As harrowing as the experience can be for those involved, people in online cancer support groups are routinely outed as healthy. It’s difficult to speculate exactly how common this phenomenon is: There have been no large-scale scientific investigations into the internet’s cancer fakers, and the evidence is limited to only those who have actually been suspected or caught. But among the internet’s cancer communities, it’s an often acknowledged problem, albeit still a shocking one. Among 10 people from three groups I spoke with recently, every person recalled someone being outed for faking in their communities at least once, if not more.Many, many people with no special problems feel that they need what illness support groups provide: sympathetic attention. Many of the cases that we know about concern fake fundraising campaigns, because that attracts the attention of law enforcement, but I think that is only a small percentage of the people who do it for attention.
Monday, May 6, 2019
Faking Cancer
Another great insight into the modern world:
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My Daughter’s Best Friend did this to my daughter in their freshman year of college. Calling from ‘treatments’ at the hospital, etc. We only found out that she was faking when I ask her mother how the cancer treatments were working and she quite angrily stated that there were no cancer treatments. Oddly, the mother was a Nurse Practitioner whom her daughter called a Doctor, emphasizing the MD! I wanted to ask the mother some questions, but she almost ran away!
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