An award-winning article on the seductive powers of alternative therapists It was her own fault that she lost her chance to be cured. Or was it? This article, which was first published in the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, and won its author a Best Cancer Reporter Award, explores what makes people choose alternative over conventional treatments. t was on a Monday three she had breast cancer. Surgery was was the resident gynaecologist from the and a half years ago that something she had never wanted. She neighbouring village. He had recently Renate Mulofwa* first gave was a woman who had always attended arranged for a tissue sample to be taken in. “I can’t cope any more,” her mammography appointments, ever from her left breast. She had cancer, the she said to gynaecologist since she had first felt a hardening in her doctor told her curtly, and he had made Angela Kuck as she bared her breast. breast when she was 28. She had had her an appointment for her to go into hospi - “I’m sure you’ve never seen anything as three children immunised and allowed tal the following week for surgery.At any bad as this!” And she burst into tears of them to be prescribed antibiotics when rate, that was how she remembered it. embarrassment. they were ill. She had never had anything The gynaecologist now says that it Three days earlier the naturopath who against conventional medicine – at least cannot have been like that – his profes - was treating her had jumped back in not until that phone call in June 2006 sional ethics would not permit him to alarm as blood came spurting out at him. that changed everything. For Renate deliver such a serious diagnosis over the The tumour was as large as a grapefruit Mulofwa, that day saw the start of an phone. The truth of the matter can no and was pushing outwards as though try - odyssey through the strange world of longer be ascertained, but Mulofwa ing to escape from her breast. It had eaten alternative medicine. For four years she maintains that from the outset she found away her skin, so that Mulofwa described had been pursuing that pathway, leaving this doctor cold, uninterested and arro - what remained as a “glacier landscape”. it only once – briefly – in 2008. gant. She saw him as representing the Renate Mulofwa was then 47; she Mulofwa had been visiting a friend heartlessness of conventional medicine, had known for almost two years that when her mobile phone rang. The caller and then she imagined the chemotherapy 28 more like “a newly hatched vulture”. But is it all ‘her own fault’? Her fault because she let herself be seduced by the promises of the wonder doctors? To what extent are the seducers them - selves to blame? Renate Mulofwa now recognises traits in herself that make her an ideal victim of that ‘alternative’ parallel world. She sees herself as easily influenced, Don’t do what I did. she takes decisions on the basis of gut Providing insight into feeling, and if a charismatic healer clasps why people choose her warmly by both hands and proclaims alternative therapies, in a tone of complete confidence, “We and what the can crack it!”, that goes down better consequences can with her than the ruthless realism of be, helps readers conventional doctors. avoid falling into And so she entered the jungle of the same traps alternative medicine, where no one showed her how to distinguish between genuine treatment methods and life-threatening quackery. The first tip came from her brother – he knew of a farmer who had cured a colleague of a persistent allergy through laying on of hands. Mulofwa drove in her green Volkswagen camper to the Allgäu in – the hair loss, the vomiting into the ‘I was stubborn’ southern Germany. A friendly elderly toilet. No! She decided not to give con - “I don’t want to push the blame onto man with a red face and a large stomach ventional medicine a look-in. others. I was stubborn and had got it welcomed her into his living room. In the And so, regrettably, she did not find into my head that I would show everyone corner stood an altar, surrounded by out how good her prospects were: no that there were other ways of doing it,” statues of Mary of every conceivable lymph nodes were affected, the cancer she now says. She shakes her head, on size. His hands on her shoulders were was less than five centimetres across which, after five cycles of chemotherapy, warm; it felt good to feel the energy and was ‘moderately differentiated’. nothing but fuzz is growing. On the flowing.And the farmer was modest; he Chemotherapy would probably not shelves in her small living room is a photo made no mention of payment. Mulofwa have been needed at all, she could of her twenty years ago, with long blonde gave him €100. She stayed a week, sleep - have been treated effectively with hor - hair and a beaming smile – she is doing ing in the camper van and enjoying the mone inhibitors. Her chances of a cure the splits on a tree trunk that is bridging outdoors and her freedom. were good. a stream. Now she thinks that she looks Once she met another cancer patient She saw him as representing the heartlessness of conventional medicine 29 Could she have abandoned her approach at this point, brought down to earth by this failure? there, who secretly advised her, “I’ve Vera Hermann, her alternative thera - patients in a panic. “Knowing patients” had surgery and chemo as well – you pist and friend, also avoided conflict. At have no fear because they know that should do the same! Just don’t say any - first, choosing her words carefully, she metastases do not exist. thing to him about it; he doesn’t like it.” tried to encourage Mulofwa to have Mulofwa learned that with healers it’s surgery – after all, the alternative route Vindicated? just like with doctors: if you want them was still an option after that. “But you Mulofwa saw herself vindicated. Was it to try to help you, you have to do what were wearing blinkers; you only took in not this very panic that was paralysing they say. things that fitted with your world view,” her? She therefore avoided all conven - A small book with a yellow cover she now says, and Mulofwa ruefully tional medical advice or newspaper arti - revealed the next step to her. Pub - acknowledges, “You’re right. If you had cles and turned off the television as soon lished in 1978, it still ranks among spoken to me forcefully like other peo - as a talk show mentioned her illness. In Amazon’s top 10 cancer guides. Under ple did, I would have stopped coming her books, on the other hand, Mulofwa the title Advice for the Prevention and to you!” learned that she herself was responsible Natural Treatment of Cancer, Leukemia By this time Mulofwa had already for her cancer. Had she not left her two and Other Seemingly Incurable Dis - accumulated two shelves of books about faithful ex-husbands, one after the other, eases, the author – also a farmer – leads her cancer. What all of them have in after many years of happy marriage, in people to believe that cancer can be common is that they accuse conven - order to eventually marry a younger ‘starved out’ by a 42-day diet: a wide - tional medicine of only treating the African man in 2003? “Although many spread misconception that flies in the symptoms, not the cause, and they sug - people didn’t understand me then, it face of all the insights of cell biology. gest an apparently simple way out of was deep love at first sight, and now he The theory is preceded by numerous the problem. Sometimes the solution is stands faithfully by me,” says Mulofwa. accounts of cancer patients who have large doses of vitamins, sometimes infor - But she believed that the cancer was a allegedly been cured by the ‘Bruess mation about the healing properties of punishment for what she had done. diet’ – even without surgery. Aloe vera that has supposedly been sup - She chased tirelessly from healer to Mulofwa stuck rigorously to the diet: pressed by scientists, sometimes you healer. She had her bowel cleansed of for six weeks she had nothing but tea and simply have to work on your relationship toxic waste, was injected with mistletoe fruit juice, with thin onion soup at lunch with your mother. Under seductive titles extract and tried out dubious procedures time. She lost 14 kilos, her hair fell out in such as Chemotherapy Heals Cancer and such as snake venom therapy and auto - clumps, but the lumps in her breast got the World is Flat (another longstanding haemotherapy. She took part in the mass no smaller. bestseller), authors of dubious standing healings of a Nigerian priest who worked skilfully attack conventional medicine at himself up into a frenzy on the stage, and A chance for a rethink its weakest point. in Tibetan group yoga events. Could she have abandoned her approach In a book about Germanic New Today some of these experiences at this point, brought down to earth by Medicine, written by the former German bring tears of laughter to her eyes. One this failure? “My mother is very strong. doctor Ryke Geerd Hamer, who has alternative practitioner pushed her in You can talk to her, but in the end she been charged and convicted on a num - the back, to test her aura.