Tuesday, April 19, 2016

VAMPIRE BLOOD


Linda and her cousin Elsie
Heron Island, Maine, 2008
 
I don’t really know what to say about this.  I stumbled on it by clicking on
which turned up in a recent Google Alert.  In doing so I violated my invariant rule: never read anything printed in a British tabloid.  But how can you resist something with the title “Gran Gail “cured” of cancer by banned “vampire” blood treatment”? 
It appears that this youngish grandmother of seven was sent home to die, with advanced metastatic ovarian cancer.  She understandably was reluctant to do so, so in desperation subscribed to a service that supplies whole human blood for injection – at nearly $600 per pop.  This treatment is banned by the British health authorities as being unsafe and of unproven utility.  However, six years later Gran Gail is alive and cancer-free.  What to think?
Well, obviously – Hooray!  Anyone who beats ovarian cancer, by whatever means, is to be celebrated.  But how did it happen?  A list:
Maybe the docs screwed up and she never had OVCA.  Possible, but unlikely.
Maybe faith-healing kicked in bigtime.  That is, maybe Gail believed so fervently that ‘vampire’ blood would do the trick that her body somehow just kicked the cancer out.  Also unlikely, but stranger things have happened. 
Maybe the blood Gail received contained some organic molecule that somehow kick-started the immune system and caused it to turn on the cancer cells and kill them.  I hope this is the answer, but…
Maybe the Sunday Daily Star made the whole thing up, in order to fill out their front page.
One thing is certain, though.  We know an awful lot about cancer – but we still don’t know enough.
 
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