Survivors using Homeopathic Treatment? - 1264013

To me that is a more philosophical than medical question. There is no good quality evidence that homeopathy improves survival or any significant cancer outcomes, and I would say that it has no credibility among practitioners of conventional, allopathic medicine. On the other hand, I think the people who are convinced of the benefits of these approaches will not be convinced by any rational arguments about the lack of wisdom of following such an approach. To me, it becomes like a religious argument.

Personally, I think it's a tragedy that Suzanne Somers and others who denigrate evidence-based medicine are fortunate enough to happen to do well by what I suspect is mostly sheer luck and then lead people to believe what they so want to believe (basically, "even a broken clock is right twice a day", but you don't hear from the 99% of proponents of homeopathic medicine who die of their cancer, likely faster than they would have otherwise). It's intrinsically appealing that vitamins and supplements will make all the difference, but in my mind that's just rainbows and unicorns.

-Dr. West
An allopathic doctor with my own personal biases

FYI, Suzanne Somers had surgery and radiation for her breast cancer which are both conventional treatment. The only thing she refused was chemo and Tamoxifen. She had a mastectomy and also reconstruction surgery. It hasn't been that long and there's no way to know if her breast cancer will recur. So I wouldn't follow anything she has to offer.
Take care, Judy

Judy, thank you for knowing more than me about this -- I appreciate the help. Yes, that just underscores my concern about how it often goes. Someone takes the effective therapy, adds questionable miracle treatment (and/or eschews the treatment that is more icing on the cake than clearly required), then extolls the wondrous virtues of the questionable miracle treatment for curing the cancer that was highly likely to have been treated effectively by the known effective therapy.

-Dr. West

I'm responding simply as a patient who accepts medical treatment. I think you are not out of line to advise her to accept treatment. I went through a phase after my diagnosis when I simply didn't want it to be cancer, and it's tempting to think if I don't take the disease seriously it will go away. I'm lucky that I got out of that frame of mind pretty quickly.

As for herbs and vitamins in general and homeopathy in particular, I think every newly-diagnosed cancer patient should know the diagnosis has put a big "Sell Me Something" sign on her back, and the world is full of people who will try to make money off of her illness, and her fear.

If her cancer was caught early and if she accepted surgery and if she's lucky, maybe she'll luck out and not have a recurrence. Her doctors have seen a lot of patients who weren't lucky, and if they recommend radiation I hope she'll take that recommendation seriously.

She might want to ask her oncologist what her situation will be if the cancer comes back. Would it be likely to come back as a localized growth that could again be addressed with surgery, radiation, or chemo? Or would it come back as metastatic growths in the bone, or the lungs, or the brain? She needs to know how big a gamble she's taking.

I think that part of the problem stems from the fact that some of these interventions (nutrition, vitamins, supplements, acupuncture) actually can make a patient feel better and help them better tolerate the rigors of standard treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy. Even though they are not directly treating the cancer they may have some value (if only in giving the patient the feeling that they are doing something to help themselves), but then there is always someone (usually with a book to sell) who will take that improvement in general well-being to the next step and proclaim that intervention "cures" cancer.

JimC
Forum moderator