256: Quacks, Cancer, and Kangen Water (feat Mallory DeMille)
Cancer, as physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, is the emperor of all maladies. The disease—the over 200 different diseases all falling under this umbrella term—has been with us as long as we’ve been us. If anything is truly ancient, it is the cancer cells that are in all of our bodies, just waiting to be turned on if the conditions are right, or if our genes dictate the inevitability.
Deep in wellness land, cancer is something entirely different. It’s avoidable if you stop consuming seed oils, stop using 5G, stop thinking negative thoughts, and by god, stop taking those jabs that cause all the turbo cancers going around. And with every wellness warning comes a wellness solution. Today our correspondent, Mallory DeMille, returns for a deep dive into the treacherous depths of one of the more insidious grifts: treating cancer with the power of…water.
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Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Derek Barris.
I'm Matthew Remski.
I'm Julian Walker.
And I'm Mallory DeMille.
You can find us on Instagram and threads at ConspiritualityPod, as well as individually.
We are all on Blue Sky, including Mallory.
You can find her on TikTok, where I've stopped going so much.
And Matthew is still trying to figure out how to load it on his phone.
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Music Cancer, as physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee writes, is the emperor of all maladies.
The disease, the over 200 different diseases all falling under this umbrella term, has been with us as long as we've been us.
If anything is truly ancient, it is the cancer cells that are in all of our bodies just waiting to be turned on if the conditions are right or if our genes dictate the inevitability.
Deep in wellness land, cancer is something entirely different.
It's avoidable if you stop consuming seed oils, stop using 5G, stop thinking negative thoughts, and by God, stop taking those jabs that cause all the turbo cancers going around.
And with every wellness warning comes a wellness solution.
Today, our correspondent, Mallory DeMille, returns for a deep dive into the treacherous depths of one of the more insidious grifts, treating cancer with the power of water?
her.
She said, I've been waiting four years and I wanted to share.
I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic colon cancer in 2020.
It was in my colon, my liver, my limb.
They told me I had three years to live.
Yesterday I read the words we all hope for in the cancer world, NED, no evidence of disease.
My PET scan was completely clear.
My tumor markers are lower than my doctors.
I do a lot of things, but I added the water to my healing protocols in January and really feel that it's part of my deep and permanent healing path.
Ready to tell everyone about its healing properties.
Hello, listeners.
If you're like, You binge-watched the Netflix show Apple Cider Vinegar this winter the moment it came out.
The six-episode series depicts a fictionalized telling of the real-life con of Belle Gibson and those around her.
For those not familiar, Belle Gibson grew a social media following based on her experience living with brain cancer and healing it naturally.
She appeared to be thriving under the holistic and natural protocols she detailed in her wildly successful app and published book.
But that could have also been because she didn't actually have cancer.
This show put the Bell Gibson story and the idea of cancer grifting as a whole on the radar of some folks for the first time.
And while the events of Bell Gibson's I Cured My Fake Cancer Holistically con took place 10 years ago, evidenceless cancer treatment influencers still very much so exist here and now.
And that's what we're going to talk about today.
Alternative cancer influencers, quack cures, and more specifically, the congen water business opportunity.
In 2019, my world turned upside down.
I was diagnosed with cancer when my son was just 8 months old.
Doctors immediately told me I needed invasive surgery and radiation treatment.
But something inside me said, wait, there has to be another way.
So I chose to seek the root cause instead.
A biological dentist helped me find that a 10-year-old dental infection was one of the major causes.
For the next three years, I dove deep into holistic healing using methods like detoxification, red light therapy, hyperthermia, parasite cleansing, forgiveness, emotional healing, and mindset work.
I even found an amazing integrative oncologist at Hope for Cancer in Mexico who supported my approach.
My life transformed and my health transformed.
It wasn't easy, but it was worth it.
Not only am I cancer free, but I truly healed.
The practices I invited into my life have helped me thrive from the inside out and feel so much better than I ever did before.
I'm a mama to two on a mission to help others advocate for their health and their path of healing.
True healing.
Our bodies have an incredible ability to heal when given the right.
What's going on visually there with all of the sound effects and stuff like that?
The influencer Carly that we're about to talk about had a phase where she would take a lot of these videos and make them into animated content.
While you can't see it, there's a lot going on on the screen.
That's why there's a baby crying when she talks about having children and all these dings and stuff.
Well, I know every time I go to the dentist, the first thing they do is make me ask for forgiveness.
So she's spot on that.
Before we move on, I want to pull back and consider cancer more broadly here.
So we'll start with a quote.
We flagged earlier Siddhartha Mukherjee, one of my favorite science writers.
He writes, this image of cancer as our desperate, malevolent, contemporary doppelganger is so haunting because it is at least partly true.
A cancer cell is an astonishing perversion of the normal cell.
Cancer is a phenomenally successful invader and colonizer in part because it exploits the very features that make us successful as a species or as an organism.
Now, I read his book, The Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer, shortly after it was published in 2010.
And by that point, I had lost a few friends to cancer.
I also knew that we all have cancer cells in our bodies, and so it's a crapshoot whether or not they'll be turned on.
So I wanted to read the book just to understand what had happened to my friends and what could possibly happen to me down the line, and four years later, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
So that book, along with Susan Sontag's Illness is a Metaphor and Pima Children's When Things Fall Apart, all got me through a very rough time in my life.
So I have a special disdain in my heart for cancer pseudoscience grifters.
Age long enough, and you're guaranteed to get cancer at some point.
But the way that influencers flatten cancer is if it's one thing that can be mystically solved.
The way they claim that cancer researchers haven't spent forever working on this disease is so inexcusable, I barely have language for it.
And the language that I do have is filled with fucks and fucking and fuck off.
Cancer was identified by Hippocrates around 400 BCE, who called it carkinos, which is the Greek term for crab due to the swollen blood vessels that would form around cancer cells.
Galen assigned cancer the most brutal of biles.
He called it black.
And the only other disease to be considered black bile is depression.
Now, one time I was talking to Dr. Andrea Love, friend of the pod, and she's a cancer immunologist, and she said to call cancer A diseases misleading.
As we flagged earlier, there are over 200 types of cancer, and each one moves through various stages and demands its own treatment.
In fact, Andrea mentioned that we could have the same stage and diagnosis of cancer, and it could be treated completely differently because...
We have different biologies that need to be considered.
Yet the way that the wellness influencers we're going to cover today talk about cancer, they treat it as if it's one disease, which immediately speaks to their lack of qualifications on the topic.
And a lot of them like to point to increasing cancer rates.
And that's been a term that's been weaponized by Maha activists of late.
So two things.
One thing is that this search for the single cause is pretty endemic throughout all of the wellness material that we...
And that's why it brings up these sort of religious ideas, I think, you know, like a miracle can come or God can do it or something like that.
And the same way that, you know, Bobby is going to find the single cure for autism.
So that's one point I wanted to make.
The question I have is, isn't...
Mukherjee correct at the same time with regard to the common denominator that's the misfiring cell?
And does that account for some of the reductionism that this group is prone to?
I believe so.
I mean, every cancer typically begins with a single cell that undergoes genetic mutations.
And it's usually because of some DNA damage.
So there's that in common.
And it's why the term cancer is applied to all the different forms.
But from there, the disease is unique to each other.
But yeah, there's a flattening that is endemic to the disease itself for that reason.
So I mentioned cancer cases increasing, and the absolute number has in fact increased in America since 2000, but that's mostly been attributed to demographic changes, and we're getting older as a country.
What these influencers don't say is that the risk for developing cancer has declined since then and that the cancer death rate since 2000, the year they love to point to, has actually fallen by 27.5%.
Doctors and researchers are getting better at diagnosing and treating cancers and one of the most promising interventions right now is the very thing anti-vax contrarians loathe, which is mRNA technology.
There is some nuance here, to be clear.
There's some demographics, like younger women, have seen an increase in some types of cancer.
You have certain types of cancer, like pancreatic breast and colorectal cancer, have all increased as well.
But lung and prostate cancer rates have declined, and the mortality rates of colorectal and breast cancer rates have also decreased.
So what we're going to hear today is extremely biased because...
The marketing pitches of the influencers have to find the dark points to sell, the dark statistics, like the rates increasing of certain cancers, in order to sell their products.
And to me, that's really fucking gross.
Now, one final point.
I want to be very clear to anyone who's healed from cancer, including by unconventional means, I think that is awesome.
Some of the influencers we're reviewing today talk about healing their own cancers or being healed in some way, and none of the criticisms are aimed at that.
They're solely aimed at turning your anecdote into a sales funnel.
I supported my body with all the incredible healing modalities that I learned about over the last three years and healed really, really well.
And so that was three months after Cash was born.
And then we've been monitoring my levels and I got the, you're cured two weeks ago.
And so I am 100% healed, cancer-free from a combination of integrative and conventional.
But here's what I talk about on this page.
I talk about integrative and holistic modalities because that is what healed me.
My fear of having surgery was...
So many women that I spoke to and heard from and found on YouTube who said, I had thyroid cancer, I had my thyroid out, and I've never felt the same.
I have weight gain, and I don't have the same zest, and I don't feel like me.
And that was my fear.
And so I understood that just removing a tumor is not a cure.
That it was the lifestyle habits and the cellular and root cause healing, including all the dental work that I did, that was actually going to be the thing to heal me.
And I don't have that story.
I feel better than ever in my entire life.
And that is not because of surgery.
It is because of my daily habits and healing tools.
And so that's why I am a voice for healing and including these integrative methods.
She was the one clipped sharing her story at the top as well.
She has over 380,000 Instagram followers and her bio reads, Integrative Cancer Thriver plus Detox Advocate, giving you permission to live...
I help you build a healthy and wealthy life.
And I feel obligated to put into perspective how much her account has grown in the last year.
So in June 2024, I stitched one of Carly's videos, and at the time, she had 187,000 followers.
So in much less than a year, she has doubled that.
Wow, that's impressive.
Well, and she also had a contest.
To get up to 200,000 followers where she would give away a trip to Hope for Cancer, which is, we're about to find out, her healing home.
So she kind of leveraged that to grow her following, which feels really gross, but that's an aside.
In November 2019, Carly was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and I know this off the top of my head because Carly's cancer story is pretty integral to her entire online brand, which focuses on two main themes, health and wealth.
So let's start with health.
Carly's online presence seems to have always had a health and crunchy well-being spin to it.
She launched her website, which does seem pretty out of date now, in May 2013.
One year later, she released her, as she describes it, signature cleanse program called 12 Days to Sexy, a real food cleanse for the body, mind, and spirit.
Her website also has a webpage labeled Essential Oils that basically seems to function as a sales pitch for both the Young Living Oils and the Young Living Business Opportunity.
A linked Instagram post suggests that this was something she was involved with over 10 years ago, so perhaps her first dabbling with multi-level marketing, but more on that in a moment.
Yeah, I hate to say it because it's always such a devastating diagnosis, but Mallory, in cases like these, it almost seems as if being diagnosed with cancer and then being fortunate enough to have survived.
Takes the opportunistic grift to the next level, like she's now better positioned in her business than she ever was before.
And I also just want to flag, it's a small thing, but she uses this word cure.
And I've never known anyone who's gone through cancer treatment who's been told at any point in time that you are now...
Yeah, I think that's very similar to a lot of the wellness influencers and their ability to speak in absolutes, because speaking in absolutes makes it a lot easier to sell stuff.
And you're absolutely right about the personal stories.
They will always win, whether they're true or not.
Today, Carly's focus is on Instagram, where I would definitely consider her a wellness influencer, and more specifically, an alternative cancer wellness influencer.
An overwhelming amount of her content ties her cancer journey or alternative cancer healing as a whole to either her own discount codes or a misleading, evidenceless narrative that, should you come to believe it, will make it easier to sell these products to you in the future.
And here's one example of that.
Doctors have been hiding this from us for decades.
Conventional cancer treatments are just the tip of the iceberg.
There's a whole world of proven therapies your doctor might not be telling you about.
Chemotherapy and radiation are not your only options.
Integrative oncology is changing the game, combining the best of conventional and complementary approaches.
From hyperthermia, high-dose vitamin C and coffee enemas, to apricot kernels, CBD oil, and turkey tail mushrooms, there are several alternative options that have been proven to treat cancer and support healing.
But most doctors are not trained in these methods.
It's not that they don't care, they just don't know.
Yes, there is value in conventional cancer therapies in certain cases and applications, but I also know there is a huge financial gain in the amount of chemotherapy administered and surgery routinely recommended.
That's why being your own health advocate is crucial.
No one will fight harder for your health than you.
Explore your options, ask questions, seek second opinions, third opinions.
Don't settle for a one-size-fits-all approach.
You know, I have to say, I did listen to the clips ahead of time, but not in headphones.
And in headphones, you really get the full effect of the foley.
Like, the amount of energy and time spent on these sound effects is really something.
And this is the type of messaging that just makes me so angry.
I mean, it's pitch perfect.
This is a masterclass, right?
She has the reasonable and accepting tone about medical science, but then she's also taking this trusted advisor or advocate sales tone around doing your own research and finding personalized treatment that works for you.
And then there's the hefty slice of conspiracy mongering because, as she says right off the top, doctors have been hiding this from us for decades.
And then she ends with the supposed...
Profit-driven bias toward chemo and surgery that you have to watch out for.
Yeah, this idea that they just don't know, but I do.
I figured it out.
I mean, that's endemic throughout the wellness industry, and every time I hear it, I want to just rip the hair that I don't have on my head out.
Yes, and we haven't even gotten to the caption of that October 2020 for real, which does say...
Why aren't there more voices advocating for integrative cancer therapies?
Here's why.
Follow the money.
The money isn't in teaching people how to do coffee enemas.
Oh, yes, it is.
Or in tools like hyperthermia or high-dose vitamin C to kill cancer cells.
The money is in pharmaceuticals and the kickbacks doctors receive from administering them.
So whenever a wellness influencer tells me to follow the money, I know that that's something that I should probably do.
But for them and with Carly specifically, this is really, really easy.
My mom loved photographs.
She took thousands of them.
And back in the print days, she framed a lot of them, but many got stored away in boxes that she'd tie up with white ribbon.
And then when she had a phone, the phone also became this box where a lot of pictures just got stored away.
So I think she would have loved the Aura digital frame because something that all parents, I think, can benefit from is this sense that memories are preserved but also accessible with a kind of Zen simplicity.
And that's what Aura offers.
Unlimited storage, soothing transitions in the carousel, and also photo sharing among family members.
Now, Aura has a great deal on for Mother's Day, so for a limited time, listeners can save on the perfect gift by using AuraFrames.com to get a $35 off plus free shipping discount on their best-selling Carver Matte Frame.
So that's O-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code CONSPIRITUALITY, and you can support the show by mentioning us at checkout.
Terms and conditions apply.
Most of Carly's posts have some sort of call to action for a product that she seems to be financially affiliated with.
From general biohacking and low-toxin living, like red light blankets and masks, non-toxic manicure kits, non-toxic toothpaste, clean coffee, and various powders and supplements, to products she's specifically connected to her cancer journey.
In September 2024, Carly posted a video that said, here is what I did daily after receiving a cancer diagnosis.
The caption then goes on to list five discount codes.
An at-home sauna, a juicer, a coffee enema kit, a whole house water filtration system, and an ozone therapy machine, which, yes, does go in the same place the coffee does.
There's also mention of some sort of mysterious water, but we're getting there.
This is just one of many examples, and I have come to expect this kind of blatant commercialization from Carly.
If there's any sort of kernel of, oh, I wonder if I'm simply in remission, the anxiety of stalking your house this way and then making your business model into this must be extraordinary.
I'm not saying this is something that you would be aware of, but for the person who isn't exactly sure how it happened...
And then they go forward with the anecdote as the basis of their business model, like the amount of potential internal conflict there and fear about what happens actually if it goes south, like if you actually have a recurrence, then what?
And the other thing is that I never really thought about it this way, but listening to this whole list of devices...
Makes me think that part of alternative medicine also involves turning your home into an alternative hospital, like a place outside of clinical medicine, but some place that can kind of mimic it or parallel it in some way.
Yeah, and that's kind of exactly how Carly has described it, like learning the tools at Hope for Cancer, which we're going to get into in a minute, and then bringing those home.
She also has mentioned that she needed $1,500 per month to continue her healing tools, and that's why she initially opened her brick and mortar juicing business, Alchemy Organics.
But I think I've also heard her say that she has a whole...
I mean, the woman has a sauna and a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, so I'm not surprised she needs space for these things.
Speaking of the sauna and hyperbaric oxygen chamber, she obviously has discount codes for both of these.
And in a video promoting the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, the accompanying text reads, guess what can't survive in a hyper-oxygenated environment?
Cancer cells.
Yeah.
And Matthew, to your point earlier, I mean...
That level of anxiety, right, that level of being able to tolerate uncertainty, I think is the thing that we see so often as being overcompensated for with all of these very absolute statements.
And those absolute statements could be, I'm cured from cancer, they could be the universe is divinely protecting me, they could be because now I have Jesus in my heart, I know everything's going to be fine, right?
At the same time, I have so many mixed feelings about this, you know, because on the one hand...
I get someone doing everything they can to heal and to survive and then wanting to help others if they feel like it's working because they believe that there's a causal relationship between what they're doing and they're feeling like they're getting better or improving in terms of their health.
On the other hand, marketing a slew of unproven products to desperate people while taking an affiliate commission really does seem despicable to me.
I just want to briefly point out as part of our larger conversation about how all of this stuff gets funded and problems with privatized medical care is that the privatization of this home care model that Carly is pushing, it makes sense as a microcosm of for-profit.
Because in truly socialized medicine, health isn't a commodity that you buy and sell and own and trade and upgrade.
It's a part of the commons that belongs to everyone.
And so that means that cancer can't be something that any one person or company profits from.
So I think the real paradox of the Carly pitch is that...
Cancer needs to be a perpetual reality, actually, for these businesses, for an individual like her to heroically overcome it and make it lucrative at the same time.
Or the fear of getting cancer, right?
Because a lot of this is pitched as preventive.
Yes.
So do these things and you won't get it.
Sure.
Yeah.
I was just going to say that, too, that there's oftentimes this repackaging of the same, you know, quote-unquote vital detox tools.
Right.
As you need to detox your body if you have cancer.
And then you need to make sure you're properly detoxing your body to prevent cancer, whether that's cancer that you would get for the first time or a reoccurrence of cancer too.
Yeah, so there actually is a coherent model here, even though it's based on complete pseudoscience and opportunism.
Totally.
Like coffee enemas, for example.
Like, oh, they'll detox your liver and keep your body healthy.
And also if you have cancer, they'll detox your liver, which is really important.
It's just repackaging depending on what your needs are.
Something else I have come to expect from Carly specifically is promotion for the Mexican Integrative Cancer Clinic Hope for Cancer.
Carly describes Hope for Cancer as her healing home and talks about them and tags them on Instagram often enough that I really do wonder if she's being incentivized, not even financially, in some way to do so.
But that's just me speculating.
She also has two testimonial pages on their website, one for her initial treatment and one for a follow-up.
The initial treatment page, she's quoted saying, I knew I needed a forever team, not the doctor who callously handled me, not the doctor who made me feel stupid and cry every time I saw him.
I needed someone who respected me.
In this initial treatment testimonial, Carly describes her shock at receiving a cancer diagnosis, specifically because she was someone who had lived a holistic and healthy lifestyle.
She also shares that while her doctor had recommended and scheduled a surgery, that didn't sit right with her.
Instead, she went to Hope for Cancer, and at the time, she said that she had not had surgery, and she was feeling better than she had ever felt in her entire life.
But the follow-up testimonial shares a bit of a record scratch.
Carly ended up having the surgery.
Her thyroid and some lymph nodes were removed after all.
This is something that she sparingly mentions on her social media.
But not acknowledging the impact that a flavor of conventional treatment could have had and instead hyper-focusing on all the other stuff, which she does, is not uncommon for some of these alternative cancer influencers.
It wasn't the chemo or surgery.
It was the coffee enemas.
Everything except the conventional treatment becomes the main character and unfortunately often becomes monetized along the way.
You know, I don't doubt that she had some kind of misattuned medical experience.
And we know that these frontline doctors who are giving out the diagnosis are going to get the strongest reactions from people.
With this contradiction of, I mean, I think you did this really well, Mallory, in waiting till now to tell us this, because we find out here that she's accepted the surgery, and then she's claimed the enemas healed her.
I think that makes it in her interest to actually...
Yeah, and the literature on this is really filled with this phenomenon, right?
Where people are getting some kind of conventional cancer treatment, and then they put their hope in some alternative approach, and so they go off of the conventional cancer treatment, which does have all kinds of unpleasant side effects.
And then they go through a period where they feel like, wow, I'm actually getting better.
I feel healthier than I have in so long, because now they're actually legitimately detoxing, say, from the chemotherapy.
And who knows what's going on behind the scenes in terms of the actual timeline of her eventually going to see a real doctor and being told, no, actually, we highly recommend surgery right now.
And so she's constantly having to do this tap dance around it.
Mallory, I can't help wondering here, you characterize Hope for Cancer as a Mexican alternative clinic.
Is it that or is it an alternative clinic that happens to be located in Mexico for legal reasons?
That's a great question.
They have two locations and they both happen to be in Mexico.
I can't say for sure, but the Hope for Cancer website has an entire disclaimer page.
Obviously, that's not surprising to me.
That starts with...
In the event that it is construed that Hope for Cancer Treatment Center's services are being advertised in the United States of America, even though we provide our services in Mexico, we herein provide a disclaimer regarding any disclosures made on this website as per the FTC requirements.
Oh, man.
So that's true.
Yeah.
You know, I did, after the fact, I went and looked it up, and all of the staff and the guy who founded it and the doctors all seemed to be Mexican.
And they have sort of a combination of different types of training.
I ask because the incentives are really high to start clinics like these in countries that have looser treatment regulations.
They have fewer patient protections, even though they're presenting themselves as being so much more kind and caring towards patients.
And then, of course, you can charge really high prices for either untested or already discredited special cures.
Doctors who are otherwise qualified, but have also gotten really into naturopathy and homeopathy and off-label cures like certain types of immunotherapy, right?
Totally.
I mean, ultimately, we don't really have time today to dive into the world of integrative cancer clinics, but Carly's reoccurring trips to Hope for Cancer are vital to this story because this is where Carly says she learned about hydrogen water, which brings us to the wealth section of Carly's brand.
Hi, I'm Carly, and I started this business two years ago.
I, at the time, was a busy mama to two beautiful boys, was navigating a cancer diagnosis, and running a brick-and-mortar business.
So I actually purchased the water ionizer to support my health and healing journey as I was about to head into surgery and wanted to be drinking the water to reduce inflammation and to help me repair after surgery.
So I simply bought the product for health benefits.
I started sharing about it on my social media.
I just got this water.
It's so amazing.
And through sharing, I learned that there was a business opportunity.
Over the past two years, I've brought in over seven figures in personal income through this business that has completely changed the trajectory of my family's financial story.
This summer, we're taking our five- and two-year-old boys to Europe for a month.
My husband and I are traveling to Japan in two weeks.
We're going to be spending Christmas in Greece.
This was always my dream, but truly the most beautiful thing, the best part of it all, is that I now get to create a community where other people can learn how to do this business themselves.
So among the coffee enemas and discount codes, Carly talks a lot about financial freedom and building a highly profitable business online.
This has become a bit of a proceed with caution fly because you're probably about to be pitched an MLM or multi-level marketing company.
And in this case, it's Enagic, which sells the infamous multi-thousand dollar Kangen water machine.
And I do want to say before we go any further that Enagic reps are very insistent that it's not an MLM, but there is some conflicting information about that online.
So while I personally believe the MLM label is up for grabs, I'll let you come to your own conclusions.
The Enagic company that sells Kangen water machines has on their website...
For over five decades, Enagic International has been the leader in manufacturing water ionization systems that transform regular tap water into pure, healthy, electrolytically reduced and hydrogen-rich drinking water.
Our passion is to transform the tap water in your home into pure, healthy, electrolyzed, reduced and hydrogen-rich drinking water.
Did I read that twice?
Is that up twice?
It's actually in the text twice.
Okay.
It's on the website twice.
Wait a minute.
Hydrogen rich.
So it's going from H2O to H3O?
Okay.
All right.
The Enagic Corporation direct sales system empowers hardworking and passionate independent distributors around the world.
They fall in love with our products and they spread the word about the positive changes Kangen Water has brought into their lives and finances.
So I'm kind of sad when I hear these references to working class empowerment along with trips to Europe and whatever.
Because traditionally in labor movements, that's always tied to the pride in making things.
But a lot of the influencers that we're talking about I don't know the timeline here, so I'm not going to make a judgment, but she did mention earlier that her son's name is Cash.
And then she's talking about using her pseudoscience products she sells, and it reminded me of The Course in Miracles thinking there.
I wanted to do these things, and now look at all these wonderful trips I'm going on.
Well, her other son's name is Cruz.
No way!
Oh, come on!
Come on!
And I'm not going to bash anyone for what they name their children.
I think that's totally...
I'd rather focus on this cancer stuff, but it is worth...
You're staying in your lane.
You're staying in your scope of practice.
Very admirable, Mallory.
But Jesus fucking Christ.
I'm sorry.
Wait a minute.
Right.
Cruise?
Cruise?
All right.
Okay, but the principle there is if you call, I mean, if there's somebody in your house.
Who you call Cruz over and over again.
If this is what she's doing.
So we don't know.
We should respect Mallory's sort of, you know, lane here.
Circumspection.
I mean, I've seen lots of really unique names for sure, being chronically online myself.
And so, I mean, I think it's an interesting kind of just note.
But she is also pregnant at the time of recording.
And so what she decides to name her third boy will...
We'll collectively talk about that in the group chat, maybe.
All right.
Okay.
I noticed on the website that the specifics of, quote, positive changes that were brought into the lives and finances, that's really vague.
And I think that that's really vague on purpose.
According to an Australian ABC.net article titled Selling Freedom Inside an MLM Universe, income disclosures for Enagic in the U.S. also show very few individuals make significant income from selling the devices.
99% of participants make less than $14,000 US per year, and 60% make a medium income of $285 per year.
This doesn't include what people have spent on products or sales coaching.
Oh, it doesn't include their expenses.
No, and I think that's the case for a lot of income disclosure statements and compensation.
And when you're saying it doesn't include what people have spent on products, that means the multi-thousand dollar machine.
Yes.
And when I say multi-thousand dollars, it's like $4,000 or $5,000.
God damn it.
Yeah, this is just income.
This is not income after it.
This is not profit, right?
Yeah.
I mean, unsurprisingly, financial positive changes seem to be reserved for a small percentage of participants at the top of the reverse water funnel.
Tell me you're probably an MLM without telling me.
And everything you just quoted is absolutely classic.
MLM, how it nets out for the vast majority of people participating.
The layer cake grift within a grift is the thing that's really striking me right now.
It's expensive pseudoscience wellness magic for consumers that's going to transform your water into water plus, but it's also a dead-end MLM scam for the entrepreneurs who probably are desperate to pay for all of their alternative cancer cures.
Totally.
And finances aside, the website also mentioned life changes.
I'm assuming this is meant to be health changes without actually saying that.
And that's because the actual Enagic website steers pretty clear of making any direct health claims, just a general mention of antioxidants and pH levels.
According to their website, by choosing to drink alkaline water, you aid your body in returning to a balanced state.
Kangen water is a fresh, clean, and great tasting way to maintain optimal health.
So why put your company at risk of making unsubstantiated health claims when your reps can and will do that for you?
Right.
On December 9th, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission issued a cease and desist demand to enagic over unsubstantiated claims for coronavirus prevention and treatment because business reps were unlawfully advertising that the Kangen water products treat or prevent COVID-19.
This was, of course, not an exclusively Kangen issue.
Many MLMs faced this, but it's just another reminder that reps for these companies will say whatever they need to say to make a sale.
And in Kangen Water's case, unsubstantiated health claims are abundant, specifically around cancer, even if Carly isn't the one necessarily making them.
I have never seen reps for an MLM so casually make this many health claims, and that's saying a lot because I have major beef with doTERRA.
Yeah.
And water ionizer that I've been sharing about.
Now, I bought that product solely for health purposes.
I learned about hydrogen water at Hope for Cancer.
I had known about this ionizer for 12 years.
They used to have it at the personal development office that I worked at in San Diego, and it made my skin glow.
It gave me energy and vitality.
But I was like, I don't know, mid-20s, and it was not on my radar to get one at the time.
But it kept coming into my orbit again and again, and I decided to invest in one right before my search.
Because I knew it was going to help me heal and repair afterwards.
So simultaneously, I buy the water.
I'm using it.
I'm falling in love with it.
And I'm watching this girl, Megan, post online about how she's making $40,000 a month.
And I'm like, it's a little annoying and super bold.
So I'm kind of like side-eye watching.
But still, I see that she's a single mom with four...
Not a single mom.
A stay-at-home mom of four children.
And I'm kind of like, how is she doing this?
So I post about the ionizer.
I say that I'm so excited.
And right away...
She answers and says, you're going to do so amazing at the business.
And I'm like, tell me more about it.
And essentially, she has built the business with the Kangen Water and Ionizer online, essentially through affiliate marketing.
She says affiliate marketing there, kind of cut off, which is very different than network marketing, but I digress.
I have attended three of Carly's Kangen webinars over the last two years.
During the first one I attended in 2023, Carly, who was filming from Mexico, suggested that joining this business could, should you or a loved one need it, fund your alternative cancer treatments in Mexico.
Did I mention that a trip to Hope for Cancer can run you tens of thousands of dollars?
She even drops in an income claim, saying her business at the time is making her $5,000 that day and $50,000 that month.
In the second webinar I attended in 2024, someone on Carly's team rhymed off testimonials from folks using the Kangen water machine.
These included a face rash going away, hair stopped falling out, pancreatic cancer markers dropped dramatically, and even that someone stopped needing their glasses after drinking this water.
And I wonder if that vision healing woman that I covered before has heard of this.
Of course, the we can't make health claims disclaimer was nonchalantly thrown in, and they did seem pretty annoyed at having to include it.
In the third webinar just a few months ago, there wasn't anything that really stood out, but I did confirm that Carly is the head of Team Rise Up, a team of over 400 people.
Now, sometimes in MLMs, folks will name their pyramid, sorry, their downline, or like the people on their team.
I think this drives a sense of community and also further divides the pitch from the name of the company.
Now, you can't have anyone looking up and seeing MLM, Google search results, come up before you've been properly sold by it.
Team Rise Up's website describes the team as an empowered team of growth-minded, health-conscious leaders creating time, financial freedom for ourselves, and a deep impact on the world, one healthy, hydrated person at a time.
So yeah, Carly has a huge fucking team.
In this third webinar, she mentioned making a million dollars in her second year of being in the business.
And when Kong and Water reps come across my feed, it is not uncommon for me to see their account is linked to Carly's Team Rise Up.
The branding is very distinct.
But what happens when you start to notice more than just a few folks who are trying to sell the Kangen water machine and business opportunity who have cancer, who said they learned about hydrogen water at Hope for Cancer, and who are on Carly's team?
Because that's what I found.
One morning while scrolling my burner account, I noticed two women in a row, both with cancer, and they said that they learned about Kangen water at Hope for Cancer, or hydrogen water at Hope for Cancer, not the business specifically.
This alone didn't raise any red flags for me, but when I dug further and saw that they were both on Carly's team, that did.
And in less than an hour of poking around, I easily found five more.
Seven cases of someone, or a loved one of someone, with cancer who has joined the Enagic Business Opportunity, who states that they learned about it at Hope for Cancer, and who are on Carly's team Rise Up.
So easily finding these seven, I have no doubt that there are more.
And look, I'm not making any allegations here.
But I can't help but wonder if part of Carly's recruitment pipeline includes her Mexican healing home and preying on folks with a very similar story to hers.
In my opinion, Carly has no problem on her Instagram pitching folks navigating a cancer diagnosis using her own cancer healing journey in order to sell a variety of products, none of which have been proven to treat or cure cancer.
And I don't really see this as being all that different.
And the health claims between kangen water and cancer are one thing, but the claims around being able to make money in the business in order to fund your alternative cancer treatment is another.
And honestly, I don't know why that one makes me rage so much more.
Maybe because it's like this multi-level grifting, MLGs.
Yeah, I have a visceral reaction to this as well.
It's amongst the worst kinds of exploitation in wellness, if everything we're talking about is a...
So much of wellness and coaching and new age grift already has this quality, but when it's organized around this often deadly disease...
The lack of conscience that I see as being required here is flabbergasting.
Yeah, and you mentioned coaching.
Carly also, this just came to be, Carly also offers, or at least at one point when I attended one of her webinars, she did, a coaching business as well.
So if your water business isn't panning out how you were pitched, you can pay her to teach you the tricks of the trade.
And then you can take your kids' ivermectin and Soft Eugenics Utopia to Monaco for that vacation.
Ultimately and unfortunately, Carly is just one example.
A single case study of what exists in the disturbing world of evidence-less cancer influencers.
And her account and her influence have and will continue to grow.
She and we will probably never know the true...
That's what I'm set out to do this day is, yes, we need all of these things, but if we have a strong financial foundation, then we can actually show up for ourselves in a bigger way because we have funds to invest in our health.
Like I said, I'm here in Mexico at an integrative cancer clinic and people are saying, how are you paying for that?
It's not covered by insurance.
It's because I have this business.
So I can invest in setting up a wellness clinic at my home and in taking care of myself in a really profound way.
So I know many of our team members, they joined because they wanted to be able to do that for their family.
Yeah, you know, all of this languaging, I feel like we've gotten all four of us so used to hearing it that we were like, oh yeah, there's that particular style of sales talk that is filled with all of these buzzwords that are so effective if you haven't learned how to be literate around them.
And I want to say here that listening to that, I get this picture of the ecosystem around alternative medicine where you have the fringe influencers, you have the egregious grifters.
Sometimes you sort of have to make a judgment call about which is which.
You have the vague quantum woo peddlers.
But then there's also the mainstreamed, normalized rebrand into complementary or integrative medicine.
And to me, that's...
A big insidious piece of this, because a range of pseudoscience approaches are not only tolerated or even endorsed as harmless and potentially helpful by real doctors, I can speak for myself here in California, they're also taught in some medical schools.
And this means that almost everyone I've ever talked to about medicine in LA thinks that these methods, these products, these services are legitimate at some level, and maybe they just haven't been proven to work yet.
And they'll typically find hard-line statements about standards of evidence to be dogmatic or closed-minded.
I made that comment a while ago, a similar comment speaking to that, in the fact that there are 2.5 million doctors in America, and the idea that all of them would be benevolent or not be egotistical is just ridiculous.
And so I would imagine some of them, even though they are doctors, they still want to stand out.
And integrative and functional medicine gives a lot of Are just staying along evidence-based medicine in their practice on their social media feeds.
You don't know where the bleed over occurs.
Yeah, so there's demand for doctors who are medicine plus.
And IV drips.
Doctors offer IV drips, for example, for hangovers.
I used to see that a lot in Los Angeles.
I want to pull back here as we wind down because Mallory, you and I have talked for over a year about doing a cancer episode just because there's so much of this online.
I just want to mention one other person who I feel is similar to Carly and his name is Chris Wark.
He goes by Chris Beats Cancer and his whole pitch is...
Promising to beat cancer holistically on his website and social media handles.
He has a similar following, I think over 300,000 followers.
He sells specifically coaching services.
He also has programs and a book.
In his pitch for Square One Cancer Coaching Program, he positions it to help people stop cancer cells from growing before they take over.
He also spreads plenty of expectable wellness pseudoscience around chemicals.
He's a big fan of RFK Jr. and Maha.
But here's the thing, and you pointed this out to me as well, Mallory, as we were discussing this episode.
Like Carly, he also had cancer surgery.
So this is from his website.
In December 2003, I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer.
This was a golf ball-sized tumor in my large intestine, and the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes.
It was two days before Christmas, and I was 26 years old.
The oncologist told me I was insane, but I decided against chemotherapy after surgery.
After prayerful consideration, I radically changed my diet and did every natural non-toxic therapy I could find and afford.
And I got well.
It was 3C, Colin's answer.
That wasn't actually a typo.
Okay, I thought it was a typo.
But you were talking about the language a moment ago, Julian.
And so here, this is a perfect example of blending irrelevant information, like it being two days before Christmas, with data on his diagnosis, which is common in influencer techniques.
Now, given he speaks about the grace of God and intelligent design, a few paragraphs later, it's likely a setup.
Well, he's referencing that he received the diagnosis pretty much on the winter solstice, right?
Like, I got the worst news of my life on the darkest night of the year, so the healing journey lines up with a story of rebirth.
Like, you're saying it's irrelevant, but it's actually, like, perfectly relevant to how he wants to describe the process by which he gets better, which is metaphysical, right?
Yes, it is very relevant to the Christian aspect of his pitch.
Absolutely, I agree with that.
But again, he had the surgery.
Christian surgery.
Christian surgery.
Derek, it was Christian surgery.
The scalpel was blessed.
I have so many thoughts and we're running on time here.
So let me qualify what I'm about to say by stating that I don't know the details of his diagnosis, but something in this story jumps out at me right away.
He doesn't mention whether or not his cancer metastasized.
Because if it didn't and the tumor was removed...
It's not surprising that he's still in remission.
I know earlier we heard Carly talking about it wasn't really the surgery.
Guess what?
If your cancer doesn't metastasize, taking care of the tumor will likely keep you in remission, possibly for life.
So using an anecdote...
When I had my testicle removed, that could have been it for me.
My oncologist wanted to do two rounds of chemotherapy just to ensure they didn't miss anything.
I read up on the literature, actual literature at the time, I even brought it to my oncologist so he talked about it.
Without chemo, there was a 92% chance that my cancer would not return.
So if I just had the tumor removed, 92%, I'd stay in remission for life.
If I did one round of chemo, I had a 98% chance of staying in remission, and two rounds brought me up to 99%.
So I listened to my oncologist.
I did one round.
She wanted two.
I did one, and it was really rough.
And look, I know people go through a dozen rounds or more.
One isn't outlandish, but given the one percentage point difference, I talked with her.
I said I didn't feel compelled to do another, and she said, I'm really glad you did one.
And again, anecdote, but there are two important points to me.
My cancer had not metastasized.
So it was all about risk assessment and I made my decision.
More importantly, in my opinion, I didn't start using my anecdote to try to sell coaching services or any products at all, and when I discuss my cancer, I'm abundantly clear about every facet of my decision-making process.
Yeah, as you just demonstrated.
So yeah, it's an anecdote, but you're not misusing it to make unfounded claims, and you also are telling an anecdote about you actually looking at the real evidence in terms of how you made your decision.
This, I think, is a crucial moment to ask you, Derek, which is that, you know, given so many people do not take that particular fork in the road, and given that, you know, your cancer experience happened while you were in or parallel to the wellness world.
What would you say are the top three things you imagine protected you from sliding in that direction?
What did you have on board?
Well, we've discussed this before, but I'm naturally cynical.
And so it protects me against identifying all the problems with our healthcare system, but it also protects me against wellness influencers and their bullshit.
Because as I've long identified, if you have a coaching certificate online and you didn't go to medical school, I don't care.
I'm not going to listen to what you say.
And I think that's really important.
We've talked about this before, but go to someone's bio and just see where they've been educated.
That should be the first stop from that.
Second of all, I have a really good support system, and I'm very lucky in that, but family and friends who are with me in whatever my decisions that help me come to conclusions.
Also talked about people in my orbit who were saying things like I shouldn't do chemo, but they weren't close people to me.
They were just people I knew from the scene in Los Angeles and back in New York.
So that wasn't really as important to me.
And third, and I think this is really relevant, I don't actually have a problem with people doing their detox protocols provided they do.
What their oncologist says.
So at the time in 2014, when I was going through chemo, I was taking a bunch of greens powders and stuff.
I was much more in that world.
I got the chemo and then I was like, okay, for the next month my diet's going to be this.
And who knows if that made a difference.
But again, if you're talking about these things, if you're taking the advice of your doctor and then you're doing other things to supplement it, Good.
Like, whatever.
As long as it's not harming you, I don't see a problem with that.
But it's when the people are pitching it as if the oncologist, you know, they're making money from chemo and all these things that they say to get you into their downline.
That's where I have a real big problem.
Yeah, I mean, if I can interrupt and feel free to use this or not.
Like, I had Lyme disease.
I recovered from Lyme disease.
I did 18 months of antibiotics.
I also did every possible alternative cure you can imagine.
And for a while, people would send their friends who got Lyme disease to me and I would say, well, these were the things I did.
And I could have very easily transitioned into saying, I healed myself from Lyme disease using all of these alternative methods, and here are all my affiliate codes so that you can just buy the things on the list that I did.
That could have very easily happened.
I don't know why it didn't.
Maybe because I had other career goals at the time.
If I was desperate enough, that would have been a natural segue for me.
And we're seeing a lot of that.
So I don't know, Chris.
I'm glad he beat cancer, truly.
But his Instagram is a vector for misinformation, and he's profiting from it.
That's fucked up.
Even though I knew that I likely had cancer after feeling my tumor, and even though I knew I was almost certainly going to be fine, that phone call from my primary care doctor that day when she asked me if I was sitting down, it brought tears to my eyes.
A minute later, I called my dad, and once he knew I was okay, he cracked a joke about me having one ball for the rest of my life, and we laughed, and the tension broke.
But he also flew out.
For my chemo to be with me, with his wife, and my sister flew out for the surgery.
And being a rough stretch of my life, it meant a lot to me.
And right now, I have a niece who's been battling stage 4 cancer for almost a year, and it's not going great.
And she has two children.
And one of those children now might have cancer.
It's really something in my family, and it's fucked up.
And I think about all the wonderful care that I received and all the care my niece is receiving right now.
And I'm really grateful for people who dedicate their lives to trying to help combat our most vicious disease.
Now, I was going to run down a list of influencers and their claims for the end of this episode, but I think Chris suffices here.
His first safe post on his Instagram is about how he decided not to do chemo and then immediately pitches his coaching program.
Now, as I said off the top, great, you beat cancer.
But you're going to turn that into a business and one that relies on disparaging professional advice to sell books and diet programs when you're not trained in any medical or nutrition field?
I think that's fucking disgusting.
In The Emperor of All Maladies, book referenced now three times, Mukherjee writes, If the history of medicine is told through the stories of doctors, It is because their contributions stand in one place of the more substantive heroism of their patients.
Now this is true and good doctors know it.
Who doesn't seem to know it is the wellness influencers who think their magic water or their pills can treat or cure all cancers as if it's one disease.
Or people who think their experience is applicable to others.
So if you or someone you love is grappling with any form of cancer, By all means, do what you need to make yourself feel better, but please consult with an oncologist.
And if you don't feel great with that doctor, you know, Matthew, a minute ago you said like three things.
I think a fourth would be, not every doctor is the perfect one for you.
