Notes & TheoriesCancer researchHoney treatment amounts to sweet nothing
A "new hope" for cancer sufferers or a jar of exorbitantly expensive honey? How the makers of Life Mel prey on the fear and desperation of patientsPhotograph: Rex Features
Sex sells. But fear, pain and desperation sell even more effectively.
This press release from the creators of Life Mel honey is an object lesson in that despicable dark art. Their target is cancer patients struggling to deal with the horrible side-effects of their treatment:
Chemotherapy is often terminated by patients wishing to live their final weeks or months without the harsh side effects of the treatment, but Life Mel offers new hope with less side effects.
What is this miraculous "new hope"? The release tells us more:
Life Mel is a unique food product made by honey bees fed on a unique diet including selected herbs such as Siberian ginseng, echinacea and Uncaria tomentosa based on over 30 years research. It is proven to boost immunity before, during [and] after chemotherapy, dramatically reducing the side effects of treatment so patients can live a more normal life.
The so-called "proof" that it boosts immunity does not, in fact, come from 30 years of research but is based on one small study conducted by Israeli researchers in 2006. More about that in a moment but put it this way, relying on it alone as a basis for Life Mel's effectiveness would be like asking Northern Rock for mortgage advice.
What does Life Mel do? The honey - which is produced by Holywell Health - supposedly targets neutropenia, a side-effect of chemotherapy in which the level of a particular class of white blood cells drops, leaving the patient open to infection. But this dangerous side-effect of chemotherapy could disappear, the company claims, if you purchase a pot of special honey - a bargain at £37.50.
Of course, no quack remedy would be complete without a celebrity endorsement. In this case, it is the actress Rebekah Gibbs who plays hospital technician Nina Farr in the BBC drama Casualty. Gibbs was diagnosed as having breast cancer in January and since April has been writing a diary about her treatment for the Mirror.
After seeing her newspaper column, the PR folks for Life Mel kindly sent her agent some sample pots of their honey to try, and in a subsequent column and video on the Mirror's website she told her reader about it.
This week I've started taking a special honey. It's called Life Mel and at more than £37.50 a pop it isn't cheap, but it's supposed to work wonders ... I'm taking two teaspoons per day and so far so good, I figure there's no harm done as it's so natural.
Her agent said that Gibbs is not being paid to promote the product.
Natural it might be, but does Life Mel actually work? The company's PR people claim that they have received hundreds of positive accounts from patients. "Life Mel constantly receives letters and phone calls from people who have tried the product and felt the benefits," said Carolanne Bamford. Hollywell Health claims to have sold more than 20,000 jars.
But anecdotes are meaningless as evidence. That is why we don't allow companies to sell drug treatments based on the say-so of a handful of patients who claim to have got better.
That brings us back to the one scientific study to have looked at Life Mel's effectiveness. By the researchers' own account, this study is a long way from the gold standard clinical trial that would provide rigorous proof the honey works. For a start it is small - just 30 cancer patients - and it does not include the obvious control group, other patients given ordinary, non-magic honey.
The scientists report that anaemia lessened in 64% of the patients - as measured by levels of haemoglobin in their blood - but with no controls to compare with they can't be sure whether this was simply due to the extra attention patients were given because they were participating in a trial. In other words a placebo effect.
One author, Prof Eitan Friedman, head of the Susanne Levy Gertner Oncogenetics Unit at Chaim Sheba Medical Centre in Israel, seems irritated that the company uses the study and his name to promote the product.
As far as I am concerned this was just a preliminary study that was not adequately controlled [and] lacked any statistical power to detect any meaningful benefits ... Having my name attached to the publicity brochures and websites sponsored by Life Mel and claiming that I support this specific product is a false and inaccurate representation of the truth.
[It is] certainly not sufficiently evidence-based, certainly too preliminary, certainly not based on any concrete facts or statistics that may justify any claim as to its superiority or proven benefit to the general public.
Life Mel's PR agents said the company provided honey for the trial but did not fund it.
By preying on the fear and desperation of cancer patients, Holywell Health is raising false hopes with a product that has only the flimsiest evidence for its effectiveness. It is easy to see why vulnerable patients would be tempted to try Life Mel honey, but my advice would be to save your money.
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