Cancer death of 'Wellness Warrior' Jess Ainscough brings focus onto alternative treatments

A public memorial will be held on Friday to farewell Jessica Ainscough, a young woman who forged a career during her short life promoting alternative therapies for cancer.

After seven years battling her extremely rare cancer, epithelioid sarcoma, it claimed her life 10 days ago while she was at home with her family on the Sunshine Coast.

Two years ago, Ms Ainscough lost her mother to breast cancer after she rejected conventional medicine in favour of alternative treatments.

Her family has released a statement asking for privacy.

Jessica Ainscough.

"I'm so proud of my beautiful daughter for her achievements, style, grace, sincerity and affection," her father, Col Ainscough, said. "I'm devastated although comforted to know that she is now reunited with my wife, Sharyn. We are deeply appreciative of all the love and support coming in from around the world."

Doctors have recognised Ms Ainscough's right to choose her own cancer treatments, but at the same time are concerned her message might convince others to reject treatments that could save their lives.

Epithelioid sarcoma is an incredibly rare, slow-growing cancer and it appears Ms Ainscough would have had to have extensive surgery to remove her arm and shoulder when it was first discovered in order to give herself the best chance of survival.

Surgical oncologist and blogger David Gorski wrote that Ms Ainscough clearly had noble motivations but was both a victim of, and complicit in, promoting dangerous therapies.

"Jess Ainscough had a shot, one shot. She didn't take it," he said. "What saddens me even more is that I can understand why she didn't take it, as, through a horrible quirk of fate, her one shot involved incredibly disfiguring surgery and the loss of her arm."

Ian Olver, the head of the Sansom Institute at the University of South Australia, said most people with cancer tried some alternative treatments, but the danger came when they replaced conventional treatments with them.

"Even if something has been reported in the press as working for someone, the critical figures are will it work for 1 in 10 people, 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000, and that's what evidence-based medicine is about," he said. "In our health system you can basically be treated in the public system without a great outlay [of money], but sometimes they ask you to pay hundreds of dollars a week for alternative therapies".

Ms Ainscough was particularly committed to the Gerson therapy, which involves eating extreme amounts of fruit and vegetables and undertaking up to six coffee enemas each day.

Advocates of the therapy claim it allows the body to heal itself from a number of conditions by boosting the immune system and removing "toxins", despite there being no evidence that most cancer is caused by specific toxins or poisons in the body, or that such toxins could be flushed out by diet and coffee enemas, or that a healing immune response exists that if stimulated in this manner can seek out and kill cancer cells. The full treatment can cost a patient thousands of dollars.

John Dwyer, the president of the group Friends of Science in Medicine and an emeritus professor at UNSW, said regular coffee enemas could cause deadly bowel perforations.

"There is no credible scientific evidence for any of these alternative treatments that claim to cure cancer," he said, but added it can be difficult for people to tell what claims are unscientific and what are not.

"If you just Google the Gerson Therapy the first 20 things you bring up will all be pro-, so you can get hoodwinked".

He said people should speak to their doctors or reputable organisations such as the Cancer Council, which says the Gerson Therapy is an implausible and potentially dangerous treatment that should be avoided.

"It's just a tragedy that a young woman who had much to live for made a mistake which may have resulted in her premature death."

Ms Ainscough's family strongly rejects the suggestion that her life would have been extended with conventional treatment and say her treating clinicians said this was not the case.

Professor Olver, a medical oncologist, said people with cancer should seek a wide range of opinions about treatment options, including from their doctors about what would work for them. But they should know that Australia took a softer approach to regulating alternative medicines than conventional medicines, allowing them to be registered for sale if only proven safe, not effective.

The Cancer Council's questions to ask when considering alternative therapies:

• Is this therapy specifically used for cancer patients or for people with other diseases?
• Are there any side-effects?
• Who will be involved in delivering the therapy?
• What are their qualifications and are they registered with a professional organisation?
• What are the costs of the therapy and are they covered by my health insurance provider?
• What does the therapy aim to achieve?
• Will this therapy affect my conventional medical treatment?