Johns Hopkins says it is not the source of false claims about cancer treatment
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on March 21, 2021 at 09:45
- 2 min read
- By AFP Spain, AFP Singapore
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The claim was posted here on Facebook on December 1, 2020.
The lengthy caption partly reads: “AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE
CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY
AND ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHN HOPKINS IS
FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY ...”
“Johns Hopkins” refers to Johns Hopkins Medicine, which consists of the medical school and health care facilities headquartered in Baltimore, in the US state of Maryland.
Other claims in the post include “every person has cancer cells in the body” that “do not show up in the standard tests” and when “a person’s immune system is strong, the cancer cells will be destroyed”. It also advocates for a specific diet and criticises chemotherapy and radiation cancer treatments.
The post also includes a 3D render images of T cells attacking cancer cells.
The claim has been shared multiple times on Facebook, such as here, here, here, here and here, dating as far back as 2011.
The claim has also appeared in multiple other languages: Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and French.
It has also circulated on Instagram and Reddit, as well as in a 2007 blog post.
The claims, however, are false.
In an email to AFP Factual in March 2019, the hospital’s public relations department said that the claims are “false” – a stance that it has maintained since 2009, which can be seen in the statement published here.
Below is a statement published by Johns Hopkins Medicine:
The statement reads in parts: “Emails offering easy remedies for avoiding and curing cancer are the latest Web-influenced trend. To gain credibility, the anonymous authors falsely attribute their work to respected research institutions like Johns Hopkins. This is the case with the so-called ‘Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins’ ...
“Traditional therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, work. The evidence is the millions of cancer survivors in the United States today who are alive because of these therapies ...
“When it comes to cancer and the immune system, it is not a matter of strong or weak as the fictional report contends, but rather an issue of recognition ... By deciphering the methods cancer cells use to make them invisible to the immune system, Jaffee and team have developed cancer vaccines that have successfully triggered immune reactions against prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, leukemia, and multiple myeloma.”
US fact-checking website Snopes reported in 2007 that the viral “cancer update” claim was false.
AFP Fact-Check has also debunked a claim about the novel coronavirus that was falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins.
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