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$1.4 Million Raised on GoFundMe For 'Garbage' Homeopathy Cancer Treatment Scams (gizmodo.com)
"Medical crowdfunding has become a billion-dollar industry practically overnight, led by sites like GoFundMe," reports Gizmodo, citing new research on its dark side: over a million dollars in donations "funneled to ludicrous, unscientific treatments for life-threatening diseases like cancer."
The authors of the study, published Thursday in The Lancet, searched for a particular kind of medical crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe: campaigns for cancer treatments that involved the use of homeopathy. Homeopathy might easily be considered the lowest-hanging fruit of medical quackery. The theory behind how it works is nonsensical (in short, its proponents claim water can be programmed with the "memory" of toxic substances that will then treat the symptoms they normally cause); there are no good studies that show it works; and its practitioners are some of the most brazen cranks this side of P.T. Barnum still kicking. "These treatments are the bunkiest of the bunk, just complete garbage," lead author Jeremy Snyder, a bioethicist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, told Gizmodo.
Snyder and his co-author found that over 200 GoFundMe campaigns, as of June 2018, had been created to help fund homeopathic cancer treatments...and were shared on Facebook more than 100,000 times in total. They collectively asked for more than $5 million in funding, and raised $1.4 million from over 13,000 donors.... Snyder and his co-author also tried to find out what ultimately happened to the people behind all these campaigns. Sometimes, the campaigns would have final updates reporting the person had died; other times, they were able to track down obituaries. In total, they found that 28 percent of the people had died by the time of their search. But even that might be an underestimate...
A third of campaigns even explicitly stated that all contributions went to people who'd chosen to avoid doctors. "I have a huge amount of sympathy for these people. They're very sick and desperate," Snyder says. "But it's concerning to see them be taken in by these claims." Gizmodo adds, "That's to say nothing of the kind people who are being roped into donating their money to medical charlatans."
"[W]e believe it is not our place to tell them what decision to make," GoFundMe said in a statement. They added that "ultimately it is up to the GoFundMe community to decide which campaigns to donate to."
Snyder and his co-author found that over 200 GoFundMe campaigns, as of June 2018, had been created to help fund homeopathic cancer treatments...and were shared on Facebook more than 100,000 times in total. They collectively asked for more than $5 million in funding, and raised $1.4 million from over 13,000 donors.... Snyder and his co-author also tried to find out what ultimately happened to the people behind all these campaigns. Sometimes, the campaigns would have final updates reporting the person had died; other times, they were able to track down obituaries. In total, they found that 28 percent of the people had died by the time of their search. But even that might be an underestimate...
A third of campaigns even explicitly stated that all contributions went to people who'd chosen to avoid doctors. "I have a huge amount of sympathy for these people. They're very sick and desperate," Snyder says. "But it's concerning to see them be taken in by these claims." Gizmodo adds, "That's to say nothing of the kind people who are being roped into donating their money to medical charlatans."
"[W]e believe it is not our place to tell them what decision to make," GoFundMe said in a statement. They added that "ultimately it is up to the GoFundMe community to decide which campaigns to donate to."
I know some folks into homeopathy and it's been because they couldn't afford real doctors and medicine. I can buy some fake cure on Amazon for $50 bucks. That won't even get me in a doc's office if I don't have insurance.
Nearly all medical go fund me's fail. It's only that there's so many of them that makes it a billion dollar industry (that and a billion dollars isn't a lot of money anymore, not globally, it's just that we humans are bad with numbers over a few thousand). I suspect that's what's going on here. Folks aren't expecting to get enough money for cancer treatment (which can be millions) so they're doing what they think they can.
Bottom line most people can't live without hope. Nerds often can, and it's one of the things that makes us nerds.
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I worked with someone who believed in homepathy and the power of crystals to cure diseases. Her attitude was "So what if there is no proof it works; what if it does and everyone is wrong?" She was well educated, and not ill, but for whatever reason would not accept any data that conflicted with her belief. That is in line with a recent study I heard about that shoiws presenting data that conflicts with a person's viewpopint just hardens their position rather than convinces them to change it.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
He probably could have got more than that. When his liver cancer was first found, it was a super rare kind that was very slow growing. It could have been surgically removed with little chance of returning and no lasting effects (your liver 100% regrows to its fully needed size very quickly, hence you can donate one liver lobe to somebody, and the remaining lobe grows to full size in both you and your recipient.)
Yet Jobs, following this hippie medicine shit, and against very strong objection from his medical team, went to a naturopath that put him on a juice diet. Two liver transplants later, he's dead, all because of willful neglect on his part. Totally avoidable, and two livers were wasted. As a kidney transplant recipient myself, that pisses me off, especially given his personal jet gave him the ability to list in all 9 UNOS regions (means you'll quickly go to the front of the list.) I had to wait 3.5 years vs a few months for him, and I was lucky because I was offered and accepted from a high risk donor. I have IgA nephropathy, I couldn't even do shit to stop by kidneys from failing, and this asshole who let his liver die on purpose got shortcuts.
It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that you're stupid enough to think that a wall is as ineffective as homeopathy. Intelligent people understand their utility.
You should ask the Chinese about the effectiveness of walls.
History has shown it is wise to constructively engage with your neighbors. Building walls is the opposite of that.
Also, net migration from Mexico is near zero. The main reason for that is economic growth and better job opportunities in Mexico.
Today, most illegals are coming from further south: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. $25B spent on economic cooperation with these countries would do infinitely more good than the same money spent on a wall.
Still nothing really good on cancer, took half a century with AIDS and still no real treatment
I'll challenge you on the AIDS claim. Modern medicine has done an incredible job at turning what was one a short term death sentence into what is now a manageable chronic condition. We have become so good at it that the hospital here in Vancouver, which was once at the heart of one of the worst outbreaks in the developed world, choose to shut down their AIDS ward because they hadn't had a patient in over a year. This was a few years ago.
Given how the mechanism behind the disease, this is truly remarkable and a triumph of modern medicine.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
The only way that you will ever stem the flow of economic, political, and poverty refugees and migrants it's too achieve the same level of development, freedom, and security of person as their origin country.
Bullcrap. Mexico is an obvious counterexample. Their economy is no where near America's level, but it is "good enough" for people to stay home.
Illegal migrants are now coming from countries further south that are much poorer and dangerous than Mexico. El Salvador has the world's highest murder rate, and Honduras the 2nd highest, both driven by illegal drug demand in the USA. Comprehensive legalization would be a far better solution than a wall.
I have a friend who is well educated, though in the arts, who reacted very negatively when I made a comment about the silliness of homeopathy.
Not "well" educated. May have learned some facts but never got what facts are or how they are found.
I was informed that in Europe it was generally accepted and had repeatedly been proven effective.
A complete lie. What happened a while ago is that some private insurers started to offer paying for some "alternative" treatments (only cheap ones). It makes perfect sense for them to do so economically, as they are competing for customers (you select your on insurance in most of Europe) and many of their customers are clueless how medicine works and unaware of that. The utter failure of politics was to not stop that.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.