What do prayer, coffee enemas and cannabis have in common?

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One of my best buddies is a woman called Karen whom I met online in a thyroid cancer forum nearly 5 years ago. I've been very fortunate that mine was cut out, zapped and has behaved ever since. She was not so lucky and has an incurable variant. Between us we've lived through a number of different forums and today, whilst we spoke on the phone, we addressed one of her pet issues - miracle cures and what rubbish they are. She's an atheist but please don't let that put you off reading if you're not as you may be surprised by her conclusions. She recently got exasperated with the behaviour of people on a Facebook page belonging to one of the biggest British cancer research charities. The cause of her annoyance was all the confident claims people make for 'cures' and the examples she picked were cannabis and prayer. I added coffee enemas because they were always touted by one of the American forums we used to hang out on. My urge was always to tell people where they could 'stick' that particular idea. Apparently on this group she's been upset by people are always getting into fights. There are people mouthing off about how 'big pharma' don't want to cure cancer and are withholding drugs because 'cancer is good for business'. The same people then trot out wheatgrass, cannabis and all manner of hokum treatments as alleged cures. All seem to miss the point that there is no 'cure of cancer' because cancer is many very different diseases with very different causes and treatments. Although my friend is not religious, we both agreed that cannabis, coffee up the bum and prayer were all were equally unlikely to actually cure you, but at least the prayer might make people 'feel' calmer and less stressed and their couldn't be too much harm in it but she really wishes that people would stop telling her that they'll 'pray for her'.