Dr. Lorraine Day She is also a rabid antisemite.

San Francisco CA

Description

quackwatch.org Stay Away from Dr. Lorraine Day | Quackwatch 35-44 minutes Lorraine Jeanette Day, M.D., would like you to believe that she has discovered the answer to cancer. She would also like you to believe that her experience as a patient has qualified her to give advice about cancer. She warns people not to trust the medical profession. Her Web site states that “the entire foundation of conventional medicine is based on ERROR.” [1] Her videotapes state that standard cancer treatment has never cured anyone and that nobody should undergo chemotherapy and radiation for any cancer [2]. She claims that (a) all cancers are essentially the same; (b) the basic cause is weakness of the immune system; and (c) her diet-centered program cures people by strengthening their immune system [2]. She states that, “All diseases are caused by a combination of three factors: malnutrition, dehydration, and stress.” [3] She tells people that, “Drugs never cure disease; they only change the form and location of the disease.” [4] She claims that “sugar is as addictive as cocaine” and paralyzes the immune system for four hours” after eating it [4]. She claims that “osteoporosis is not caused by lack of calcium” and that “the more milk you drink, the more osteoporotic you become.” [4] She spouts long lists of health problems that she claims are caused by commonly used foods and drugs [4]. She also advises against vaccination [5] and the use of standard treatment for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder [6]. She speaks eloquently and from the heart, but her tapes contain hundreds of factual errors and far-fetched claims. In my opinion, her advice is untrustworthy and is particularly dangerous to people with cancer. She is also a rabid antisemite. If you or someone you know has followed Dr. Day’s advice or have any other significant information about her, please contact me. If you have any of her tapes or other educational materials that you no longer need, please MAIL them to me at 287 Fearrington Post, Pittsboro, NC 27312 Background History Dr. Day graduated from the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine in 1969 and then trained in orthopedic surgery at two San Francisco hospitals. Her Web site states that she subsequently became an associate professor and vice chairman of the department of orthopedics at the UCSF medical school and chief of orthopedic surgery at San Francisco General Hospital. During the mid-1980s, she received considerable media attention related to the risk of acquiring AIDS through exposure to the blood of AIDS patients during trauma surgery. Her book AIDS: What the Government Isn’t Telling You, states that in 1989 she resigned from her jobs because she thought the risk of getting AIDS was too high [7]. Day says that she noticed a small breast lump in 1992 but did not seek medical care until about a year later [2]. A pathology report posted to her Web site states that October 26, 1993, she underwent an “excisional biopsy” in which a 1.7 centimeter tumor was removed and found to contain an infiltrating ductal adenocarcinoma that extended to the margins of the biopsy specimen [8]. A medical report dated November 2, 1993 indicates that she was advised to have more of her chest area and the lymph nodes under her armpit removed and then undergo radiation treatment [9]. The doctor’s note indicates that Day wanted only the wider chest surgery. Day’s “Cancer Doesn’t Scare Me Anymore” video [2] indicates that a few days later she had a second operation to remove the cancerous margins, but the extent of this surgery and the pathology report are not posted on her Web site. Then, according to the tape, she began eating a strict vegetarian diet, eliminated all refined sugar and processed foods, and drank large amounts of vegetable juice. All went well, she says, until nine months later when her tumor returned, this time the size of a marble. Realizing that “diet was not enough,” she turned to “alternative methods ... one after the other”—a total of 40 of them—trying each one long enough to see whether it worked. (She does not say how she could tell whether a method worked or how long it would take to decide.) Then, she says: Suddenly my tumor grew from the size of a marble to the size of a large grapefruit. And it did this in just over a period of just over three weeks.... It was the size of a softball. By this time the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes under my arm and at the base of my neck and I knew I was in big trouble. At first, surprisingly, the tumor wasn’t very painful, but over time the pain became more and more intense until even but even the strongest narcotic pain medicine would not touch it... .. Now I became so sick I had to close my office. As things got worse, I became essentially bedridden and the pain continued to increase. The tumor was so heavy that when I got up even to go to the bathroom I had to support the weight of the tumor with my hand. My body was in total collapse. I had symptoms of numerous other diseases besides cancer. Not only did I have this huge painful tumor on my chest that I had to look at every day, but I had developed a tremor in my right hand that was a specific symptom of Parkinson’s.... In addition, I had symptoms of multiple sclerosis on the left side of my body, my leg became numb from my knee down, I lost some control of my left leg, and my left arm felt like someone was always grabbing it. The tips of my fingers and toes became numb and cold, a disorder known as Reynaud’s syndrome. I developed what appeared to be allergies to all foods except three. Whenever I would eat any others, I would collapse and have to be on oxygen. And I was overwhelmed with depression and anxiety to the point that that my heart felt like it was going to jump right out of my chest. I was a mess. For over a year I continued to get worse, all the time becoming more anxious and more discouraged. But I kept going forward. I kept studying and trying one thing after another and I kept studying the Bible and praying, asking the Lord to show me how to get well. But nothing worked. My cancer kept getting worse. Because my pain was becoming intolerable, I found one surgeon who was willing to remove a portion of the tumor just for pain relief without forcing me to have mastectomy or chemotherapy. And all the rest of the tumor was left in place, including the lymph nodes. Then they sent me home to die. I became so sick that I was essentially bedridden for six months. As my cancer progressed, I became unable to eat and then unable to take fluids. At one point I was not expected to live through the night. My husband who saw my life rapidly ebbing away as my breathing became more and more labored said to me, “I’ve got to take you to the emergency room. You’re dying.” And I knew I was. As a trauma surgeon caring for victims of massive injuries, I’ve seen a lot of people die. I know what death looks like. And I was dying. But I refused to go. I knew that if I went to the hospital they would give me drugs. I knew that I had so little life left in me that the drugs would kill me. I also knew that God says in his word that he forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases. God says, “I am the Lord who heals you.” My husband and I had been praying together three times a day every day since I’d been ill. I had claimed the healing promises in the Bible, while at the same time following everything I knew how to do, including eating the original diet God gave in the Garden of Eden: fruits, grains and vegetables in their most natural form. I decided I had to continue to trust God. I wanted to stay under his protection and depend on Him rather than depend on human medical knowledge which is nothing more than drugs... . Because I’d been unable to eat for three weeks, nor take in fluid for three days, I was rapidly becoming very dehydrated. I knew I could not continue for long without water. Then the Lord impressed on my mind something I had heard was done in medicine 60 or 70 years ago before the introduction of intravenous fluids. Dehydrated patients could be rehydrated through the colon by water dripped in slowly by enema. The colon can absorb water and even nutrition in the form of wheat grass juice, carrot juice, or green leafy vegetable juice. That’s the way I stayed alive for the next few days until I could drink. At that point of death, I had decided to trust God with my life and He showed me what to do. Then over the next few weeks and months I started to understand the rest of the 10-step plan. Sometimes the information would come to me through the mail anonymously. Sometimes I would become impressed to study in a certain area. And information that I had previously read now became clear in the way it applied to my situation. Of course, all the time I continued to pray and asked the Lord to show me the way to get well. Finally, the entire plan became clear. From the time I started on the whole 10-step plan with 100% commitment, it was just eight months until all my cancer was gone. It went away slowly, one day at a time. Then it took an additional ten months for me to regain my strength. So in 18 months I was totally well and cancer-free. I’ll soon be 64 years old and I am healthier than when I was 30. I have lots of energy and I don’t have an ache or a pain anywhere [2]. Unanswered Questions One way to judge whether a story is accurate is to see whether it is internally consistent. Day’s story is not. She states that her cancer grew from marble to grapefruit size in about three weeks—and her video shows a mass in the front of her chest. (It might be interesting to know why she videotaped it.) Then, she says, she proceeded to do 40 “alternative” treatments, one after the other, until she could tell whether each one worked. How long did it take to try these out? What happened to the tumor size during this period? She said the tumor became painful and was so heavy that she had to support it with her hand when she walked. The allegedly tumorous area in the video does not appear large enough to fit this description. Did the tumor continue to grow at an extremely rapid rate? If it enlarged and she intended to document what happened, why doesn’t she show subsequent videotapes? Did she actually have a tumor recurrence, or was the swelling she displays in her video merely a large benign cyst (walled-off collection of fluid) or swelling due to inflammation? Day says that when the tumor recurred, the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes under her arm and in her neck. Yet she describes no further medical care at that time. How could she know whether she her lymph nodes were cancerous without obtaining a biopsy? If she had a lymph-node biopsy, why hasn’t she posted a pathology report showing that she had cancerous nodes? Day says that as her condition worsened, she developed Parkinson’s disease; multiple sclerosis; Reynaud’s syndrome; allergies to all but three foods; and severe anxiety and depression. How likely do you think it is to develop four significant unrelated illnesses in a short period of time? Do you think it is possible to be allergic to all but three foods? (I don’t, because many foods never cause allergic reactions.) Do you think it is likely that eating other foods could produce an allergy so severe that the person would collapse and require oxygen? I don’t. Anaphylatic shock is a severe allergic condition in which the person has great difficulty breathing. But the appropriate treatment would be adrenalin, not oxygen. It could also be asked why she happened to keep oxygen handy and why, if it were critical, she didn’t die the first time she had one of her “allergic” reactions. Is it possible that her “allergic” symptoms were merely anxiety attacks that included rapid breathing (hyperventilation)? She states that she became bedridden for months and implies that this was the result of her cancer. It seems to me that severe depression and possibly malnutrition were more likely to be responsible. She then says that over a year she “continued to get worse” and the pain got so unbearable that she had further surgery. I assume she means worse than when she had the serious ailments described above. Is that possible? She does not describe the surgery in detail and does not provide documentation of what happened. Why doesn’t she post her pathology report for this third operation? What about her pain management? Why did she delay surgery that she thought could relieve her pain? She says at the beginning that her pain was so unbearable that “even the strongest narcotic couldn’t help.” She says elsewhere that she did not want medical care because doctors rely on drugs and drugs cause cancer. Yet she apparently took “the strongest narcotics” and did not explore other pain-relief measures such as injections that might deaden the nerves that deliver the pain. She expresses antagonism about cancer surgery that she regards as mutilating. Yet she delayed seeking a minor operation that would not only relieve her pain but would also improve the appearance of her chest. Her willingness to suffer for years rather than seek timely medical care strikes me as extraordinarily poor judgment. Day states that after slowly recovering from what she describes as near death, she apparently decided that she had found the answer to cancer and began marketing her insights to the world. She apparently believes that her single experience entitles her to declare that virtually everyone who does what she recommends will be helped. And she apparently believes that it is appropriate to tell people that medical treatment has never succeeded in curing cancer. These claims are absurd, but people who are frightened, possibly desperate, and uncertain what to do might decide to follow her advice instead of getting proven care. Day acknowledges these feelings, states that she has been there herself, and offers an alternative to chemotherapy, radiation, and “mutilating surgery.” This message can be very powerful because when people feel “understood,” they are prone to believe what they are told. As far as I can tell, Day stopped seeing patients in 1989 and never returned to practice. She still holds a California medical license but her primary activity is the sale of books, tapes, and dietary supplements. Her educational materials were published by Rockford Press, which she appears to operate from her home. Day’s Response to “Vicious Rumors” Day notes on her Web site that “vicious rumors have been circulating” and that letters have been sent to “people in leadership positions” warning them not to have her speak to their groups. In response to this, she distributed several pages from her medical records and posted part of this information on her Web site. These documents (which I have seen) and what she did with them raise still further questions. Day’s videotaped account [2] states that she developed a Parkinson’s disease tremor in her right hand and weakness of her left arm and leg between her second and third chest operations, which would be some time in 1994. However, there is good reason to believe that this was not the first time she had these symptoms. The clinical note of November 4, 1993 was actually longer than the half-page report Day has posted to her site. The original report was at least two pages long and stated at the bottom that it was a “History and Physical.” The section below what Day posted reads: In other words, the doctor reported that Day told him that her left-sided weakness, tremor, and probable diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease occurred 3 or 4 years before the episode she described in her “Cancer Doesn’t Scare Me Any More” videotape. A line at the bottom of the page states “History and physical continued,” which means that there was a physical examination that Day has chosen not to post. (I do not have the page or pages that followed.) She also cut off the bottom of the pathology report of the specimen obtained at her second surgery. According to Day: My Scripps Memorial Hospital Biopsy Report, on November 4, 1993 showing -“Microscopic Residual tumor at previous bx (biopsy) site.” with a Diagnosis of: INFILTRATING DUCTAL CARCINOMA. (Pathologist, P. Price) This biopsy also showed that the surgeon at Scripps Memorial Hospital was also not able to remove all of the cancer. Cancerous tissue was still present at the margins, even after the surgery [10]. To back this claim, Day has posted a page with two images [11]. The upper image shows the top 3 inches of the “Surgical Pathology Report.” The body of the pathology report is not included. The omitted portion (which I have seen) describes three specimens: (A) a large specimen of “left breast tissue,” which is said to have no residual cancer; (B) a small specimen of “pectoral fascia tissue,” which is said to have microscopic cancer present; and (C) a small sample of “most medial breast tissue,” which is not interpreted on the page. It appears to me that there is at least one other page to this report and that the report cannot be fully interpreted without seeing the pathologist’s conclusions. The lower image is a full-page copy of her “Breast Staging Worksheet,” dated November 5, which contains the handwritten words “Microscopic residual tumor at previous biopsy site” at the top. I don’t know whether these words refer to the situation before or after her November 4th operation. Moreover, the studies were done on frozen sections, which probably means that a final and more definitive report exists but was not distributed by Day. Unlike the first biopsy report, the records she distributed do not state that tumor extended to the margins of the specimens. Thus, as far as I can tell, her response to the “vicious rumors” does not actually demonstrate that tumor remained after the second procedure. It would not surprise me if the final pathology reports showed clear margins, which would mean that the cancer might have been fully removed.