Snyder Jeremy, Zenone Marco, Grewal Ashmita, Caulfield Timothy
Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
JMIR Cancer. 2024 Aug 14;10:e52018. doi: 10.2196/52018.
Complementary and alternative (CAM) cancer treatment is often expensive and not covered by insurance. As a result, many people turn to crowdfunding to access this treatment.
The aim of this study is to identify the rationales of patients with cancer seeking CAM treatment abroad by looking specifically at crowdfunding campaigns to support CAM cancer treatment in Tijuana, Mexico.
We scraped the GoFundMe.com and GiveSendGo.com crowdfunding platforms for campaigns referencing CAM cancer clinics in Tijuana, initiated between January 1, 2022, and February 28, 2023. The authors created a coding framework to identify rationales for seeking CAM treatment in Tijuana. To supplement campaign metadata, we coded the beneficiary's cancer stage, type, age, specific treatment sought, whether the beneficiary died, gender, and race.
Patients sought CAM cancer treatment in Tijuana because the (1) treatment offers the greatest efficacy (29.9%); (2) treatment offered domestically was not curative (23.2%); (3) the clinic treats the whole person, and addresses the spiritual dimension of the person (20.1%); (4) treatments are nontoxic, natural, or less invasive (18.2%); and (5) clinic offers the newest technology (8.5%). Campaigns raised US $5,275,268.37 and most campaign beneficiaries were women (69.7%) or White individuals (71.1%).
These campaigns spread problematic misinformation about the likely efficacy of CAM treatments, funnel money and endorsements to CAM clinics in Tijuana, and leave many campaigners short of the money needed to pay for CAM treatments while costing beneficiaries and their loved one's time, privacy, and dignity. This study affirms that Tijuana, Mexico, is a very popular destination for CAM cancer treatment.
补充和替代医学（CAM）癌症治疗通常费用高昂且不在保险范围内。因此，许多人转向众筹来获取这种治疗。
本研究的目的是通过具体研究支持墨西哥蒂华纳CAM癌症治疗的众筹活动，确定寻求国外CAM治疗的癌症患者的理由。
我们在GoFundMe.com和GiveSendGo.com众筹平台上搜索了2022年1月1日至2023年2月28日期间发起的提及蒂华纳CAM癌症诊所的活动。作者创建了一个编码框架来确定在蒂华纳寻求CAM治疗的理由。为了补充活动元数据，我们对受益人的癌症阶段、类型、年龄、寻求的具体治疗方法、受益人是否死亡、性别和种族进行了编码。
患者在蒂华纳寻求CAM癌症治疗的原因是：（1）该治疗具有最大疗效（29.9%）；（2）国内提供的治疗无法治愈（23.2%）；（3）该诊所治疗的是完整的人，并关注人的精神层面（20.1%）；（4）治疗无毒、天然或侵入性较小（18.2%）；（5）诊所提供最新技术（8.5%）。活动筹集了5,275,268.37美元，大多数活动受益人是女性（69.7%）或白人（71.1%）。
这些活动传播了关于CAM治疗可能疗效的有问题的错误信息，将资金和支持导向蒂华纳的CAM诊所，使许多活动发起人缺乏支付CAM治疗所需的资金，同时让受益人及其亲人付出了时间、隐私和尊严的代价。这项研究证实，墨西哥蒂华纳是CAM癌症治疗非常受欢迎的目的地。
