What makes people defend the indefensible? A prime example of this conundrum is the case of Antonella Carpenter, a 71 year old “alternative practitioner” who was convicted of conducting a fraudulent scheme to cure cancer in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is likely looking at spending the rest of her life in prison. She is not a physician but has some training in physics and claims that she can cure cancer by injecting a tumour with a saline solution of food colouring and walnut hull extract followed by heating the area with a laser. She calls her treatment “Light Induced Enhanced Selective Hyperthermia,” for which she claims 100% efficacy without any side effects. Any claim of 100% efficacy is a hallmark of quackery since no drug of any kind works in such a foolproof fashion. Even worse, she sometimes told patients they had been cured. As is often the case, quacks unearth some legitimate process and then twist it out of proportion to hatch a money-making scheme.
In this case, the legitimate process is “photodynamic therapy.” The treatment of cancer involves some process by which cancer cells are destroyed while normal cells suffer less damage. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to avoid collateral damage completely and cancer treatment via radiation or drugs is always burdened with side effects. In photodynamic therapy the idea is to introduce a chemical, known as a photosensitizer, that when activated by light interacts with oxygen to convert it into a very reactive form known as “singlet oxygen” that then attacks any organic compound it encounters with the result being cell death. The photosensitizer can be introduced intravenously followed by the tumour being exposed to long wavelength light via optical fiber. Alternately, the photosensitizer can be injected directly into a tumour and then the area exposed to light. In either case singlet oxygen is produced only within the tumour, minimizing damage to normal tissue. The process is applicable to certain types of tumours and is certainly not a cure-all for cancer.
It is this therapy that has been mentally mangled by Antonella Carpenter, who according to investigators cheated cancer patients out of their money and gave them false hope. In spite of any evidence of her treatment having any efficacy, supporters have sprung to her side, claiming that she was wrongly convicted by a kangaroo court. Here are some of the phrases they are pumping out: “The greedy and vindictive genocidal maggots who control the Cancer Industry and have the FDA and courts in their back pocket”…. “the medical mafia is hard at work twisting the truth and vilifying Dr. Antonella Carpenter and any other non-Allopathic practitioners and natural or alternative treatments as quackery”…. “Dr. Carpenter was vindictively targeted by the Medical Mafia and their Gestapo goons at the FDA for successfully curing dozens of cancer patients.” No. The truth is that she was targeted for subjecting cancer patients to a treatment that had no chance of working and was claiming she had cured them. That is evil.
