MAY 2019 | The Australian Women’s Weekly 79
Cancer con
it his business to press all the right
buttons for people who are fearful.
Otherwise, what sane person would
choose to have themselves mutilated
over trusting a surgeon with years and
years of experience?’”
As Helen grew sicker, her family
begged her to have a CT scan. A
surgeon told Helen the tumour had
grown to 15cm and they needed to
operate. She agreed, but then she went
and saw Jensen.
“He said, ‘I don’t know why they’re
saying that to you, Helen,’” Deb says.
“She went the day before [the surgery]
to see him because he wanted to
talk to her and he said, ‘Whatever
you do, under no circumstances
are you to have this surgery’.”
The day of the operation, the
hospital was desperately trying to
ring Helen. They left messages saying,
“Where are you? Where are you?”
“She wasn’t picking up the
telephone to the surgeons. Eventually
they rang Belinda and said: ‘Belinda,
help us. Helen needs to be here or she
is going to die.’”
Helen never had the surgery. Jensen
continued applying black salve to her
raw wound, and she continued to get
sicker and sicker. Deb implored Belinda
to film Jensen, and keep any black
salve. “I said: ‘I know you don’t want
to hear this, but we’re losing her.’”
By December, fluid was building up
in Helen’s stomach and needed to bedrained. “The surgeons freaked out.
They said: ‘Helen, we can’t operate
on you. We wouldn’t know where to
begin. We need to get plastics down
here to put you back together.’”
As Helen’s decline continued,
Jensen became harder and harder
to contact.
“She was getting more and
more desperate. She was leaving
messages, ‘Denn, don’t leave me.
I need you. Where are you?’ He’d
just filled this girl with belief,”
Deb says, crying again.In 2014, a herbalist named Ian Pile told a
woman with terminal colorectal cancer he
could “cleanse her blood” with powerful herbs
and led her to believe she would be cured
within weeks. He gave the patient two tablets,
one of which contained black salve, which
caused pain and vomiting. Mr Pile, whose
qualifications include a certificate of psychic
and spiritual healing from the Unity College
of Healing, resisted telling his patient what
was in the pills he gave her. When she asked
him to give her a receipt he said it would be
illegal to do so. The patient died in August 2015.
Queensland man Bevan Potter narrowly
avoided jail in 2015 after pleading guilty to
24 charges of importing or producing blacksalve. He made more than $100,000 profit
from sales of the substance.
In 2016, Queensland woman Deidre
Brophy was banned from making, supplying
or selling black salve, and from claiming
she could diagnose cancer with thermal
imaging. Cancer Australia says there is no
current scientific evidence to support
thermal imaging’s efficacy in the early
detection of breast cancer and the reduction
of mortality. When the investigation started in
2015, Deidre told The Cairns Post she had
cured herself of nine different types of
cancer over a 12-year period.
In 2006, an otherwise healthy 76-year-
old woman was diagnosed with asuperficial spreading melanoma. It was a
stage 1 tumour with a prognosis for a 20-year
survival rate of 97 per cent. She refused
surgery to remove the cancer and instead
purchased a tub of black salve online.
Five years later, a dark blue, hard nodule
had formed where the melanoma had
been and the surrounding skin was
discoloured. As the symptoms grew worse
she was referred for surgery, but again
failed to attend her appointment, instead
purchasing more black salve online.
The melanoma eventually spread into
her lymph nodes, lungs and liver. She
began conventional treatment but died
shortly afterwards.THE PLAGUE SPREADS
Black salve isn’t lethal on its
own, but when it is used instead of
evidence-based treatments, it can kill.
In February 2015, a Queensland
father named Ian Booth was told by
doctors he had a cancerous tumour in
his right eye. They could remove it,
they said, but he would lose the eye
and part of the bone surrounding his
eye socket. Ian said he didn’t want →George Zaphir
Zaphir (pictured right, in checked shirt,
with a reporter), told Ian Booth (above, right)
that he could cure the tumour in his eye with
black salve and vitamin C injections, which he
administered from Crystal Connections (above).COURTESY OF CHANNEL NINE/A CURRENT AFFAIR.