De Telegraaf als kwaliteitskrant?

Wilma S. 24 October 2016

In Duitsland zou men zich de ogen uit de kop moeten schamen en als de wiedeweerga met adequate wettelijke maatregelen komen:

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/german-alternative-cancer-clinics/

German alternative cancer clinics: Combining experimental therapeutics with rank quackery and charging big bucks for it

Posted by David Gorski on October 24, 2016

A couple of months ago, I discussed patient deaths at an alternative medicine clinic in Europe, where a naturopath named Klaus Ross had been administering an experimental cancer drug (3-bromopyruvate, or 3-BP) to patients outside the auspices of a clinical trial. 3-BP is a drug that targets the Warburg effect, a characteristic of cancer cells first reported in the 1920s by Otto Warburg in which the cancer cell changes its metabolism to shut off oxidative phosphorylation (the part of glucose metabolism requiring oxygen that produces the most energy) to rely almost exclusively on glycolysis and anaerobic metabolism. From a cancer cell evolution standpoint, one can understand why cancer cells would behave this way, as this change allows them to survive in environments with much less oxygen than normal cells, but the side effect of the Warburg effect is that cancer cells consume a lot of glucose for their energy needs. Indeed, positron emission tomography (PET scanning) takes advantage of this characteristic of cancer cells to use glucose labeled with a positron-emitting isotope that accumulates in cells. The result is that cancer cells, which in general use a lot more glucose than normal cells, light up compared to the surrounding tissue, allowing the identification of areas suspicious for cancer. Targeting the Warburg effect is therefore a strategy to attack cancer cells preferentially.

Since I wrote about the tragic deaths of those cancer patients, I’ve been seeing stories about German alternative medicine cancer clinics popping up in my newsfeed over and over again. Intuitively, you’d think that a scientifically advanced economic powerhouse like Germany would have stricter regulations over the practice of medicine, but, the more I looked into these clinics, the more I realized that there are a lot of quack clinics in Germany every bit as quacky as any clinic in Tijuana, but with a twist. Like Mexican alternative medicine clinics, German clinics often charge enormous sums of money for treatments that range from the unproven to the dubious to pure quackery. However, in addition to the rank quackery, German cancer clinics include legitimate experimental drugs that are as yet unproven and might even only have cell culture or animal evidence supporting its potential efficacy. Indeed, 3-BP is just such an example. It is a legitimate candidate cancer drug that’s in the pipeline, having shown promise in cell culture and animal experiments, but that has no human data from systematic clinical trials yet, just a handful of anecdotes when it was tried in humans under desperate circumstances. Not surprisingly, Klaus Ross’ main clinic is in Germany, and, like so many other clinics there, he was administering an as-yet-unapproved drug to humans.

So, prodded by a couple of recent stories from the UK, I decided to take another look at these German cancer clinics.

eindquotes:

That’s the worst thing of all. Think of it this way. What if the doctors at Hallwang and other German cancer clinics really do have protocols using experimental drugs that cure cancers that can’t now be cured and save lives that can’t now be saved by conventional medicine? Failure to publish these protocols and their results is not just unethical, it’s downright criminal because, without publication, no other patients can benefit from their protocols unless they come to Hallwang. The doctors at Hallwang basically treat their protocols as trade secrets, so that their clinic is the only place such good results can be obtained.

That’s the best case scenario. Now let’s look at the worst case scenario.

Consider another possibility about clinics like Hallwang. Their protocols don’t work any better than conventional medicine. They almost certainly don’t even work as well as conventional medicine. However, combining a “make it up as you go along” approach to the use of experimental drugs with the addition of “holistic quackery” appeals to desperate patients who want hope, are prone to believe the “best of both worlds” sales pitches, and like the idea of “individualized” treatment regardless of whether it really is or not. Publishing their true results would be a threat to their ability to charge outrageous sums of money to patients like Pauline Gahan.

Of the two possibilities, the first is criminal, and the second is even more criminal. I also know which possibility that I consider more likely.