As a teenager, Melbourne geriatrician Dr Kate Miller fell for a Big Pharma conspiracy theory, wrongly believing a ‘miracle’ tea would save her father from terminal cancer. The tragic experience has left Dr Miller with valuable insight into how to approach people who fall for snake oil treatments. Here’s her story:

I was an angry and disinterested teenager, with parents who had split up when I was four. My Dad had moved overseas when I was 12, and then returned when I was 17 because he had metastatic melanoma.

At the age of 18, I went to see him in Tasmania where he was staying. He told me that he’d decided to stop chemotherapy, and that he’d been given a 10% chance of survival.

In the same breath, he told me that he firmly believed in mind over matter, and that he was putting himself in that 10% of people who survived.