It's bad enough to imply that someone dealing with the physical and emotional debilitations caused by both the disease and the treatment, not to mention secondary concerns like the effect on employment and finances, essentially isn't trying hard enough. But suggesting pseudoscience that could very well make things worse is deplorable.
I'm truly glad it worked out for you, but as someone who has had cancer this is an absolutely awful position to take.
You have to take some responsibility for your health, and the things you do or don't do have a big effect on your long term outcome. If you want to call that insulting, fine.
To be clear every treatment I had was recommended or approved by a medical doctor, that's part of the research and discussion with my doctors. I absolutely think that's important. And having a diverse team of doctors from different backgrounds both in and outside of mainstream U.S. medicine is useful.
Naturopathic medicin is not "pseudoscience". I've seen first hand friends that trusted main-stream cancer doctors and were hurt almost to the point of death. It wasn't until they turned to alternatives that they improved and survived.
It doesn't take much of a history lesson to find many many examples of Allelopathic medicine causing much more harm than good. The OP details that they found out that the mechanism at work was not what the doctors thought. How many other mistakes are they making on a daily basis?
You embrasing the status quo, which is demonstrably killing people daily with poisons, and calling everything else "pseudoscience" is truly a deplorable stance.
I truly believe that humans, if we make it that far, are going to look back at this time of "the war on cancer" as one of the most disgusting and, obvious in hindsight, destructive things we've ever forced onto people in the chase for the god mighty dollar.
The financial incentives of the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession do not make them work for our benefit. A cure would be a huge loss of one of the largest money making schemes ever devised.
There has been good research on cancer treatements that do not destroy the immune system, nor require poisoning. A cursory scan on sci-hub for medicinal mushrooms and cancer yeild a hundred hits [1] with much to learn from. Studies from 20 years ago showing how taking certain mushrooms while undergoing chemo and/or radiation can greatly reduce side effects and improve survival rates.
This is science. This is also science that the medical and drug profession ignores, to their own discrace and shame.
The GF was stating a hard fact, you have to do your own research because the baises and conflicts of interest of the medical profession and the drug companies blind them to less damaging and much less profit driven treatments.
(1) Naturopathic medicine by and large is pseudoscience and confirmation bias. Some people with cancer spontaneously go into remission. One study found 22% of breast cancers undergo spontaneous regression. [1] This includes people taking pseudoscientific treatments. People then point to the naturopathic medicines are the proximate cure, but in reality, it would have gone away with or without. This is why we have double-blind studies that account for this, and for the placebo effect -- which is super strong, and growing stronger as our faith in medicine grows.
(2) 'You embrasing the status quo, which is demonstrably killing people daily with poisons, and calling everything else "pseudoscience" is truly a deplorable stance.'
Chemotherapies are toxic treatments, and they are toxic in no small part because we are looking to kill off specific tissue. Unfortunately few chemotherapies are totally specific, and work is being done to improve them, including delivery mechanisms. Radiation treatments obviously also destroy tissue, but again, every effort is made to improve target specificity.
(3) "...we've ever forced onto people in the chase for the god mighty dollar."
In many countries, doctors are public servants, and the government run programs negotiate hard with pharma companies to knock down prices, instead of, you know, passing them on to the "customer."
(4) "The financial incentives of the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession do not make them work for our benefit. A cure would be a huge loss of one of the largest money making schemes ever devised."
Far be it from me to support the crazy profiteering of big pharma, however, I think you'll see them finding ways to profit from one-off cures for chronic conditions like Sofosbuvir for Hep C. They'll just charge medical systems what its 'worth' in terms of how much a lifetime supply of Hep C treatments would cost -- minus a little so the system benefits over the status quo too. In this case, $84,000. Not to mention the company that developed it was acquired for $11 billion dollars by Gilead. [2] But of course quickly after others will follow. [3] This is why patents last 20 years.
(5) "There has been good research on cancer treatements that do not destroy the immune system, nor require poisoning. A cursory scan on sci-hub for medicinal mushrooms and cancer yeild a hundred hits [0] with much to learn from. Studies from 20 years ago showing how taking certain mushrooms while undergoing chemo and/or radiation can greatly reduce side effects and improve survival rates."
So does fasting, no mushrooms needed. [4] But in both your studies and mine it was the "poison" chemotherapy that was treating the cancer, not the mushrooms.
The really ingenious work being done these days is finding ways to point our immune system at cancer and letting it do the hard work for us.
It's bad enough to imply that someone dealing with the physical and emotional debilitations caused by both the disease and the treatment, not to mention secondary concerns like the effect on employment and finances, essentially isn't trying hard enough. But suggesting pseudoscience that could very well make things worse is deplorable.
I'm truly glad it worked out for you, but as someone who has had cancer this is an absolutely awful position to take.