Ask Dr Miriam

QI’m thinking of contributing to a crowdfunding appeal for cancer treatment. Two people in my family have had cancer and I want to help find a cure for the disease.

Give some thought to where you put your money if you want to help find a cure for cancer because crowdfunding often supports research for alternative cancer treatments where there’s no evidence that the treatment actually works.

I have to nail my colours to the mast and say that I can only support treatments where there’s sound evidence they work. I’m with the Good Thinking

ASociety, an anti-pseudoscience charity which has found hundreds of appeals are for unproven or even dangerous therapies, according to figures published in the British Medical Journal. This pseudoscience would include coffee enemas, raw juice diets, burdock tea, alkaline foods, crushed apricot kernel and the patient’s own urine.

Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, says: “Crowdfunding for a terror attack is out of the question. “Crowdfunding for cancer quackery is not any better and must be stopped.” I agree.