Theories that malignant tumors are not actually harmful and that the body has the ability to respond adequately without the intervention of allopathic medicine are proliferating on social media, with devastating effects on some patients. “From a grade 2 it metastasized, refusing to do chemo.”
“Did you know that menstruation is also a form of cancer? That discharge with blood clots that we women eliminate monthly is actually CANCER! And no one is afraid of him! Well, we were used to it being something normal!. And look, all forms of CANCER are something normal of the body and NOTHING BAD! I leave here a link from the explanations of a doctor! Don’t believe me… but at least take it and read what a doctor says!” – is just one of the posts rolling around on social media and troubling the minds of the gullible. To some, such claims are simply “nonsense”.
“I think they get paid for every piece of nonsense they regurgitate”is, by the way, one of the reactions to the post containing the statements reproduced above.
“God forbid! Only idiots and unconscious people are on social media”; “You should be held accountable for such claims. Do you think that people may drop out of treatment because of the claims you make?”; “If it’s a doctor, should we take what a doctor says, or what millions of cancer patients around the world are experiencing? I’m a cancer patient and I’ll be fine thanks to innovative treatments and doctors who don’t deviate. Stop selling illusions to people in perhaps the hardest time of their lives!” there are several other reactions.
As hard as it may be to believe, there are patients who, in the face of a harsh diagnosis, choose to believe such reassuring theories and throw away decades of research, confirms Cezar Irimia, president of the Federation of Associations of Cancer Patients in Romania (FABC).
“This is from Georgescu reading. They really are aberrations. When everyone is fighting to find the miracle cure for cancer… I don’t know where this legend comes from, but it’s not fair to people, because they’re going to die in days.” warns Caesar Irimia.
The representative of cancer patients gives the example of a patient who came to believe that her cancer ailments can be annihilated by her “brothers” in the “church”. “When she was sick, her brothers would come over and play guitar. From stage 2 breast cancer, it metastasized within a year of refusing chemo and she died within days. So forget another way to fool the world and make victims“, says Irimia.
Patients come to believe in such theories also because they are often tired of the tests to which the health system subjects them. “Our health system does not work, education is on the ground, and all these things converge in convincing the Romanian that there is an alternative. Not. The alternative is until you become a patient. That is to say, to lead a healthy life – not to smoke, to eliminate stress as much as possible -, these are things that you can avoid, but not in the conditions of today’s Romania and, above all, not in an uneducated Romania from a sanitary point of view”, adds Cezar Irimia.
Hallucinatory theories spread with the speed of light and because they benefit from “vehicles” with high visibility, and in this sense Cezar Irimia draws attention that a character who would become the candidate with a fulminant rise spoke about how bad chemotherapy is. “We have had patients who gave up chemotherapy, as Mr. Georgescu said. They died. They actually died. The idea is that in all this civilized world, treatments are done, but they are done on time and cancer detection is done on time, only here, because we don’t have education, we don’t have screening programs, cancer is detected late, when the chances decrease, and the costs of its treatment increase”Cezar Irimia further explains how hopeless people came to believe in irrational theories and “helped” by the syncopes of the health system.
It’s not cancer that kills fast, but illusions of cure: Coffee enemas and ‘miracle’ juices, deadly traps in the age of disinformation
“You suddenly find that it’s the same information on many channels”
Family doctor Mihai Ungureanu, president of the Olt College of Physicians, says that attempts to distract patients from conventional medicine, with the promise of miraculous alternatives, are not new.
“There must be something to stimulate attention in another direction, precisely to steal from the patients who are addressed to allopathic medicine. There is alternative medicine, there is natural medicine, there is homeopathic medicine, there is acupuncture. Each of them has its limits, but they have practical demonstrations, they have stood the test of time, while in such situations they are just ideas promoted by various circles. That there are already circles here that spread their information simultaneously. They use these social media channels a lot and manage to throw them away at about the same time. However, this information is somewhat calculated when it leaves, because you suddenly find that it is the same information on many channels. Just don’t overlook it. You see it once on one channel, you go on the other channel and you see the same information and it starts to take root.” explains Dr. Ungureanu.
The effect is that people begin to question and even question their own perceptions and beliefs.
On the other hand, for a patient facing a difficult diagnosis it becomes much easier to adopt such a theory.
“It’s the fear of doing something that might hurt you. This is where the others gain ground, because it gives you that feeling of comfort that you don’t have to do anything specific, that you should, in fact, stay calm, try to be in sin. It is true that the church and religion promoted this idea of silence, of confessing, of cleansing yourself, precisely to find your inner peace. But this as a way of prevention, somewhat also of therapy, but less so. There is a psychotherapy here, especially for depressive, anxious states, it works very well here. Mental illnesses have been scientifically proven to have a cure up to a certain point in prayer and so-called meditation. But from this idea to promoting that we don’t have to do anything, on the contrary, to sit quietly, look at the apple and wait for it to fall…”added doctor Mihai Ungureanu.
The head of the Olt College of Physicians even draws attention to the fact that in the Code of Ethics it has been established that doctors who do not practice their specialty, do not practice medicine, but limit themselves to providing advice and information through various channels, should no longer recommend themselves as doctors, even if some of them do very good quality information work, bringing before the viewers doctors with solid experience behind them.
