Patrick Swayze
I’ve been focusing on celebrities with cancer. This post is dedicated to Patrick Swayze. Swayze’s condition is a classic example of why we must take a different approach to cancer treatment. Much is made today of cancer prevention and screening to detect cancer. In fact, avoidance and early detection of the disease accounts for almost all of the minimal progress in recent mortality rates. We have made very little progress in treating those who are in advanced phases. Patrick Swayze has pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease, because its onset is largely undetectible, and it is very aggressive. Less than 5 percent of patients live five years or more after diagnosis, and very few live more than a year. Last year, 37,680 Americans were diagnosed with this type of cancer, and 34,290 died from it.
Swayze was a model of health and vitality. He was obvioiusly successful, great family life (married to Lisa more than 30 years-the only marriage for both), lived on an Aribian horse ranch in New Mexico. When he was diagnosed, he was able to afford the finest medical treatment available. Flying his own airplane to the Stanford Cancer Center regularly, he received everything medical science has to offer from the best doctors the medical profession has to offer. In spite of the dibilitating treatment, he has managed to continue his work on the cable series, “The Beast,” and his next movie, “Powder Blue.” However, every day is more difficult.
I am all for preventing cancer and, failing that, finding it early. Nonetheless, there are still 1.4 million people each year who have to take it on. These are the ones that I am fighting for. There has to be something more effective than the same old triad of surgery, chemo, and radiation that has failed to move the statistics appreciably in four decades. There is. It’s called integrative oncology. Integrative oncology accepts the conventional therapy that proves helpful and adds a host of other natural and non-toxic options. Through the synergy of the best of conventional treatment and complements of other non-harmful, evidence-based methodologies, we have a proven strategy that can win the war on cancer. The problem is that it is extremely slow in coming. It’s difficult to change 40 years of tradition in the deeply rooted institution of medical science.
Keep coming back to this blog as we continue to explore integrative oncology–the future of cancer therapy.