Google reviews of alternative cancer clinics giving patients false hope, says study

More than 30% of the positive reviews claimed cancer had allegedly being cured, patients were in remission or life had been meaningfully extended. They did find negative reviews but these were heavily outnumbered by reviews claiming cures. File photo: Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images

Cancer patients are being given false hope and putting themselves in danger due to Google search and review results that allow alternative cancer clinics to draw people in, according to a review in the journal Nature.

The study says vulnerable patients are finding positive reviews for the clinics “compelling”. In reality, the reviews are “an ineffective indicator of treatment outcomes”, international health academics said.

Cork oncologists have also seen significant negative results for patients affected by the “growing scale of misinformation” around cancer, they wrote in a response to the study, also published in Nature.

The international study said Google needs to offer better safeguards for vulnerable patients, including identifying when clinics offer alternative care.

Led by Marco Zenone, Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who worked with universities in Canada and Scotland, it analysed Google listings and reviews for 47 well-known alternative cancer clinics.

More than 30% of the positive reviews claimed cancer had allegedly being cured, patients were in remission or life had been meaningfully extended. They did find negative reviews but these were heavily outnumbered by reviews claiming cures.

“It is not feasible for Google to adequately monitor the informational quality of the tens of millions of reviews it hosts monthly," the authors admitted.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

However, they called for a structured approach from the online giant, saying searches are “actively abused with limited, potentially negligent oversight”.

“In our study, we cannot assess the degree of review truthfulness,” they said. “However, we can state unequivocally that effective safeguards to ensure truthful, accurate medical reviews are absent, and thus any alternative cancer clinic Google review should not be used for medical decision-making.” 

The wife of one patient in a Tijuana clinic wrote: “My husband went there twice. The second time they told him he was cancer free and sent him home. He was not cancer free. It had even spread to his liver and bones."

In their report, Cork University Hospital oncologists Professor Seamus O’ Reilly, Dr Dearbhaile C. Collins and palliative care consultant Dr Karie Dennehy said cancer is a "lonely illness" and patients often find comfort in online support groups.

However, they said: 

In our practice, we see patients abandoning potentially curative cancer therapy and forgoing evidence-based therapies for these alternative cancer clinics.

They have seen people crowdfund for very expensive alternative treatments and also be coerced by family to attend these clinics.

They support the call for stronger online protections, saying: “Ensuring that the internet remains a trusted resource for all is in everyone’s interest, including those who profit from it.” 

The Irish doctors also raised concerns at a lack of online protections for patients who are even more vulnerable due to living with an intellectual disability or having cognitive impairment caused by cancer. “Such groups assume source credibility in the results of their internet searches,” they said.

They also pointed to a 2018 study from the Yale School of Medicine. This found patients who subscribe to alternative therapies are twice as likely to die in the same period as those who rely on conventional therapies.

These deaths were either due to delays in treatment or caused by the patient rejecting conventional therapy.

Both the international study Alternative cancer clinics’ use of Google listings and reviews to mislead potential patients and the Irish response Source credibility: a necessary North Star in cancer care can be read in Nature.