Alarm over rise in fake remedies for cancer

Cancer patients are snubbing proven treatments in favour of quackery such as coffee enemas and raw juice diets amid an "alarming" increase in misinformation on the web, doctors have said.

- Andrew Gregory

Some patients were dying needlessly or seeing tumours spread as a result, oncologists said. They raised their concerns at the world's largest cancer conference in Chicago, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco).

Dr Fumiko Chino, a cancer researcher and assistant professor at MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas, co-authored a paper presented in Chicago that said cancer misinformation had "acutely worsened in the past decade".

With more people being diagnosed amid a growing and ageing global population, misleading or false information about cancer had become a significant public health concern, the study said.