Finding Information about Cancer Therapies
" You can't
always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get
what you need." - Rolling Stones
One of the problems that the cancer patient who is
interested in finding alternative and complemenatry
therapies in the age of the internet is evaluating the
reliability of the information provided about that
particular therapy.
There is always plenty of anecdotal evidence (ie.
individual patient experience) that is cited by every
therapeutic modality. As one of my homeopathic colleagues
once commented, and with which I generally agree, “Any
therapeutic modality will have a minimal success rate of
about 20% in any group of patients because of factors that
include the placebo effect, the suitability of that
particular patient to that particular therapy, and other
unknown factors.”. This 20% of patients on whom that
particular therapeutic modality has worked will be telling
you the stories of success of that treatment. However, this
does not mean that it will work for the other 80% of
patients.
As a homeopath,
I understand that therapies (and remedies) must be
individualised and not every patient will respond in the
same way to the same treatment (this has finally been
recognized by orthodox medicine in the latest research into
chrono-biology and genetics). There are some CAM therapies
that have a higher rate of success than others across a
diverse population, (psychotherapy, group work, and
nutritional therapies are among some of these successful
therapies - see Ralph Moss list on
therapies). Each
patient will have to inform him or herself and decide on
the therapeutic modalities they would like to pursue. Be
open to abandoning any therapy if it doesn’t work for
you. Remember that you must approach your own healing
process with conviction and an open mind.
One of the ways of getting reliable information on orthodox
and CAM therapies is to use a professional research service
like that of Ralph Moss (see the section on Cancer Report
Services) or to
inform yourself by reading some of the excellent books
that now exist on the market (see the recommended reading
section). These
resources will also guide you to professionals who have
experience in integrated cancer care.
CAM Therapies
There are
numerous complementary and alternative modalities (CAM)
that you will hear about in your search. Ralph Moss has
created a list of those modalities which, in
his opinion, are well-documented, less documented, and
undocumented. This is not
an absolute indication of their success in treating
cancer since the conviction of the patient in the
efficacy of the treatment (even toxic chemotherapy) may
well play a key role. However, it does provide some
guidelines as to which therapies might be more
effectively pursued.
As you can see from Ralph Moss's list there are numerous
therapies available. In the Information section on this
website I have listed the main ones that I and some of my
colleagues have used successfully.
Since (CAM) are
currently in use by a lot of cancer patients, orthodox
medical practitioners and their websites also discuss their
use but usually with great (perhaps excessive) caution.
These include the National Institutes of Health in the
US and
the Canadian based BC Cancer
agency, for
example. Since this site proposes to allow the cancer
patient to make their own informed choice I have
included these references. At the same time I would
encourage any cancer patient to look at the track record
of orthodox modern medicine by reading
the article "Are We Losing the War on
Cancer?"