The Spark Went Out

For going on 15 years now, I've been outspoken on the blogosphere. Admittedly, much of the time spent blogging is/was dedicated to my advocating a certain sphere of thought, and that is one of  humanity before religion, reason before faith, evidence before feelings, and for today, it will be science before pseudoscience.

Recently there's been another victim at the hands of pseudoscience being peddled as science, or more precisely, someone is dead because of alternative medicine being peddled as modern, real medicine. A young woman who was very popular with the alternative medicine camp has succumbed to a rare form of cancer after a 7 year battle. She was just 30 years old. Actually, the way it was described by her and her league of online supporters, many of whom, BTW, are students of this woman's former school of thought, is that she "thrived with cancer", ever since her diagnosis in her early 20s until her death. Her name was Jess Ainscough, AKA, "The Wellness Warrior". You may have heard of her, but if not, you can do your own research if you please. For the purpose of this post, and mostly for brevity, I'm going to try to encapsulate the details based on the limited reading I've done on this young woman's life. In other words, this isn't so much about one person's fight with cancer, but more so, it's about the *big picture, which is this: The danger of opting for unproven medical alternatives over those actually proven to work.

To back up a bit, at around 22 yrs old, Jess Ainscough developed a rare form of cancer called Epitheloid Sarcoma . I should interject right now that her mother had died from terminal breast cancer, and the reason for this was because Jess' mother opted for alternative, natural treatments, in lieu of modern, conventional treatments, just like Jess did. The treatment that Jess and her mother used in an attempt to cure their own cancer was called Gerson Therapy, and this was the very same "therapy" that Jess peddled online, making multiple videos and even making personal appearances, appearances that mainly involved "how to" presentations and inspirational talks. This, in part, included instructions on vegan dieting, juicing, taking vitamins, and exercising. Jess charged $100 a head.

In other words, Jess would come to make a fairly lucrative living selling pseudoscience. Needless to say, she had a lot riding on this, so much so that she was forced to start lying after it started to become very clear that her "self-treatment" was failing. She would have go into hiding, in fact.  

The biggest hit came when Jess' mother's treatment didn't work, and she died. Now, Jess, who opted for, promoted, and even made a living selling her personalized "approach" to dealing with cancer..i.e..Gerson Therapy, is dead too. The Gerson Therapy, an unproven natural method of healing, failed these two woman, and now they're both dead. In Jess' case, her cancer doctors told her that her best chance of surviving her disease would be to amputate her left arm at the shoulder blade, because it was her left arm that was the origin of the cancer, which eventually progressed to open, bleeding wounds the size of a golf ball.

Jess opted out of the doctor's recommendations, deciding to take on her cancer herself. But here's the million dollar question:  Where did she get this idea that she could heal herself? She certainly didn't pull it out of thin air. So?... who told her that she and her mom could beat their own respective cancers with "natural healing" methods?

And alas, this is the problem, one that I contend will continue to needlessly claim lives until/unless something is done about those who continue to perpetuate and extol unproven medical methods, and in some cases, demonstrable false methods. It should be noted that in this particular case, Jess Ainscough started out right, seeking the advice of qualified, medically-trained oncologists. However, since she didn't like what she heard, she opted to take a chance rather than be disfigured the rest of her life. Well, she lost. Her "faith" in bad ideas did her in.

Leading up to the end of Jess' life, excuses we're eventually being made as to why her public appearances, her "how to" videos, and her blog posts, were becoming more and more sparse, when she seemingly vanished from the public eye entirely.

The next-saddest thing to a woman being struck down from cancer in the prime of her life - and this is perhaps the scariest part - is that her supporters still stand by her decisions, and it will only be a matter of time until similar life-decisions are made for the same reasons, yielding the same results. And when I say this, I don't mean that Jess' decision to treat her own cancer isn't or shouldn't be her own decision; I'm saying that, even in the face of evidence that something does not work, people still support it. It's sickening, really, and this is one of the most irresponsible, not to mention, deadly, schools of thought plaguing mankind today. At its face-value, it's barely less superstitious than the olden days when they thought that they were "healing" leprosy by smearing bird's blood on the patient.

In a twisted sort of way, Jess Ainscough is like a "martyr" for pseudoscience. That is, the impression given is that she'd have rather died than admit that her "faith" was misguided. And just as sad(and scary), her brethren in "woo" are right by her side.

The one who was seen as a "bright spark" is now dead. The spark went out.

RIP Jess Ainscough http://jessainscough.com/in-loving-memory/

*Disclaimer: I am not suggesting nor advocating that modern medicine is fail-safe, and anyone who attempts to counter anything I've said herein misses the big picture when/if he or she interjects that fact.