Medical crowdfunding raises millions for dubious cures

• October 24 2018
• http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business-observer/medical-crowdfunding-raises-millions-for-dubious-cures_147772

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Online appeals to help sick people by raising money for unfounded and sometimes dangerous treatments and purported cures bring in millions of dollars each year, researchers warned Tuesday.

The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) looked at crowdfunding activity from 2015 to 2017 and “identified more than 1,000 campaigns that raised nearly US$6.8 million.”

“This money is wasted at best and harmful at worst,” researchers wrote on the site healthaffairs.org.

Four crowdfunding sites, including the most well-known, GoFundMe, collected the money.

Researchers focused on homeopathic or naturopathic cancer treatments, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) for brain injury, stem cell therapies for brain and spinal cord injury, and long-term antibiotic therapy for chronic Lyme disease.

The study was limited in scope by focusing only on these five treatments and four crowdfunding platforms.

But the dangers posed by such approaches are real, according to co-author Ford Vox, a doctor at the Brain Injury Program of the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia.