Today Buzzfeed ran an article titled This Kid Had His Birthday Party At Target And It Was Everything. Now admittedly, this is a better birthday party than I was expecting to read about. A birthday party at target sounds kind of like something a dead-beat parent would try and pull-off when they realized that though they had remembered the visitation day… they had forgotten the birthday. So Candance gets to pick out any Barbie she wants. The party is the Buzzfeed article is leaps and bounds better than that (unless Candace is walking away with an Elizabeth Taylor Barbie, then we have to look at things a little more closely), but this party is absolutely not ‘everything’.
It’s clickbait. It’s hyperbole. And it’s fine when you’re talking about human/Kardashian interest stories.
It’s not fine when you’re talking about cancer from a place of authority. It is absolutely not fine.
On this same day as Buzzfeed was waxing poetic about Target Icees, an organization representing my disease posted this article: Suffering from colon cancer? Turmeric is the cure. Funny, I don’t remember my oncologist ever mentioning turmeric as a solution. I was pretty sure I was told there was no cure for cancer, but with an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery I could live a long time without the disease recurring. Pretty irritating that I could have avoided all of those nasty side-effects by just upping my curry consumption.
Now, in the interest of being fair, the organization sharing this article did toss on a brief disclaimer. It encouraged patients to do their own research and choose what they thought was best but finished off by recommending fresh herbs rather than dried ones. The original title by the Indo-Asian News Service remained, looming large were the words colon cancer and cure.
You know who by and large follows these disease advocacy groups and charities on social media? People that are directly affected by the disease. I wasn’t liking colorectal-related communities on Facebook until I was directly affected by that disease. Who else in my friend network likes this major Canadian Colorectal organization? Two of my friends with this disease, both metastatic and currently ongoing treatment. Treatment that isn’t turmeric. Treatment that makes turmeric sound like a seductive alternative.
I invite you to google the words turmeric, colon, and cancer. Throw them all in a line and press search. What comes up? First hit, nutritionfacts.org/. Sounds legit enough, maybe they’re just spreading that good word. I doubt they have great financial interests in turmeric farming. Oh wait…
Wow. Four huge ads on some book called How Not To Die that happens to be by the very same author of this article on turmeric saving my ass. He couldn’t possibly have a vested interest in pushing this line of thinking onward on upward. A book called How Not To Die couldn’t possibly be trying to profit off of the desperate and the sick. I’m sure the other Google hits will only enforce this.
Oh, Cancer Research UK is the next hit on an article titled Can turmeric prevent or treat cancer? This website isn’t trying to sell me anything. That’s nice. Can’t wait for it to justify ordering How Not To Die on Amazon. Wait… it says currently there is no research evidence to show that turmeric or curcumin can prevent or treat cancer but early trials have shown some promising results. That sounds, balanced? No research evidence? Early trials? Come on, how am I supposed to share this with an eager audience of sick people. So boring! The most recent research it cites is from 2008 but it sounds like they’ve got something going on in Puerto Rico. Nothing could possibly be off with running trials in a place where 41% of its population is below the poverty line… unless you want to examine any of the multiple ethical issues addressed by The Atlantic in this article: Testing Drugs in the Developing World. The Cancer Research UK article also finishes with a warning from the MHRA and the FSA about the serious dangers of turmeric supplements upon the liver. But I thought it was good for you?
Third link, oh if it isn’t Chris Beats Cancer. I don’t really have the time to get into the sheer scope of irresponsible behaviour here or cutely pretend he’s legit for even a moment. Mostly because the very mention of him makes my heart start beating irregularly and my blood pressure hits unmanageable levels. I’ll let these articles and blogs take him down for me:
Yes, Chris beat cancer, but it wasn’t quackery that cured him from Science Based Medicine
Yet another misleading alt-med cancer testimonial from ScienceBlogs
Anyway, let’s move onward. We have The Truth About Cancer.Org which again spouts the benefits of turmeric while being a horrifying anti-science website and failing to mention any liver-related risks of taking too much turmeric. Please see the comments on the article for more heartbreak and desperation than your heart can take. Now it mentions the article is based on information from a 2011 study conducted by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center while also failing to link the research, so best I can tell they referencing this article published by the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. This article concludes:
Overall, our review shows that curcumin can kill a wide variety of tumor cell types through diverse mechanisms. Because of numerous mechanisms of cell death employed by curcumin, it is possible that cells may not develop resistance to curcumin-induced cell death. Furthermore, its ability to kill tumor cells and not normal cells makes curcumin an attractive candidate for drug development. Although numerous animal studies and clinical trials have been done, additional studies are needed to gain the full benefit from curcumin.
ADDITIONAL STUDIES ARE NEEDED. Please shout this into the heavens above. Here is the National Centre for Complementary and Integrative Health’s (a part of the US Department of Health) summarized stance on turmeric is:
There is little reliable evidence to support the use of turmeric for any health condition because few clinical trials have been conducted.
Preliminary findings from animal and other laboratory studies suggest that a chemical found in turmeric—called curcumin—may have anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antioxidant properties, but these findings have not been confirmed in people.
So why on earth would anyone tout it as a cure? Seems pretty irresponsible.
I’m gonna glaze over the next Google hit, found at NaturalNews.com, and recommend that you set your ad block settings to WOW THAT’S A LOT OF ADS. It’s more of the same, but puts bolder numbers to its claims: affordable curcumin cancer treatments could save over 50,000 lives without the devastating side effects. Damn, why isn’t the whole world strapping on slop bags of curry?
Finally, we are getting close to the article that started me on this rage spiral- The Times of India. The very same publisher of the article linked by the major colorectal foundation that is supposed to be working to save my life. It starts out with the following highlight:
The incidence of bowel cancer in India has been low when compared to western countries. The annual incidence rates for colon cancer and rectal cancer in men are 4.4 and 4.1 per lakh population respectively.
That is awesome. That’s really great for India. I’m just hesitant to jump on that claim because of the inaccessibility to health care experienced by a massive empoverished population. If you can’t afford to find out you have cancer, you don’t get slotted as a cancer incidence. Healthcare is both privately and publicly available in India, which creates massive inequities in access to and quality of healthcare in a society that has over 276 million people living on less than $1.25 a day. The social determinants of health are a very real thing that cannot be ignored. Some interesting work specifically on healthcare inequities in India:
Health Inequalities in India: The Axes of Stratification from the Brown Journal of World Affairs
Health Care and Equity in India from the Lancet
I’ve seen first-hand how palliative care in India is compromised by privatisation from the Guardian
Healthcare in India from Wikipedia (a decent overview)
Heading back to Google, we’ve hit the original article of my disdain: Suffering from colon cancer? Turmeric is the cure. That title makes my throat tighten. The article points to research published in The Journal of Cancer, and God bless it, of course, there isn’t a direct link or even a title given for this research. As far as I can tell, it is in reference to this article: Curcumin Sensitizes Silymarin to Exert Synergistic Anticancer Activity in Colon Cancer Cells. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t begin to go through this research and tell you about where it succeeds and fails. I am a fucking skeptic, and boy, does The Journal of Cancer ever ring a million alarm bells.
There is a big problem with the amount of shoddy science journals that are out and about peddling their wares. Here is a brilliant article that the National Geographic published on the topic. And now for a list of reasons that make me raise an eyebrow at The Journal of Cancer.
According to ThomsonReuters, it is only indexed by one major database, and not even the primary database, but the expanded one
Its publisher specifically deals in open-access scientific journals
Information about the publication not generated by the publication is next to none, the last source was a stub of an article from Wikipedia, as is the page for The Journal of Cancer itself
A general lack of transparency from the publisher and the journal noted here byJeffrey Beall, a passionate researcher of potentially predatory journals
It is ranked 76th in oncology-related journals by Scimago Journal & Country Rank
The impact factor is only 3.609 by ThomsonReuters (accessed via my university library, can’t provide you for a working link-back unfortunately)
I would love to be proven overly cautious about The Journal of Cancer and their publisher. I would love to have more information on them from beyond their own website. I’m usually quite skittish of journals that appear to be internet ghosts in 2016. Regardless of any of this, the article cited above discusses the use of turmeric at extremely early stages, before any animal or human trials. It is at best information meant to inspire more research, not to inspire wild headlines to be shared around for the highest amount of clicks.
There needs to be a vigilance in what and how research is shared. A horrifying example is the false link between autism and vaccinations. An article published by Andrew Wakefield with manipulated data started a nightmarish chain reaction of ignorance, leading to the reduction of vaccinated children and having to worry about Measles again. It has been over ten years since the study and the researcher were discredited, and I still see people sharing anti-vax clickbait on my social media. It isn’t up for debate anymore, but somehow it always is.
So, if you are an organization that is supposed to be lobbying for my disease, fundraising for my disease, advocating for my disease… I need you to never share garbage like this again. Clickbait can be dangerous. I called you out on your shared content 26 minutes after you published it. You deleted it. We’ve actually done this dance before, you post something ignorant, I call it out, you delete it. This time, you followed it up with a public post about how you could make your content “educational, meaningful and tailored for you” by asking for suggestions. This time, you didn’t apologize or take any real responsibility for the damaging content you posted. This time, I didn’t name you. My suggestion is that you do your research and understand the position of authority and power that you hold. My suggestion is not to trust your social media to an intern or someone who isn’t largely knowledgeable in this disease. My suggestion is that you do better.
Disclaimer, these are my opinions. They may be different from yours. I am not a scientist. I am just a girl living in the shadow of cancer. This research was done to the best of my ability, but I’m not going to pretend that’s an ability of any real authority. Don’t sue me. That’s insane. Way better to write me an equally vitriolic blog post. XOXO Gossip Girl.
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