Police Psychology | Honesty:  An Endangered Species

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

I was at a party this Labor Day weekend and I talked to a New York Port Authority Police Officer who was originally from Peru.  His mom had cancer and I felt real bad for him.  She was only given a few weeks to live, then he said that was 4 ½ years ago.  When she was diagnosed, he went down to Peru and purchased a bunch of cancer eating beetles, bringing them back into the United States in an ant farm type of arrangement.  The beetles have to be swallowed whole and alive, but seem to release some kind of toxin that kills cancer cells.  The beetles were used in many different ancient medicines.  The toxin actually burns you while going down and in the stomach.  He said at first week you eat 10 beetles a day, and it increases to 80 beetles a day before it comes back to rest at 10.  He said he didn’t know if it worked because they changed her diet and a whole bunch of things she was doing, but he said whether it is real or a placebo effect it definitely worked for his mother.  I looked it up on the internet, and in fact there is a lot about it, even some studies.  Seems it is only the male beetle that releases a toxin, it does offer a legit treatment for skin cancer, but the mythology is that it works with all cancers, sometimes.  Whoa, 80 burning beetles!  Alive!  And let’s say 40 are female, so you are  eating 40 that you don’t even have to!

My friend’s wife has cancer and they are not too positive about the prognosis.  He changed the diet, she starting radiation and such, but he was considering cannabis oil as a treatment.  When distilled in a certain way it has some studies that show it is effective, and there are articles on both sides of the effectiveness issue.  It has also been used in ancient medicines.  But of course, it is illegal except in California, and you can’t cross state lines to bring it back to New York.  So we devised some ways to get it back and try it if needed.  Not approved by the government for treatment, yet it sure sounds more pleasant than burning beetles from South America.  Unfortunately, you are supposed to take the oil in suppositories, so you might get a “high” in the wrong end.  When in desperation, you look for anything to cure the problem, but underlying this is a lack of trust in our government to regulate these types of things.  A lack of trust in medicine also.  Why is it we don’t trust medicine and the government to regulate these things anymore?  Shouldn’t we do something about this problem? (more…)