Who is Dr. Simoncini? He’s an Italian physician who claims to be an oncologist, whose claim to fame is the invention of the quackery–yes, quackery–that claims that cancer is in reality a fungus and that all cancer can be treated and cured with sodium bicarbonate. Here is a video in which Simoncini describes how he came to this conclusion as his hawksish book Cancer Is A Fungus, makes the argument that fungus is the One True Cause of Cancer and that the medical establishment is Too Deluded or Too Blind to realize it.

Worse, Simoncini proposes a treatment that, even if cancer were a fungus, is completely implausible and wouldn’t work. Indeed, we don’t treat fungal infections that way even when we are treating a clearly diagnosed fungal infection. You can get an idea of just how quacktastic this video is by listening to Dr. Simoncini opine in the first couple of minutes of the video that whenever he sees a cancerous tumor in the body, the lumps are “always white.” He emphasizes this amazing observation several times, so apparently important is it. Yes, that was the observation that supposedly led him to his idea (I refuse to dignify it with the term “hypothesis”) that tumors are in fact due to fungus. In response, the host gushes about how brilliant that is and how obvious it is. Just crush up a mushroom! Of course, it would be a major blow to Dr. Simoncini’s idea, would it not, if not all mushrooms are white. Truly, Dr. Simonici has demonstrated the the ultimate in taking a flawed observation and running with it straight off the cliff, as this description of his book shows:
"The book “Cancer is a fungus” describes how a fungous infection always forms the basis of every neoplastic formation, and this formation tries to spread within the whole organism without stopping."

So what is the answer, according to Dr. Simoncini? Baking soda. Yes, baking soda, a.k.a. sodium bicarbonate. Dr. Simoncini injects sodium bicarbonate into tumors and claims to be able to cure any cancer using these injections. One thought that immediately comes to mind whenever I see a claim like this is: If Dr. Simoncini can actually do what he claims he can do, where are his publications? Where is his Nobel Prize? To be able to cure cancer by something as simple as injections of sodium bicarbonate directly into tumors would be such an incredible breakthrough that there’s no way it could be kept quiet. Yet somehow only Dr. Simoncini knows this remedy, which is not only physiologically incredibly implausible and isn’t even used to treat real, biopsy- or culture-proven fungal infections but has no evidence to support it. There’s a whole culture of acid-base quackery that I’ve been meaning to write about in more detail, and Dr. Simoncini would be right up there among its chief “practitioners.”

Not surprisingly, Dr. Simoncini has been a focus of attention for the Italian health authorities. All I could find was a thread on the JREF forums. According to various commenters, not only was Dr. Simoncini expelled from the Italian Medical Order (Ordine dei Medici e Chirurghi) but he was condemned in the first degree by an Italian court for cheating and homicide.

(via David Gorski's blog on ScienceBasedMedicine.com via Bad Astronomy)