Every day, we’re subjected to one idiotic post after another about some weird plant or oil that “kills cancer cells.” None of us can log into Facebook without seeing at least three of our quinoa-snorting hippie friends repost an article from some quasi-baloney website about some “cancer cure” that “Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know about.”

You people who do this are idiots.

To find a cure for cancer would be magnificent… really. The only problem is that it’s literally impossible to find a cure for cancer. Because cancer is not a disease. It’s a type of disease. There are seriously hundreds of types of cancer — each one vastly different from the other. Even with the hundreds of types of cancer, a lot of them have multiple mutations of themselves, each behaving differently. Sometimes a treatment works on one kind of cancer but does nothing for another kind, or even — horrifyingly — can make it worse. Saying “this treatment worked here so let’s give it to everyone” is like saying “this socket wrench was great for fixing my car, let’s harvest strawberries with it.”

Nothing is more dangerous than your friends with a medical degree from Google University trying to tell you they know better than your actual doctor. Or any doctor for that matter. Even a quack doctor has far more training than your casual Facebook acquaintance in Chandler, AZ who makes hand soaps and does hot yoga twice a week.

What’s even more dangerous is the fact that your friends reposting this bullshit likely didn’t even read it. They just hit “share” and said, “yay, I did something.” Most of the authors of this clickbait cherry pick random information, place it out of context, and hit the Publish button without taking the time to read or understand what it is they’re quoting.

Look, it’s great that you’re into wellness and holistic stuff. Good on you. But a connection to the Earth and your Spirit Animal does not replace the basic knowledge of what it is you’re talking about. No one thing “kills cancer” and even if there was, it wouldn’t be squirreled away in some unwashed corner of the internet waiting for you to find it first. You’d hear about it during an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize.

Stop reposting this crap. You’re just embarrassing yourself.

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Michael Peckerar is a Staff Writer for YMBNews, “Like” him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @michaelpeckerar and Instagram @michaelpeckerar, or add him to your network on Google.

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