The "Nanny Plate" debate, and the Neanderthal fat factory

A growing industry of unproven and often dangerous cancer "cures" is thriving online – promoted through slick social media campaigns and misinformation. A recent BBC investigation exposed some of the figures profiting from this trade, targeting vulnerable patients with false hope. The surgeon Liz O’Riordan has just written a newspaper article on this topic, drawing on her perspective as both a breast cancer doctor and survivor. I’ve been speaking with her…

Liz - I had no idea how much cancer misinformation was online until I became a cancer patient myself, and I was exposed to the world of alternative medicine and people representing themselves as cancer coaches. You pay to see them, they help you navigate what treatments you should have, what clinics you should see, and I know it's fraudulent. And then people contacted me, giving me stories of men and women who had used these coaches and who died because they weren't getting standard treatment. And the scale of this is huge. It's like a pandemic.

Chris - The people who are cancer coaches, what are their medical qualifications?

Liz - Whilst there are reputable cancer coaches who help people navigate treatment – you can often find them in NHS cancer centres – these are often people with no medical experience. Often they've been patients themselves, and this is how they are making their money. One's a retired biochemist, one's a woman who's a chiropodist, but they have become self-proclaimed experts. They know how to cherry-pick data or to persuade patients. They charge an awful lot of money, and I just think it is awful taking these vulnerable cancer patients to a place of false hope.

Chris - And how do they track down their victims? Do they come and find people or do they just market their wares and people come and find them?

Liz - It's very clever marketing – on Facebook groups, on Instagram, on TikTok. Once you start searching for cancer natural therapies, they come up. And they've got glowing testimonials on the websites claiming they can cure you. And a testimonial is now more seductive than a randomised controlled trial. And when you've got cancer, you're vulnerable, you want someone who can cure you, and these people are offering that.

Chris - And what sorts of things are they telling people to do?

Liz - You've got the standard diets, the juicing, the detox, the coffee enemas, buying electric home resonance machines, doing parasite cleanses, multiple intravenous infusions and supplements, going to Mexico for treatments that you won't get in the UK. Up to 20 or 30 treatments at one time. There's no evidence to show they work, but they make you believe. And when the cancer comes back, they tell you it's because you didn't try hard enough – “Let me get another treatment for you.” Again, they're kind of doing the shopping like a bespoke shopper to tell you what to choose. And you put your faith in them and people are dying.

Chris - The case of Steve Jobs seeking out alternative remedies for what killed him eventually – that was pancreatic cancer – that isn't then just a cause célèbre, that isn't just a one-off. You're saying this is pretty common, that people are being seduced by alternative treatments when we know there are certain cancers that would definitely respond better to traditional, proper medical intervention.

Liz - It's the tip of the iceberg. I've had 20 or 30 people reach out and tell me about people using cancer coaches or going directly for alternative treatments. There's evidence to show that if you only have alternative therapy, you are twice as likely to die. And that number is five or six times more likely if you have breast, bowel or lung cancer. Take the case of Paloma Shemirani in the recent Panorama article – she had an 80% chance to cure the lymphoma, but she died because she was persuaded to choose a juicing diet instead.

Chris - How on earth is this ethical?

Liz - It's not. It's not ethical at all. It's illegal to advertise cancer treatments online. I don't know how these people live with themselves, but they lull you into a sense of security, they offer control, they offer hope – and it breaks my heart.

Chris - Where do you think we should start trying to deal with this then?

Liz - I honestly don't know. I think social media companies have to take some responsibility for this. It's doing harm. I think for the cancer coaches – they're not offering medical treatment, they are helping you choose it – and they often have disclaimers: you know, check with your oncologist, I'm not a doctor, if it doesn't go right, sue me. I think it's about raising awareness, but also letting doctors know, because I had no idea this was going on until I became a patient myself. And also, when they're putting ads online, Meta and TikTok are getting shares of those ads.

Chris - So did they come after you? Because you had breast cancer – as a breast surgeon, you knew all about it – but did they come after you?

Liz - They didn't come after me. I don't think they target individuals, but I've seen the adverts and I've started researching this in my book. And suddenly, the more you look at parasite cleanses, the more you see those – they come up on your feed. And when you see so many of them, you start to think, is there any truth in this? I know there's not, but most people don't have the knowledge that I do, and you can be drawn in. We need to find some way to stop this and to educate the public so they know to look out for the red flags of people promising they can cure you.

Doctors aren't online saying that chemo isn't a great drug to have – but it does save lives – and radiotherapy isn't great – but it does save lives. We're not doing that. These alternative providers are.

Chris - One wonders whether, when people are having those clinic appointments – when you get the diagnosis and you are extremely vulnerable – if people need to have some help at that point to warn them: watch out, there are some sharks in these waters.

Liz - I used to say, don't Google. And it's the first thing I did when I was diagnosed. I did it when my mum was diagnosed. I think we need to say: these are safe websites to go to. Let us digitally signpost you. And if you see anything online that you're even remotely thinking about, double check it with two or three reputable sources, so you can tell whether it's actually true or whether it's nonsense.

There are spiderwebs on Mars! But they’re not made by any Spiders from Mars that would have made David Bowie famous. These are strange interlocking networks of lines that were first seen from space and now the Curiosity rover has trundled over to take a closer look and has revealed their true identity. They are heaps of material that were piled up billions of years ago by flowing water and glued together by dissolved minerals, making them tough enough to stand the test of time. But where water once flowed, life might also have lurked, which is why Curiosity has taken a keen interest. Our very own Ziggy Stardust, Richard Hollingham at the Space Boffins, has the story and some other insights into the funding situation at NASA at the moment…

Richard - Curiosity has been investigating these spider's webs on Mars. There are no spiders on Mars, I'm sad to say. Well, no spiders we yet know about.

Chris - Despite what David Bowie said? Now I'm disappointed.

Richard - Despite what David Bowie says, there might be — we just haven't found them yet. These were first seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter back in 2006. It's one of the orbiting spacecraft, and Curiosity has essentially gone in to have a closer look. They're not actually called spider's webs — they're called boxwork formations. I've been reading a little about these. They're essentially formed very much like stalactites or stalagmites on Earth, created by water. And that is the key, because that's what Curiosity has been doing. It's been going to interesting places, roving around very slowly and looking at areas where there was once water. Because we now know that Mars was once a wet planet — flowing rivers, lakes, seas. I mean, that's just extraordinary. Now it's just this red, dusty desert. And of course, if water once flowed, that's an ingredient for life. Was there once life? Is there still life on Mars?

Chris -That's the reason it's homing in on those formations — because they indicate this was once wet. Water is an essential ingredient for life. Part of Curiosity's mission is to look for molecules linked to life. Ergo, that's a really good place to go and investigate?

Richard - Absolutely. It's also been looking at shores where you see formations that could only have been carved by water. Water once flowed through there. But what's happened since the water's gone from Mars is that it's just been whipped up by wind over aeons — over thousands, millions of years — into these much more spider-like formations. But to be able to see that this was formed by water, I think, is just extraordinary. You've got to imagine millions of years back.

Chris - The thing that's extraordinary, though, to my mind, isn't so much those formations — it's Curiosity itself. I remember 13 years ago, I think we even spoke to you, about the whole way this car-sized rover was coming down onto the surface of Mars, and it was going to trundle around doing this kind of thing. It is still going. I mean, that is a triumph of engineering, if ever I saw one.

Richard - Yeah, absolutely. It's not small. This is the size of a car — something the size of a Mini — a six-wheeled rover. It's got a nuclear battery on board, which I think is one of the keys to its longevity. It's not got solar panels. A lot of the other rovers haven't lasted so long — their solar panels degraded, they kind of died. Whereas this is just carrying on, trundling along. And it's not just one — there's Curiosity, and there's also Perseverance trundling around Mars. These two extraordinary rovers are our avatars, if you like, on Mars — giving us these extraordinary images, investigating areas where there might once have been life, where there was certainly water. An absolutely phenomenal engineering achievement.

Chris - What does the future hold for them, though? Because I wanted to ask you this — obviously you're very in tune with what's happening politically in America, science budgets and so on. What does the future hold? How are they funded? And are they going to carry on for another 12, 15 years?

Richard - I have never seen so much concern amongst the scientific community and the space science community — not just in the United States, but across the world. The White House budget proposes a 25% cut in the NASA budget, which equates to a 50% cut in the NASA science budget. And that would make an extraordinary difference to not just current missions, but future missions. The sort of cuts you're likely to see are: well, can they afford to keep the teams behind the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers? We know that if this cut goes through, almost certainly the next big mission to Mars — the proposed Mars Sample Return, where we bring back samples from Mars that Perseverance has been collecting — that just won't happen. That will be cancelled.

It even puts a question mark over the Rosalind Franklin rover — the European rover — because that has a NASA component to it. It puts a question mark over future telescopes, over future missions to Venus, for example. It will make a huge dent not just in NASA expertise, but in scientific expertise right across the US. And that has ripples around the world, because space is such an international endeavour.

Chris - The case has always been made, though, that when you spend a pound on space, you get far more than a pound back — in terms of return to the economy and the science and technology you inevitably create to solve all the problems involved in doing what you want to do. Donald Trump’s a businessman — I mean, he must see that that's a good investment.

Richard - I don’t honestly understand the logic behind it. You can even look at the human space programme — which I report on a lot — and NASA puts out a report that says: you put $1 in, you get $7 out in benefit to the wider economy. So I don't understand the thinking behind this at all, because surely NASA is one of America's greatest achievements.