A TikTok account promoting health spray products has been circulating videos that call chemotherapy the biggest scam in the medical world and tell cancer patients to seek treatment at their centre before undergoing any conventional medical care.
The videos were flagged on Threads by user @budakmark412, where they quickly drew alarm from healthcare workers and members of the public who recognised immediately what kind of person these messages are designed to reach, not the medically curious, but the desperate.
What the videos claimed
The TikTok account made several distinct claims across multiple posts. One video stated that chemotherapy could turn a healthy, mobile person into someone who was bedridden and seriously ill. Another declared that cancer does not kill people, but chemotherapy does. A third directly targeted parents of children with cancer, urging them to bring their child to the centre before pursuing any medical treatment.
The videos were accompanied by promotions for spray products listed at RM132 each on an online shopping platform, with the advertisements making claims related to cancer, kidney disease, thyroid conditions, heart health, high blood pressure, migraines and other illnesses.
No regulatory approval numbers appeared in the advertisements.
The people these videos are made for
The reason this matters is not that the claims are persuasive to the medically informed. They are precisely calibrated for people who are not in a position to think clearly. A person who has just received a cancer diagnosis, or whose child has just received one, is not in a neutral state of mind when they encounter a video telling them that the treatment their doctor has prescribed will make things worse. They are frightened and looking for anything that sounds like hope.
“They don’t agree with the treatment, but suddenly they can agree with the diagnosis?” one commenter, who identified themselves as working in healthcare, wrote on Threads. “The difficult part of making the diagnosis, doing the biopsy and carrying out tests to confirm the cancer wasn’t done by them.”
Others raised concern about elderly patients and those already undergoing treatment being particularly susceptible to messaging like this, and questioned whether authorities could act against sellers making medical claims without supporting evidence.
What Malaysian health authorities and the science say
Under the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency’s guidelines for health supplements, claims made for health products must be supported by appropriate evidence and must not be misleading. The Health Ministry has previously warned the public about products making miracle cure claims, including claims related to cancer.
Under the Medicines (Advertisement and Sale) Act 1956, advertisements involving medicinal products are regulated by the Medicines Advertisements Board and approved advertisements are required to carry an approval serial number.
On the medical side, chemotherapy is an established treatment that uses drugs to destroy cancer cells or slow their growth.
According to the US National Cancer Institute, it can be used to cure certain cancers, reduce the likelihood of cancer returning, slow disease progression or ease symptoms, depending on the individual patient and their type of cancer. Chemotherapy does carry side effects, and those side effects are real and in some cases severe. But side effects are not the same as the treatment being a scam. Patients who have concerns about chemotherapy should raise them with their treating doctors before making any decisions about stopping, delaying or replacing prescribed medical care.
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‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman
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