British citizens are protesting the kickoff of a lucrative tour of the country by Brian Clement, a controversial U.S. alternative health clinic owner who has made millions selling phony cancer cures that have been linked to the death of at least one child.

The Daily Mail is reporting on the public outcry which has already led to the cancellation of Clement’s speaking engagements in Dublin and Galway. His planned events in Birmingham and London this month remain scheduled although these may also be cancelled soon.

Clements and his wife run the Hippocrates Health Institute (HHI) in Florida. A devotee of the late Ann Wigmore and her holistic remedies of wheat grass and sprouts, Clements made headlines recently after two aboriginal girls with leukemia who were taken off their chemotherapy after being told that his methods which he claims had helped “thousands and thousands reverse stage-four catastrophic cancer” could help the girls. Each paid a staggering $18,000 to partake of Clement’s miracle cure.

One of the girls, Makayla Sault from Ontario, has since died even though the chemotherapy treatment she had been enrolled in had a high rate of success.

What kind of miracle cures is Clement offering? As this detailed report published on the Science Based Medicine blog reports, HHI’s treatments “include almost every imaginable form of cancer quackery, including ‘detoxification,’ colonics, wheatgrass, ozone pools, ‘bio-energy treatments, the aforementioned ‘Cyber Scan’, and, of course, the Aqua Chi ‘detox footbaths’. One particularly silly treatment offered by HHI is called a ‘wheatgrass implant’, which, it turns out, are actually wheatgrass juice enemas. Indeed, if you believe the hype on the HHI website, there’s nothing that wheatgrass can’t do. If the HHI is to be believed, wheatgrass can increase red blood cell count, decrease blood pressure, cleanse the blood, organs and GI tract of ‘debris’, stimulate the thyroid gland, ‘restore alkalinity’ to the blood, ‘detoxify’ the blood, fight tumors and neutralize toxins, and many other fantastically beneficial alleged effects. Basically, combine a raw vegan diet with a veritable cornucopia of other kinds of quackery, and you have the HHI.” 

Earlier this year, Clement made headlines for a run-in with Florida authorities who issued a “cease and desist” order accusing him of misrepresenting himself as a doctor. The charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence.

As the blog reports, Clement “has been fudging on his credentials, referring to himself variously as a naturopathic doctor, an NMD [naturopathic medical doctor] and a Ph.D. He has used the honorific ‘Dr.’ (as recently as last November, on the HHI website) and called himself a “scientist.” But his degrees are from diploma mills.”

It seems almost unbelievable that an organization such as this could have raked in $22 million in revenue in 2013 but when people are seriously ill and medicine has either run out of options for them, or failed them in one way or another, they become vulnerable to snake-oil salesmen like Brian Clement.

“Mr Clement's claim to have 'reversed cancer' can sound very convincing, especially to vulnerable patients who could be seduced by the false hope on offer,” said Good Thinking Society Director, Michael Marshall, to the Mail.

“Sadly, the number of people to follow advice like this and spend large sums of money on worthless treatments is all too high. We need the authorities to ensure the public are fully protected from such false cancer 'cures'. Where vulnerable patients are involved, the risk of a tragic outcome is incredibly high.” Want a more thorough understanding of the New Age - and have fun while you're learning? Read my new book, The Learn to Discern Compendium, which explains 30 of the most prevalent New Age practices along with a chapter full of Discernment Tools to help you "learn to discern" what is New Age and what is Christian.