail, she sent
• 45:16
  basically requests for time served, because she's not very well. Yeah, yeah. So she thinks
• 45:24
  she's not very well. Well, she's been in her first 18 months in jail. She got sent to the hospital
• 45:35
  24 times. The reason I was bringing her up this is like classic scammer is there is something about
• 45:45
  you're really not getting it. Are you? No, you're really not getting that people are kind of
• 45:52
  figuring out that this isn't acceptable to say that you're sick in order to get things. But there
• 46:01
  is an unrelenting nature to it that she's going to double down and keep going. And I think there's
• 46:08
  something about scams and you know, like now with AI, that is going to keep going. But in some ways,
• 46:17
  that's quite useful. Because once you have the signs of it, you can then go,
• 46:25
  Yeah, no, I got this. Yeah, I've seen this before. I do have to say with Amanda, though. So say she
• 46:33
  made $200,000 over 10 years, that's $20,000 a year. And I've seen the documentary and listened
• 46:41
  to the podcast. It was a lot of work, right? Like scam everyone, she was going to church, she was
• 46:48
  shaving her head, she was turning up at A&E taking videos of herself with I mean, she did she did a
• 46:55
  lot. It just seems like there would probably be easier ways to make $20,000 a year. Well,
• 47:02
  that's the thing is like she was faking like being in hospital, like she'd get really dehydrated and
• 47:09
  stuff, and then go in and like get them to like rehydrate her. And so she could be seen on a drip,
• 47:15
  you know, and take a photo. But these days, you can just fake that. Like, I think, you know,
• 47:21
  Yeah, well, you can do that. But you can also just put it in like, you know, put me in a hospital.
• 47:28
  You know, and yeah, like there's much easier ways of doing it. So it really is catching the signs
• 47:37
  of what is someone writing? And if they're selling something?
• 47:42
  Yeah, what we're saying is like, don't go to Germany.
• 47:45
  But also, if you are going to scam people for money, you want to use AI to help you.
• 47:54
  Not really.
• 47:58
  No, no more scammers. I think it's just that thing of sometimes when you start to follow
• 48:03
  somebody, and you're like, Oh, this one's legit. It's like even just taking that second moment to
• 48:09
  go. Okay, let's read this. And just like not everyone online that says they have it actually
• 48:16
  does, unfortunately. And looking at what someone's actually posting and does it make sense to some
• 48:24
  degree, I think that's it that can be reassuring. Because sometimes, those are the people that are,
• 48:31
  you know, like your guy, Claire, that they might be going through something,
• 48:36
  or they might be selling something, or they might be making something, you know,
• 48:42
  but money is going around. I think that's also the thing to be looking at is if it's like this
• 48:48
  cured my cancer, and I'm selling it. Exactly. If someone's selling something,
• 48:54
  you know, I always ask the question, who's making money off of this? I mean,
• 48:58
  usually the NHS is not making the NHS is not making money off of giving us chemotherapy.
• 49:03
  They're losing money. That's what we pay taxes for. But your man in Germany is making money off
• 49:09
  of your trauma. And there are lots of other people who are making money off of selling
• 49:14
  Rick Simpson oil or Yeah, it's he's making money. That's always a good question.
• 49:20
  Love that. That's perfect way to end today. So thank you to my guests,
• 49:25
  Ceinwen and Clare for chatting about all things cancer scams today. We will no doubt be back
• 49:33
  again because the cancer scams keep on scamming. But we're really, really happy that you're here
• 49:38
  with us. And if you've gone down some rabbit holes, and you're like, what am I reading?
• 49:43
  One of the ways to feel more normal is actually be around other people. So come along to a shine
• 49:51
  meetup. We've got online ones we've got in person, head over to the website shine cancer
• 49:57
  support dot o RG. So you know that you're not by yourself. Other people can help you through this.
• 50:03
  And thank you to radio facilities for sponsoring our podcast. Thank you again to my guests.
• 50:10
  Until next time. Bye.
• 50:16
  Not your grandma's cancer show.
• 50:21
  Transcribed by https://otter.ai