This article has been Kamran Abbasi went along to a public meeting to learn about the latest cure for cancer
Luigi Di Bella has the answer to every patient’s—and every businessman’s—dream. Pour somatostatin, melatonin, bromocriptine, and vitamin A into the mix, stir, and bang—the cure for cancer. Last weekend, the controversial Italian scientist spread the word about his miracle cure in London, at a public meeting that was broadcast live in Canada.
Be it breast, brain, lung, or gut, Di Bella’s method uses the same ingredients of differing potencies. Thousands of patients have been cured over the past 25 years without side effects, he claims, and thousands more Italians are demanding a treatment for which no evidence has been published in a peer reviewed journal.
Di Bella is unconcerned. He has living patients to prove that his method works, and doctors, he believes, are unnecessarily sceptical of innovative treatments, especially this one: “If I were to speak to humankind, I would recommend the use of my protocol, because I have had so many good results.”
In 1996 reports from Italy, by the National Oncology Commission and the Pharmacology Commission, concluded that Di Bella’s method lacked scientific validity, and the health minister Rosy Bindi responded by asking him for data to support his treatment (BMJ 1998;316:327).
By the end of last year, Di Bella’s appearances on Italian television and radio had caused a public frenzy for his banned miracle cure. The dam burst when a judge from Puglia ordered a local hospital to prescribe Di Bella’s method. Other regions followed, and Rosy Bindi was forced to begin clinical trials with a panel of international cancer experts established to oversee the results.
Not content with Italy, the Di Bella publicity machine has gone global. Di Bella spoke to the European parliament, claiming that he had also cured Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and retinitis pigmentosa with somatostatin. Thanks to Di Bella, manufacturers of somatostatin report a boom in demand, pharmacists report thefts, and black marketeers know the street price.
At the meeting, arranged by HDS Studios—a production company that claims to be merely “interested” in Di Bella’s method—the 85 year old retired physiologist, who temporarily held a professorship at the University of Modena, sits hunched over his hand held notes.
After being introduced as a “forerunner in cancer research,” Di Bella embarks on a confusing 45 minute monologue about his wonder cure. He claims to use the concept of “quadrilogy,” which he tells us he mastered by means of a backwards logic process. Undoubtedly. Four factors affect growth we are told, but which ones, I wonder? His results have been “quite good ones,” but how many has he cured? Other patients have certainly improved, but by how much? Who can say? Certainly Di Bella is hesitant to divulge figures.
Di Bella’s explanation generates more questions than answers. Yes, he has presented his work at scientific meetings, but Luigi Di Bella feels that his results speak for themselves, and analysis by a prejudiced scientific community is unnecessary.
Brian Wilson, a self proclaimed anti-ageing nutritionist, ends the public meeting by applauding Di Bella’s work and his stand against the medical establishment, which, he claims, is hell bent on suppressing cures for cancer, including his own, to profit from expensive and ineffective chemotherapy. Di Bella agrees: “Chemotherapy has never healed a tumour.”
Ignoring my doubts, the presenter closes the broadcast by announcing, “Well we’re all agreed here.” Hmm. The audience applauds enthusiastically, rapt in the hope of a cure for cancer. Di Bella’s message is traversing oceans, buoyed by the aspirations of vulnerable cancer patients and desperate relatives. For these people, the scientific community is withholding a lifeline, but Di Bella’s method needs substance rather than hype.