Argentine Cancer Cure Is Debunked
Only several months after leaping into the headlines in Argentina, a supposed cancer cure has been banned by the government in Buenos Aires in an attempt to end the country’s most elaborate medical fraud in memory.
Health Minister Conrado Storani said a 12-man investigative team he appointed has found that the drug, known as crotoxina, “had no clinical or therapeutic effect whatsoever.”
The team said that about 65 of the 83 cancer patients who had been taking crotoxina had either died or grown sicker, and not one had improved. The substance is made from rattlesnake venom.
Crotoxina had been touted not only as a cancer cure but as one that offered a more palatable alternative to radiation treatment. Some cancer patients and their relatives had formed a group called Crotoxina-Hope for Life Committee to demand free access to the substance.
“We will now probably see the drug go underground,” said Argentine Cancer Assn. President Abel Canonico.
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