PSA: Alternative Medicine Can Be Deadly Instead of Cancer Treatment
Cancer is scary. Chemotherapy and radiation are scary. Herbal medicines and special diets seem friendly and comforting by comparison, but we now have clear evidence that people using alternative cancer treatments are more likely to die.
This is one of those “yeah, but we had to check,” studies: Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine followed 281 people who used alternative medicine without any traditional therapies, such as surgery or chemotherapy, and compared their survival rates. with control people who had the same health condition, type of cancer, and other factors. These controls are much more likely to survive five years from now than people who choose to only use alternative medicine. As you’d expect, the difference was most noticeable among people with fast-acting cancer.
The study was observational, so it cannot technically prove 100% that alternative medicine is responsible for death, but the researchers controlled for almost every possible factor that could affect survival. Even NHS Choices, which conducts very thorough and skeptical analyzes of research in the news, concludes that this is pretty straightforward .
Yes, people really do that.
You and I might be thinking skipping real cancer treatments is a scary thought (we agreed that, didn’t we?), But there is definitely a market for alternative therapies. Most people use them as complementary medications, such as doing acupuncture in the hopes that it will reduce the nausea they get from chemotherapy.
But there is a small industry selling fake cancer drugs to people who cannot afford the real treatment, or who simply believe claims that supplements and the like work better. Earlier this year, the FDA sent out warning letters to manufacturers of 65 products being illicitly marketed as cancer drugs .
FDA-identified foods are the tip of the iceberg: you can’t legally sell a supplement saying it will cure cancer, but there’s nothing stopping you from writing an article claiming that a supplement cures cancer. Anything that crosses the line of fraud is monitored by the FDA, but they are playing the frustrating game of hitting the mole. So the material still exists. Take, for example, people who, against all odds, believe in the healing power of apricot seeds .
You also cannot cure cancer with homeopathy or naturopathy, although some medical practitioners say or emphatically hint that they can (as stated above). Don’t believe this obvious lie. In the dire event that you or someone you love gets cancer, you can listen to other opinions, but make sure they are from a real doctor.