Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowd-funding [Serious stuff, not enough jokes]

Back in the days, someone with smarts and experience warned against goofling for "GcMAF + GoFundMe" 'unless you are in the mood for a long parade of sadness and exploitation, in which the phrase "rejected Western chemotherapy" recurs like a Wagnerian Leitmotif farted out on a tuba.'
Now let me extend that warning to searching for "Mexican + clinic + cancer + GoFundMe". For the result is a litany of despair and desperation that will destroy all will to live and turn your previously sunny, optimistic disposition into a fish dinner without illumination, a long dark night of the sole.

Ultimate blame rests with the combination of magical thinking and conspiratorial Truther ideation... is there anything it can't accomplish? Once someone has accepted that there must be a cure for cancer, i.e. for the particular cell-line within them that have adopted a new agenda of short-term growth, then it is evident that because hospitals do not offer this cure then it is being suppressed, for the benefit of the elite. Therefore it will still be available from sketchy individuals in countries where central government is too weak to enforce that suppression, on account of governance being 50% corruption and 50% criminal gangs (also yawning inequities of wealth, the official policies of therapy-suppression are unlikely to stop the billionaire elite from getting what they want).

At which point it suddenly becomes a plausible claim that some bunch of self-certified butchers or hairdressers, having converted a condemned public toilet into a 'clinic' by slapping on a fresh coat of paint, are now in command of cutting-edge therapies that are decades of anything that well-funded first-world researchers can offer at their state-of-the-art facilities. Hence Ukrainian stem-cell clinics, and the Mexican cancer-leech industry, and such as.

Professional-charity crowdsourcing companies have been a godsend to the cancerleech industry. They no longer need to limit their charges to what individual victims can charge; the net is now broadened to whatever their victims can wheedle from their social network and from the generosity of strangers.

'gofundme hope4cancer': About 2,120 results
'gofundme hoxsey clinic': About 65 results
'gofundme "oasis of hope" mexico':

About 11,700 results

So please to welcome Peggy-Sue and Rusty Roberts, of "Cancer Research Awareness", who will say whatever they must to talk cancer patients out of receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy or surgery or any treatment that works; for they are recruiters and groomers for the Immunity Therapy Center of Tijuana and its panoply of worthless but theatrical ways of waving dead chickens modalities. Here in particular is Rusty, generously creating Annette's GoFundMe money-funnel. Annette cannot raise the $46000 that would undoubtedly save her life, but such is the philanthropic altruism of the Immunity Therapy Center, they are offering her a bounty for every patient she can persuade to come to them instead of to treatment that works.

The Peggy Sue special is will reduce treatment costs by $2000 for anyone who stays at the clinic for 6 weeks and contributes $200 or more to Annette’s campaign.

Oh joy, it is a pyramid scheme of mortality.

In a similar vein, please to welcome Amanda Mary, of Pearl Lodge (Bulgarian Ski-hotel-turned-quackcentre), giving of her time to set up a GoFundMe site for Anne Pharo, to help her pay the £15,000 demanded by Pearl Lodge for treatment. As of August 2015, with £3,486,

We are just £1,800 away from Anne being able to afford her treatment needed, we are so close and I just wanted to ask everyone to kindly share this information, maybe a little fundraiser or work raffle to help with the extra funds, we are so close now, all help will be well received with thanks x

but after that the site fell silent and was shuttered.

Now a challenger appears, in the form of Flor de la Salud!

They may not have GoFundMe charities that specify their name, but they do have Amanda Mary, wearing a white lab coat to reassure us that all is above board. I struggle to read the diplomas on the wall. Perhaps 'Caveat Emptor' is the assumed name of a clinician, a hommage to Dr Lecter.

Steve Kellogg asks your assistance for treatment.* He went to Flor de la Salud initially for stem-cell therapy for his metastatised prostate cancer, because stem cells are what plants bodies crave to destroy metastatic tumours [I don't understand that part either]. But now the clinicians are adamant that his cancer springs from a slipped cervical disc which must undergo surgical reconstruction before anything else will work, and he needs money for at least three more weeks there.

These internal and external protocols are unavailable in the U.S. Originally they planned to be there for 3 weeks, but after the doctors examined him and ran numerous tests this week, they find he needs surgery on a herniated disc in his neck. In addition to surgery, Steve is scheduled to have stem cell therapy.
As you can imagine, these extensive treatments and the extended stay comes at a cost they had not counted on.

Kellogg's charity is mainly of note because he is one of Amanda Jean's most enthusiastic cheerleaders. His Twitter stream is a paean of praise to the panaceal glory of GcMAF and credulous Tea-party politics and God.

Non-white people, always expecting hand-outs

Six months ago he was up at Pearl Lodge receiving the full protocol of GcMAF and bleach enemas, which totally cured his metastatic prostate cancer.**

It is not clear why the bonus surgery came as a surprise to Mr Kellogg, for the Grifter-in-Chief at Flor de la Salud is a slipped-disc carpenter who diagnoses and reconstructs nails slipped discs for everything... THAT IS WHAT HE DOES. All the other Alternative Modalities at the clinic, the ozone and chelation and Bach Flowers and the Magnetic Bed, they are just icing on the cake in case a patient still has money left over afterwards. But still, it's better than mainstream oncology with all that surgery, right?

When I learned that GoFundMe is owned by a private equity firm, and rakes off 5% of every donation, their uninterest in shutting down charities just because they're complicit in dodgy activities suddenly became less of a surprise.

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* Mexico apparently lies beyond the reach of the Interlattice:

Due to the poor internet Steve has asked for me to withdraw funds and send him a check. I really would prefer to not handle it this way, but under these unusual circumstances I need to honor Steve's request.

**

"I have known Amanda Mary for a few years now. I attended her clinic in Bulgaria where I personally witnessed a very compassionate person. She helped people to obtain the recommended natural products for their illness, including mine. The restoration of health for nearly all was amazing. She has been so concerned about my health that she even used her own money to buy products for me, AT GREAT EXPENSE"

Bonus recruiting and grooming:
https://www.facebook.com/MotherNatureAndYou/posts/942581372504288

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AFTERTHOUGHT
Andy Lewis at Quackometer notes that newspapers love these stories -- "plucky patient fights cancer IN OWN WAY, NEEDS OUR HELP".

It makes a good media narrative. It allows the newspapers and TV stations to present themselves as heroes in helping to raise the money.

[...] the media can be heroes both for sending this poor girl to Mexico and then bringing her home against all the odds when it has all gone horribly wrong.

Giving free advertising to the human tapeworms, collaborating with them, as well as professional courtesy, it has mutual benefits.