The Aging Healthfully Virtual Library - The Works of Majid Ali, M.D. __________________________________________________________________
Further reading http://www.majidali.com/sayingno.htm
Saying No To Chemotherapy From The Book What Do Lions Know About Stress
Treatment decisions facing patients with cancer were once simple and easy to make.
Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy were considered scientifically proven, effective therapies. The physician's word was gospel, and there was no room for doubt. Decisions about cancer therapies were easy precisely because there was no choice—and no stress.
However, there was no choice in cancer treatment because patients were uninformed. In the past, patients often went for a second opinion about chemotherapy. That second opinion was, of course, never different from the first one. This confirmation was reassuring to the patient and made his decision easier to accept. The consulting doctor who rendered the second opinion always agreed with the referring physician. (As conventional wisdom goes, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. Giving a different second opinion would jeopardize chances of receiving future consults.)
Consensus medicine is comfortable for physicians, and it also brings comfort to the patient.
A second opinion in mainstream medicine is one opinion for which the patient pays twice.
The Cortical Monkey and Healing Now all that is changing rapidly. Many cancer patients are well-informed. They read about alternative therapies that are being used in foreign countries and in the United States. They are aware that there is a mushrooming underground of unapproved therapies. Physicians vigorously caution their patients against the dangers of unapproved therapies, but patients are increasingly rejecting that party line. Almost everyone knows of patients who were told surgery had removed the whole tumor or chemotherapy had burned down all of the cancer, yet the cancer returned and killed the patient. They also know of patient who clearly died of "approved" chemotherapy drugs rather than of their cancer. Many people also know of people who opted for "unapproved" nondrug cancer therapies, and who lived without cancer for decades.
Few things are as stressful as the decision to choose the right operation and whether or not to accept chemotherapy. Cancer drugs are invariably very toxic and seriously damage the immune system. Most people know someone who had chemotherapy and have seen the havoc it wreaks.
Although many oncologists believe the toxic effects of chemotherapy are reversible, I have yet to hear a patient say he was the same person before taking chemotherapy as he became after it. This phenomenon is common knowledge among well-informed people. And yet, oncologists continually tell patients are continually that by not taking chemotherapy they are destined for certain death, as if certain death is something patients taking chemotherapy can escape.
