Errol Denton claimed he could cure cancer (Picture: Kevin Dunnett/Central News)

A quack collapsed in tears in court when an Oxford professor dismissed his theories on blood as ‘dangerous’.

Errol Denton, 52, charged clients £650 for consultations and offered to put their blood under a microscope.

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He claimed he could cure cancer with herbs, blood analysis and diet tips, a court heard.

But Professor Alan Hoffbrand, who writes Oxford University’s textbooks on blood, soon ripped apart Denton’s medical claims in court.


‘I think it is quite dangerous,’ he said. ‘This is why we all take examinations and are all trained so we give accurate medical descriptions.

Professor Alan Hoffbrand ripped apart Denton’s theories (Picture: Wikicommons)

‘The earth goes round the sun, the sun doesn’t go round the earth, two plus two makes four and the same here – for blood and scientific study of blood – there is only one language and it is universal.’



Denton claims he speaks a ‘different language’ and part of his defence against a fraud charge is that western medicine is overly dismissive of homeopathy.

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‘I am very, very opposed to alternative medicine. If I produce writing I know it’s proved by scientific research,’ Prof Hoffbrand continued.

‘I do not want to base how I manage patients on anything other than peer review and what is best for them.

‘This really did annoy me because I spent 50 years teaching how to diagnose these things.’

The quack was reduced to tears in Blackfriars Crown Court (Picture: PA)

The professor told jurors that Denton’s BA in traditional Chinese medicine was simply ‘irrelevant in our field’.

Denton is said to have given an undercover trading standards officer a bottle of colloidal silver to drink after a consultation, claiming it would ‘clean your blood’.

The professor said: ‘Silver is not going to do your blood any good.’

Another of Denton’s claims was that he could tell from the blood that a patient had dislocated her shoulder.

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‘The idea that you could tell someone has dislocated there shoulder from the blood is just so way out,’ Prof Hoffbrand said. ‘I have never come across it.’

During a short adjournment, Denton broke down in tears and said: ‘What I have had to cope with over the last eight years, nobody should have to cope with.’

He claims to have been viciously trolled on Twitter by those who seek to discredit him.

During a trading standards interview he said his treatments were ‘light years away’ from traditional medicine.

Denton, from Woodford Green, east London, denies fraud, unfair commercial practice and selling food not of the quality demanded.

The trial continues.

A previous version of this article described Errol Denton as a homeopathic doctor. We are happy to clarify that Mr Denton is not a homeopath, and that the treatments described in the article are not homeopathic. We apologise for any upset this may have caused.