The apostle of this sort of thing was Martin Howard of Braintree in
Essex.  Search this group's archive in Google Groups.

I don't know the etiquette of quoting posts written by people who are
now deceased.

jimhoney

Julie,

I hope you will NOT publish any quote given to you anonymously.

Any idiot can make up any story and send it to you as Mr. J.
Unless you can confirm the truth of the story, it is irresponsible
and unethical of you to publish it.

One of the biggest problems of the "alternative medicine" community
is that an unscrupulous person will make up a ridiculous lie and
feed it to some gullible (or equally unscrupulous) person who
publishes it.  Others quote the first publication, and before you
know it, the lie becomes "common knowledge" believed by
everyone and taken for granted as true because, after all,
it was published - possibly in multiple publications!

But even if you can verify them, anecdotes are a poor guide to
understanding.

I suspect that there are people who have been treated for prostate
cancer who have undergone reflexology and drunk essiac tea.  If
so, I bet that some of them conquered their cancer and some died
of it.  Unless you have a properly designed study to determine
if the reflexology or the tea made any difference, the anecdotes
are absolutely worthless.  Worse, if you only publish the positive
anecdotes (and none of the dead people will send you theirs), you'll
give a dangerously false impression to your readers.

If you disagree with my arguments here, I hope you will write
back in this newsgroup and explain why.  There are some scientists
and mathematicians in the group (cancer can hit anyone), who
can help you to clarify this issue.

Instead of publishing anonymous anecdotes, perhaps your
magazine could help fund a reputable hospital or medical school
to conduct a real, properly designed, clinical trial.  It would be
a great service to your readers and practitioners - whether it
showed that reflexology and essiac tea help, hurt, or does nothing
for cancer.

   Alan