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2015

A friend of mine recently posted an article about how to cure cancer on social media.  Below is my response, which I’m posting here for posterity, and to serve as a counterpoint to the claims often repeated by well-meaning people who are skeptical of cancer treatments.  Go ahead and read the article first, then come back to this.

1. There will never be a cure for cancer, because cancer isn’t a disease. Cancer is a group of diseases, just like the flu or hepetitus or herpes. Cancer’s huge, incorporating hundreds (maybe even 1000s) of individual diseases.

Thus, cancer cures, treatments, and prevention are going to be different for different kinds. Some cancers can be vaccinated against (like HPV). Some can be caused by environmental factors (like smoking or asbestos). Some respond well to chemo and radiation, some don’t. FWIW, the ideal treatment for cancers is almost always excision, if possible. When it isn’t, then radiation, chemo, immunotherapy, angiogenesis inhibition, to name a few. Palliative care is incredibly important too.

2. Naturopathy, alternative medicine and Western Medicine do not exist... ...but good medicine and bad medicine do. If a doctor knowingly refuses to prescribe the best treatment, they are a bad doctor, regardless of whether they’re a lion-killing tea-partier or a tree-hugging raw vegan.

My grandpa, for example, was raised as a Christian Scientist, a faith healing religion. Even though he was failing school, they wouldn’t allow him to get glasses for many years because they thought they could medically heal him with prayer. That’s bad medicine--and there’s no data to support that vision can be improved with prayer.

Alternatively, I use 5mg of melatonin orally for occasional insomnia. It’s actually uncertain whether my drowsiness after taking the pill is brought on pharmacologically by the drug, or whether it’s just a strong placebo effect. Regardless, it works for me (and has no bad side-effects), preventing me from seeking prescription for a more habit-forming, dangerous and expensive option.

3. If it’s proven to work, then it’s medicine. If it doesn’t, it isn’t.

Now, some pointed critiques

4. “Cancer thrives on sugar” That’s true...but so does everything else other part of your body. Glucose metabolism is source of power for every single cell in your body, cancerous or otherwise.

Perhaps the author meant “dietary sugar,” but even then, they follow up with a strange logic “...the first thing Kerry did was pursue an aggressive diet heavy in fruits and vegetables with no refined sugar.”

That being said, overconsumption of sugar can increase the chances of developing certain kinds of cancer (though I don’t believe that bladder cancer is one of them).

5. “Cancer cannot survive in a temperature exceeding 105 degrees Fahrenheit” This is a huge overgeneralization. However, hyperthermia is a well accepted form of mainstream cancer treatment, as evidenced by the American Cancer Society’s article lauding its merits. There’s nothing “alternative” about this procedure, however, it generally needs to be combined with radiation or chemo to be effective.

6. “Blood is drawn out of the body, filled with oxygen and then re-inserted” Cancer cells are, indeed, cells, they too require oxygen and thrive on it. Sometimes this treatment is done with ozone (O3) instead of the oxygen we breath (O2). I’m not sure what was happening in this situation though, since little detail is available on the

7. “Detoxify” Fasting and other temporary dietary shifts can be a great spiritual experience, but detoxifying doesn’t exist...at least no in the colloquial sense of the word. Detoxing has been extensively debunked my many authors more eloquent than me: Here’s a nice read: http://www.straightdope.com/.../does-fasting-rid-the-body...

8. “Dioxychlor, GC-MAF, Vitamin B-17, Selenium, DMSO, and the ground up thymus of an organically fed cow” I fail to see how this is more natural than any other form of treatment.

9. I’m almost done, I swear. I think that a lot of these misguided claims come from fundamental misunderstandings about cancer. One that underlies this article (though isn’t explicitly stated) is the misrepresentation of cancer as something foreign. Cancer is us. But it’s a part of us that’s acting badly. However, lots of bad medicine focuses on treating cancer as if its an “other”, that it doesn’t like the things we do. In truth cancer loves all the same things as our other cells: sugar, oxygen, warmth, and long walks on the beach--at the end of the day, this is the reason cancer is so hard to treat.

I’ve met a lot of naturopaths that I see as inspiring. It comes from their bedside manner. It’s often a more personalized and compassionate approach--medicine that patients feel good about taking. And there’s strong evidence to show that patients who feel validated by their doctors have better outcomes. That’s great medicine and IMHO, should be implemented across the medical field.

10. Lastly, and most importantly... I am glad that this person’s cancer is gone.

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