Expert warns website cancer therapies put lives at risk

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Reproduced from the Society for Scholarly Publishing list, of possible 
interest.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 13:56:53 -0400
From: "Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>
To: ssp@lists.sspnet.org
Subject: [SSP-L] Expert warns website cancer therapies put lives at risk  

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=887992004
The Scotsman 

By HILARY MARSHALL 

* Scientific study reveals a number of websites are promoting treatments
with no evidence of curative or preventive powers

* The country's only professor of complementary medicine fears patients
are putting their lives at risk by following advice to shun conventional
treatments

* Some patients have died after using certain 'remedies'

THOUSANDS of cancer patients could be putting their lives at risk by using
advice from websites promoting alternative therapies, new research has
found.

A scientific study identified 32 cancer-treatment websites that attracted
tens of thousands of "hits" every day.

But not one of the numerous treatments and approaches they advocated could
be shown to cure or prevent cancer.

In 3 per cent of cases, the sites actively discouraged patients from using
conventional treatments, and 16 per cent did the same indirectly through
the information they provided.

Three sites - heall.comand healthy.netbased in theUnited States, and
worldwidehealthcenter.netbased in theUKandCyprus, were judged to offer
advice that was potentially harmful to patients.

Professor Edzard Ernst, from the University of Exeter, who co-led the
study, said: "This was to us quite an eye-opener and pretty scary stuff.

"Our conclusion was that a significant proportion of these websites are
actually a risk to cancer patients. We found that between these 30-odd
sites, 118 different cancer 'cures' were recommended, complementary
treatment which claimed to be able to cure cancer. None of these 118 can
be demonstrated to cure cancer."

The citation for the research article the newspaper refers to is:
K. Schmidt and E. Ernst 
Assessing websites on complementary and alternative medicine for cancer 
Ann Oncol 2004 15: 733-742.  

Chuck Hamaker
Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services
Atkins Library
University of North Carolina Charlotte
Charlotte, NC 28223
phone 704 687-2825