The reason alternative cancer treatments are not more widely known has little to do with their alleged therapeutic ineffectiveness and far more to do with political control and the therapy marketplace.
Many of the treatments are on the "Unproven methods of cancer management" list maintained by the American Cancer Society, which is effectively a 'blacklist'. Also, your doctor will not know about most of these treatments because:
Medical schools don't teach alternative treatments.
Medical journals rarely contain articles about alternative treatments. Medical journals are published for the allopathic establishment, and they are mostly financed by advertisements from pharmaceutical companies.
Doctors receive a lot of negative information about alternative treatments from the American Medical Association (AMA) and the pharmaceutical industry.
Internet 'Quackwatches' and so forth decry alternative therapies even when there is contradictory evidence to their effectiveness. See Quackwatch below.
The American Cancer Society (ACS), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and other Government cancer bodies will not investigate or promote alternative treatments.
Your doctor can only prescribe treatments that are Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved. If your doctor prescribes treatments that are not FDA approved, he or she can be sued or lose their license.
Their state medical boards may fine them heavily, suspend their license to practice or even revoke it.
The federal government can close them down and confiscate their property.
They may lose their right to see patients in hospitals.
Others doctors (their peers) openly ridicule and criticize them.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
What will my doctor say about these treatments
He or she may not be interested.
You may be asked for published articles about the treatments in peer-reviewed medical journals. If those articles exist, you will most likely be told that if the treatments in question were effective, the FDA would have approved them; if a treatment is not approved, it cannot be a good and beneficial therapy.
The trouble with this answer is that obtaining FDA approval takes many years and can cost several millions of dollars for clinical trials. The simple fact is that there is no money to spend to do these trials on treatments that are often un-patentable and therefore unprofitable.
As far as publishing is concerned, it is against the policy of all mainstream medical journals to publish any research coming from other than allopathic (mainstream) sources.
Many of the treatments described in Natural Cancer Treatments belong to categories that do not fall under the jurisdiction of FDA approval, and are not regulated by them. It is not common knowledge that many such therapeutic categories exist. For example, none of the medications used by homeopathic and naturopathic doctors are regulated by the FDA..
Chemotherapy drugs are regulated by the FDA and you may well ask the question,
'If chemotherapy is not only harmful, but has been statistically shown to be almost useless, as indicated in How Successful are Conventional Cancer Treatments? and by many others like Ralph W. Moss in Questioning Chemotherapy, then why does my doctor insist that I should take it?'
You should ask your doctor that question.
You may be asked for published articles about the treatments in peer-reviewed medical journals. If those articles exist, you will most likely be told that if the treatments in question were effective, the FDA would have approved them; if a treatment is not approved, it cannot be a good and beneficial therapy.
The trouble with this answer is that obtaining FDA approval takes many years and can cost several millions of dollars for clinical trials. The simple fact is that there is no money to spend to do these trials on treatments that are often un-patentable and therefore unprofitable.
As far as publishing is concerned, it is against the policy of all mainstream medical journals to publish any research coming from other than allopathic (mainstream) sources.
Many of the treatments described in Natural Cancer Treatments belong to categories that do not fall under the jurisdiction of FDA approval, and are not regulated by them. It is not common knowledge that many such therapeutic categories exist. For example, none of the medications used by homeopathic and naturopathic doctors are regulated by the FDA..
Chemotherapy drugs are regulated by the FDA and you may well ask the question,
'If chemotherapy is not only harmful, but has been statistically shown to be almost useless, as indicated in How Successful are Conventional Cancer Treatments? and by many others like Ralph W. Moss in Questioning Chemotherapy, then why does my doctor insist that I should take it?'
You should ask your doctor that question.
What is the difference between conventional treatments and natural or alternative cancer treatments
To a conventional physician, the tumor is the enemy.
Cancer is viewed as a local disease, namely the tumor. By cutting out the tumor, irradiating it, or flooding the body with toxic (and often carcinogenic) drugs, the conventional physician hopes to destroy the tumor and restore the patient to health.
But all too often, the cancer is still present and has metastasized, or re-occurs.
In contrast, the alternative physician regards cancer as one that involves the whole body.
The tumor is merely a symptom and the cancer treatment aims to correct the root causes of disease in the whole body.
Dr. Josef Issels, who successfully treated many 'incurable' cancer patients, stated:
'.. those who believe cancer is a local disease [that is, conventional physicians] think that the tumor comes first and only afterwards follows the generalised illness; those who think it is a generalised disease of the body [alternative physicians] believe that first comes the illness, and only afterwards the tumor' from this basically different way of looking at cancer, [the two types of physicians] take separate paths towards the solution to cancer.
Cancer is a general disease of the whole body from the outset.
The tumor is a symptom of that illness.
It is my contention, based on twenty-five years of clinical experience with over eight thousand cancer patients, that only by recognising the disease is, and always has been, one affecting the whole body from the outset, can it be more effectively arrested. By adopting that principle, the statistics of survival can be improved from the present grim position where eight out of every ten patients die having received all possible surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.'
Cancer is viewed as a local disease, namely the tumor. By cutting out the tumor, irradiating it, or flooding the body with toxic (and often carcinogenic) drugs, the conventional physician hopes to destroy the tumor and restore the patient to health.
But all too often, the cancer is still present and has metastasized, or re-occurs.
In contrast, the alternative physician regards cancer as one that involves the whole body.
The tumor is merely a symptom and the cancer treatment aims to correct the root causes of disease in the whole body.
Dr. Josef Issels, who successfully treated many 'incurable' cancer patients, stated:
'.. those who believe cancer is a local disease [that is, conventional physicians] think that the tumor comes first and only afterwards follows the generalised illness; those who think it is a generalised disease of the body [alternative physicians] believe that first comes the illness, and only afterwards the tumor' from this basically different way of looking at cancer, [the two types of physicians] take separate paths towards the solution to cancer.
Cancer is a general disease of the whole body from the outset.
The tumor is a symptom of that illness.
It is my contention, based on twenty-five years of clinical experience with over eight thousand cancer patients, that only by recognising the disease is, and always has been, one affecting the whole body from the outset, can it be more effectively arrested. By adopting that principle, the statistics of survival can be improved from the present grim position where eight out of every ten patients die having received all possible surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.'
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