Originally published at: FDA warns against using corrosive "black salve" — a deadly cure-all that's disfiguring lives | Boing Boing
…
4 Likes
they have been able to draw out Cancers. Including […] Prostate Cancer, […]."
How is that salve being applied, exactly?
6 Likes
DYOR becomes FAFO. Truly, we live in interesting times. Sigh.
16 Likes
I’d guess they are either rubbing it on their nether regions, or ingesting it. good times!
5 Likes
seriously. this timeline is so depressing.
6 Likes
I can understand diagnosed cancer patients being terrified when confronted with legitimate (and sometimes horrific) actual proven medical treatment…and fall into the conspiracy trap…believing that the entire professional medical community and researchers are “tricking” them to make more money (or whatever).
Logically speaking, however, you would never get (nearly) the entire medical profession to agree to such a scam.
But when you are sick and scared, it’s easy for hucksters to brainwash you and convince you of a lot of things that are lies. And I hope those huckster rot in hell.
8 Likes
Sanguinaria canadensis, or bloodroot
blue blistering barnacles! there’s some fascinating and morbid chemistry going on there. (thankee for the motivation to improve my flagging education!) Didn’t even know about the term “escharotic” …don’t click on the linked incidence of that word below unless you want a view a slightly gruesome image. poor desperate folks -sigh-
Sanguinarine kills animal cells by blocking the action of Na+/K±ATPase transmembrane proteins. As a result, applying bloodroot to the skin may destroy tissue and lead to the formation of necrotic tissue, called an eschar. Bloodroot and its extracts are thus considered escharotic. Although applying escharotic agents (including bloodroot) to the skin is sometimes promoted as a pseudoscientific home treatment for skin cancer, these attempts can be severely disfiguring…
(lots of extended electron conjugation there to promote photon absorption; no wonder it’s red == 'blood’root)
7 Likes
I have a (soon to be former) friend who has just made the jump from vaccine conspiracies to cancer treatment conspiracies, and I’m just looking at him and thinking, “I just can’t even with you anymore.” I don’t know how you argue with someone who is convinced that, based on no evidence, standard cancer treatments are a scam, but if some knucklehead on the internet says wiping yourself down with pesto twice a day will prevent all cancers, that’s completely believable. He even sent me a link to a sketchy page that, after clicking a couple of links, was clearly identifiable as a KKK/white supremacist-curated collection of “thoughts.” He got pissy when I pointed out that those people would happily see him dead on general principle, so maybe medical advice from them isn’t great, either.
16 Likes
The thing that puzzles me about black salve specifically is that it deviates significantly from the “comforting; pity the medical neglect will kill you” formula that a lot of other quackery sticks to.
If you’ve got an alarming skin lesion of some sort that has to go whatever the dermatologist is going to do to you is likely to be less gruesome(plus they have anesthetics and antibiotics; and know how to inspect the periphery of the extraction site to minimize the risk of leaving cancerous tissue without going overboard on sacrificing the healthy stuff).
I can understand the appeal of juice cleanses and happy thoughts vs. chemo and/or radiation; but picking the improv option when both approaches involve removing a bunch of tissue just seems baffling.
11 Likes
Everything old is new again.
Note how the title went from “they” to “cures” being in quotation marks. Pretty sneaky, sis.
7 Likes
This shit has been around forever
The FDA has been saying this for years
And it is still easily available and very popular among a “certain” group
Amazon.com : black salve ointment
I do not even know anymore. When facts became “that’s just your opinion,” and “my ignorance is just as valid as your facts,” the grifters move in.
15 Likes
“Black Salve. Apply directly to the forehead. Black Salve. Apply directly to the forehead. Black Salve. Apply directly to the forehead.”
3 Likes
I wonder how much this is effected by the cost of legitimate treatments and availability of health insurance in America? Quack cures still exist in countries with universal health care but I don’t believe they are anywhere near as popular as they are in the US.
5 Likes
If this were the motivating factor, one would expect the woo to be consumed by folks of lower SES more commonly. This is not what we (usually) see. Your average Gwenneth Paltrow Goop consumer is quite well off. The majority of this stuff is strictly cash-on-the-barrelhead, with no insurance offset at all. My diagnosis is that this is more based in rejection of conventional medicine as a product of the “conspiracy” that pushes vaccines, chemo and antibiotics. (TBF, if reality is considered a conspiracy, then they are correct in this.) Being that science has become the enemy, and facts are disposable, this is the logical outcome, I guess.
5 Likes
4 Likes
… I’M OFF TO the library YOUTUBE 
9 Likes
Slightly different scams aimed at opposite ends of the market. Goop is to Black Salve, as Bitcoin is to Powerball tickets.
9 Likes
It WAS used to treat skin lesions - before liquid nitrogen and other safer methods were developed - by physicians who dabbed on a precisely calculated quantity of known strength. Not “Billy Bob’s Salve” cooked up in his basement.
4 Likes
But both are aimed at folks who have lost trust in science, medicine and objective facts.
10 Likes
