Suzanne Somers, Cancer & Controversy

Actress Discusses New Book, "Knockout," on Alternatives to Chemotherapy

(CBS)  Actress Suzanne Somers is known for her roles on "Three's Company" and "Step By Step," as well as her exercise and diet plans. But for cancer research?

In her new book, "Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who are Curing Cancer and How to Prevent Getting It," Somers shares what she describes as "groundbreaking and successful cancer prevention and care protocols incorporating chemo-free options that are available now."

Read an excerpt of Suzanne Somers' "Knockout."

Somers herself has stared cancer in the face -- including a shattering scare last November of "full-body cancer."

"For six days, six doctors confirmed I had inoperable cancer. I went into that valley of fear. I saw my death, it was horrible," Somers said.

Somers later learned she had been misdiagnosed. But, during the time Somers thought she had cancer, she spoke with several doctors and patients about their various treatments. She turned her research turned into a book about their responses, particularly the alternative treatments available for cancer patients.

The book has proven highly controversial, and she said she's been attacked by doctors for promoting treatments that avoid chemotherapy.

Click on the video below to see Somers address attacks on her book, in an interview with "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

[ozo0919]

quote from the earlier post
"Depending on the cancer's severity, some doctors have stated that they know chemo and rad. therapy will not work, but they suggest it anyhow, believing that the patient would at least feel better that SOMETHING is being done by their doctor (even though it will kill them faster and worsten their pain in the mean time."

is so ridiculous. It is a copmletely uneducated statement. Do you have any idea of why surgery vs radiation vs chemo therapy are used? And what cancers each is used for any why it differs? I am serious that I would like your next post to have an answer.
I am jusr curious because your statement basically implies that doctors are so immoral as to actually suggest harmful treatment when they know it is a bad idea. That is pretty shameful to say.

[AnnKramer]

For those interested in alternative cancer treatments, you may want to see the DVD The Beautiful Truth and Dying To Have Known (available on Netflix). The subject of the documentary is Dr. Max Gerson, a medical doctor from Germany who practiced in NYC and cured Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his wife who had serious life-threatening illnesses, as well as many many other people with no other treatment options for their cancer, by having them change to a plant-based diet and use simple system-cleansing procedures.

We have been told since we were little kids that we are what we eat. That still holds true throughout our entire adult life. Unfortunately the processed foods we consume because we want "healthy quick meals" are actually not that healthy and pound for pound more expensive than if we prepared a simple organic meal for ourselves and our families.

With so many families are on very tight food budgets, my suggestion is to buy whole fresh foods and organic products when you can. I believe that if you can wean yourselves off of canned and processed "quick meals", you and your families will be healthier in the long run.

Also check out the different forms of MSG that are out there (Google "MSG" and look for the Truth In labeling website, as well as other sources). You will be surprised how the food processing manufacturers will hide MSG under different names such as "hydrolyzed [anything]", "yeast extract", and "natural flavors", among others. And if you're still not convinced about how MSG affects health, I was surprised to find out that MSG is used to make rats obese for diabetes research since rats genetically are not overweight. To me, it is no wonder that our population is terribly overweight, especially the younger generation.

[ozo0919]

great passion deb. you make really great points and i hope people read what you wrote and think about some of these things.

[deb6122]

I just want to say that anyone who believes what ss says is an idiot, she is a fraud, and out to make a buck- first of all if she did have a 2.4 tumor years ago she wouldnt of been able to have a lumpectomy without it deforming her breast,she says she has no scar even with plastic surgery there would be a scar, she talks about how her miracle hormones and natural diets and excersize keep her healthy well she sure how a lot of stuff going on for beign so HEALTHY! And every time she comes up with somthing new she comes out with a book, i had breast cancer and i know half the stuff she said does not make sense. Some things she said she didnt know about, well gee, you think you would know before you wrote the books, my uncle died from pancreatic caner, he was a vegan, did the whole natureal thing, he didnt last as long as he would of if he did chemo- For her to even make acommet about patrick swaze is just plain wrong, i hope if any one that follows her advice and isnt getting any better because of it, sues her. And funny how when the paparazie took pictures of her at a liposuction clinic she says oh it had to do with my breast cancer, ummmmm.. ok! If she is so dang healthy why would she need liposuction, give me a break, how do you sleep at night ms somers knowing all the advice you give to actually kill someone

[AsmaHameed]

Hi people.Yes this is absolutely disappointing about Misdiagonising.I wish i were an Onocologist,but its too late now.i have joined this Blog inorder to share and keep myself updated about Cancer.My father is a Colostomu Patiend now.and this is the reason i try and do keep myself updated.its been 2 yrs my fathers is a Colostomy Patient,we do get his tests done every 6months,and now i hav joined this inorder to keep myself updated.and the remidies to be taken now and then.So far his reports are clear Alhamdulillah !!

[Naturalistic]

Hmm, the comment about Patrick Swayze which I addressed to teb2104 was really meant to ozo0919.

[ozo0919]

Naturalistic, I really do not have time to really break apart everything you said because I do not have enough time but there is so much ridiculous misinformation being said. I will simply point out a few things.

"During many years medicine was based on proven treatments, not on tests done with sophisticated and expensive machinery nor studies, so why do the common person have to rely just on that in order to choose how they want their own bodies to be treated??"

This is such a funny statement. You say things were based on "proven" treatments....but then you follow it up with saying but NOT on tests done with sophisticated and expensive machinery nor studies. So what do you mean by the word "proven" then? Then you go on and say so why do the common person have to rely just on that in order to choose how they want their own bodies to be treated?? I don't know Naturalistic, I would only hope that the common person would want their treatments to be based on tests done with sophisticated and expensive machinery and studies instead of these "proven" treatments that are based on whatever that means.

And lastly, in your statement to teb when you say "If female hormones caused cancer NO woman on earth would be safe from breas t and other cancers, as we produce quite a bit of them throughout our lives"...is this for real? Are you really making this point as a serious one? The natural way is that estrogen is necessary and involved in feedback mechanisms with gonadotropins and crucial to ovulation which allows people to conceive, etc. Naturally women are made with a certain number of eggs and as ovulation occurs, they get less and less until you reach menopause as the natural way females exist. There no longer is this feedback anymore and estrogen levels then drop, naturally. The female body which has naturally survived since the beginning of existence without these high levels of estrogen after menopause have done fine. This is the natural way. The natural way is not to continue to give yourself estrogen in "bioidentical" hormones. And thus it is therefore potential harmful to do something so unnatural and is have been shown that it can lead to certain cancers as they are not "naturally" used to still be exposed to such high levels of estrogen. Thank you very much Naturalistic for your statements. This still does not explain why Suzanne Somers is seemingly manipulating the media and public to help her book sales at the expense of viewer's health.

[ozo0919]

just in case someone happens to read graviolaleaves-com comments and finds that it "sounds" credible. I think this would be once again another tactic where people defend these insane treatments by saying that "many studies have been done" or like graviolaleaves-com states "His research on cancer was partially funded by the NCI-- the National Cancer Institute" to make it sound more credible. I am including the link for the actual NCI website and I will copy a portion of it below so that graviolaleaves-com can tell everyone how effective Gonzalez's pancreatic cure is in comparison to chemotherapy....

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/gonzalez/Patient/page2

"Nicholas Gonzalez, a New York physician, first studied his regimen in 11 patients who had advanced pancreatic cancer. In 1993, he reported selected results of the study to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Patients treated with the Gonzalez regimen lived an average of 17 months, which is longer than usual for patients with this disease. Most patients with advanced pancreatic cancer live less than a year.

Because of the small number of patients in the study, and for other reasons, the NCI and the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) decided that the results were not clear and prospective studies were encouraged. In prospective studies, patients are followed forward in time. The NCI and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) sponsored a second study with a much larger number of patients. This was a 7-year clinical study that included patients who had stage II, stage III, or stage IV pancreatic cancer that could not be removed by surgery.

In this study, one group of patients followed the Gonzalez regimen while another group was given standard treatment (chemotherapy). Results in the two groups were compared to see if the Gonzalez regimen works better than the standard treatment and if it has bad side effects. Results of the study were reported in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Oncology in August 2009. Patients treated with standard chemotherapy survived an average of 14 months and patients treated with the Gonzalez regimen survived an average of 4.3 months. Patients treated with chemotherapy reported a better quality of life than those treated with the Gonzalez regimen"

The original study did NOT have very many patints and of course as these quacks tend to do quite often, they only published "selected" results so that they get to pick the ones that look better on paper and don't report all of the 11 patients so you can't see how everyone else did. So the NCI then has them do another study and the results speak for themselves. I am glad NCI sponsored some of the studies so that they could actually reveal the fraud that is going on out there.

[Naturalistic]

I'm wondering if you get some satisfaction of trying to be a smart a** or if you really didn't understand what I said. I'm going to indulge you on the assumption that you're just missing my point.

"Proven", in the context of what I said (talking of a far gone past), meant what had given good results on ill people since the "sophisticated" tools of today didn't yet exist. Take for example Chinese medicine, which is still widely used today and, in fact, its wisdom has been spreading around the world. It became what it is through tradition, not "studies". Also, in many cultures lots of people still rely on traditional remedies to treat simple to moderately serious conditions, it's a choice that people should be free to have but here in the USA it's considered by many (like you, I suppose) an "outrage" and always and indiscriminately labelled as "quackery".

I guess your reasoning of why the "common" person would/should ideally rely on studies, etc. to choose their treatments is based on faith that today we're really advanced and that studies are the "be all and end all". While I'm not saying that all studies are valueless, I do believe many are biased and made with the full intention of proving or disproving whatever the sponsor wants, therefore, unlike you, I DON'T put all my trust in them.

I know the natural feedback regarding hormones may not be there anymore, but I believe that if bio-identical hormones (as opposed to stuff like Premarin, Provera, Prempro, etc.) are given in proportion to the woman's needs (and there are tests which will show where her levels are) and not in a standardized dosage or type, the risks are WAY smaller.

The "natural" way in an IDEAL WORLD may be for women to not take hormones at the onset and/or after menopause, but the fact is that most of us live under so much stress all our hormones very often get out of balance long before we reach that point. For example, insufficient sleep and/or sleeping at the wrong times, will throw several vital hormones off kilter and I know you know they're all interdependent. And something most doctors selectively ignore is that tired adrenals make the difference between an easy menopausal transition (which some women in other cultures still experience) and a difficult one and unless you're a woman you have no idea the hell it can be when that happens. I speak of personal experience because my life as a single mother of two was anything but easy so neither was my transition. I stopped taking estrogen/progesterone 5 years ago due to the cancer fear but twice already have chosen to take them to get some relief of the symptoms that have robbed me of a good quality of life, for me it's choosing the "lesser of two evils" as I'd rather not have to take any drugs at all but I've also have gotten myself thoroughly informed so I'm really not afraid now. I am convinced there is much more to getting the types of cancer you refer to than just the exposure to estrogen, but I also do not want to go into that here.

[cfarran]

I would like to hear from the six physicians who misdiagnosed Ms. Somers "full body cancer." In this day and age, I find that impossible to believe.

[Naturalistic]

cfarran:

Say what? Doctors are constantly misdiagnosing people - have you ever watched the show "Wrong Diagnosis" on TLC by any chance??? And that's not just TV, it's happened to me and members of my family; for crying out loud, even wrong organs and/or limbs have been removed during operations, it's called "human error", yet, the ego of many doctors, fed by the fact that they spent a lot of years in school, makes them believe that their knowledge should never be questioned as if the M.D. following their names actually meant Medical Divinity! Kudos to those that have the humility to sometimes say "we just don't know".


To teb2104:

You should try to get your facts straight, the studies that showed the link with female hormones and cancer were NOT done with bio-identical hormones but with "estrogen" (probably ethinyl estradiol) and a progestin which is far from "identical". It had to be so because drugs like Premarin, Provera and Prempro were what all or most doctors were prescribing at the time.

If female hormones caused cancer NO woman on earth would be safe from breast and other cancers, as we produce quite a bit of them throughout our lives. Also, the key word here would be "balance", something lacking in the usual "ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL" type of approach.

Oh, and I LOVED Patrick Swayze but he was a smoker, a strong indication that his lifestyles was NOT a really healthy one. While I feel very sorry that one of my "idols" had to suffer in that way, his choices had a lot to do with that and I find absolutely nothing "heroic" in submitting oneself to a poisonous therapy like chemo.

To ozo0919:

During many years medicine was based on proven treatments, not on tests done with sophisticated and expensive machinery nor studies, so why do the common person have to rely just on that in order to choose how they want their own bodies to be treated?? It's true many of those old treatments were actually bad for people but that has still been happening in recent decades; personally, I find some practices of "modern" medicine quite barbaric and I'm sure in the future they will be abolished too.

Doctors may read "lots of articles" but out of the ton of journals published most only subscribe to a few since it would be impossible to get/read them all. And some doctors are more diligent than others in this area than others too, some after being disillusioned by allopathic medicine take a step "beyond" but, of course, then they're called "quacks" but to their very grateful patients they are actually the REAL good ones.

You know, your nickname reminds me of Dr. Oz, who has good intentions and recommends a lot of good natural things to prevent illness, but who IMO is still quite a bit behind on some things and very often gives people pat answers to their problems when real solutions DO exist for many of them. But, of course, what am I thinking, he could be sued if he recommended something not sanctioned by "the powers that be" didn't work, for that reason I still watch him most of the time.

[teb2104]

I find it shocking that she promotes "bioidentical hormones" which have been linked to causing cancer(1) AND that she renounces chemotherapy. It's as if she's on cancer's payroll.


(1)Bioidentical hormone therapy: a review. Boothby LA; Doering PL; Kipersztok S. Menopause 2004 May-Jun;11(3):356-67.

[graviolaleaves-com]

The main doctor mentioned her book has impressive credentials according to Wikipedia. One of the youngest people to be an M.D. and a PhD in biochemistry. His research on cancer was partially funded by the NCI-- the National Cancer Institute. He has many patents for his research.

Dr. Alan Levin, Professor of Immunology, University of California Medical School, 1987 says "Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon or lung cancers. The fact has been documented for over a decade.... Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemotherapy than without it."

Dr Levin is also a recipient of fellowships and awards from Harvard Medical School and other medical institutions, and was Director of various research laboratories. Chemotherapy does help 2-3% of cancer patients.

[cfarran]

Ms. Sommers is either stupid, naieve or simply cruel to sugggest that chemotherapy is not as effective as alternative treatments for many forms of cancer. In her own diagnosis of breast cancer, depending on the tumor size, grade, BRCA factors, ER+ vs ER Neg, long term studies have proven that chemotherapy reduces the likelihood of recurrence by 50%. I would like to see her alternative treatments such as the mistletoe therapy she opted for stand up to scientific scruitiny.

If I were Mrs. Swayzee, I would be furious and offended like I am sure much of the dedicated oncologists and other cancer specialists are. Just another example of why celebrities should shut up.

[beingjohngalt]

cfarran said:
"Ms. Sommers is either stupid, naieve or simply cruel to sugggest that chemotherapy is not as effective as alternative treatments for many forms of cancer."

For some forms, it may be effective, but it also effectively attacks the patient. That is how Chemo and radiation therapies work... they poison the body, attempting to kill the cancer before killing the patient.

Depending on the cancer's severity, some doctors have stated that they know chemo and rad. therapy will not work, but they suggest it anyhow, believing that the patient would at least feel better that SOMETHING is being done by their doctor (even though it will kill them faster and worsten their pain in the mean time.

And to note... Laertile treatment has nothing to do with mistletoe. It is extracted from apricot pits.

I would seriously recommend you look at both sides objectively, before trusting so unscientifically. The two doctors from the American Cancer Society who tried to falsely claim that Amygdalin (natural form of laetrile) was toxic, were the same doctors who told America that smoking was good for you.
worldwithoutcancer.org.uk/research.html

[ozo0919]

I read so many of these posts and I hear a lot of "stories" about someone they knew or someone they heard about having a really bad cancer or "full body cancer" (whatever that even really means I am assuming a primary cancer that has metastasized?) yet they fail to really address the support of evidence. For instance, if you know that someone had cancer and they went to get alternative treatment and now they say they are doing well, there is no detail about what cancer they had, what stage it was, WHO diagnosed it or if it was just a diagnosis by some quack that wasn't really accurate, and just because they may tell you they are feeling good (placebo effect or becasue it's truly working) does not accurately say whether the treatment is working. The tests would be a better way to see if they are truly doing better.

When she makes these claims about these amazing success rates for curing pancreatic cancer, can someone please provide me with a link to a published article or anything that is done objectively to show this success. All I see is the alternative doctor claiming it's so great and people who have heard about someone who it worked so well on them which is not what we should really be basing our knowledge on. I am pretty sure that the entire medical community (who show in so many ways their devotion to their patients and that they are doing their work for the good of people and NOT for the money) would gladly accept and incorporate the new treatment into their practice. Somer's states in her interview that she thinks the reason they don't accept it is because they spent all this time learning about the chemo drugs in school that now they are too closed minded to learn or accept something new. This is a joke, doctor's read articles all the time and new studies are constantly being done trying to find better cures for their patients. The reason they don't accept it is because there is no proof for these treatments. The information given to Somer's and other people are likely picking out patients who did better, who may have been misdiagnosed so it didn't actually cure anything, or denying the fact that they also have a surgery to remove the tumor or got some other traditional treatments. What would be nice to do would actually have a study done by physicians other than the ones making BANK on these alternative methods. People need to open their eyes and realize they are so busy picking on traditional medicine for being all about the money but actually the new way to make money in the field is by doing these out-of-pocket, cash paid alternative therapies because the insurance companies won't cover it and the patients are willing to "trust" these "groundbreaking" treatments and hand over their money to them. Somer's is simply perpetuating unethical treatments already done by making some of her statements. With that said, I am not against all treatments that alternative medicine offers however it is very very important that patients know the true efficacy of what they are getting. You can't simply trust the alternative doctor who says it's been proven in many many studies when really he probably would provide you with a study done on mice or on 20 people who "said" they were doing better without following them long term. As with anything in life, if it sounds way too good to be true there's obviously a catch. If Somer's knows about a treatment for pancreatic cancer that would blast all other success rates out of the water, she is an evil person for not sharing this with Patrick Swayze.

[Dr_RightOne]

Look at these comments. And it's not even a full moon. Big Pharm is gonna get you.

[scorp1936]

Irrespective of whether Ms Somers is an oncology expert or not, what she is saying and advocating has been proven to be true thousands of times. The same applies to HIV/AIDS and antiretroviral drugs, where vested business and scientific interests are squashing alternative therapies that have proven their effectiveness, while costing much less, and are much easier on the patients. The current US$100 billion business of antiretroviral drugs would suffer if they allowed this to surface.

[Lizanne58]

All I can say is my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at 60 years of age. They treated her with chemo and radiation. She didn't die from breast cancer - she died from leukemia which was caused by the chemo and radiation treatments. I will always wonder if she would still be alive had she opted out of those treatments.

[DrCurtis]

Suzanne, you are right on the money. Keep up the great work.
I began metabolic therapy in 1985 to combat liver cancer, diabetes, polycythemia and several related metabolic disorders. Dr. William Donald Kelley, the founder and originator of metabolic typing, inspired me to pursue this new science as I was experiencing the rebuilding process. Since then I have written 2 books, finished 2 Ph.D."s and worked with many clients dealing with all forms of degenerative disease. In 1986 I began working on my doctorate Dissertation, which is a New "Theory of Personality" based on Dr. Kelley's 12 metabolic types. Dr. Kelley was a man decades ahead of the scientific world. As Linda Clark of the Price - Pottenger Foundation in San Diego stated so well, "Dr. Kelley's work with metabolic science is the MOST IMPORTANT NUTRITIONAL DISCOVERY IN THE LAST 150 YEARS."

Sincerely,
Curtis R. Kuhn
C.M.T. - E.L.A.
A.A., B.S., M.S., Ph.D.

[greysonn]

As a newbie to breast cancer I am so grateful to the folks who have shared their stories here in this article. I had mammograms every year then skipped three years as money got tight thinking I was fine. I went through 4 rounds of chemo and it was cumulative for me and the last round was rough. If someone who has the spotlight like Ms. Somers can shed light on an alternative that may come from someone outside the cancer specialist box that is welcome.

[CompletelyFrustrated]

While I am happy that people have alternative or holistic methods of treating disease, this is really hard to believe.

She claims she was diagnosed with Cancer in November, but then she says she was misdiagnosed! Well what is it?

I know folks who did both with holistic and proper medical treatment, sadly they list their battle, so I am afraid I do not believe this.

I do use holistic methods to help me manage asthma so I am not against it all together, but when she came out with patients that have been treated for Pancreatic cancer and are still alive after 10 years she lost all credibility - sorry then they were misdiagnosed!

I have watched 5 people(family and friends)die of this disease and while mixing alternative with conventional medicine did help they all still died within a few years of diagnosis.

Patrick Swayze just died from Pancreatic Cancer, I did not hear any mention of her talking to him since she found a Doctor who can cure it??

Sorry, most of the interview was OK but her statement about pancreatic cancer just turned me off.

[Naturalistic]

Dear "Completely":

If your basis for rejecting Ms. Somers' viewpoints is your knowledge that most people with pancreatic cancer die soon, I have to tell you that a doctor I knew (a plastic surgeon) lived with the disease for about 10 years too. He lived in another country though, maybe that had something to do with it, I don't know...

I recommend that you read Doug Kauffman's book "The Fungus Link, Vol. 2", in it he states that many cases of fungal infections are indeed misdiagnosed as cancer because in some tests they do look the same. So, what Ms. Somers was saying is that her doctors "said" it was cancer but they were wrong. However, there is evidence that many types of cancer may indeed be caused by fungus (which produce lots of mycotoxins). If you really want to judge this more impartially, pleaset visit Mr. Kauffman's website (www.knowthecause.com) and read all you can, maybe your eyes will be open just like mine were.

Your comment reminds me of an irate post in a forum which I found during a search. One girl shared very excitedly that her aunt's pancreatic cancer went into remission after following a natural anti-fungal program but another forum member, whose father died of the disease, told her it could not have been cancer in the first place, she had "studied" a lot about it and there was no way something so simple could put it into remission. This girl was actually VERY upset that someone would even dare say such a thing, but I believe the truth behind that is that she couldn't handle the thought that her dear father could've been saved but now he was irrevocably dead and all his suffering was in vain. Besides, because a lot of people are not proactive about keeping themselves healthy to begin with, they don't want to even think their lifestyles might've had anything to do with their being sick, they prefer to think that illness is just an unfortunate thing that befell them.

Personally, I can't understand that kind of thinking even though my own mother died of metastasised b.c. - or rather the aftermath of chemo and radiation... - and two uncles of prostate and colon cancer. It was indeed a bitter pill for me to swallow when the fungus/cancer link made sense to me to think that at least one of them might've been saved and/or spared all the suffering they went through. However, it was their choice to run in a panic to get themselves poisoned, burned and/or cut rather than trying to rebuild their health, and believe or not, that knowledge makes it easier for me to bear their loss. At the same time I think of the hope that MY CHILDREN and MYSELF, other relatives still living, and countless others may have now of being spared of even getting this dreaded disease precisely because there are truly brave people like Ms. S. who take the "beatings" for the rest of us, getting ridiculed and scorned for spreading the word that THERE ARE REAL ALTERNATIVES!

So while I'm sorry that you had to watch 5 people die of p.c., I have to say maybe their mistake was to "mix" conventional with alternative, personally I would go "alternative" all the way! And, by the way, that does not mean buying some strange potion at the last minute or following a "crazy" therapy without doing the "research", it would TOTAL dedication (spirit, mind and body) to give my own body the tools to heal itself.

How about if instead of living in denial because we might not yet have all the facts, we dare explore a new possibility with an open mind and being diligent in gathering as much information as possible in order to begin to "connect the dots"? Someday you may be glad you did...

As for Ms. Somers not talking to Patrick Swayze, how do we know if she really had access to him? And just because they were both celebrities that doesn't mean he would've welcomed her opinion with open arms... I have to say that after all I've learned in recent years I have to agree with her, in my humble opinion, both Farrah and him might've stood a better chance staying away from the poison called chemotherapy.

And to Dr_RightOne, typical response of someone who probably knows nothing about that which they so loudly decry... It's unfortunate that some people do not have the humility to try to explore something because that would just throw to the ground everything they learned and put their faith in, regardless of how WRONG it could be!

[Dr_RightOne]

As we get closer to Halloween the crazies start to gather. Please people this person is a fraud, a charlatan and a poseur. Don't let anecdotal happenings color your judgment. This is akin to Jenny McCarthy writing books on autism while legitimate people like Dr. Paul Offit get castigated. This is one of the reasons it is difficult to take CBS seriously anymore. Are they so desperate they need to feature this person on national television. To call her a quack would elevate her.

[HarrySmithisRUDE]

I was so eager to hear what Ms. Somers had to say, but that RUDE man had to insert his 2-cent ego while she was trying to say something that was very very important. I started to get really upset about it because she clearly was the GUEST, and had the right to speak. After all, she was invited! Furthermore, Ms. Somers had obviously some very valuable information to share and that idiot just had to cut her off to spin the interview into a 'conspiracy-type' direction. Granted that that might be true, but given the limited time there was and the useless commentary that would serve with the remaining time left for the live interview, it would have been much more 'viewer-useful' if Harry Smith shut up and let the poor lady speak. His ego must be a mile wide. Harry Smith is clearly not concerned with the life-saving knowledge that Ms. Somers had to share to the world otherwise he would have not cut her off while she was in mid sentence! Perhaps he is part of the AMA and FDA's conspiracy to keep her from steering people away from THEIR medical recommendations.