Deadspin Writer Hammers Seth Davis Mom’s “Hoax” Cancer Cures

College basketball reporter Seth Davis has been slammed by writer Jeff Waksman for promoting his mother’s “hoax” cancer cures.

“Hoax Cancer Cures”

In a piece entitled “Seth Davis Promotes His Mom’s Hoax Cancer Cures” Waksman points to a series of tweets from 2012 to 2014 by Davis in which he promoted his mother’s website that focuses on alternative medicine.

If you want to learn about green juicing, raw foods and alkaline water, here’s my mom’s website. She beat cancer twice! http://t.co/jAXFEzgY

— Seth Davis (@SethDavisHoops) March 15, 2012

Renewed Living

Davis’ mother, Elaine Gibson, runs the website renewedlivinginc.com, most of which details her successful battle against Stage IV cancer. Green juicing, deionized water, and detoxing are all promoted on the site. A second website, renewedlivingdetox.com sells a “Renewed Detox” program which ranges in price from $77 to $457 for the 11-day program. On her Twitter page, Gibson states that she “beat stage IV cancer without big pharma!” On the detox site, she claims, “I beat stage IV cancer without traditional protocols!” Waksman points out, however, that while Gibson has repeatedly stated that she beat cancer “without big pharma,” Davis himself stated in a 2014 tweet that his mom “got chemo and beat cancer twice.”

@BPredict @rolub you are both misinformed. My mom got chemo and beat cancer twice. And unlike you guys she has class. — Seth Davis (@SethDavisHoops) August 21, 2014

Gibson’s website does not contain links to peer-reviewed scientific studies to back up any of the claims or products offered for sale.

Renewedlivinginc.com was registered in June 2011, while renewedlivingdetox.com was registered in October 2014.

Seth Davis

Davis, for his part, tweeted out his mother’s website on several occasions between 2012 and 2014. Spencer Hall at SB Nation took Davis to task back in 2012 in an article entitled, “Seth Davis has hot health tips for you.” Hall concluded that Davis, “really wants you to go to his mom’s website full of internet science and expensive, demon-killing deionizing equipment.”

When pressed on his promotion of his mother’s site, Davis tweeted a link to an article summarizing the work of Dr. Joseph Mercola, a controversial alternative medicine proponent. Mercola has been referred to as “likely to mislead consumers” and he has received warning letters from the FDA for violations of marketing laws.

Natural Remedies

Waksman points out that, “There is no science to back up a single statement on the cancer-fighting website Seth Davis promotes.” Indeed, the danger of avoiding traditional medicine with a life-threatening condition was highlighted when Apple founder Steve Jobs opted to try alternative medicine for nine months before seeking traditional treatment for cancer. Tragically, what was considered treatable early on became much more difficult to tackle after his 9-month detour into alternative medicine. Several studies in recent years have found that cancer patients going the alternative route have suffered a lower survival rate than those who sought traditional treatment. This study, for example, concluded, “Women who declined primary standard treatment had significantly worse survival than those who received standard treatments. There is no evidence to support using Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) as primary cancer treatment.”

It appears that Davis has calmed the promotion of his mother’s site since mid-2014, but given the renewed attention of Waksman’s article, it will be interesting to see if he responds.

Bottom Line

Sports reporter Seth Davis has been known to promote his mother’s alternative medicine website since 2012. Several writers have taken Davis to task on this issue.