LONDON (Reuters Health) - Some Internet sites that promote alternative remedies for cancer are potentially dangerous to patients, according to the results of a new survey.

The study of 13 alternative medicine sites revealed that some discourage patients from using conventional treatments, such as chemotherapy, and instead promote alternative remedies for which there is little or no evidence of effectiveness.

The findings, by researchers from the department of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, are highlighted in an editorial in the latest edition of the British Journal of Cancer.

Research leader Professor Edzard Ernst said many of the sites recommended a multitude of treatments, with little consensus among them.

"Cancer patients get confused in the maze of claims and counter claims and often turn to the Internet for information which can give advice that has led to real harm and even death in some cases," he said in a statement.

Ernst and fellow researcher Katja Schmidt found 5 of the 13 Web sites offered potentially harmful advice to patients and said that two more, in their opinion, were "dangerous."

One of the sites lists what it describes as botanical cancer cures like goldenseal, pokeroot, wild indigo, thuja, figwort and red clover. But Schmidt stressed: "There is no evidence that any of these herbal medicines cure cancer."

However, the researchers praised the award-winning site run by the charity Cancer Research UK as "a very useful source of information" that discusses complementary as well as conventional cancer therapies.

Schmidt told Reuters Health that most questionable Web sites appeared to be based in the US. But she said that rather than being forced to close, the sites should be encouraged to subscribe to Health on the Net--a code of conduct that seeks to raise the quality of health information on the Web.

Sally Penrose, chief executive of the British Homoeopathy Association, said the organization does not condone any claims that homoeopathic medicine can treat or cure cancer on its own. But she added that at least two National Health Service homoeopathic hospitals in the UK do have experts who specialize in cancer care.

"Homoeopathy is never, as far as I'm aware, used as a solo treatment for cancer," Penrose said. "But it is used in a complementary and palliative way."

SOURCE: British Journal of Cancer 2002;87:479-480.

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