What are your thoughts on Jess Ainscough?

[i-need-a-martini]

She is the young woman with a slow growing (but likely curable) cancer who refused conventional treatment, made money from selling her natural treatment (and from related products like tshirts etc) and lectured and published books about the effectivieness of eschewing traditional medicine etc.

And is now sadly dead.

Personally I think she paid the price for ignorance and did a lot of harm while she lived. Even as she was close to death she made excuses for why her treatment didn't work and encouraged others to continue theirs.

Hopefully her death will be a wake up call to others.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/cancer-death-of-wellness-warrior-jess-ainscough--brings-focus-...

[azureline**]

I think....... You get to choose. You do know even people who choose conventional treatment die sometimes?

[wilk1149]

Bib us right plenty of things worse than death. Watched my granddad die of motor neuron disease in the end death was a blessing. Months if unnecessary suffering because it's so wrong to take human life. How retarded he was always going to die from it why not earlier and without this totally stupid belief that euthanasia is wrong. Would not let a dog die like that but we subject humans to it every day

[ladydeburg]

I have a problem with all of her choices. She was a danger to public health and spread delusional ideas that made money out of gullible ill people.

[jean2579]

I totally agree with voluntary euthenasia.

This is a very personal choice and I respect other people who hold very strong opposing views.

If I allowed one of my pets to linger in total agony and did not do anything about it, I could be charged by the RSPCA.

As much as I care greatly for my pets, why is their quality of life more important than mine?

[ladydeburg]

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@jean2579 wrote:

I totally agree with voluntary euthenasia.

This is a very personal choice and I respect other people who hold very strong opposing views.

If I allowed one of my pets to linger in total agony and did not do anything about it, I could be charged by the RSPCA.

As much as I care greatly for my pets, why is their quality of life more important than mine?

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I agree and if people are against it they don't have to participate. This is a personal choice and it has nothing to do with anybody else. 

I strongly object to being told what I can do by interest groups. 

I don't want to linger in a nursing home like a vegetable, completely at the mercy of people who don't have your best interests at heart.

[wilk1149]

So, gullible people loss money every day. It's nit like conventional medicine has a 100% success rate and all of these people were going to live forever. Death is sad but only for the people that live, they are alive and should celebrate the lives of the ones they lived not wallow in their deaths. I was a grave digger for ten years and all too often death is a selfish celebration by those that are living and they need to get over themselves, of course there is grief to be felt but many make a show of it

[gleee58]

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

She is the young woman with a slow growing (but likely curable) cancer who refused conventional treatment, made money from selling her natural treatment (and from related products like tshirts etc) and lectured and published books about the effectivieness of eschewing traditional medicine etc.

And is now sadly dead.

Personally I think she paid the price for ignorance and did a lot of harm while she lived. Even as she was close to death she made excuses for why her treatment didn't work and encouraged others to continue theirs.

Hopefully her death will be a wake up call to others.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/cancer-death-of-wellness-warrior-jess-ainscough--brings-focus-...

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I think it's great shame that she let the fear of losing her arm dictate that her life will be very much shortened.  

I think it's where the beauty industry is at odds with the wellness industry.  She seems to equate wellness with keeping all her limbs in tact rather than being cancer free.

[ladydeburg]

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@gleee58 wrote:

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@i-need-a-martini wrote:

She is the young woman with a slow growing (but likely curable) cancer who refused conventional treatment, made money from selling her natural treatment (and from related products like tshirts etc) and lectured and published books about the effectivieness of eschewing traditional medicine etc.

And is now sadly dead.

Personally I think she paid the price for ignorance and did a lot of harm while she lived. Even as she was close to death she made excuses for why her treatment didn't work and encouraged others to continue theirs.

Hopefully her death will be a wake up call to others.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/cancer-death-of-wellness-warrior-jess-ainscough--brings-focus-...

---

I think it's great shame that she let the fear of losing her arm dictate that her life will be very much shortened.  

I think it's where the beauty industry is at odds with the wellness industry.  She seems to equate wellness with keeping all her limbs in tact rather than being cancer free.

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I agree, choosing beauty is a shallow and tragic choice. 

[curmu-curmu]

My wife lost her brother to cancer some 4 years ago.

Stupidly, his wife believed wholeheartedly in alternative, (read Quack) medicines, and the power of prayer.

3 years after initial diagnosis, treatment with herbal medicines, and continued prayer, he returned to mainstream medicine, who advised him that as he was now riddled with Lymphoma, palliative care was his only option. 3 months later he was dead.

My father, many years before this, also suffered from the same cancer, but with traditional medical treatment, (radiation and chemotherapy), lived for 23 years after diagnosis.

I too, was diagnosed with a cancerous thyroid. After its removal, I'm left with a nasty scar across my throat, complications in breathing, so need a cpap machine every night, and replacement thyroid medicine for the rest of my life...but I'm still here!

And curiously, my brother-in-law was devoutly religious, but I'm an atheist - so does this mean that atheism heals better than religion?

Food for thought...

[cherry*135]

Going by these two comments, I can understand her choice.

Very sad for the family, to loose both her and her mother.

Ms Ainscough's family strongly rejects the suggestion that her life would have been extended with conventional treatment and say her treating clinicians said this was not the case. 

Surgical oncologist and blogger David Gorsk iwrote that Ms Ainscough clearly had noble motivations but was both a victim of, and complicit in, promoting dangerous therapies.

"Jess Ainscough had a shot, one shot. She didn't take it," he said. "What saddens me even more is that I can understand why she didn't take it, as, through a horrible quirk of fate, her one shot involved incredibly disfiguring surgery and the loss of her arm.