January 31, 2012

I firmly believe that if the whole Materia Medica (the Bible of Homeopathy), as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for fishes. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, US author, wit and poet (1809-1894).

British Medical Association (BMA) vice-chairman, Tom Dolphin, who first proposed banning homeopathy in May 2010, said later: “I got into trouble for saying that homeopathy is witchcraft. I take that back and apologize to the witches. I apparently offended by association. Homeopathy isn’t witchcraft – it is nonsense on stilts. It is pernicious nonsense that feeds into a rising wave of irrationality that threatens the hard won gains of enlightenment, and the scientific method.”

There is lot of discussion with regard to alternative medicines which has now come into focus following the death of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc. But first the facts.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October 2003. A shadow was noticed in his pancreas during a routine CAT scan that he underwent as a follow-up to a kidney stone. His doctor recommended further work-up for the abnormal finding in the pancreas. Though hesitant, Jobs eventually relented to an endoscopic biopsy. The Stanford surgeons were jubilant with the result of the biopsy. Jobs had a rare islet cell or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour, a less aggressive and slow-growing u that could potentially be cured with a surgical resection.

But Steve Jobs refused surgery.
 
As per Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Steve Jobs, his “magical thinking” may have defined his business brilliance, but may have been counterproductive in his fight against cancer. To the dismay of his friends like Andy Grove, a prostate cancer survivor and the brilliant CEO of Intel who strongly encouraged Steve to go for surgery and chemotherapy, “Steve was trying to cure his cancer by eating horsesh** and horse roots.”
 
His intuitive approach dominated his decisions about cancer treatment as well. Jobs refused potential curative surgery despite the insistence of his wife Lawrence Powell and his doctors. Dr Dean Ornish, an eminent cardiologist and a leader in alternative and nutritional methods in treating illnesses, visited him and tried to coax him into doing the surgery.

But Jobs never wavered. He kept a strict vegetarian diet; consuming large quantities of fresh carrots and fruit juices. He tried acupuncture and even consulted a psychic whom he found over the internet. He also sought treatment from a doctor who practiced natural healing methods.

In an interview to Fortune magazine, Steve Jobs clearly regretted the missed opportunity and the chance he took with his life.

According to Dr James Abraham, a leading India-origin oncologist practicing in USA (Writing in The Week Health – 29-1-12), about 70 per cent of patients with cancer or other chronic illnesses seek alternative medicine. Many of these complementary or alternative medicines have limited scientific proof of effectiveness. “But why is it so popular and widely used that even the brightest mind of our time opted for it when he was diagnosed with cancer? It is puzzling, but not surprising. We don't have the humility to admit the limitations of modern medicine. Many branches of medicine are still evolving. We are very good in fixing bones, curing bacterial infections, and controlling many chronic conditions. But a cure for diabetes, hypertension or many cancers is still farfetched.

We don't train our doctors to connect with patients in a very humane way. We follow the principles of the French philosopher Descartes to the core and treat humans as broken machines. We are more focused on curing the disease than healing the illness.

Modern medicine has turned into one of the largest profit-making industries in the world. As in any industry, the end points are often share values (stock market) and balance sheets and not the well-being of the customer. This undermines the human element in the art of healing.”

Dr Abraham says that many of the traditional approaches such as Ayurvedic and Chinese medicines have proven to be highly effective for many chronic conditions. Even though they lack rigorous scientific proof, they have stood the tests of trial and error and emerged from centuries of application. Complementary medicine, as the name suggests, is very reasonable and beneficial if used to complement conventional medicine. Yoga and meditation have proven to be very effective in many conditions including hypertension, arthritis or diabetes. But when complementary medicine is adopted as an alternative to standard treatment, without proper medical supervision and monitoring, it could be life-threatening.

All branches of medicine, Dr Abraham says, have their own merits and relevance. There should be a mutual respect and openness to different approaches. For each diagnosis, it is important to know which medicine or branch of medicine works best. We should not fall into the traps of false hope offered by alternative medicine.

In an article on the same subject titled “Steve Jobs and the lure of alternaive healing”, published in New York Times (4-11-11), Judith Warner, a columnist for the paper, says:

Steve Jobs’ decision to treat his pancreatic cancer with a vegan diet, herbs, juices and acupuncture rather than the surgery his doctors urged, is being debated everywhere. And while it’s impossible for any outsider to judge whether Jobs’ faith in alternative medicine “likely shortened his life,” or instead just improved the quality of a life that was already beyond saving, raises important questions as to why an ever-expanding group of people now feel they can’t derive meaningful healing from conventional medicine.

According to Warner, in many ways, it’s the failures of our current system of conventional care. Brent Bauer, the director of the complementary and integrative medicine program at the Mayo Clinic told her what has made the search for alternatives so popular. For one thing, alternative practitioners — who rarely are reimbursed by health insurance — can afford to take the time to sit down and talk to their patients. “We’ve created this system where we want more and more access to physicians and we pay them less and less,” he said. “But with these alternative practices, with no third party constraining the time that can be spent, there’s a lot of hands-on time, and that’s been marginalized in lots of places. We feel better if someone takes an interest in us, talks to us, spends time with us. There’s enormous power there.”

Mainstream medicine, with its greatly increased use of high-tech diagnostic testing and medication has, despite its considerable progress and successes over the past few decades, he said, in some ways bred its own rejection. “We have a lot of unmet needs,” he said. “We kind of became a pill culture for a while in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. It looked like medical science was going to find a solution for everything. Then we saw in the eighties, nineties, we were living longer, but we also saw we were living with a lot of problems. We have to be on, wired 24/7. We’re really stressed … and we’re also finding pills don’t help us so there’s a natural backlash.” Driving patients to alternative medicine practitioners.

Warner concludes: “We all, I think, have people around us who prefer to use expensive and questionable treatments — or engage in no treatment at all — rather than submit to what they perceive as the uncaring power of the medico-pharmaco-industrial complex. My father, for example, when told that he needed heart valve replacement surgery to stay alive, chose instead to take massive doses of fish oil — and he died.” In India, he would have gone for gomuthra!

John B Monteiro, author and journalist, is editor of his website www.welcometoreason.com (Interactive Cerebral Challenger) - with provision for instant response.