that sinking feeling in your tummy

[corplinx]

I was at work and overhead someone mention that their husband quit his cancer treatments to pursue an all raw fruit and vegetable diet to treat his colon cancer.

Of course, she realized he was a fool for quitting his treatments. But she had hope that maybe the alternative treatment would work since her husband was "really smart" and had researched this from a book written by a christian.

I'm still speechless.

 

[The Don]

It's up to each person to make their own decisions based upon their own research and or gut feel. As such he is entitled to make his own decisions regarding treatment.

What does annoy me is that he would be comparing 5 year survival rates for the chemo/radiation treaments which have been compiled as rigourously as possible from hundreds of thousands of cases against anecdotal evidence for the fruit and veg cure. I am willing to wager that this anecdotal evidence would be very much skewed in favour of the treatment.

If good records 5 year survival rates could be kept for the fruit and veg treatment then at least we'd have an objective way of comparing effectiveness.

Of course, if the survival rates were significantly lower for the fruit and veg patients, I'm sure that the alternative practitioner would insist that a proportionally greater number of people on their regimen have already failed to respond to conventional treatment and so represent a hard core of cases, from which you would expect a lower 5 year survival rate

 

[Beleth]

I was at work and overhead someone mention that their husband quit his cancer treatments to pursue an all raw fruit and vegetable diet to treat his colon cancer.

Why not do both? Why not eat healthily and undergo chemo / radiation / whatever?

 

[Andonyx]

Re: Re: that sinking feeling in your tummy

Why not do both? Why not eat healthily and undergo chemo / radiation / whatever?

The sad truth is that this man, in his fear or despair may be giving up.

I imagine a lot of people who simply cannot endure any more chemotherapy choose to give up and pursue an "alternative treatment" as a consolation to their loved ones.

But the fact is that for very severe cancers with low hope of remission, chemotherapy courses can be excruciating and torturous, and for many people, if the hope of recovery is low, they see the possible cure as worse than the disease.