The Cure for Cancer has Problems
A friend of mine recently posted an article about how to cure cancer on social media. Below is my response, which Iâm 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 isnât a disease.
Cancer is a group of diseases, just like the flu or hepetitus or herpes. Cancerâs 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 donât. FWIW, the ideal treatment for cancers is almost always excision, if possible. When it isnât, 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 theyâre 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 wouldnât allow him to get glasses for many years because they thought they could medically heal him with prayer. Thatâs bad medicine--and thereâs no data to support that vision can be improved with prayer.
Alternatively, I use 5mg of melatonin orally for occasional insomnia. Itâs actually uncertain whether my drowsiness after taking the pill is brought on pharmacologically by the drug, or whether itâs 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 itâs proven to work, then itâs medicine.
If it doesnât, it isnât.
Now, some pointed critiques
4. âCancer thrives on sugarâ
Thatâs 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 âdietary sugar,â but even then, they follow up with a strange logic â...the first thing Kerry did was pursue an aggressive diet heavy in fruits and vegetables with no refined sugar.â
That being said, overconsumption of sugar can increase the chances of developing certain kinds of cancer (though I donât believe that bladder cancer is one of them).
5. âCancer cannot survive in a temperature exceeding 105 degrees Fahrenheitâ
This is a huge overgeneralization. However, hyperthermia is a well accepted form of mainstream cancer treatment, as evidenced by the American Cancer Societyâs article lauding its merits. Thereâs nothing âalternativeâ about this procedure, however, it generally needs to be combined with radiation or chemo to be effective.
6. âBlood is drawn out of the body, filled with oxygen and then re-insertedâ
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). Iâm not sure what was happening in this situation though, since little detail is available on the
7. âDetoxifyâ
Fasting and other temporary dietary shifts can be a great spiritual experience, but detoxifying doesnât exist...at least no in the colloquial sense of the word. Detoxing has been extensively debunked my many authors more eloquent than me: Hereâs a nice read: http://www.straightdope.com/.../does-fasting-rid-the-body...
8. âDioxychlor, GC-MAF, Vitamin B-17, Selenium, DMSO, and the ground up thymus of an organically fed cowâ
I fail to see how this is more natural than any other form of treatment.
9. Iâm 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 isnât explicitly stated) is the misrepresentation of cancer as something foreign. Cancer is us. But itâs a part of us thatâs acting badly. However, lots of bad medicine focuses on treating cancer as if its an âotherâ, that it doesnât 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.
Iâve met a lot of naturopaths that I see as inspiring. It comes from their bedside manner. Itâs often a more personalized and compassionate approach--medicine that patients feel good about taking. And thereâs strong evidence to show that patients who feel validated by their doctors have better outcomes. Thatâs great medicine and IMHO, should be implemented across the medical field.
10. Lastly, and most importantly...
I am glad that this personâs cancer is gone.
Around the same time that I published this response, I also published an episode of Here Be Monsters about a black metal cancer researcher and his colony of mice. Hope you like it.
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