Question:
When my mom was sick, she was using a combination of western medicineand alternative medicine.

My mother saw a doctor who practised chinese medicine. He really hatedwestern medicine(chemo, radiation therapy) he denouced western doctors andtalked about how he could cure my mom. He charged insane prices, just tovisit him for one session including the medicine we bought from him costabout $300 CDN a visit. My mother really believed in him, that doctor toldmy mom about how he cured a patient who was sufferring from leukemia, heeven brought the patient in so we can meet her, then we find out the reasonwhy she has been living for 10 years after being diagnosed is because shehas Chronic leukemia my mother was suffering from Acute which is different.Even then you can't assume what one treatment will work for someone is notgoing to have the same effect for someone else. What i want to know is thathas there ever been any documented case where alternative works? and if sowas it wise to let my mother used both methods western and alternative.

Answer: You can get some relatively authoritative information on alternativecancer therapies at the US National Institute of Health's NationalCenter for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, at http://nccam.nih.gov

There is at least one cancer remedy from traditional Chinese medicinethat has been reported in peer-reviewed journal articles to have merit,namele PC-spes. As I recall it was found useful against prostatecancer, but my memory is a bit hazy on it so that may not be correct.

Also, it was reported in a recent PBS Nova program on prostate cancerthat M D Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, TX, which is a highlyreputable mainstream oncology center, has an alternative medicinegroup which among other things sometimes recommends to its oncologypatients the use of a vegetarian diet, basically the Gerson diet fromthe sound of it. One patient interviewed in the program reported thathis PSA test score dropped from 15 to 7.5 after 3 months on this dietaryregimen. Another patient reported no noticeable effect. However,just as with weight-loss diets, one has to consider the possibility thatone patient was more strict with the dietary rules than the other.The fact that MD Anderson recommends this diet to some patients suggeststhat they must think it has some merit. Personally I find it not unreasonableto think that if the very mainstream advice to eat lots of fresh fruitsand vegetables is now widely believed to be helpful in preventing cancer,just maybe taking it further and going on an all-out vegetarian dietmight have some further effect, and might actually cause cancer to regressin some cases. However, that is conjecture on my part, only somewhatreinforced by the many reported cases in which that seems to have happened.I would think that research into this possibility is warranted, butclearly such research will not be appealing to the pharmaceutical industrybut must be funded by government agencies like the NCCAM.

In general it seems to me that more experimentation by cancer patients,when and where it does not seem risky for them to experiment, willgenerally result in the accumulation of more knowledge about what worksand what does not. The dietary therapy counseling at Anderson is anexcellent example.