Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts

22 May 2016

On the Death of a Wellness Warrior (The Case of Jessica Ainscough)

Jessica Ainscough: Wellness Warrior (1985-2015)
Photo by Peter Wallis


The case of Jessica Ainscough, the so-called Wellness Warrior, who, sadly, but unsurprisingly, died last year from cancer despite her fanatic adherence to a range of alternative treatments based on diet and lifestyle rather than medical science - including the ludicrous Gerson therapy - perfectly illustrates the peculiar mix of denial, dishonesty and desperate self-delusion that those who reject chemo and surgery in favour of fruit juice and coffee enemas all too often indulge in.*           

The beautiful young Australian was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma of the left arm when she was aged twenty-two. When an isolated limb perfusion failed to destroy the malignant tissue, Ainscough was told her only remaining option was amputation; a traumatic procedure, but one which significantly increases chances of survival.

Refusing to accept this, Ainscough placed her hopes in quackery and reinvented herself as a wellness guru, becoming a pin-up girl for those who believe there's a global conspiracy by the medical establishment (in cahoots with big business and governments) to cover up the beautiful truth about cancer; i.e. that it can be cured with positive thinking and a bizarre range of practices that are basically forms of faith healing and folk magic despite the pseudo-scientific language they are disguised with.

Despite increasingly obvious evidence that her disease was progressing, Ainscough continued to proselytize for her new religion until the very end of her journey (earning a significant sum of money in the process from books and personal appearances).

It's hard to say how many lives have been touched by her - and by touched, I mean fatally compromised and needlessly lost - but it's worth noting that one of these lives was that of her own mother who was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2011.

Convinced by her daughter's ascetic idealism - and doubtless not wanting to disappoint or embarrass her - Sharyn Ainscough also elected to pursue an unorthodox health regime in order to take responsibility for her illness and find a natural cure. She died two-and-a-half years later; a period of time consistent with expectations for untreated cases of breast cancer.         

The ugly and unfortunate truth is this: abnormal cell growth is a fact of life and cancer kills millions of people globally each year. And the Gerson therapy - for all its living enzymes and coffee enemas - hasn't cured a single case.


* I'm not trying to be flippant, or making this up; the Gerson therapy that Ainscough decided both to follow and advocate really does involve the daily consumption of thirteen glasses of fresh organic juices and five coffee enemas per day. In addition, one must strictly follow an organic whole food plant-based diet, boosted with additional supplements. These measures are designed to optimize health and purify the body of what believers call toxins (but would have at one time designated as evil spirits). 

I have sketched out a brief history of coffee enemas in another post: click here.  And for more information, readers might also like to check out the entry on Gerson therapy in The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert T. Carroll: click here.  


10 Jan 2015

Alzheimer's and the Becoming-Object of Loved Ones





Recently, Dr Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal and an honorary professor at the University of Warwick, claimed that, in his view, cancer is the best way to die, as it affords one the opportunity to come to terms with death, say goodbye to family and friends, and spend time doing favourite things or visiting favourite places. Thanks to a combination of 'love, morphine, and whisky' even the pain that cancer results in can be managed and made bearable.   

This perfectly reasonable argument predictably attracted much criticism; a spokesperson for Cancer Research, for example, claimed that his comments were insensitive, irresponsible, and nihilistic! The fact that he also suggested we should spend the billions of pounds invested worldwide each year in a search for a cure to cancer in other areas, obviously didn't help convince the above of the merits of his case.  

What most interested me about Dr Smith's remarks, however, was his view that it is the protracted death from dementia that it is the most awful to contemplate or experience, as the person is slowly robbed of their humanity and, eventually, their life. 

This proves, contrary to what some of his critics claim, he's no nihilist; rather, he's a romantic humanist who finds the prospect of becoming-inhuman or becoming-object the most terrible thing imaginable. As an object-oriented philosopher - and as a son whose mother has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - I would beg to differ here and challenge Dr Smith's thinking.

Contrary to what he says - and despite our anthropocentric conceit that posits human subjectivity as a unique and superior form of existence - there's nothing to fear about becoming-object, or making a return to material actuality. It might in fact be rather joyous and liberating to be stripped of agency and autonomy; to abandon the illusion of essential inner life and discover instead the seductive and ironic qualities of complete inertia and indifference.

Why dream of being your old self once again when you can become-object? Indeed, might it not be the case that in becoming-object one finally becomes what one is ...?