Our Hereditary Submissive Attitude?
by Steven Ransom

"I kind of went into a trance and although
something didn't feel quite right, I found
myself nodding to chemotherapy." Hazel

Whilst in the main dismissing the 'alternativist' treatments (as he called them) and writing in a generally confident manner about his trust in the conventional medical paradigm, journalist and cancer-sufferer John Diamond would sometimes waver:

"What if those denying alternativists were right? What if the truth was that no life had ever been saved by radiotherapy and that there was every chance that my cancer would be made worse by it being irradiated? What if the truth, as pronounced by a couple of book,s was that the main effect of cancer surgery was to release stray cancer cells into the body, allowing them to set up home elsewhere?… I turned to the medical books for solace and got none."

Talk with cancer patients and one soon discovers that many of them report that they have an uncomfortable gut feeling that there must somehow be a better way forward. Yet they still find themselves returning to their oncologist for more of the same 'uncomfortable' treatment. Why is this, when there are, as we shall see, well-founded, non-conventional and non-toxic treatments available?

Surely, one significant factor is our hereditary submissive attitude to the medical orthodoxy and its archetypal symbolism - the white coat, the stethoscope, the years of knowledge represented in those framed diplomas. Every artefact speaks of us being in the hands of experts. On top of this, there is the added pressure that can be exerted upon the patient at the point of diagnosis by the cancer physician.

"We must move aggressively"
In his essay entitled The $200 Billion Scam, Jeff Kamen reports on how a cancer diagnosis was delivered to Kathy Keeton, the late wife of Penthouse magazine magnate, Bob Guiccione:

"I'm sorry," she remembers her doctor saying, "It's a very rare form of the disease. It's the nature of this kind of cancer that it takes off at a gallop, and metastasises quickly, so we need to act quickly and get you started on chemotherapy at once. We have some of the best people in the world in this field. I urge you to let me get you into their expert care. There is no time to waste. This form of cancer is often fatal, and quickly so. Untreated, you have six weeks to live. We really must move aggressively with the chemo."

Here is Gawie Marx's story:

"A week before my planned vacation to Miami and the Caribbean, I noticed a big bruise on my right upper leg, and decided to see my doctor because it looked awful. For some reason the doctor decided to take a full blood count. He told me he would let me have the results the next afternoon. At that stage I did not even know what a full blood count was! I was still sleeping the next morning, when Dr Petersen phoned me and instructed me to go and see a certain Professor Peter Jacobs. He actually told me the Professor was waiting for me. I was still not concerned, because I did not feel sick.

Prof Jacobs told me I had acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL). He told me I was very sick and he had to start treatment immediately. I did not listen to what he was saying - I could not believe I had cancer. I told him there was nothing wrong with me - I was feeling fine. But that was not the case. My white cell count was 0.7 and my platelets 6. I was admitted into hospital the same afternoon and had my first platelet transfusion.

My folks and my one brother were with me that evening and the following day my youngest brother and his family came down from Johannesburg to see me. The treatment I was going to receive consisted of a course of all-trans-retinoic acid for 3 months, followed by 3 rounds of 7-day continuous Ara-C with 3 days of idarubicin chemotherapy."

Hazel recalls a similar rushed experience:

"Basically, I was in shock from the diagnosis. I was sitting there, with the doctor saying that this treatment was the best available and that it was actually a matter of life or death that I received it. My husband was sitting next to me, telling me that I needed to go along with it. I kind of went into a trance and although something didn't feel quite right, I found myself nodding to chemotherapy."

And in Janet's story, we discover a particularly hurried and pressurised encounter with the establishment:

"It all started when I went into the gynaecology clinic on base for very heavy bleeding, which was unusual for me. This was on Thursday, 4th May. They said that they couldn't see anything because of all the blood, but that there was definitely something wrong with my cervix. They stressed how important it was that I see a cancer specialist off-base within the next couple of days. That really scared me. I left there more freaked out than when I went in, with no answers.

On Monday, 8th May, I went down to Salt Lake to see a specialist oncologist. After my examination, he had Dee and I come into his office. He determined that it was cervical cancer and that he believed it was still stage 1 and I would not be able to have any more kids. Of course that hit me very hard. He said I needed a radical hysterectomy, which is more drastic than a regular hysterectomy…. they take out a lot more tissue, etc. He scheduled my surgery for that Thursday, 11th May.

The surgery took 4 hours. They removed my cervix, uterus, ovaries, 20-some-odd lymph nodes, and a bunch of tissue surrounding the uterus. All went well. A couple of days after my surgery, my pathology report came back. They got all the cancer from my cervix. The cancer had already started to spread to the lymph nodes, but they believe they removed all that as well. The tumour they removed was about the size of a golf ball.

I was in the hospital for a week. I came home Wednesday, 17th May. I cannot believe that just 6 months before all this, I had a normal pap done. I don't understand. The Doctor said that I had some really nasty cancer cells. It just progressed so fast. I am just soooo thankful that it was found when it was. If I would've waited 6 more months for my annual exam, I just know that the cancer would've been too far gone to stop. I just know it.

On Monday, 10th July, I began both radiation therapy and chemotherapy. The reason for me having to go through both the radiation and the chemotherapy is that it increases my survival rate to around 85%. My chemo doctor said that if I decided not to get treated, the chances of it coming back were pretty high and that if it did, it would take my life. Scary thought, so, needless to say, I decided to do it."

Most definitely, the power imbalance that exists in all doctor-patient relationships, (whence the term 'shrink' in psychiatry) is a key agent in determining the direction of treatment. As we shall see, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Janet, Hazel, Gawie and countless other cancer patients are being coerced into a one-sided regime, in which perfectly valid treatment options are not being made available to them - options that do not involve such drastic medical intervention. And while there are some people who credit their cancer recovery to chemotherapy, the simple fact remains that some people recover from cancer anyway - they are blessed with strong immune systems. Can we really credit cancer recovery to toxic chemicals?

A sea of conflicting information
Shock and fear at point of diagnosis, combined with the powerful influence inherent in the doctor/patient relationship, is one aspect of the equation. The move away from conventional cancer treatment towards non-conventional treatments is also being hampered by the vast sea of confusing, conflicting and often bizarre information posing as 'helpful' alternative cancer advice. Take the Internet, for instance. A first-time patient, or someone just plain interested in researching cancer, can soon become thoroughly confused and disheartened. Some four thousand links come up under "alternative cancer treatment" alone!

But an anxious patient, without the luxury of a clear guide to hand, and with no time to separate the wheat from the chaff, turns off his computer. He is faced with having to make decisions based solely on his own somewhat overwhelming and probably demoralising Internet search, together with a kind of blind, desperate faith that, somehow, the well-qualified oncologist has got to be right, "… and didn't he warn us that there were a lot of Internet 'cancer kooks' out there wanting your money?" The patient then finds himself right back at square one and, by default, the chemotherapy suggested earlier seems overall to be the 'safest' bet. In the view of health reporter Phillip Day, author of 'Cancer: Why We're Still Dying to Know The Truth', "Many people just gulp, enter the cancer tunnel and hope they come out the other end."

Genuine treatments do exist!
Despite the fact that an Internet search can quite easily generate confusion, there is actually a wealth of well-documented, credible information available on the web on natural, efficacious treatments for a variety of serious illnesses, including cancer - information that in some instances has been on record for many years. But information on such treatments is not widely known in the public domain. This is because genuine medicine has often had to fight tremendously hard to be clearly heard. And there are particular reasons why this has been so.

Before discussing specific natural cancer treatments in more depth, it is important that we briefly examine the reasons for the current levels of confusion surrounding genuine natural medicine as a whole. Sometimes, it is not so much where to look for genuine treatment and advice, as how to look for it. Wilful distortion, negative propaganda campaigns, unwitting stupidity - you name it. Conventional and alternative, it's taking place on both sides of the fence. We must learn to read between the lines.

© Copyright 2003 Steven Ransom
Extracted from Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century

Further Resources
Cancer: Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth by Phillip Day
Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century by Steven Ransom
The ABC's of Disease by Phillip Day
B17 Metabolic Therapy compiled by Phillip Day
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