Monday, November 23, 2015

If you are sick, would you trust a sick health care system

Let me answer the question. Let us say, I am diagnosed with cancer – would I trust our health care? I am unsure. The problem is that the health care system is sick itself. In addition to the pitfalls of the U.S. healthcare system, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems to be dispensing placebo and toxins, rather than effective anti-cancer drugs. The shocking realization is that many FDA-approved cancer drugs do not work. A recent publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association is the source of this sobering realization. Here is what the authors wrote:
 

Our results suggest that the FDA may be approving many costly, toxic drugs that do not improve overall survival. Enforcement of postmarketing studies is therefore of critical importance.
 

Actionable
Dear FDA, researchers and profiting pharmaceutical companies, please stop pumping pseudoscience into the oncology clinics. By doing so, you are giving ammunition to the alternative cancer treatment proponents. No wonder that the recent Ty Bollinger’s documentary on cancer was watched by more than 800,000 people within the first month of its release on Internet. Laced with some anti-establishment emotions, this documentary contains a few true messages and warnings about our conventional cancer care. The ludicrously expensive new anti-cancer drugs that kill the patients and bankrupt their families, the blatant ignorance of our oncologists about diet and its effects on cancer initiation and progression, the stubborn refusal to research and incorporate century-old remedies, are all ammunition in the hands of the alternative cancer care network. The documentary is an absurd mixture of ignorance and truth that leads us to the denial of any conventional cancer therapy. The vehement negation of the values in the two systems – the conventional cancer treatment and its alternative counterpart  - is the wrong way to go. We should be able to extract the best of both approaches and integrate them. Above all, in our fascination with curing cancer, instead of preventing the birth of the enemy (i.e., the initiation of cancer), we are fighting the enemy at its optimal power (i.e., when the cancer is already established and has advanced). Although prevention is the best path, It seems that no one (mainstream or alternative cancer care proponents) is interested in following this direction.
 

And to answer my initial question: if I cannot prevent my cancer, if I am a cancer patient one day, I will seek a highly integrated cancer care system that includes the best of the mainstream and alternative medicine.

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