Crowdfunding campaigns to help people with cancer pay for expensive and ineffective alternative treatments are becoming more common. These often set six-figure targets in order to meet the fees charged for controversial therapies. Newspaper headlines are almost guaranteed and fuel the flow of money to the clinics involved.
The BMJ this week , based on information I gathered working for the charity Good Thinking. By sifting fundraising sites like JustGiving and GoFundMe to identify appeals from people in the UK who sought funding for unproven or disproven treatments, I was able to find more than 400 such appeals in the past three years. Those 400 have raised 拢7 million, the vast bulk of which pays for treatments abroad.
Although the treatments in question, which include and , aren鈥檛 backed by scientific evidence, people who are desperate and vulnerable are often tempted by remarkable testimonials. They may link the high costs with a greater chance of successful treatment, encouraging friends and family to join the fundraising effort and help spread the word.
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For those of us who see such stories emerge in the media, and who care about following good scientific evidence, the natural reaction is to try to protect people from the potential damage caused by ineffective treatments, whether that is physical, emotional or financial.
Media role
Unfortunately, any attempt to question the value of an intervention 鈥� however considerately and compassionately couched 鈥� is destined to fail. People view these therapies as beacons of hope, and their supporters don鈥檛 want to consider that their efforts to help may actually cause harm.
Instead, we should be helping journalists see the problems with these alternative cancer 鈥渃ures鈥�, because the media plays a prominent role in promoting and proliferating these appeals. Of the 400 fundraising cases discovered, I found coverage of 191 in the media, many of which had been covered multiple times.
Stories in local newspapers would often be passed along or picked-up by national titles, catapulting the appeal past its fundraising goal. Of the 12 appeals I found that each raised in excess of 拢100,000, only one went unreported in the media; of the 50 most successful fundraisers I studied 鈥� representing 拢4.7 million raised 鈥� local or national media covered all but nine.
The influence of media coverage cannot be overstated. As I sifted through hundreds of appeals, and the heartbreaking stories of desperately ill people, I was alarmed by just how many cited success stories they had read in newspapers as their reason for trusting these treatments.
Skewed view
Most concerning of all were the frequent cases where, when I followed up on those testimonials, the person who made them had passed away 鈥� sometimes just months after the glowing coverage of their treatment. While the uplifting story of a community helping someone fund their treatment is an attractive tale for the media to tell, the subsequent reality when that hope proves fruitless seems far less newsworthy.
This leaves the public with a skewed view of the efficacy of a treatment, and serves as an advertising tool for clinics which, under UK law, wouldn鈥檛 be able to promote their cancer treatments directly.
If journalists wish to avoid inadvertently promoting ineffective treatments, they would do well to view these stories not solely as lifestyle or human-interest stories, but as science and health stories. This means examining the evidence behind the treatments, seeking expert medical opinion on their efficacy, and choosing not to run stories that don鈥檛 stand up to such scrutiny.
I鈥檓 certain no journalist would want their stories to be used as a recruitment tool for therapists whose treatments offer nothing but heartbreak and false hope. But until reports of miraculous cancer cures are approached with a healthy level of scepticism, I fear clinics that offer ineffective treatments will continue to flourish.
BMJ
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