Pete Evans the tip of the iceberg in charlatans’ race to the bottom

Robert O. Young has encouraged cancer patients to abandon chemotherapy.

On 4 February, the Cancer Council released a survey to coincide with World Cancer Day. The council estimated almost 150,000 Australians had been diagnosed with cancer last year while some 50,000 Australians died from it.

But the survey also went on to describe how many Australians are falling for the wellness trap.

The survey of 1000 Australians from 18 to over 76 years old, showed one in five Australians said they were likely to have changed their behaviour based on something they read online; e.g. not from the mouth of a qualified medical health professional, and that included one in eight who might do so according to a story they read on social media.

Almost two-thirds of people believe their doggos can sniff out cancer (perhaps their cats can too but are just not letting on). Most shocking of all was the figure that two in five respondents thought cancer could be cured by alternative therapies that have no scientific backing.

Sadly, for every Paul Kelly (not the singer, nor the footballer but Australia’s Chief Medical Officer) there is a Paleo Pete Evans.

Evans has today announced he’s a Great Australia Party candidate for the Senate at the next election. The nobly named GAP was founded by former One Nation senator, Rod Culleton who was deemed ineligible to sit in the parliament on not one but two grounds – bankruptcy and conviction of a criminal offence with a penalty of 12 months or more behind bars.

The weirdos, the narcissists and the charlatans are in the fight, spreading misinformation, quackery and false hope.

I’d like to think that in times of pandemic science-based, rational approaches will win the day but it is proving to be a close run thing as the wellness industry is replete with snake oil floggers, grifters and outright con-artists who prey on the vulnerable.

Australia does have one of the best regulatory systems in the world, designed to keep shysters at bay. When Paleo Pete Evans flogged his lamp with all those pretty colours claiming it could treat “Wuhan flu”, the Therapeutic Goods Administration issued a $25,000 fine and a cease-and-desist order.

But still they seem to fall through the cracks.

Pete Evans was fined $25,000 over his Biocharger light.

Lovely lamps, magic crystals and aromatherapy don’t cure cancer. If they did, I would have been burning frankincense and oil of cloves snorting the fumes up my left nostril, thrusting shiny rocks up every orifice while bathing in the glow of Evans’ astonishingly expensive light for much of the last five years.

Well, not really because when I was diagnosed, I did not for one moment contemplate alternative remedies. But a cancer diagnosis is a traumatic event which left me feeling vulnerable and uncertain.

It is not difficult to imagine the reasons why cancer patients turn to snake oil remedies. Treatment can be difficult, painful, life changing.

One of the most compelling reasons is that there are so many of charlatans out there.

Readers may have heard of the alkaline diet nonsense put about by vegans and vegetarianists. The New York Times Bestseller lists routinely features this guff in the form of cookbooks and self-improvement harangues. Harmless frippery … possibly.

It’s based on debunked 19th Century microbiology and predicated on the abject stupidity that gobbing down high alkaline foods will somehow alter the body’s chemistry for the better by dispatching said foods to the stomach literally brimming with acid.

The first thing I’ve noticed about these people is how sickly they look, emaciated with crumbling fake smiles staring soullessly back at you from their Instagram pages. I’m not a doctor (neither are they) but if I was, I’d prescribe 250gms of aged porterhouse. Cooked rare. Stat.

But it gets worse because there are a suite of homeopathic grifters who maintain that they can cure cancer by infusing the bloodstream with bicarbonate of soda and not just that but charge vulnerable cancer patients tension thousands of dollars for it and make millions from their collective misery.

Dr (not a doctor and actually sent to prison for pretending to be one) Robert O. Young is based in California. At least two people have died by my count and probably many more. Replete with worthless qualifications churned out from diploma mills, he encourages cancer patients to shun the chemo and come to him for treatment which means multiple infusions bicarb at $800 a pop.

Robert O. Young encourages cancer patients to shun chemo in favour of his dud practices.

Pete Evans pushes dubious remedies. Picture: Supplied via NCA NewsWire

Two years ago, a jury awarded $US105 million in damages to a former cancer patient Young persuaded to forgo effective treatment in favour of his alkaline diet, resulting in her disease progressing to an incurable stage. She’s dead now but Young keeps peddling and profiting from people at the absolute apex of vulnerability.

African dictators, Russian mobsters, Chinese totalitarians are just some of the people we might consider the world’s worst. I could mount a solid argument that Robert O. Young is at least as bad and possibly worse.

He’s not the only one. There are many like him. Chemophobes who create fear and distrust of science based medicine only to flog their own dangerous cures.

I only came across Young while keeping an eye on Paleo Pete and his poorly produced vodcasts.

There was the wannabe senator (let’s all take a minute to let that soak in) and the ultimate charlatan and killer, Robert O. Young, chatting as we might about the weather, on Covid conspiracies and the evils of science based medicine.

Then it occurred to me. If I’d listened to a word of their nonsense five years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer, I’d be dead now.