Doctor who promoted herbal cancer cure arrested (Christine Daniel).....

[dimbear]

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33234411/ns/health-cancer/t/doctor-who-hailed-herbal-cancer-cure-arrested/

This old link emphasizes the important part of this story. Daniel used her 'credentials' as an ordained Pentecostal minister to sell her snake oil, and appeared on the Trinity Broadcasting.

The update is her sentencing, which took place last week. Facing originally up to 150 years in slam, she's scheduled to do 14.
***********
Prosecutors brought fraud charges Thursday against a family doctor accused of promising terminally ill cancer patients in their darkest hours that they would be cured with an herbal treatment.
Using her influence as an ordained Pentecostal minister, Dr. Christine Daniel tapped into the vessel of faith to entice people from across the nation to try her regimen. She even appeared on cable's Trinity Broadcasting Network in 2002
**********

Dimbear again--the key ingredient of Dr. Daniel's miracle cure: sun tan lotion. It is California, folks. Once again, degenerate gambler Blaise Pascal craps out.

[Warpy]

1. Damn, this one has everything

A holy-roller preacher pushing a bottle of fake herbal slop, trying and succeeding at convincing people that it was worth all their worldly goods because it would snatch someone directly from the jaws of death.

There it is: old time religion, herbal fakery, and naked greed, all in one story.

Daniel might spend time in jail. Then again, all those people would have died quickly anyway, so maybe not. Fraud is a lot less attractive than murder through superstition would have been.

[longship]

2. Cancer quackery, the lowest of the low.

Like Hulda Clark. (Look her up.)

People who attempt to get rich on other's naïveté or their ignorance deserve to be locked up for life. Especially, cancer quacks.

I don't believe in Hell, but I'd be pleased if there was a special place there, in some inner circle, for people like these people.

[Adsos Letter]

3. Good!

Too bad it took so long.

[trotsky]

4. This is a good example of the harm of religion.

Justifying religious beliefs as being "another way of knowing," independent of facts or reason, sets people up to be exploited in other ways, like healing scams such as this.

[cbayer]

5. I have never been anywhere that had more of these quacks than Southern California.

Some may use religion as a credential but most don't. Sales of alternative medicines, herbal supplements and other highly questionable treatments are astronomical.

Shysters will use whatever means necessary to sell their snake oils. They always have. The problem here is the FDA and licensing boards.

[trotsky]

6. But the primary problem isn't people using religion as a credential,

it's taking advantage of religious thinking. If someone is taught that evidence isn't needed in order to believe something, they're going to be a lot more susceptible to scams.

In fact, many alt-med scams take the religion link to an even higher level - their practitioners will claim that the act of collecting evidence for their treatment will prevent it from working! This echoes a common refrain heard from religious apologists - you can't demand evidence for god, you have to take it on faith!

[okasha]

7. So what we have here is a doctor--

the product of a scientific education--deliberately and knowingly initiating a muderous scam to prey on people of faith.

Disgusting.

[cbayer]

8. Exactly. Just another scam artist preying on the desperate.

In SoCal they also prey on the vain and those in the "industry" who don't want to age.

Perhaps we should eliminate all TV and motion pictures as the root cause of this kind of behavior -

[trotsky]

9. The desperate who have been conditioned to believe in things without evidence or reason.

None of you seem to have a response for that, so you put on the blinders and pretend gullibility had nothing to do with it.

I'm not excusing the scam artist. I'm not calling for the eradication of religion. But the role of religious belief in this kind of incident cannot be dismissed, no matter how tightly you close your eyes and wish otherwise.