In a contentious comment section of a Youtube video, a die-hard Chris Wark fan expressed the wish to see “virgin” testimonies, i.e. stories of people with advanced stage cancer who healed it entirely naturally with diet, supplements, coffee enemas, and juicing. No conventional treatment whatsoever. Likely this wish was provoked by the fact that 70% or more of the “survivor stories” on Wark’s blog and Youtube channel have used some form of conventional therapy, either surgery, chemo and /or radiation, in addition to alt-med remedies thus muddling the evidence that alt-med cures cancer as claimed.
Chris Wark had surgery for his stage 3 colon cancer. Let’s see what a “virgin” Chris Wark would have looked like using 2 real life examples. So **POOF*, your wish is granted Woody.
Story 1: Penelope Dingle
The PDF document[1] contains evidence and the findings by an Australian coroner into the death of Penelope Dingle. The inquest into Mrs. Dingle’s cause of death came at the request of her siblings. Penelope was diagnosed with an early stage of rectal cancer, one her oncologist considered treatable as it had not yet penetrated surrounding organs. Penelope declined all conventional treatment, including surgery, choosing instead to be treated by homeopath who had convinced her she could cure cancer. This document is heart-wrenching to read. Penelope died a horrific, extremely painful, premature death.
A few notes from the inquest report and conclusion:
A further contention of the family and the deceased in her diaries was to the effect that in spite of her increasing pain levels the homeopath repeatedly assured her that the treatment was effective (curative) and encouraged her to persist with homeopathic treatment. Further it was contented that the homeopath had encouraged the deceased not to take appropriate pain relief on the basis that relevant medications would interfere with her monitoring of the disease and the effectiveness of the homeopathic treatment. The contentions of the siblings of the deceased included a claim that in a telephone call with the deceased while she was at the Emergency Department at Fremantle Hospital being treated on 12 October 2003, the homeopath had tried to dissuade her from having emergency surgery for a complete bowel obstruction in circumstances where unless surgery had been performed she would have died within the next 24 hours.
Professor Platell (the oncology surgeon) advised the court that the deceased was the only patient who he had treated for rectal cancer who has ever refused any treatment at all.
Later, after the emergency surgery, the deceased told her family that she had been told by Mrs Scrayen (the homeopath) not to tell the family about her cancer as the family would not have approved of her being treated by homeopathy alone.
The deceased suffering extreme uncontrolled pain over an extended period of time at a level not normally experienced in societies where there is access to modern medical treatment.
The deceased made a number of unfortunate decisions based on misleading and erroneous information and advice provided to her by a homeopath and those decisions ultimately resulted in her premature death. Ultimately, however, the decisions were those of the deceased, sadly those decisions were to a large extent based on misinformation.
Story 2: Orange Man
This account [2] was written by Dr.David Gorski and describes his encounter with “Orange Man”, a patient in his early ’50s diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer. Here is a section of that blog post:
The Orange Man, unfortunately, made a different choice. Convinced that he could find another way, he sought “alternative” medical treatments. He somehow ended up in New York City, where he undertook a regimen that involved coffee enemas and megadoses of carrot juice. There he returned periodically for over a year, all the while purging himself with coffee enemas, consuming megadoses of carrot juice and vitamin supplements, and undertaking various other “alternative” treatments for a potentially curable cancer (and, I guess, trying to ignore the increasingly orange tint his skin was developing).
Unfortunately, the cancer hadn’t yet had enough the Orange Man. By the time he returned to “conventional” doctors and surgeons, his tumor had grown considerably. It was now intermittently bulging out of his anus and may have been growing into his anal sphincter.
I still remember his operation. It was one of the last ones I did before I had to move on to another service. The Orange Man had a bulky rectal tumor that was very difficult to remove. He had numerous hard, suspicious lymph nodes in the mesentery, going all the way up to the root of the aorta. He clearly had node-positive disease, a negative prognostic factor. The tumor had clearly invaded all the way through the wall of the rectum, another negative prognostic factor. All I can remember thinking is: How on earth could this guy have chosen not to undergo surgery a year before, back when his tumor would have been much more easily removed, and he would have had a good chance of not needing an APR (with its attendant permanent colostomy), not to mention a much better shot at long-term survival?
He had clearly been taken in by a quack and was very likely to pay the ultimate price. And he knew it. A few days later, before the Orange Man was discharged, I had to move on to another service in another hospital. I never saw Orange Man again. Given the extent of his disease, there’s certainly less than a 50-50 chance that he is still alive today. If he is still alive, however, there is a 100% chance that he has a permanent colostomy that he probably didn’t have to have.
Alternative medicine that is ineffective is not harmless.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120413035906/http://www.safetyandquality.health.wa.gov.au/docs/mortality_review/inquest_finding/Dingle_Finding.pdf
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20080316214650/https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/08/the_orange_man_1.php
Fact-Checking Chris Beat Cancer 