Black Cumin - Cure for everything?

[FTLJohnson]

So, I recently got into a discussion with a friend who was proselytizing online about the civil right to make medical choices for one's self and one's family.

The conversation began becuase of the widely publicized media case regarding Daniel Hauser - the young boy with cancer whose parents are refusing medical treatment and fleeing court ordered Chemotherapy.

I made a (somewhat crude) comment to my activist friend that I agreed that I wanted to see this boy be free from treatment, not for the civil rights reasons, but for the Darwinian fact that this particular families lineage would stand a better chance of being cut off if these idiots let their child die.

Now, I am a voluntaryist politically, so I *DO* actually support this family's right to not treat their child medically, especially considering the boy doesn't want to be treated. However, let's not debate that point, becuase it's not the reason why I came here to post...


The media, in the case of Hauser, is mostly ignoring that fact that the family has sought to not treat Daniel becuase of.... *DRUMROLL*

RELIGION!

Hey, who would have guessed? Well, I did - and I decided to do a little research to confirm it for my discussion with this friend.

Well this time, the religion is not just a standard simple Christianity variant - It's a religion called Nemenhah founded by a criminal named Philip "Cloudpiler" Landis.

He took his beliefs for this religion from some Native American spirituality and the Mormon Church. Oh, of course, it costs $250 to join the Nemenhah band. Then Phil also instructs all his followers to avoid medicine and doctors, and instead charges his followers for secret magical native american herbal remedies... Did I mention he's a criminal that has been arrested for fraud?

Anyway, the Hausers are members of the Nemenhah - and so I went to poke around a little more at Cloudpiler's website. I found out that he basically preaches Nigella Sativa - Black Cumin - as a cure for cancer, and states that he himself, had cancer, and that Black Cumin cured him.

I did a little more digging, and it seems that there are websites everywhere springing up touting the amazing miraculous cureall properties of black cumin.

What I'm wondering is... where is the DEBUNKING? If it doesn't already exist, if there anyone here that has the resources to start that process, becuase I think it should begin immediately, it could potentially save lives.

(Oh did I mention that, regardless of the fact that there are scores of websites saying that black cumin is the cure for everything, and even though there isn't anyone countering that claim yet, for some reason... I still don't believe that black cumin cures even a common cold, let alone cancer... Maybe I'm too much of a skeptic? Naaaaaaah)

 

[Pipirr]

The Nemenhah get about then. Black cumin is not native to the Americas.

It could be one of those recent Native American herbal remedies, you know, traditionally used by the ancestors, in that Grandmother swears by it, kind of thing.

An extract of black cumin, thymoquinone, has shown some activity in pancreatic cell lines. [link] But pancreatic cancer is not what Daniel Hauser has, and besides, results in vitro do not at all mean it will be a cancer cure in vivo.

 

[Mojo]

If a single treatment is claimed as a cure for a wide variety of conditions that should immediately raise a red flag.

 

[Goshawk]

What I'm wondering is... where is the DEBUNKING?

Oh, it'll be along, never fear. This is just Black Cumin's beginning of its 15 minutes of fame, it's apparently going to be the Next Big Thing.

It takes a little while to get the debunking machinery geared up for the next production run of debunk, but it'll get there eventually, be patient.