Black Salve Is A Dangerous Fake Cancer Cure, But It Continues To Flourish In Facebook Groups (buzzfeednews.com) 163
Even as Facebook has cracked down on anti-vaxxers and peddlers of snake oil cure-alls, a particularly grotesque form of fake cancer treatment has flourished in private groups on Facebook. From a report: Black salve, a caustic black paste that eats through flesh, is enthusiastically recommended in dedicated groups as a cure for skin and breast cancer -- and for other types of cancer when ingested in pill form. There's even a group dedicated to applying the paste to pets. A Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that these groups don't violate its community guidelines. This summer, it launched an initiative to address "exaggerated or sensational health claims" and will downrank that content in the News Feed, similar to how it handles clickbait. But it's not clear how it defines what a "sensational" health claim is. Citing user privacy, Facebook would not say whether or not it had downranked the black salve groups in the News Feed. Other platforms have taken a different approach. When BuzzFeed News asked YouTube about several videos where people discussed using black salve, YouTube said the videos were in violation and removed them. Amazon, which does not sell the salve itself, removed a book about black salve when BuzzFeed News asked about it.
It is possible it is (Score:5, Funny)
If it kills you I would say that it did cure the cancer. So yeah, totally not fake news.
Re:It is possible it is (Score:4)
An in addition, if it kills the user, it makes the whole human race a tiny bit smarter. I think this is a perfectly good cure. Not for cancer though.
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I just ordered a bottle. I'll let you know how it goes!
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Who you are planning to give it to? Some really annoying relative?
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Yeah, the most annoying relative I know: me.
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My condolences. Good luck!
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That's like saying letting Hawking die at the young age would've made human race a tiny bit fitter. We all have our blind spots and for fucks sake, when you get a cancer diagnose it's just absolute panic. Get some humanity in you.
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I have a zero-tolerance policy for stupidity that seriously harms others. If you want to do this utterly stupid thing to yourself, fine. But as soon as you start to recommend this to others, you are a problem.
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If your blind spot makes someone else blind, you're more of a problem than you're worth.
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Setting aside the tongue-in-cheek nature of your post and treating it as if it was entirely serious (after all, we're a bunch of pedants around here), the OAED defines "cure" as relieve (a person or animal) of the symptoms of a disease or condition. Given that a corpse receives no relief from symptoms and is devoid by then of its personhood, you'd be hard-pressed to reasonably argue that anyone was cured or that there is even such a thing as a post-mortem cure.
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http://i.imgur.com/PeIRKEg.png [imgur.com]
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They're also applying it to poor pets that have no idea what is being done to them. Poke as much fun at the humans as you want, but that alone should count as animal abuse and get the groups shut down.
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Guess you should have thought about that a long time ago.
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Re: It is possible it is (Score:2)
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Oh yeah, and a skilled voodoo priest can also cure back problems. Loonies!
Seriously, see a dermatologist (Score:3)
Re:Seriously, see a dermatologist (Score:5, Funny)
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Since you must be unemployed and not paying any taxes you really should thank those that do for their tolerance and generosity.
Re:Seriously, see a dermatologist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously, see a dermatologist (Score:5, Insightful)
All it takes is the impossible to afford part. Desperation takes over from there.
If we don't want people using things like this (and they shouldn't), we'll need to fix the mess that is U.S. healthcare.
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I agree with you. Wasn't there once a time when certain things were, by law, not-for-profit? Like healthcare? We need to return to those practices for a number of industries, re
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There will always be some who go for crazy fake cures, even if healthcare is free at point of use, but with this stuff, even the propaganda is pretty gruesome, I suspect few will find it an appealing option when they can afford something else. Even chemo+ radiation looks better than giant festering wounds.
It's what's for breakfast. (Score:2)
I put some some black salve on my breakfast cereal this morning. It was delicious and good for me. You can definitely believe me, because you saw it posted on the internet.
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Darwin (Score:5, Insightful)
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Cancer specifically is associated with age. So no. Home remedies in general might be bad, but so much of good health is luck and lifestyle based that they don't have much of an impact outside of full blown pandemics. So no.
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Cancer specifically is associated with age. So no. Home remedies in general might be bad, but so much of good health is luck and lifestyle based that they don't have much of an impact outside of full blown pandemics. So no.
The problem is when the home remedy is applied in place of the proven medical treatment. For some cancers (pancreatic, for example), the mortality rate is so high that maybe it doesn't matter, but breast cancer has a very high survival rate when treated early.
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> Cancer specifically is associated with age
Not even slightly, unless that age is "any", including in utero.
There's a strong correlation between cancer diagnosis and age - older people are diagnosed with cancer more often than younger people.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.o... [cancerresearchuk.org]
That doesn't mean that a 2 year old, or even a fetus can't get cancer, just that it tends to happen more often in older people.
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That's a cherry pick. Cancer overall is very heavily age skewed (the older you are, the more likely it is).
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> There's a strong correlation between cancer diagnosis and age - older people are diagnosed with cancer more often than younger people
Because there is still an inherent belief in exactly the incorrect assumption already made: kids rarely get cancer, so it must be something else, therefore we won't even consider it. The older you are, the more likely you are to have had prolonged exposure to pollutants, telemerase malfunction, eating trans fats, whatever, even sunlight, so it becomes a more likely candid
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At some point, doesn't crap like this just end up being bleach in the gene pool?
Not really. It usually happens after they breed. More than once too.
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But they use it on their offspring, so it evens out.
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At some point, doesn't crap like this just end up being bleach in the gene pool?
If it's 100% fatal then you might have a point. However, the more likely scenario is that someone might use this stuff, get a nasty chemical burn and end up in the ER. The end result is they have much higher medical bills (especially for internal injuries) than before which we all end up paying in the form of insurance.
The real question is do we want a society where it's acceptable to refuse someone treatment because they did something stupid to themselves (an astounding amount of ER visits are self-infli
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Intelligence is more complicated than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also in America at least millions of people either do not have healthcare or have limited access to healthcare due to our system of private health insurance. I had a buddy with gall stones tough it out and drink magic herbal tea because the gall stone treatments were thousands of dollars and this was post 2008 so everybody was broke from job losses and pay cuts.
Eventually he passed the stones on his own, after a lot of pain. But he like to think the magic tea helped because when you're in a lot of pain and under a lot of stress you want to feel like your doing something. And if you can't afford real medicine then you'll settle for what you _can_ afford.
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Then there's the question of 'where the hell is your humanity, these people are getting fucked up for no good reason, why don't you care?'.
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But they think they did, and therein lies the problem. A lot of them believe that the traditional cures are better than today's modern medicine and that the only reason it's no longer being used is because of BIG PHARMA. And now I am not trying to start a debate (or argument) about the role of big pharma and some of their decidedly dodgy practises, one has to admit (well I wish some would admit) that little things like penicillin have definitely h
It's NOT a Facebook problem (Score:4, Informative)
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It's an FDA regulatory one
AFAIK. There are FDA regulations regarding medical device and medication advertisement and their publishing. They should be applied to Facebook.
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Applied to PUBLISHING and ADVERTISING. Not public discourse. Facebook is NOT a publisher by law.
Yep. For those that demand that facebook not be classified as a publisher even though they are selective.... this is what you get.
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Think about DNP for a moment. The stuff is literally a metabolic poison, you'll literally kill yourself if you take too much of it, boil your cells from the inside out. Even if it doesn't kill you it c
Instagram Influencers (Score:4, Insightful)
It sure would be nice if we had a functioning FTC right about now. And no, just saying "It's their fault for being stupid" doesn't cover it. You and me still have to deal with the effects of their stupidity, like all the unwanted pregnancies.
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laxatives that interfere with birth control.
Sounds like it works as designed.......I wouldn't want to knock somebody up if they kept shitting themselves.
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Post-factual actually, but the difference is negligible. As usual, you have the 10...15% that can actually think independently and then you also have a varying percentage of people where education did actually take. The rest is as dumb as bread. The problem is that this rest used to have at least some inkling that hey do not get it, but lately they have been aggressively demanding that their views are just as valid. As these people have absolutely no clue what a fact is or how Science works, the outcome is
FTC could do better (Score:2)
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great, next people will... (Score:1)
... tell us what color paint you can't drink! ! !!!
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... tell us what color paint you can't drink! ! !!!
Eh, the taste of paint has never been the same since they took the lead out. It's the same with gasoline.
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Get the REAL cancer cure.. (Score:1)
People aren't experts (Score:2)
People in tech, especially those in highly technical fields, are often in a bubble and don't realize that, yes, the general public needs protection from snake-oil salesmen. Everyone should have a job at some point in their career that involves dealing with the off-the-street public, just so they can see that outside of their peer group, people are vulnerable to seductive claims.
This is especially true in these highly individualistic times where expert advice doesn't carry as much weight as it once did. Even
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Dunning-Kruger effect at work. You will not fix this by shutting down the cretins that push these things. The only fix is that people realize their limits and too many are far too arrogant these days to do that. These people have no clue what an actual expert is and what such a person can see and do. Hence society will just have to live with crap like this. Of course, if anybody starts to make real money off such a thing, I am all for shutting them down hard (prison time please), because _these_ people usua
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This is called "the tragedy of the commons."
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People in tech, especially those in highly technical fields, are often in a bubble and don't realize that, yes, the general public needs protection from snake-oil salesmen.
Which is ironic, because Steve Jobs.
If it's advertised on Facebook, it's fraud. (Score:2)
Not always, by any means, but that has to be the default assumption.
Facebook is flooded with ad after ad after ad for some gee-whiz product, or this "cure cancer with corrosive crap" thing.
99 times out of 100, check the domain, it was registered within the past month, whois privacy protected everything, and no way to determine who it really is allegedly selling the alleged product.
Google for the product itself, and you'll often find that the actual manufacturer of the product is someone else entirely, the F
What's the thought process? (Score:2)
My process was to google the Black Salve thing, and when I did I got a list of accepted cancer cures--some of which have cure rates of 98% for less aggressive forms caught early, or at least 50% for melanoma. So if you do that, what's the thought process that makes you say, "screw going to the doctor and possibly getting that 98% cure rate procedure. I'm a' gonna paste some caustic goo on my face."
It's more complicated (Score:2)
The problem isn't that it doesn't work but that if you're going to excise a potential cancer be it with acid, scalpel or otherwise you need to be specially qualified to do that right.
There likely are a hand full of people who have managed to successfully burn off a tumour.
There is a common problem of something worked for one thing or appeared to then it becomes a miracle cure.
A similar thing with tee tree oil. I had what I thought was ring wor
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Tea tree oil, like most essential oils, is a chemical weapon that certain plants make to protect themselves. It turns out that if it has anti-fungal properties, they're quite poor. It'll kill you (or your pet) pretty well if you eat it though, so it's probably aimed at animals that like to eat tea tree leaves, rather than fungi.
Self-mutilation is advertised a lot (Score:2)
Yup. (Score:2)
not entirely fake (Score:2)
i will read this (Score:2)
When there will be at least one number, how many people are affected by this.
OMG (Score:2)
OMG, idiots doing idiotic things! Oh noez! Quick, CENSOR EVERYTHING!!!!!1!!
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"60% of anti-vaxxers describe their political leaning as liberal."
Pew research [people-press.org],
5% of Republicans, 9% of Democrats, are anti-vaxxers.
It was immediately after this stuff came out that the news became plastered with opinion pieces stating that conservatives were the anti-vaxxers.
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Lets try again but weigh it by how many public announcements and web posts are being done by liberals and conservatives.
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>"So you would call the conservative Jews here in New York state, who are responsible for the measles outbreak - https://www.lohud.com/story/ne [lohud.com]... [lohud.com] - "liberals"?
Um, yes. Hate to break it to you, but most NY/NK Jewish are very much to the left.
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He's confusing "religiously conservative" with "politically conservative".
It's not entirely his fault - he's been trained to assume all identifications are political, so he just assumed (in his ignorance) that it was the case here.
But yes, as a group, the 'conservative' Jews are very much politically Left-wing - about 2:1.
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Lol wut.
Most NY Jews are liberal, therefore those particular conservative Jews are liberal... Do you really not see the massive flaws in that logic. Most frummers are very very socially "conservative" I.e. Wildly regressive too.
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But nice try sneaking in your lefty antisemitism.
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The classic response whenever anyone says anything critical of a Jewish community: Accuse them of antisemitism. Should they object to being labeled an antisemite, well, that just proves it all the more true.
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Waaah? Actual facts? You do understand they have no place in a political discussion? These are all about crafting outrageous accusations and fantastical "facts", not about telling actual truth or referring to reality.
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Idiots, because vaccination is more or less mandatory in jewish law.
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I know, right? The GOP's health care plan is not quackery, it is "Poors can fuck off and die, we've got robots now." Even quackery costs money, money which would be much better spent on pills to make rich folks poop turn gold.
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Nobody asks how we are going to pay for the next war, or the next tax cut for the rich. Somehow, it always works out. The only time we hear budget hawks scream is when it is something they don't want in the first place. It's patently, obviously, glaringly disingenuous. The fact that you have to appeal to emotion and use insults to try to make your point only proves how divorced from reality your side is.
And let's be honest here, Republicans and conservatives in general have proven, time and time again, that
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Budget hawk? I'm not a budget hawk, and I think we shouldn't have cut taxes under Trump and that in fact taxes will need to go up on anyone making over, say, $50k a year and especially on those making over $1M a year. Not to 90%, but at least a few percent higher on the lower brackets and low double digits on the upper.By Republican standards this makes me a filthy commie, by Democratic Socialist standards it makes me a corporate shill and alt-right because it's too low.
You're trying to fly under the radar
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Sorry, my sources indicate you are wrong. And my sources are the congressional budget office. What dank crevice are you pulling your alt-facts from?
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So your source for Elizabeth Warren's proposed plan..is the...CBO. Gotcha.
My source for Elizabeth Warren's proposed plan is...Elizabeth Warren. Here you go, nice reliable source [npr.org] for you.
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You're all over the place. First you tried to claim M4A would _save_ us money (remember your remedial math?). Now you've shifted the goalposts again.
Fact is Federal revenues would need to increase by $20T over 10 years. And that's using Warren's funny math (the very article you mention says costs will be higher, she just fudged the numbers down by $7T).
In fact I like that page you linked, they don't support Warren's plan either. They support something much more sane which I also support , namely the last li [urban.org]
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I don't think any of the Medicare-for-all plans will work, but you do not help your argument at all by continously ignoring the fact that these plans remove some or all of the direct payments for health insurance. This is a non-zero value, the GP is claiming (like others) that it exceeds the additional necessary federal revenue. I think there are logical arguments that in fact the additional federal revenue will be greater than the value, and that is what you should be arguing. But pretending this reduction
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Are you saying a politician would never lie about their programs?
If you truly believe that, I think you have problems.
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I'm not moving the goalposts. The article you linked to says M4A will save us money. Full stop. By "Us" I mean citizens will pay less. We will pay less overall, as the savings from not paying monthly fees, deductibles and co-pays more than offsets the tax increase. Overall, the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare will fall, and that's a win.
Try to keep up, nobody cares whether health care costs come from taxes or fees, as long as they go down. And the page I linked says they will go down. You are just loo
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What's the difference between a "sane single payer system" and M4A though? What does one do that the other doesn't?
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You are confusing new, higher federal spending with overall national spending. Yes, the federal government would have to spend more. Yes, we would have to pay more in taxes. BUT, and this is the key point, almost everyone's out of pocket expenses would go down by MORE than the tax increase.
"Why not just let people buy into medicare for a sliding scale amount based on income?" Dude, come on. Think it through. That's exactly what we're doing. That "buy into medicare" for a sliding scale" is known as "our curr
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Damn. I hope this is sarcasm. However my guess it is just another loon.
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Not sure. This seems to be his website: https://remedycoin.com/ [remedycoin.com]
Pretty sure he is just another loon.
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Look up the guy named Hoxy. He had a clinic where he took care of people using Black Salve.
The name is Hoxsey. There was a "documentary" about him called "The Quack who Cured Cancer". He used two herbal mixtures, one was the black salve (or similar) and the other was taken internally. The claim was that the skin treatment was 100% effective against skin cancers, and that he had (IIRC) a 25% success rate treating internal cancers.
Hoxsey himself got prostate cancer in 1967, which did not respond to his treatment, so he sought standard medical treatment. He died in 1974.