I can only speak for breast cancer, but conventional treatments, in addition to being dehumanizing, are also highly toxic. The medical community (for understandable reasons) doesn't advertise the fact that cancer patients (a) are left with life-long disabilities and conditions from radiation and chemo, and/or (b) die from the treatments themselves (especially from chemo).
In addition, cancer patients who already suffer from heart problems or other disabilities often are not candidates for chemotherapy, which may be considered too risky for them. Rather than just "give up," such patients sometimes look into alternative treatments for their cancer.
However, even when cancer patients *are* in good enough health to undergo chemo and radiation, alternative treatments, such as acupuncture, are often sought in conjunction with conventional treatments so as to reduce some of the negative side effects of radiation and chemotherapy.
Medical science does not yet have a handle on treating breast cancer in a way that doesn't risk undermining the patient's overall health. We have yet to come up with treatments that actually *nourish* the body. We only know how to *poison* the whole body, in the hope that the cancer will be annihilated in the process--which, in the best of circumstances, happens.
Still, no responsible oncologist or breast surgeon will ever tell a breast cancer patient that she is "cured." The cancer can--and often does--return, no matter how "successful" the conventional treatments may have seemed at the time. Some breast cancers return sooner than others.
All in all, regardless of the treatment, it still remains pretty much of a guessing game, and *honest* cancer doctors will admit to that when pressed.
They are not.
'Alternative' in this context is simply another word for 'unproven'. If a treatment has been proven to be effective, it is no longer 'alternative medicine' it is just 'medicine'.
In general the only good done by alternative treatments is to the person selling them,. Sadly wherever there is cancer there is an unscrupulous charlatan eager to part desperate and vulnerable people from their cash in exchange for ineffective and sometimes dangerous 'treatments' and 'cures'.
Conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy are not perfect, far from it. But we know, because they have been tested and proven in double-blind clinical trials, that they save many lives and prolong many, many more.
I am fit and well five years after receiving surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy for aggressive advanced breast cancer; there was 'no evidence of disease' at my last routine check up.
It is true that breast cancer cannot ever be considered cured, and no doctor will claim it is. Also, no doctor would argue that present day conventional treatments for breast or any other cancer are perfect.
These are arguments for the research that continues into more effective treatments and possible ways to reverse cancer, not arguments for untested, unproven 'alternative' therapies.
Cancer treatments that are clinically established as effective receive FDA approval. Treatments under development by pharmaceutical companies are all eventually submitted for FDA approval.
Any treatment that is not FDA approved or under development by a legitimate pharmaceutical company is a fake, fraud, and preying on desperate people.
Alternative therapies? Quack Quack
As a journalist who writes about cancer, sadly so many well-hyped 'alternative' therapies turn out to be useless. They are alternative because unproven. Except they are often proven to make money for the person who discovers them.
I agree with the person who said that doctors don't help with side effects of proven drugs - as a patient I lost sight in one eye and broke out with bloody skin blisters all over my body. Doctors in UK shrugged their shoulders, so I went to France and discovered clinically proven products that helped enormously, and enabled me to stay on drugs.
I wrote about this on www.after-cancer.com - and also discuss other therapies and treatments. I mention books that debunk myths of alternative medicine.
If you believe in alternative medicine I am not here to rock that belief - just to say investigate very carefully.
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