A paper that claimed a homeopathic tincture could be used to treat cancer has been retracted after the authors were arrested for practicing medicine without a license.
The article claimed psorinum – a pus extracted from scabies cells, normally used for skin conditions – can be taken as a tincture to ‘trigger a complex anti-tumor immune response’ in patients.
The authors, father-and-son team Ashim and Aradeep Chatterjee of India, said their specific concoction, diluting it one million times, would treat stomach, gall bladder, pancreatic and liver cancers.
But last month the journal retracted the 2011 article after it emerged the Chatterjees were arrested at their clinic in Kolkata, for giving cancer patients this concoction – and no other cancer medication – despite no evidence to support their theory beyond their own paper.
The authors of this paper, father-and-son team Ashim and Aradeep Chatterjee of India, said their mix, diluting scabies pus a million times, treats stomach, pancreatic and liver cancers. It was retracted in February after it emerged the Chatterjees had been arrested
The journal eventually pulled the paper in late February, and the Chatterjees subsequent work published in the esteemed Journal of Clinical Oncology is now under review.
The Chatterjees carried out their research program at their own clinic, the Critical Cancer Management Research Center, depriving patients of conventional treatment and giving them scabies pus extract instead.
These patients served as the models for their research paper, which did not use any control or placebo as a comparison.
Their paper was published in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a contentious publication that promotes homeopathy as a mainline treatment.
Despite its pro-homeopathy stance, the journal’s publisher launched an investigation into the Chatterjees’ article earlier this year.
The first major issue they singled out was that the Chatterjees own the clinic where the ‘evidence’ was compiled.
More critically, however, the Chatterjees claimed that their program started in 2001, when their ethics approval to perform it was granted. However, their clinic did not open until 2008, long after the approval expired.
When the publishers contacted the Chatterjees to smooth out these issues, they were told both had been arrested – the son, Aradeep, in June 2017, and his father Ashim in August – for practicing medicine without a license.
They contacted the four listed co-authors. Three said they disagreed with the paper, and one did not reply.