Cancer didn't just upend Trisha Thadani's family; false hope did, too. In a wrenching first-person piece for the New York Times, Thadani recounts how her father, already distrustful of traditional medicine, was pulled deep into a world of alternative cancer care that promised more empathy, gentler treatments, and even long-term remission—at enormous cost and with little scientific backing. Diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in 2019, he walked away from Memorial Sloan Kettering and standard oncology for a Scottsdale clinic called Envita Medical Centers, whose website touted "proprietary" therapies and glowing testimonials. Thadani joined her father at his intake appointment, and even she was taken by what seemed to be a "thoughtful and promising" approach.
Over months, he spent around $200,000 on unproven regimens, a cell therapy performed in Mexico, vitamin and hydrogen peroxide infusions, and coffee enemas. At first, her dad visibly seemed to improve. Then things took a turn; he died within months. Thadani's reporting uncovers FDA investigations, complaints, and lawsuits involving Envita and similar clinics, and shows how targeted online ads, social media, and "integrative" branding can target desperate patients. She writes:
- "When I asked several oncologists across the country to take a look at his records from Envita, they were stunned. One told me that he struggled 'to identify a biologically plausible or mechanistically coherent rationale' for much of my dad's treatment plan. Reading the records, he said, made him 'sick.' Another wrote back, in all caps: 'OH DEAR.'"
Read the full story
here.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
