You think that’s just a joke, but I have a great aunt who honestly believes Mexicans don’t get cancer.
Now that you mention it, I personally have never known a Mexican with cancer. Hmmm.
Cancer isn’t just one disease. There are over two hundred types of cancer, and they all behave differently. It seems unlikely that any one medication (natural or not) would be so effective against all of them. The fact that the FB page in question makes such a bold claim without qualifying it in any way is, to me, the main clue that it’s BS.
Holy shit, where do I get Mexican cartilage?
My former boss was a professor of clinical oncology and he had patients come to him with some of the weirdest woo… One guy turned himself orange drinking carrot juice. He always listened to them and counselled them, but people in desperate circumstances will do anything if it gives them hope. The office was always flooded with calls from patients and their carers any time an article appeared in the national press regarding some new miracle treatment.
What’s even worse is, there can be multiple mutated versions of the ‘same’ cancer in a single person:
In the Clinical Chemistry research lab I used to work in, we were working on what was in turmeric that made it appear to have anti-cancer possibilities. Curcumin was one such substance, but there were also salicylates. We used an HPLC to do some preliminary separations, which made the lab smell nice.
You know, now that you mention it, neither have I. Neither one of the two Mexicans I know has ever had cancer. For that matter, neither have the two people I know who live in Vermont. Maybe we should look at maple sugar as a cancer drug. Or politicians, since the 4 people I know who live in DC are all cancer-free. And the 9 I know in the Carolinas, maybe it’s the tobacco…
I could go on all day, folks! Aren’t you glad I didn’t?
Ain’t confirmation bias wonderful??? 
For topical application this would probably work, and yes it will probably stain your skin. For internal use you need turmeric extract that is high in curcumin and something to help absorption like biopeperin. The curcumin isn’t terribly absorbable by the body and there is only 3-5% curcumin in even the freshest turmeric powder. You would need to eat a fair amount of turmeric powder to get the same dosage of curcumin you would from a 95% curcumin extract of turmeric
groan.
These things on Facebook make my brain hurt. I’ve got lots of friends whose minds are so open their brains have fallen right out. Lovely, lovely people, but just huge fearful blind spots when it comes to “Western Medicine”.
(Although I notice it doesn’t stop them from calling or emailing me when they’re sick and asking my nursey advice.)
Basically, what they said. Promising, sure. Pretty damn cool, sure. Being investigated, you betcha.
And I wouldn’t entirely rule out whole turmeric or whole plant extract…there are some plants that do seem to work better kept whole rather than using the isolated “active compound”. Marijuana > Marinol, for example, and St. John’s Wort > hypericin. Kava kava looks to be safer as a whole root water extract than a high tech acetone extract pill. If the dose ends up being, say, 1 gram of ground turmeric 3 times a day, I can get people to take that in capsules. More than that, and it’s probably going to get into patient compliance issues, and isolated extract is the way to go if it’s effective.
And anyone who insists that “They” don’t take plants seriously because They can’t patent them needs a brief history in the development of statin drugs, possibly the hugest moneymaker for drug companies in the last decade.
For many reasons there is a lot of cancer in India, but indeed turmeric is given partial credit by some real scientists for the low colon cancer rate there.
I am sure the lower quantity of red meat consumption would contribute.
But they should have known that Straight Dope message board people said it wouldnt do it… Mustard jokes etc.
Look at it this way: If you have cancer and eat a bunch of curry, worst case scenario you’ll have some really tasty meals before you die.
Based on what evidence?
Common knowledge.
Well, I dunno about turmeric, but my husband had chemotherapy for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia early this year with therapeutic medications of Rituximab, which is a chimeric monoclonal antibody, and Bendamustine, a nitrogen mustard with similarities to the mustard gas of WWI notoriety. His response was very good; the original course of six treatments was shortened to four, and his blood levels are currently normal, as of his last checkup in September. 
A FWIW cite. (A 2011 review)
In short hard to untangle what is even associated with what between the various factors, let alone what may cause what. But indeed a broad correlation and biological plausibility.
Only when you put them on your hot dog.
So far as I can make out, nitrogen mustards are so called because they are similar in chemical structure to mustard gas, but substitute nitrogen for the sulfur that mustard gas contains. Mustard gas is so called because it smells a bit like mustard. That distant, second-hand relationship does not give us much reason to think that the drug your husband is taking bears much relation in, its chemistry or its bioactivity to anything in actual mustard.