When I was a student of nutritional therapy, about 15 years ago, I attended a lecture given by Charlotte Gerson, the daughter of Max Gerson, founder of the Gerson therapy. She was an old lady then, and she must be well into her 90's now. What I remember of the lecture is that she herself was a rather alarming shade of orange, no doubt as a result of the large amounts of carrot juice that she drinks Indeed, she did so throughout the lecture, the juice being prepared freshly for her by an assistant at the side of the stage. (Is her longevity due to the carrot juice - who knows?) She was extremely rigid about how the therapy should be followed. (In case you don't know, it consists of 13 organic juices per day, coffee enemas, a low-sodium vegetarian diet and lots of supplements). Although her insistence that the programme should be followed exactly gave me a pang of unease at the time as it seemed so onerous, even so I remember saying to my fellow students afterwards 'if I get cancer, I'll certainly do the Gerson therapy'. Oh, what innocence and credulity I had back then!
When I did 'get' cancer (which had probably been growing slowly for years, so the correct term is 'diagnosed with', not 'get'), I didn't even consider the Gerson approach. Why not? Because by then I had received some scientific training and knew how to subject pseudo-medical claims to critical analysis. I also knew of two people who had rejected conventional treatment in favour of the Gerson therapy, and died of their cancer.
So I thought it might be helpful to share with others the checklist that I use when evaluating the treatments I read about in the press, on the internet, in books or in the newsletters I receive from complementary and alternative (CAM) sources.
Before I start, it is sensible to point out that there is a very good summary in 'alternative therapies and cancer' under the 'cancer information' tab on this website. I'm not trying to step on Mac toes at all, but I haven't seen anywhere (and please, admin, correct me if I'm wrong) any list to help us decide whether a treatment is worth investigating. I'm not talking here about complementary therapies such as aromatherapy, acupuncture, reflexology, reiki etc. Their practitioners never make claims about curing cancer, but they can help patients feel better while they're going through treatment. I myself regularly practice Tai Chi and Qi Gong, meditate, visit an acupuncturist, and inject myself with mistletoe extract (in the full knowledge of my GP and oncologist). As I'm a nutritional therapist, a healthy diet and vegetable jiuices (1 or 2 per day, not 13!) go without saying.
So here is my checklist:
1. First of all, does the therapy you are considering work? This sounds like a simple question, but it isn't. Alternative cancer treatment providers use testimonials from individual patients rather than scientific studies. If you question them about this, they will say that they can't get the funding for studies, or that randomised controlled trials (RTCs) are not a suitable way to test their particular therapy, because it's 'natural' and not a pharmaceutical drug. But if you think about it, would you really want to subject yourself to something that hasn't been rigorously tested? I wouldn't.
But anyway, testimonials are not the sort of evidence that's recognised by the scientific community. Testimonials from individual patients who claim that the therapy cured them may not have had cancer at all, they may be in remission but think they are cured, they may have had conventional treatment at the same time, or they may already be dead. The providers of these therapies rarely perform follow-up studies, so they don't know whether their treatment works. For example, investigators who visited the Gerson Institute in California in 1983 were able to track only 18 patients over a 5-year period. After 5 years, only one was still alive (but not cancer-free), while the rest had died of their cancer. Not a great track record. To be fair, there was a more promising case study in 2007 of six people with cancer who seemed to exhibit anti-cancer effects. However, some were also having conventional treatment and some were using other alternative therapies at the same time. And six cases isn't much to go on. Even Max Gerson's original 50 case studies, when analysed by the National Cancer Institute in the USA, were very open to question. Apparently most of them turned out not to be proven cancer cases at all, but sufferers from some other illness.
2. Does the therapy claim to cure a wide variety of diseases, eg all cancers? Beware any CAM treatment that claims to do this. The complexity of human physiology and the many different kinds of cancer mean that few treatments can work for them all. In reality, most proven methods of treatment apply to a relatively small number of cancers, or perhaps to only one form of a particular cancer.
3. Does the therapy have the potential to harm? I'll use the Gerson therapy again as an example, because it's the one I know most about. It includes the frequent use of coffee enemas (supposed to detoxify, see point 4) a sodium-free diet and potassium supplements. Together, these can lead to potentially dangerous electrolyte imbalances. The injections of raw liver juice, originally part of the therapy but since discontinued, even led to deaths in the past.
4. Do they talk a lot about toxins, and claim that you need to detoxify? I really don't like this talk - it can make you feel that the cancer is your fault because you're so 'toxic'. In my opinion this is all nonsense and I find it offensive. Note that the so-called 'toxins' are never actually identified by name, but there always seem to be plenty of expensive ways of getting rid of them. Our livers and kidneys detoxify substances all day long - that's what they're designed to do. We do not need to subject ourselves to detoxification regimes, however they are administered.
5. Next, do the proponents of the therapy talk about a conspiracy to suppress 'the truth'? Very often they accuse the medical profession, drug companies, government agencies and so on of conspiring against 'natural' cancer cures, But if you think about it, why would the authorities do this? Surely if there was a cheap and 'natural' cure for cancer, everyone would be jumping on the bandwagon, not trying to suppress it? After all, even doctors and their families get cancer. This one just doesn't make sense.
6. Lastly, is the therapy going to cost you a lot of money? If so, who is getting rich from it? And can you afford it? Some of these therapies, eg laetrile, can only be administered in foreign countries such as Mexico. If a clinic is situated in Mexico, it's because they can't practise in the United States for legal reasons. Typically they ask for your money up front, and you are expected to stay at the clinic for some weeks. Other therapies that can be conducted at home require the purchase of extremely expensive supplements and special foods, which can put an enormous strain on the household budget, particularly if you are not working because of your illness.
I recently applied this checklist to a therapy which looked promising. I don't wish to name or describe it here, except to say that it was a non-invasive therapy which appeared to have some basis in logic and it appealed to me (as complementary to my chemo, not as an alternative). Their website had several testimonials from happy, apparently cancer-free patients, most of them residents of another European country where according to the website this therapy is widely used. I spoke to its representative in this country and asked to see some clinical trials. There were none available, although she told me that one was about to be conducted (by the company themselves. Impartial? I think not). The therapy had to be administered in London (at a very expensive address), which would have meant weekly visits from here in mid-Wales for an indefinite period, when I'm already being treated at The Christie in Manchester, which is quite far enough away, and it costs £250 per hour! So I said no - the therapy had failed my test.
I hope this helps.
Sources: www.quackwatch.org (rabidly anti-CAM), www.canceractive.com (very pro-CAM - see their guide to alternative cancer treatments, too numerous to mention here, and try applying the 6-point checklist to them), www.cancerlynx.com (not sure where they stand).
BTW, Laura (admin) - your fix didn't work, so I typed this all out again. Now going to bathe my sore fingers in warm water!
