Alternative medicine charity winds down after regulator ‘identified concerns’ about its public benefit – Third Sector

A charity that promoted complementary and alternative medicine to cancer patients has decided to wind down following engagement with the Charity Commission.

Gerson Support Group, which aimed to promote treatments based on diet, nutritional supplements and enemas, has been removed from the charity register after the regulator opened a compliance case into its work.

Charities that promote alternative medicine or therapies must provide objective, scientific evidence in support of their claims, according to commission guidance which was updated in 2018.

The commission said GSGs own board acknowledged it would not meet the criteria for registration if it applied today.

GSG was registered as a charity in 1997 to support cancer patients and advance Gerson nutritional therapy.

The commission opened a case to scrutinise GSG in 2019, a year after concluding a consultation into public benefit offered by alternative therapy charities.

That consultation recommended that charities offering alternative cures and treatments must provide scientific evidence to back their claims.

The regulator said that during its assessment it identified concerns about the extent to which GSG provided public benefit, and that the charitys trustees also acknowledged that the evidence to support Gerson nutritional therapy would not now meet the commissions criteria for registration as a charity.

Helen Earner, director of regulatory services at the commission, said: I welcome the decision by the trustees of GSG to wind it up, having recognised our concerns regarding its claims to cure people from life-threatening diseases.

Charitable status is a special status that comes with clear expectations and responsibilities. The law is clear that all organisations which wish to hold that status must demonstrate public benefit.

It is right that, following the commissions intervention, the organisation has been removed from the register of charities.

The regulator said that there was a number of other ongoing cases concerning other alternative therapy charities and that it would take firm and robust action where necessary.

A spokesperson for GSG told Third Sector: The trustees of the Gerson Support Group are extremely sad that the charity had to close down.

They are aware of many thousands of people worldwide who have been helped by Dr Gersons therapy, and personally know people who believe they would not be alive today but for Dr Gersons work.

The commission decided to review its guidance on alternative therapy charities shortly after the Good Thinking Society, which says it battles against irrationality and pseudoscience, threatened to bring legal action over the regulators stance.

Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society, said: It is extremely encouraging to see that the GSG will no longer be able to use their charitable status to promote a disproven and wholly ineffective therapy to vulnerable cancer patients.

As the Charity Commission has noted, however, this is far from the only example of an organisation using its charitable status to encourage the public to put their trust in unproven and potentially harmful forms of treatment. It is not even the only charity spreading misinformation about cancer.

Marshall described todays news as a good first step in protecting the public and the reputation of the charity sector as a whole but it is only the first step. We will be watching with keen interest what steps follow.

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Alternative medicine charity winds down after regulator 'identified concerns' about its public benefit - Third Sector