Cancer is a fungus. And can be cured by baking soda. Barmy

So claims the notoriously accurate David Icke. I was alerted to this nonsense by a conspiracy-obsessed friend on Facebook.

One such case is the Italian doctor, Tullio Simoncini, a brilliant and courageous man who has refused to bow to the enormous pressure he has faced, and continues to face, after he realised what cancer is and how it can be dealt with.

Simoncini's 'crime' has been to discover that cancer is a fungus caused by Candida, a yeast-like organism that lives in the body in small amounts even in healthy people. The immune system keeps it under control normally, but when the Candida morphs into a powerful fungus some serious health problems can follow - including cancer.

Naturally, Icke has an explanation for why Big Pharma is trying to silence Simoncini (I can't bring myself to give him the title "Doctor").

But look at what has been happening as cancer numbers worldwide have soared and soared. There has been a calculated war on the human immune system that has got more vociferous with every decade.

The immune system is weakened and attacked by food and drink additives, chemical farming, vaccinations, electromagnetic and microwave technology and frequencies, pharmaceutical drugs, the stress of modern 'life', and so much more.

What defences are today's children going to have when they are given 25 vaccinations and combinations of them, before the age of two - while their immune system is still forming for goodness sake?

This is how the Illuminati families are seeking to instigate a mass cull of the population. By dismantling the body's natural defence to disease.

Yes, of course it's all a dastardly plan by those blood-sucking lizards to keep the human population down. How could we ever have doubted otherwise?

We can leave aside Icke's deluded ravings, but cancer is a serious business. Cancerous cells reproduce uncontrollably inside the body, invading and destroying healthy tissue. Generally, the only treatment is to remove the cancerous cells, and then follow up with courses of radiation or chemotherapy, to ensure all the cells are destroyed. This also damages healthy tissue, and unfortunately doesn't always succeed. The prognosis for some cancer survivors, even after surgery, may be less than 50/50.

Given such an unpromising diagnosis, it's understandable, I suppose, that many turn to alternative (or as I like to call them, untested and dangerous) treatments. And this is where quacks like Simoncini enter the picture. According to Icke:

Instead, Simoncini found something much, much simpler - sodium bicarbonate. Yes, the main ingredient in good old baking soda (but I stress not the same as baking soda, which has other ingredients).

He used this because it is a powerful destroyer of fungus and, unlike the drugs, the Candida cannot 'adapt' to it. The patient is given sodium bicarbonate orally and through internal means like an endoscope, a long thin tube that doctors use to see inside the body without surgery. This allows the sodium bicarbonate to be placed directly on the cancer - the fungus.

Baking soda. 

A quick bio of Simoncini:

Tullio Simoncini lost his offcial license to practice medicine in 2003  in Italy. On May 2006 he was convicted to 3 y. for manslaughter of the first patient and 16 months for having charged 7.500 EUR each to the other 2 patients.

Even a prison sentence didn't stop him. In 2010, a Scottish man suffering from cancer turned to Simoncini after refusing chemotherapy on the NHS.

"I've always refused chemotherapy because it just kills your immune system. I think if I'd gone through it I'd maybe even be dead by now.

Of course, Simoncini's baking soda doesn't come for free.

He has agreed to treat Mr Fyvie, from Musselburgh, but they must come up with £10,000 by 21 March to make the procedure happen.

He has the full backing of his children, one of whom ran a sponsored ten miles on Friday to add to the £1,200 they have already collected.

£10,000. One pound of baking soda costs £1.47 from American Soda. By my calculation, that money could have bought 6,802 pounds of baking soda. That's one big shopping trolley.

In any case, it did Fyvie little good, because within six months, he was dead.

The family of Robert Fyvie has been left devastated after he passed away last Friday morning, with his 10-year-old son, Marc, distraught his dad will not be there to see his first boxing match.

Mr Fyvie, 54, of Eskview Terrace, died peacefully beside his wife Angie as they slept, five months after he travelled to Rome in the hope that a cutting-edge treatment would help him overcome his illness. Sadly, it was not to be.

Still, presumably Simoncini put the money to good use.

I do think Fyvie's actions were fundamentally irresponsible towards himself and his family - he also travelled to Thailand for herbal treatments for cancer, and refused chemo, so he was dicing with death anyway. But Simoncini deserves nothing but shame for taking an obscene amount of money from a dying man and his desperate family for his sham treatments. People like that are wasting perfectly good oxygen for the rest of us.

Hello, Vera

Bet you didn't know aloe vera could cure cancer.

Aloe Vera is a natural plant. The form you buy may be nearly 100 per cent natural. This natural compound was used in Egyptian times to fight skin problems and as a cancer treatment particularly for skin cancer, and one of its major benefits is its ability to soothe. It contains at least 6 natural ingredients which act as ´anti-inflammatory agents´, reducing inflammation, one of the important precursors to cancer.

Aloe vera can fight cancer.

What criteria is used for "100% natural"? What devilishe moderne practice has been used to defile the pure aloe vera, so it's not quite there? Never mind.

I wait with bated breath for the stunning evidence of aloe's amazing cancer-fighting properties, but none seem to appear. How strange. Just lots and lots of sciencey-sounding waffle.

It doesn't help, either, when the official Cancer Research site publishes stuff like  this:

Some people claim that aloe vera can balance the immune system, or even treat and cure cancer. Studies have been carried out into this and some laboratory studies and early studies on animals seem to show that extracts from aloe may be helpful in boosting the immune system to attack cancer cells.

It goes on to cite, fairly credulously, a study that claims to show aloe vera shrinking cancer cells:

One study in Italy of 240 patients reported in 2009. It tested aloe vera alongside chemotherapy for people with metastatic lung cancer, bowel cancer, and stomach cancer...

...In this study the cancer was controlled or shrank for a time in 67% of patients who had the combined aloe and chemotherapy treatment and in 50% of patients who had chemotherapy alone. In this study the researchers said that patients taking the aloe vera had a better quality of life and that they had fewer chemotherapy side effects such as numb fingers and fatigue. They also said that there were no ill effects from the aloe vera. More patients who had the aloe vera survived for 3 years than patients who just had chemotherapy.

Now, I'll give Cancer Research its due. It also points out that

Although this research seems positive the researchers said that there are some concerns about the study. The researchers knew which patients were receiving aloe vera and they may have influenced the results.  

Admittedly, they're only showing the criticisms the researchers themselves apparently brought up, and seem to have no thoughts on the study. But they also state:

But there is no evidence that aloe can treat cancer in humans. Some types of aloe can cause severe side effects when used as a cancer treatment and should only be used under medical supervision. It should never be used instead of conventional cancer treatment.

We don't recommend alternative therapies in place of conventional treatment because there is often little (if any) scientific or medical evidence to back up the claims made for these therapies. If you have cancer, using methods such as aloe vera instead of conventional medical treatment can be very harmful to your health.

The trouble is, the damage is already done by the earlier statements that show some lukewarm support for at least the idea of aloe vera as a cure for cancer. You end up with sites like thealoeverasite.com able to spew up garbage like this:

So popular is the idea that Aloe Vera may be able to treat Cancer that Cancer Research UK have devoted an internet page to it in which they generally state that there is no scientific proof but that it can do no halm (sic).

This is dodging the truth by any standards, as Cancer Research make it quite plain that very serious "halm" can come from trying to treat cancer with aloe vera.

I can quite understand that the possibility of aloe vera being a miracle cure for cancer would be of great interest to Cancer Research, for very legitimate and understandable reasons. Hell, I'd probably shout it from the rooftops. But the science shows nothing of the sort. In fact, a literature review from the University of Westminster concluded that

There is no evidence from clinical trials to suggest that topical Aloe vera is effective in preventing or minimising radiation-induced skin reactions in cancer patients.

But this doesn't stop hundreds of altie sites heaving up their unfounded claims for aloe's alleged properties for treating and preventing cancer itself - and of course, selling you their crank remedies.