Alternative and Natural Medicine Rant

After reading one more attack on the medical system from someone praising a good idea (eating nutritionally) and wishful thinking (that herbs cure cancer), I have to say something.

Admittedly, drug companies are out for profit. Despite this Ida-Rubicin, Vincristin, Cytarabine, Methatextrate, tacrolimus, prednisone, and other drugs saved my life. Zofran, Prilosec, and other medications made the treatment I required bearable. Those all came from pharmaceutical companies.

The reason that corrupt, money-hungry drug manufacturers save lives is because there is a scientific method and there are laws and agencies requiring the medical establishment to make every effort to follow the scientific method. It has its shortcomings, but because hospitals, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies have to report their results publicly, they are scrutinized, and we learn.

The result? A few years ago a guy with BPDCN-like leukemia, like me, was guaranteed dead in two years, probably less, and that only if he went through chemotherapy. Diagnosis to death for aggressive leukemias killed in an average of 6 weeks in the 1960's.

Because of a lot of research, we now know you can save BPDCN patients by giving them a bone marrow transplant. Only five or six years ago, such a transplant killed 30% of the recipients. This year, however, it is down to 5%.

FIVE PERCENT! People ought to be cheering them, not attacking them.

How did they do it? By expensive drugs? Partially. They always had the expensive drugs. They dropped the death rate from 30% to 5% by assigning only a few patients to one nurse practitioner. The NP diligently tracks the patient's health and gives advice, including nutritional, attitude, and lifestyle advice. The NP learns the patients, sees them often, and notices if a problem arises.

So let's compare that to alternative, natural medicine. I hope it's no surprise to you that I researched the dozen or so natural therapies that well-meaning friends recommended to me. What did I find?

Nothing. No records. No people that could be contacted. First names and user names with comments on web site. Absolutely nothing verifiable. I was insulted by one "camp" that promises turned around health in three weeks because I asked them if they had any references to prove their method worked.

Gerson Therapy has recently started releasing their records. Kudos to them. The results are not very impressive, but they do have results. Gerson Therapy, according to the Gerson Therapy web site, doesn't do anything for acute leukemia, so I quite researching them once I found out.

Everyone else? Nice claims. Wishful thinking. No evidence.

I once looked up the claims that a company called Lose Your Back Pain (I think) was making for an enzyme that you could take by mouth. They said it would relax your muscles, relieve pain, and help your back.

I looked up the enzyme on the PubMed database. It was there! Only one study, but the study concluded that the enzyme relieved pain and inflammation as well as ibuprofen.

The problem is, very few alternative medicine claims pan out like that. And when they do, the herbs or enzymes are sold almost as expensively as pharmaceuticals. A small dose of the enzymes costs $60/month.

People make excuses. "No one will study these herbs because they can't make money on them."

That is just not true. The last time I checked there were three ongoing studies on the efficacy of Pomegranate juice for preventing prostate cancer. It's hard to find a natural food claim that hasn't been studied.

I want to make it clear that I agree with the importance of good health. We could greatly reduce cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and many other diseases by eating more healthy and exercising.

However, it is ridiculous to claim that doctors don't know and don't promote healthy eating and exercise.

Miracle health, from drinking Acai juice, doing Pilates, or taking colloidal silver, is a fantasy. Colloidal silver, by the way, can permanently turn your skin gray if you drink too much of it. Oh, yeah, the medical establishment has studied colloidal silver, too.

It makes me angry that people with no evidence to back up their claims, and who have no intention of keeping track of the success of their claims, fire salvos at a medical establishment that has a lot of problems, but which has almost doubled our expected life span over the last century.

Natural Healing

I have had a lot of suggestions to try natural healing. Here's my thoughts.

First of all, I have already switched to all whole foods, nothing processed, mostly organic. Friends are helping my wife juice organic (and well-grown) carrots, apples, beets, parsley, kale, and, uh, something else. I drink 2-3 quarts of that a day.

Ah, can't hurt to try.

(In this case, I think that's accurate to say. If I were to do that long term, yes, it could hurt. Overdoses of vitamins can be dangerous, and so can the amount of sugar that you get when you drink that much juice, especially dentally.)

But what about getting on someone's specific program?

Here's what I want to know:

• How many people have you treated with leukemia?
• What kind of leukemia?
• What's the success rate?
• Can I contact the people that you've healed? (This would be typical for all other references, like job references, right?)

Those are simple questions, right?

There's not one natural healing place that provides that kind of information. Not for any disease.

In the meantime, I can go to pubmed.com and get the answers to those questions from "the medical establishment."

One of the places that was recommended to me publishes no results whatsoever, yet Steve Day, who wrote me back from their web site, was actually willing to tell me that I ought to go through their 19-day program. This is even though he is aware that if their program didn't work, I'd be dead or in desperate need of a transfusion.

Excuse me? On what possible basis could any thinking human being recommend that?

Let me say the same to you should you ever be in a position like mine, being pummeled with suggestions to pursue natural therapies and forego (Wow! Blogger's spell checker doesn't recognize that word, either!) traditional ones.

Get the facts!

If they're not giving you results, it's because they don't have any.

Let me repeat that. If they are not giving you results, it's because they don't have any!

Testimonies are not enough! Everyone has testimonies.

Gerson Therapies is one of the largest "natural" anti-cancer organizations in the country. They at least admit (on their FAQ page) that their therapy doesn't work on acute leukemia.

I doubt anyone can put together a better set of testimonies than Gerson therapies. Nonetheless, they have been repeatedly reviewed with some rather distressing results. For example, you will probably never find one of their testimonies that says:

Between 1980 and 1986, at least 13 patients treated with the Gerson therapy were admitted to San Diego-area hospitals with the Campylobacterfetus sepsus, which was believed to be caused by the liver injections. None of the patients was cancer-free, and one died of his malignancy within a week. Five were comatose due to low serum sodium (as low as 102 mEq/l), presumably as a result of the "no sodium" Gerson dietary regimen. As a result, Gerson personnel modified their techniques for handling raw liver products and biologicals. (ref)

Why You Can and Can't Trust the Medical Establishment

You can trust the medical establishment because you can see their results. You know exactly what you're getting into.

You can't trust the medical establishment because it's obvious that they do not focus nearly enough on prevention, and many of their recommendations do not include lifestyle changes, as though it is some sort of crime against humanity to ask Americans to do something other than simply pander to their own lusts.

Why I Don't Believe the Medical Establishment Is Covering Up Natural Remedies

The paper I referenced above points out that ever though Dr. Linus Pauling could not verify his very famous claims for the power of Vitamin C, the Mayo Clinic nonetheless conducted three clinical studies testing out Dr. Pauling's recommended regimen.

I know from the National Institutes of Health that numerous clinical trials have been conducted on pomegranate juice as a treatment for prostate cancer and other ailments (see list of references at end of the page I linked). In fact, they have an entire section of their web site dedicated to alternative medicine, which very fairly deals with studies conducted on natural healing methods.

Think About it

Let's say you found a plant in your backyard. You took it for acute leukemia, and it healed you. You then spread word around a bit, and you treated 14 more patients with acute leukemia, and let's say that 10 out of 14 were healed. The others went on to try conventional treatments and obtained whatever results those will get you.

So now, you call a local reporter and tell him.

What do you think he's going to say?

"Well, that's boring. I'm on my way over to Randy's Stop 'N Shop, where they're celebrating their 20th anniversary in business."

No, he's going to come talk to you and see if what you're saying is true.

Even someone at a large newspaper would come talk to you if there were anything at all believable about what you were saying.

And no matter how much the medical establishment hated it, if you actually publicized your results, you'd be rich and famous and so would the journalist who made you known! The Mayo Clinic (or someone) would have no choice but to conduct studies on your plant.

Sorry, but you just can't cover up a good cure.

(Speaking of which, I have an amazing one. Nature Sunshine's Black Ointment cures brown recluse bites. I'm not kidding. I've tried it 4 times on myself, once on my infant daughter, and on at least a couple other people. Anyone got any idea where to publicize that? After all, it's hard to find people in the first three days after they've been bit by one. I'm not a hospital, and they don't seem to be around our land any more. I got all my bites in a two-year period more than five years ago.)