Most of the “alternative” cancer care groups are quacks and charlatans pitching dubious diets, but “most” is not “all” and an outfit in Mexico called “The Williams Cancer Institute” caught my attention because they’re offering legitimate treatment—for example, they’ll inject legitimate immunotherapy agents like Opdivo straight into tumors.[1] They’ll also perform Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) ablation, which has some research showing potential efficacy; PEF may stimulate tumor antigen release in a way that allows immunotherapies to identify the tumor antigens and thus attack the tumors themselves. The possibility of tumor response from PEF and immunotherapy is real, as opposed to the “eat our special diet” people, or the “energy” healing people, or the homeopathy people.[2]

In “The financial costs of healthcare costs, or, is keeping me alive worth it?”, I wrote about whether from a society-wide perspective the care I’ve been consuming passes a reasonable cost-benefit analysis. But that essay primarily assumes a system in which health insurance or a public healthcare system is paying—I’ve also faced the question more concretely, because the Williams Institute is in Mexico and all payments are cash. Is $200,000 for treatment that would probably not cure me worthwhile?