From: Michelle Webster <michelle@...>
Date: Fri Apr 28, 2000 9:42am
Subject: Politics of cancer

John,

I read your below remarks with interest.

You say that we can't discuss the politics of cancer in a forum like this.
But that's exactly what happens when you look into how to best care for
your cancer. There is nothing about the treatment of cancer that can
exclude politics in any way.

Whether you choose alt or conventional medicine, you choose to associate
with the purveyors of systems.

To further imply that alt medicine is looking for your $$ is ludicrous. I
have yet to witness any of my collegues in alt. medicine driving expensive
cars, owning luxury boats, experiencing luxury vacations, or sending their
kids to private schools. Alt medicine still doesn't have access to the
elitist schools or medical institutions, and drums out it's recognized and
credentialed professionals who jump the sinking ship of the conventional
establishment. (note the drumming out of Dr. Len Horowitz, DDS,
distinguished Tufts University and Harvard graduate).

You also mentioned that is pointless to say the chemo and radiation don't
work. When in fact, they are repeatedly used as pallitive (sp?)
treatments. This means that the treatments are KNOWN to cause other
cancers, but there is no other way to treat the cancer under the current
medical billing and insurance system, and that the cancer will probably
reoccur, if not in the same place, but somewhere else in the body.

Does this matter?

Only if you are the person who is not being told the nature of your cancer,
LIKE MY MOTHER WAS. She was never told what the outcome of her last two
years of chemo and radiation where about, until family member were told
that she was STAGE FOUR, and that this was all that could be done.

It DOES MATTER.

Because the QUALITY of LIFE that my mother enjoyed in these last two years
was diminished by these "pallitive" therapies, as they were called. She
never knew what all that meant, because her trusted doctors didn't know any
better, so how could she?

Ignorance in the medical profession abounds.

It simply does matter, John.

You could argue that ignorance is everywhere. And I would agree. However,
we are talking about LICENSED CONDONED and DELIBERATE IGNORANCE, that we
are expected to ACCEPT without QUESTION.

I would like to make a small comment about the righteousness and intent of
my arguements, and the "reason" that I bother to post at all.

It's not my desire to make anyone a convert to alt. medicine, because I
know, from working as a lobbyist for alt. medicine, that the horror stories
abound on both sides of the fence.

And perhaps, I admit, I'm expecting too much for people to begin thinking
on their own, and to not accept carte blanche their diagnosis or schedules
of treatment without second or third opinions.

My desire, regarding my own personal bias AGAINST modern medicine stems
from the shoddy, sloppy, inconsistent, ignorant treatment that my mother
received over the last 7 years. She is not alone. In fact, her treatment
was likely the norm. And this incenses me.

Why?

Because I am my mother's daughter. And one day, I may have to face the
music that I inherited from my mother's genes.

To know that there was a "better" way, and that my mother didn't "choose
it", is more than painful for me. She's DEAD NOW.

There's my motivation.

Let's stop the madness. I'm not making money watching these discussion
lists. My children don't get an involved mother when I spend time on the
phone, email, reading, researching, consulting, or educating in alt. health
care.

But perhaps, they won't lose their mother in the prime of her life, as I
did. Perhaps, my grandchildren will invite me to their wedding one day, if
I play my cards right.

Perhaps, because of the STUPIDITY of oncologists everywhere who FAIL TO
ALERT their patients of the side effects of medications, NO ONE WILL EVER
DIE OF HAVING THEIR COLON EXPLODE, due to "decreased bowel motility",
(Listed as a side effect of chemo drugs), like my mother nearly did.

When her bowel exploded, she was full-blown, stage IV, with cancer and
UNMONITORED. She was not told that if your bowel doesn't "move" in a week,
it could EXPLODE and kill you, until it happened. The surgery that saved
her life, killed her within 6 months. Everyone knows that having surgery
with an active cancer causes it to grow faster, right? Doesn't everyone
know that?

No, we are not told that.

Nobody knew, except me, the harbinger of discontent against the
establishment, who had been calling daily to ask my mother if she was
having good bowel function. I had been "harping" about the need to be sure
to be eliminating well.

If her DOCTOR had shown so much interest, perhaps his CHEMO AND RADIATION
would have had a chance to save her life. AND SHE WOULD HAVE LISTENED TO
HIM. But I was ONLY her daughter, WHAT COULD I KNOW???

My petitions to her to not eat soy (more mucous forming than dairy) and to
lay off the cheese (KNOWN TO CONGEST THE COLON) went unheaded, because I
lacked my medical degree, I suppose.

Was my mother's oncologist too busy with a hectic patient load to manage
this type of counseling, or was he just IGNORANT of it's impact on my
mother's health.

In ICU, in the MONTH following my mother's full colostomy (a sure death
sentence for a cancer patient), she was placed on a soy based nutrition
that caused her to GAG on the feeding tube that she had installed for the
next two weeks. The mucous that her system created caused her to nearly
gag and choke, resulting her suffering trying to pull out the tubes, which
she succeeded in once, because the family members where asked to leave the
unit. Afterwards, we were allowed to keep vigil, to insure this didn't
happen again, due to lack of adequate nursing care on the ward and heavy
patient load in ICU.

I wonder what the cause of death would have read on the chart, had my
mother succeeded in pulling out all her feeding tubes and other "life
saving" apparatus?

You can be sure, it wouldn't be, "patient was choking on mucous resulting
from a soy based nutrition in her feeding tube".

Fortunately, (or would it have been more humane to die of choking during
the "recovery" period), I consulted with the "dietician", about changing
the nutrition, to a formula that was NOT SOY based, the next morning. I
was DRILLED about my concerns, what my credentials were, and WHO WAS I????
Rather than the EFFICACY of the treatment??????????

Nevertheless, because of my persistence, the nutrition was changed later in
the day, with the "dietician" remarking that she was going to "change it
anyway" regardless of my influence. The nurses on the ward indicated that
they RARELY saw this other nutrition that was given to my mother as a
substitute for the soy nutrition.

Did this ONE change in my mother's care, save her life? Or was it the
vigilence of the family members to hold 24 hour watch over here, in the
absence of continual care in ICU?

Did it matter in the long run? NOPE. It didn't matter one iota, John. I
certainly don't mean to attack you in anyway. How could you know that the
politics of cancer and modern medical care DO MATTER??

Is this all I know about treatments of cancers?? Nope, I'm seeing it and
hearing about it all the time, with sickening regularity, and it makes me
want to SCREAM.

We are dying, dear friends, from ignorance, not lack of care.

We are being killed by pallitive treatments.

We are the fodder of the "establishment".

Cancer wards are the killing fields of modern medicine. Side effects of
treatments are not being fully disclosed, or even aided with simple dietary
changes.

Even my urologist prescribed an overdose of SELENIUM, while I was standing
in his office waiting to write my check, before the PATIENT CALLED TO
QUESTION THE PRESCRIPTION ITEM. Fortunately the patient researched and
caught the 1000X overdose in selenium which could have resulted in a
condition related to osteoporosis.

A nutritionist would have caught that error.

A properly trained alt. health practioner, like myself, and yes I am
properly trained, would have been able to assist the INAPPROPRIATELY
PRESCRIBING LICENSED PHYSICIAN.

And we call this science and quality care?

We need a new medical system, one that doesn't concern itself with
optimizing PROFITS or generating new sources of REVENUE.

If all I do is sit on discussion lists like this the rest of my life, and
write down the FACTS, and expose the IGNORANCE of the politics of cancer,
then I pray that my posts are forwarded extensively, and that lives are saved.

Because I do believe that choking on mucous can be life threatening in an
unattended ICU unit, and that not having a bowel movement for a week can be
life threatening.

Apparently a medical establishment that is licensed and accreditated may
ignore it, but I can't shut up about it.

My plan is to continue to write and speak out against the dangers of
unscientific medical treatments, lack of patient disclosure, and whatever
else I find unethical in health care treatment.

I plan to attend my grandkids weddings and give them ostentatious gifts
that rip out their parents hearts in jealousy!

After you've seen how to die from cancer, it either makes you want to kill
yourself, or make the world a better place.

Just wondering, John, if I've convinced you of the "righteousness" of my
argument? It took me about an hour and a half to get it all typed in,
while my kids played outside waiting for me to get lunch ready. Nobody
paid me a dime to write it, so I'm free and clear of the influence of
greed. Trust me, John, if it was money I was after, I'd take my cum laude
BS, to a school like Columbia and trade it in for a PhD, and take over the
alt. health movement by storm. I'd use my USMC training to wean out
non-performers in the medical and non-medical professionals, and discharge
licensed professionals from service who were unable to produce quantifiable
results. I'd run the medical profession like business, by hiring somebody
like Bill Gates to "microsoft" medicine.

I wonder how many doctors could repaint their shingles if their patients
left because their "kill" ratios where made public, forcing them to renew
their commercial taxicab licenses?

Because we all just want people to get better, don't we?

Be blessed and always be well,
in spite of the politics of cancer, it can be done,
Michelle


Message: 3
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 19:27:47 +1000
From: "John A Allan" jallan@d...
Subject: alternate vs western medicine

I have watched with interest, the arguments to & fro, each one trying
to convince the other (and no doubt the crowd beyond) of the righteousness
of their particular certitude, with no hope of success in the desired
conversion and I wonder, why? (Perhaps I'm doing the same thing here)
Surely the purpose of a group such as this is to make available a
discussion that is constructive not destructive. Sure, there is a need for
those among us who are seeking assistance, to know of those treatments
which are disastrous, dangerous and plain stupid and sure, there is a need
to know which practitioners out there are seeking control of the wallets
and not the healing, but to simply send mail back and forth deriding the
generalities of Alternate and Western medicine, is pointless?
I would think that everyone of us has heard stories of disasters on
both sides and to merely count the bodies and point a deriding finger and
say 'you've got a larger body count than us' is equally pointless and may I
say, not conducive to assisting those among us who need help the most.
It is crazy to say that chemo therapy and radiation simply dont work.
There's plenty of evidence to indicate that in some cancers, it does work,
child hood leukemia is one case in point where good success has been amply
demonstrated, but it is equally stupid to say that all alternate medicine
doesn't work either, my own wife who has been cured of cholongiacarcinoma
is one example of healing outside of the Western model. But I am the first
to acknowledge that Donna's healing happened with the support of Western
medicine through the use of stents, cholongia grams etc. And maybe this is
the point isn't it? To use the best of both worlds, not simply to shut one
or the other out because we dont like the politics of the other camp.
Obviously there are many, many cases where taking the "alternate" approach
has reaped huge benefit. I know the argument is to say that there is no
real evidence of Alternate healing, because of the lack of figures and
studies kept, however the reasons for this must surely come back to the
politics of health involving both alternate and the western medical model.
Alternate medicine will almost never have the investment the pharmaceutical
companies can afford, but that doesn't make those avenues any the worse to
follow.
Perhaps the question of politics has little place in a forum such as
this. No one shall ever convince the other side of the righteousness of
his or her argument to the complete satisfaction of both side, so what is
the point of attempting it here? Surely we would be better served giving
those among us who need it, the support they so rightly deserve? Most
people just want to get better.
Kind regards
John Allan