When Hayley and I began our YouTube channel, Cancer Research Demystified, we had a clear aim in mind: to give patients & their loved ones answers to their questions about cancer research. We began with tackling the science of common treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, explaining the latest hot topics in research like immunotherapy, and showing footage of what happens to a patient’s donated blood or tissue sample when we receive it in a research lab.

But over time, we noticed that these weren’t necessarily the most common questions we were actually getting from patients. Whether we were discussing latest advances in a support group meeting, consenting a patient to take part in a research study, or even just chatting to a taxi driver or barman who mentioned they had a family member with cancer – one question type was emerging as a very common trend.

Cancer conspiracies.

Now and then, patients & their loved ones would ask us if it was true that big pharma is keeping the cure to cancer a secret. Or indeed, politely inform us that this was happening, and with certainty – to them it was a fact.

While getting an Uber to my lab one day in Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, USA, my driver told me that what I was doing was a waste of my time – that his cousin was importing the cure from China and selling it at a very reasonable price, and that the US regulators refuse to approve it, because they make too much money from chemotherapy.

In trying to engage with the online cancer patient support community, I joined a wide range of Facebook cancer support groups early on in the Cancer Research Demystified days. I was baffled at the sheer volume of misinformation being shared there. It seemed every time I logged in I came across someone trying to make money off desperate cancer patients – whether it was essential oils, CBD products or alkaline water, the list goes on.

It enraged me to see people trying to make a quick buck off vulnerable people. A cancer diagnosis is an extremely overwhelming thing, with patients getting a huge amount of technical jargon thrown at them during a time of great emotional challenge. You can’t be expected to get a PhD or MD overnight, in order to tell apart the clinicians from the scam artists, and you shouldn’t have to.

Of course the moment you bring up this topic in an office full of cancer researchers – you get a response. Everyone had their story to tell, whether it was a vulnerable relative being lead to believe they could avoid surgery for their cancer and just get acupuncture instead, or a set of memes or viral tweets convincing people that cancer researchers like us are keeping a cure a secret in order to line our own pockets.

It didn’t take long for us to decide to make a small series about this for YouTube. We roped in a colleague, Ben Simpson, who had a penchant for schooling those who were attempting to spread misinformation online. And so far, we’ve produced three episodes, under our series ‘Spam Filter’. The aim is to address these sorts of questions by reviewing the peer reviewed literature on each topic, explain the facts, and discuss why some of these rumours or myths might have managed to take hold.

Is cannabis a cure for cancer?

This topic is persistent online, and it’s easy to understand how it has grown legs, given some of the chemicals found in cannabis can genuinely help to relieve some symptoms/side effects of cancer or cancer treatment. It is not, however, a cure.

Are big pharma covering up the cure to cancer?

This one is a bit irritating to us to say the least, given we have all dedicated our lives to researching cancer. It’s also hard to provide peer reviewed data on something that isn’t real, but we’ve done our best to explain the reality of just how hard it would be to cover up a cure, given the numbers involved – as well as why nobody would bother, given they’d become rich beyond their wildest dreams by just marketing the cure instead!

Finally, the alkaline diet

This is a persistent myth online, that making you body more alkaline by eating alkaline foods (which in some case are actually acidic) could prevent or cure cancer. It’s a trendy diet, that really doesn’t make much sense at all. However, it’s very easy to see why people might think it is working, given they can test differences in their urine’s pH, that make it seem like something is changing. For this video we did some urine and blood tests on Ben, before, during and after a day of eating this diet, and discussed the facts and myths involved.

Which cancer myth do you think we should bust next? Or better yet, is there a rumour, trend or theory going around that you’ve seen, and you can’t tell whether it’s legit or not? Let us know and we’ll try our best to get to the bottom of it!