Sahil Bali dives into the dangerous world of YouTube medicine and finds out countless channels promoting home-made remedies like baking soda to cure cancer. Here’s why you should never take these videos seriously!

Here’s the most bizarre cancer treatment of all time: baking soda cures cancer! With the Internet flooded with so much information these days, most of us tend to rely on Dr Google. Right from the common cold to deadly diseases like Cancer – Google has it all. And, strangely, despite the authenticity and scientific relevance of these ‘curious cures’ being questioned time and again, most of us still tend to fall prey to these outlandish remedies.

In India alone, half a million lives are lost due to cancer every year. And, to beat the number of patients, you’ll find millions of social media forwards and YouTube videos being circulated widely. So much so that each video claims to be that miraculous ‘cancer cure’ you’ve been waiting for.

Upon research, we came across several videos that claimed baking soda and baking soda injections can cure cancer. And it’s worth mentioning that such misleading posts with no scientific grounding have a massive following.

One such video with maximum hits and views features its proponent Dr Tullio Simoncini. The Italian doctor is of the view that cancer is a Fungal infection that’s caused by Candida overgrowth. And, based on his belief every stage of cancer can be cured from baking soda.

While digging details about Dr Tullio Simoncini, we came across a case of a 50-year-old breast cancer patient who died within a few days of seeking treatment from Dr Tullio at the emergency ward of the University Medical Center of the Free University of Amsterdam. Findings revealed that she was treated with injections and infusions of sodium bicarbonate. But it did not stop Dr Tullio who kept practising his unscientific treatment on other cancer patients as well.

Later, Dr Tullio, the cancer quack was found guilty of fraud and manslaughter and was sentenced to a jail term of five years.

However, there have been no published clinical trials of sodium bicarbonate as a treatment for cancer so far. Ongoing research is investigating this but no conclusions have been made as such. To the contrary, Cancer Treatment Watch found evidence that high dose of sodium bicarbonate is hazardous and can lead to serious consequences.

There are hundreds of videos surfacing internet portals every hour, which if followed without awareness can have serious repercussions on health.

During the research, we came across more than 10 such videos trending in India alone. And what’s noteworthy is the fact that these videos have crossed a viewership mark of more than 50,000 per video, and in some cases adding up to more than a million views.

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