Clinical Trials Do Not Always Mean Good Medicine
Clinical trials for prospective medicines and methodologies are absolutely necessary. They help to protect us from ineffectiveness, harmful side effects, and dangerous dosages. They are not, however, without down sides. They are painfully long in duration, extremely expensive, and not always conclusive. Unfortunately, most conventional medicine professionals revere them as the mecca of modern medical science.
Clinical trials have been both the friend and foe of complementary and alternative medicine. Thankfully, they have bestowed the stamp of legitimacy to such practices as adding nutrition and dietary supplements to certain prescribed protocols as well as hyperthermia therapy to chemotherapy and radiation treatments. On the other hand, clinical trials have rejected many potentially helpful natural medicines and methods as a result of inadequate processes or misinterpreted data.
The hyperthermia therapy trials that I wrote about in my last blog post were successful only after many years of research and previous trials. Dr. Ralph Moss, in his latest weekly newsletter, Cancer Decisions, noted that, in the mid-eighties, a large randomized controlled study failed to show any benefit of hyperthermia therapy as a complement to conventional cancer treatment. So, this tremendously enhancing procedure was put on the shelf for several years. Later, researchers who “studied the study” judged it as have glaring issues of quality control. Even The Journal of the National Cancer Institute reported that almost one-third of the tumors that were treated were never tested for an internal temperature. The JNCI also concluded that there were problems with the equipment and technique during the course of the trial. Unfortunately, the initial official reportings of the trial had already had their effect on the cancer treatment community, and few practitioners wanted to associate themselves with what was considered a bad field of practice. Not until the very recent new trials, has hyperthermia redeemed itself in the scientific world as a therapy of choice.
The lesson from the hyperthermia trials and many other medical science research projects is that it often takes more than one trial to accept or reject a new medicine or method. Numerous chemotherapy drugs used routinely today were “proven” ineffective in early trials. Seemingly, toxic chemicals developed by major medical research labs continue to survive multiple trials until they are legitimized. Meanwhile, natural candidate medicines and methods such as chelation, laetrile, vitamin C, etc, are doomed after one trial with questionable quality control and technique.
The difference is mostly about financial investment. Costly toxic drugs can recoup the investment of multiple clinical trials once they are proven safe and effective. Who is going to finance multiple trials for even a potentially highly beneficial therapy that can be purchased from an aisle in the grocery store? There lies the biggest dilemma in the world of cancer treatment. We must pursue a new strategy for the war on cancer.