Alternative Cancer Treatment And Medicine
What is the difference between 'complementary' and 'alternative' cancer therapy?
How do I find out if an alternative method for treating cancer is effective?
I think the ability to determine if an alternative therapy is effective is going to be really difficult. The types of literature and research that I go into to determine a particular course of therapy for my patient is based on published literature, and unfortunately, there isn't a lot of published literature using non-medicinal approaches, supplement based approaches, or herbal medicinal approaches. There is, however, a trend – and I applaud that – the N.I.H. and the National Institutes of Health, have been adopting and encouraging investigators in the country and around the world for producing and developing clinical trials using non-medicinal approaches to the treatment of Cancer and other diseases. I think once those get up and running and we have results and we have peer reviewed journals that are publishing these results, I think we'll have a good idea for patients and for physicians to utilize these modalities in the future. The problem now, is that you have lots of testimonials on the internet, you have patients claiming miraculous treatments with particular products. I think it's really a guess when it comes to a lot of these therapies and unless there are really well planned and well designed trials, it will be difficult for anyone to make a good decision about these agents.
