Alternative Medicine

Okay, I admit it. Everything else being equal, I would much rather receive treatment by alternative medicine than suffer the “cut-burn-poison” triumvirate of conventional medicine. (Quite telling though that treatment and suffering go hand-in-hand . . .)

Two friends have mentioned Gerson Therapy (diet/supplements/enemas) to me. And there are many other alternative approaches. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) maintains a webpage dedicated to its assessment of alternative therapies:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/treatment/cam

Important disclaimer here: NCI applies the wet blanket approach to anything outside of mainstream treatment. And perhaps with good reason. There is significant quackery and opportunism in the healthcare industry. But NCI, despite (or perhaps because of) their critical bias, is as good a place as any to start one’s research. They provide summaries of nineteen different complementary and alternative medicines on their webpage. My initial read of these summaries yielded only one that seemed to still be smoldering despite NCI’s best snuffing efforts: “Selected Vegetables / Sun’s Soup” (a mixture of vegetables and herbs). Although the other alternative approaches seemed to be damned outright, this one appeared to be closest to merely falling within the “damned by faint praise” category.

But pursuing alternative approaches has its own set of challenges, questions of efficacy notwithstanding. Exhibit A, a text message from my oldest son at 12:25PM, 8/1/08:

“Fuck all this herbal and Chinese shit that is bullshit and a path to death. This tumor is gonna come out ASAP. If I have to force you to have surgery at gunpoint I will.”

Followed by Exhibit B, an email from him six minutes later:

“I am not going to let you do any bullshit diets or herbal tea or Chinese medicine. That stuff is all horse shit and I do not care what you say. This damn thing needs to come out and now.”

I wish that if he had an opinion he’d just come out and say it. ;-)