New Cancer Therapies The Patient's Dilemma

Introduction Let me be absolutely clear. This book is about cancer, cancer patients, and the issues they face after diagnosis. It is not a tirade against establishment medicine or a paean of praise for all alternative cancer therapies. However, it does put the latter into the realm of realistic options and pleads for a fair hearing. In the present climate, that is asking a lot.In the current state of cancer treatment, patients rarely have the dubious luxury of concentrating solely on their disease. Cancer not only comes cloaked in horrific images of madly multiplying cells and suppurating tumors; it also trails a bewildering array of issues. There are medical turf wars, conspiracy theories, conflicting research, and shifting statistics; announcements and denouncements of cures; risk factors that change like chameleons; debates on patients' rights and responsibilities; arguments about the accuracy, efficacy, and ethics of clinical trials; disagreement among practitioners and among treatment centers; and second, third, and fourth opinions on everything. For many patients, the most contentious debate -- the widest schism of all-is that between conventional and alternative approaches to cancer treatment. For those caught in cancer's maw, the disputation around these issues is not distant thunder. It is a loud roaring amplified by their impending mortality.Discussions of cancer therapies usually support one of the two approaches: conventional (see also "industrialized" and "establishment") versus non-conventional (see also "unconventional," "alternatives" and "unproven"). Rarely do you see them joined by "and." A communication fault line bites right through the middle, ensuring that the chasm between the two remains deep. Throughout the history of medicine it has been ever thus.During the four years of researching and writing this book I have been struck again and again by just how wide that chasm is. For many, the very existence of the field of alternative cancer therapies is an affront. However, its existence also underlines one inescapable fact: conventional treatments are not winning the war against cancer.This book had its genesis in a magazine article I wrote in October 1995. Entitled "Cancer: New Frontiers," it discussed alternative therapies and offered a gentle plea for cessation of hostilities between the two camps. There were lots of letters in response, both positive and negative. But one in particular I remember, from a doctor who was incensed that I had had the temerity to write about the subject at all.A discussion of cancer treatments seems to produce knee-jerk responses to criticism of either approach. People form up into opposing camps, and the middle ground disappears under a carpet of misinformation and emotion. The first casualty is facts; the second is reasonable discussion; but the most serious casualties of all are people with cancer who must slog through the mud flung by both sides, motivated not by the challenge of a lively debate but by the goal of achieving their own survival.Why is the subject so controversial? At a dinner party of old and good friends, the subject of alternative therapies came up. In less than a minute we were at it, hammer and tongs."Listen to what I am saying, not what you think you hear me saying," I kept repeating ever more quietly, finally in an astonished whisper. My plea that other approaches to cancer treatment be given a fair hearing was interpreted as total endorsement of anything alternative. A comment on the failure of chemotherapy in treating a specific cancer was translated into a blanket condemnation of all conventional treatments. And such criticism seemed to be considered as outrageous as an attack on motherhood. Chemotherapy is not motherhood. Radiation is not motherhood. What was the problem here? Why wWilliams, Penny is the author of 'New Cancer Therapies The Patient's Dilemma', published 2000 under ISBN 9781552094853 and ISBN 1552094855.