It is not okay to go for alterantive therapies for cancer

Q: Is it okay to go for alternative therapies for cancer?

Krishna: The oncologists I know say it is not Okay! Science says it is not Okay!!

Reasons? Do you want reasons for this 'not okay thing'?

Okay.

Clinical trials show cancer patients using alternative treatments, even if taking standard treatments have shorter longevity. That may be because those patients tend to accept less standard treatment or the alternative treatment interferes with chemotherapy/immunotherapy oxidation of cancer cells. Sometimes alternative therapies increase liver or kidney toxicities of chemotherapy as well.

So the survival rate of those using only alternative therapy will be no better than in those who take no treatment whatsoever. But in some cases it may be worse than that.

Some people claim alternative therapies  helped them. But these people really don't understand the science of cancer. Anecdotal evidence is the worst form of evidence. 

The survival rate would depend on the natural history of the cancer. If it is a slow indolent cancer, such as a low grade lymphoma or some very slowly growing kidney cancers, observation without treatment is considered medically appropriate. Such people may claim alternative therapies helped them, if they opt for them. 

If it's a faster growing cancer and clinical trials demonstrate that for that cancer situation, chemotherapy or immunotherapy can improve cure rates or lengthen survival, then those who opt for alternative treatments will have shorter life expectancy. In some cases, it will be far shorter by decades.

‘Good results’ are a matter of perception—and this doesn’t necessarily fit with what is actually happening to your body. This is precisely why we do placebo-controlled, ‘double blinded’ clinical trials. We use these to cross-check perception against reality.

By ‘double blinding’ things, neither the patient nor the observer knows who got the active treatment. This goes a long way towards obliterating the bias that we all carry—both healers and patients. 

But there are many ways ‘alternative therapies’ may fool you ...

1. You may believe (against the evidence) that you’re improving. Placebo effect?
2. Sheer random chance becoming reality may mean that your cancer improves a bit.
3. You may even have an incorrect diagnosis, or an indolent tumour that wasn’t going to kill you as quickly as expected.
4. There is some evidence that immune function is modulated a bit by central nervous system function—the brain talks to the immune system. Now, although they think this as a ‘cure for cancer’, Experts suspect that in a few cases this may cause transient improvement.
5. You may combine ‘alternative’ and effective treatment and decide that the benefit you derived from the latter actually came from the former. “It wasn’t the chemo/radiation/immunotherapy that fixed me, it was the mega-dose vitamin C”. Or Laxmi taru or whatever.
6. There is a tiny possibility that therapies labelled as ‘alternative’ may actually work in some circumstances. Many therapies from real medicine (medicine that works) started off as herbal therapies (like willow-tree derived aspirin for pains and aches), or were derived from them. For example vinca alkaloids originated from plants, as did taxol-based therapy. There are a few cautions here:
   1. We’ve grabbed the treatments that work and now use them in real medicine;
   2. In  doing so, we’ve found that doses have to be carefully regulated, and the chances that you’ll get this right (even with something that works) are vanishingly small. Too much—you die. Too little—you die. Just right—you have a chance.
   3. Many people punting ‘alternative’ therapy for your cancer are deceiving either themselves or you (or both). This is difficult stuff to get right, and grinding up some herbs or taking cannabis oil won’t stop it. There are many frank charlatans out there who deceive people with sweet talk.
   4. Much ‘alternative’ therapy is patently rubbish. You may not like this, but lots of these treatments simply don’t make sense. If you really believe that (for example) homeopathic medicine works, you’re denying things like (a) atomic theory; (b) modern methods for testing whether things work. If you believe that Amygdalin helps, you’re denying the evidence that it kills people faster. 

A few days back a person showed me a video about several claims about Laxmi taru plant and asked me whether it would really work for cancer. This was my reply to him.