Claims misleading

I REFER to the piece by ‘freelance writer’ Paul Minga in The National on Sept 20 titled ‘Cancer patients claim to be cured’.
Although the heading includes the word ‘claim(s)’, the article gives the story that cancer patients have been cured by herbal medicine.
Herbal medicine does not cure cancer and to claim this is nothing short of an endorsement of charlatanism.
First of all the cost of any cancer treatment available in public hospitals in PNG is mostly free and therefore it is not true to say treatment ‘within PNG means a lot of money’ and private hospitals in PNG do not have any more to offer than Port Moresby General Hospital for the treatment of cancer.
The main cost for patients is getting to PMGH, but this would apply to any herbal medicine in the NCD as well.
The two patients that Paul Minga spoke to have no evidence that they actually had cancer.
The man with the pus discharge from the sinus in his neck is not typical of any kind of throat cancer.
This man probably had a bacterial infection in glands in his neck and not cancer.
The only way to make a definite diagnosis of throat or neck cancer is to have a biopsy and the tissue examined under the microscope.
This man did not have this procedure.
The other patient with ‘breast cancer’ was 19-years-old.
It is almost unknown anywhere in the world for such a young person to get breast cancer, and this young woman did not have any biopsy evidence of cancer either.
Lumps in the breast are very common, and most of them are not due to cancer.
The young Tari woman in the story claimed that her painful disease developed when she was still a young woman in Tari.
Breast cancer does not produce any pain in the breast; the breast lump is painless.
By printing these stories as written by Paul Minga will give ordinary people that the best thing to do if you think you may have cancer is to go and get herbal medicine.
It is not.
The best things to do is to go and see an experienced doctor.

Professor Glen Mola