Clinic Claims Smoking Cures Cancer, Emphysema
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}If someone is suffering from emphysema or lung cancer after decades of smoking, the last thing you want to give them is a cigarette, right? Well, in Indonesia, smoking is openly touted as a cancer cure, Agence-France Presse reported.
At the Griya Balur clinic, doctors not only claim smoking cures cancer, they also claim it cures autism as well. Dr. Gretha Zahar, the founder of the clinic, told AFP that she had treated 60,000 people with tobacco smoke over the past decade.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Zahar said she believes that by manipulating the mercury in tobacco, smoking can cure all diseases, and even reverse the aging process.
"Mercury is the cause of all illnesses. In my cigarettes — we call them Divine Cigarettes — there are scavengers that extract the mercury from the body," she said.
Using the “Divine Cigarettes,” Zahar treats emphysema sufferers by blowing smoke infused with “nanotechnology" to remove their cancer-causing "free radicals", through a tube into her diseased lungs. She also blows smoke into their ears and nose, while she holds a cup of aspirin over her right eye.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In response to her critics, Zahar states on her website that “she does not need to subject her theories to clinical tests or publish them in peer-reviewed journals, nor does she have the money to ‘fight with Western medical scientists.’”
In Indonesia, smoking is incredibly popular, with rates rising six-fold over the last 40 years, according to the World Health Organization. However, Indonesia is the only country in Asia that has not ratified the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, according to the report, which was “developed in response to the globalization of the tobacco epidemic.”