The cancer scammers
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How social media is being used to target cancer patients with fake cures. Tamasin Ford hears from cancer bloggers dealing with a flood of 'snake oil' salespeople. A former naturopathic doctor Britt Marie Hermes gives the inside story. British chemist and Youtuber Miles Power and researcher Corey Basch from Willian Paterson University in New Jersey describe how social media algorithms are facilitating the scams.
(Photo: Pills and capsules on a keyboard, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Tamison Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:07.3 | Lotions, potions and so-called miracle cures that are anything but. |
| 0:13.1 | Today, we're looking at the raft of online marketing scams claiming to cure cancer. |
| 0:19.4 | As soon as I was diagnosed, I started a blog. People started contacting me |
| 0:24.7 | saying that they had some sort of herb that was going to cure me and I should give up my treatment |
| 0:32.3 | for it. I mean, they're praying on the innocent and the vulnerable people. And it absolutely breaks my heart. |
| 0:39.5 | It's all over the internet. |
| 0:41.4 | It's very prevalent on YouTube. |
| 0:43.6 | You can see how many views the videos get. |
| 0:46.0 | Some of these are several million views. |
| 0:49.0 | And it seems to be something that's unregulated and very accessible. |
| 0:55.1 | We explore how easy it is for patients to get sucked into an online world, |
| 1:00.8 | promising so much and delivering so little, |
| 1:04.6 | and why it is such big business. |
| 1:07.9 | Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:14.6 | Thank you. Business. Business Daily from the BBC World Service. My name is Arlene O'Sullivan. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2013 in my mid-40s. |
| 1:26.6 | The challenge is that there's gaps between appointments. |
| 1:31.3 | There's a lot of time and from the moment you get up in the morning |
| 1:34.3 | to the moment you go to bed at night, you're thinking about cancer |
| 1:37.3 | and there's cancer inside you and what's going to happen. |
| 1:40.3 | So it was then really when you go to the internet that you see, you go to the wild west |
| 1:46.0 | really of information. When you go online suddenly your Facebook and your Twitter and all your |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.