Cancer cons preying on hope, SBS Dateline

Mar 1 2012

Dateline, 9.30pm Tuesday 6 March 2012 on SBS ONE

Mexico’s border with America is clustered with clinics providing unusual treatments for cancer - alternatives to conventional medicine that claim to offer a complete cure, even for the terminally ill, in return for tens of thousands of dollars.

Dateline on Tuesday (9.30pm on SBS ONE) features an investigation into this multimillion dollar industry as Sarah MacDonald, a journalist who has been treated for cancer herself, goes undercover to find out if these clinics are offering genuine solutions or are just trading on the hopes of those desperate to survive.

Last year MacDonald was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent intensive treatment including chemotherapy, a mastectomy and radiotherapy leaving her drained and exhausted. Through it all, she spent hours trawling the internet searching for her statistical chances of survival. Alongside the cancer chat rooms and online supplement stories, she came across websites advertising alternative cancer therapy clinics, many based in Tijuana, Mexico. 

MacDonald is one of the lucky ones - her treatment was successful and her condition has gone into remission. For others who are told that there is nothing else conventional medicine can do for them, it is easy to understand the attraction of these clinics and the willingness of some to part with thousands of dollars for some hope for a future. 

Shaving her hair and posing as terminal cancer patient, MacDonald visits a number of clinics to investigate these treatments and the people behind them. She learns at least some of the Tijuana clinics are offering nothing but false hope. They have little or no evidence to support their claims that their strange therapies actually work, and there is plenty of evidence that vulnerable people have parted with large sums of money without being cured.

Also on Dateline on Tuesday, video journalist Foud Hady travels to far north Egypt to investigate the flourishing human body parts trade targeting African refugees on their way to Israel. David Brill interviews ‘young earth creationist’ (and Australian) Ken Ham, and visits his 17 million dollar Creation Museum in Kentucky, United States.

Yalda Hakim hosts Dateline live at 9.30pm, Tuesday 6 March on SBS ONE. More information is available online at www.sbs.com.au/dateline .