NY Times: "Dying Patients Are Inundated by Misinformation. My Dad Was One of Them."

Yes, a very well-written article.

This struck me - people are gambling with their lives, and using their life-savings.
Some claimed they were betrayed or misled by their clinics but felt their only recourse was to write a bad online review. (I would also later leave Envita a one-star review online.)
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It is awful that so often writing a one star review, the sort of thing you might write about something trivial like a faulty air fryer or unfriendly wait-staff at a restaurant, is so often the only recourse.

People with serious illnesses are desperate, and will try anything. There needs to be better protection for them.

What exactly that protection should look like, I'm not sure. But I think part of it should be patient advocacy groups not contributing to the misinformation, but instead actively trying to get good information to the patients and their families as they make their decisions.
 
There are many sad and disturbing things about this story. Perhaps the saddest aspect to me is the remaining life this man could have been spent with friends and family that was taken instead by undergoing quack treatments from a clinic that didn’t seem to mind depriving this man of his time, health, and money.
 
wingate said:
There are many sad and disturbing things about this story. Perhaps the saddest aspect to me is the remaining life this man could have been spent with friends and family that was taken instead by undergoing quack treatments from a clinic that didn’t seem to mind depriving this man of his time, health, and money.
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Medicine has behaved this way forever . It is only in recent history that science became a go to for all things to do with physical complaints but the scam artist will continue as long as the law is not bothered to do its main job of protecting people .
 
Scammers are bad but we have quite a lot of laws around the selling of goods and services requiring them to provide accurate information, which largely aren't enforced these days and don't fine anywhere near the amounts that would be a deterrent, but some protection exists. What I am most concerned about is the fact that medicine can do so much quackery without any oversight and no such quango's exist to fine them and compensate the victims. This is a far more concerning problem because its mixed in with real medical interventions proven to work and as a sufferer of a condition you never know which you will receive without intricate knowledge of your condition. We need a serious clean up of medicine and a removal of all the quacks in it, and there are a lot of quacks.
 
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Are there such cancer treatment centres in Europe?

In the last few years, I saw a few fundraising campaigns for treatments in Turkey, not all were for cancer. The text was usually along the lines of "ran out of treatment options in the home country, seen doctors in countries X, Y, Z (Europe), this treatment in Turkey is my only option". Does anyone know what I might be referring to? Are there legit treatments available in Turkey but not elsewhere?

Although I guess it's a slightly different equation if the patient has tried all conventional treatments before experimenting with alternative medicine or potentially dodgy options. Sad in any case.

It seems that the man from the article still received care in the local hospital in the aftermath of the quack treatment while doctors apparently refuse to treat ME/CFS patients because ME/CFS patients engage with quacks.
 
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