Once diagnosed with cancer, life as a patient knows it becomes harder and terrifying, because it involves giving ones life into someone else’s hand to help you overcome and win. However, there are many sick minded thieves who do anything to make money and in the long run they take the patients’ life. However, cancer patients should be careful but they are always left vulnerable and have little knowledge about the cancer schemes which have the “magical” treatments that cure fast, last resort help, cost less, and less painful than going through actual cancer treatment.
At worst, fake cancer treatments, medicine, and therapies can cause death. These cancer scams are run by heartless money stealing thieves. They post their treatments in misleading advertisements, news events, people who run charities, drug stores, and the worst way spamming e-mails. From this they make their “patients” by medication that will help them cure their pain and get rid of lumps or any other disorders that come about. One of the worst quackery-related tragedies which is a well-known one among cancer patients was committed by reeling in an Oregon man who saw that he can treat his cancer without seeing an oncologist and treat himself from mail-order remedy. By not going to the doctor and using this medicine for fifteen years he was badly disfigured and the tumor grew bigger. This is a great example of how caner patients are willing to do anything to get cured and shows how the scams work and end result is devastating. Once being reeled into far cancer patients began to suffer from a psychological burden and do not think they can cure themselves, thus hurting the patient indirectly and making him or her lose precious time. Research shows thirty-three respondents reported seven needless deaths and fourteen cases of hopeless prognosis due to diversion by quackery. In like manner an incident happened with a popular herbalist who treated her “patients” with herbal remedies. One of her victims had found out about her cures and went to her for six months. The herbalist had psychologically manipulated her and her husbands mind into sticking with her substance. After a few weeks she had died because the lesion had gotten worse. The husband an arrogant and stubborn man, was not shocked and his reaction was that she did not use the diet the correct way.
Once the patient has gone in too far psychologically they began to lose precious time. Cancer quackery does this best with stealing time from terminal cancer patients who do not get to use the little time they have to fix up their mistakes. Ann Margret spent her time finding homes for her ten kids that she was going to leave behind so they will grow up and have a successful and bright future. The quackery discourages people from making that difficult move. Thus killing them with out letting them prepare for the future. These scams also put in misplaced trust for caring and telling the victims that they will be there every step of the way. In another instance regarding time cancer patient Diane Klenke had been told the worst by her doctor: “Mrs. Klenke you have three months to live, you should go home and put your affairs in order.” From that she was so worried and had turned to bogus remedies and practices that made her waist her time and could not do what the doctor had told her (Walecia 3).
One of the best alliances that quackery scams have is when the media gets involved by helping them spread the word about a product and giving it good feed back. With today’s generation which loves to follow the media and whatever is in fashion done, thus making the media a big seller and an indirect helper of these scams. The product is not the only thing that gets cancer patients into scams but the stories of how people over come and were cured by the product. Sarah Wally, a nutritionist with the American Institute for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C. says that "That it’s not fair to the