The Manuscript Is In!
Yes, yesterday was a banner day. My wife, Linda, and I positioned ourselves in front of the computer with the manuscript of A New Strategy for the War on Cancer attached to an email to the publisher and celebrated the click on “send.” For the next few days, I will highlight a few things from the book to be released this summer.
I was honored to receive the Foreword for the book from David S. Rosenthal, M.D. Dr. Rosenthal is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also the Medical Director of the Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. And, he was a former president of the American Cancer Society. His agreement with the content of the book to the extent of writing the Foreword is a huge credibility factor for the project. I would like to share a few excerpts from his Foreword.
Dr. Rosenthal writes: Following a review of the most recent statistics on the incidence and mortality of the various cancers, the cost of cancer care in dollars and lives and the funding of research, the author then focuses attention on the need for an innovative approach to the disease. He envisions incorporating the evolving discipline of integrative oncology (IO) in the cancer care model. Integrative oncology is to be differentiated from complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), in that it considers the patient as “a whole human being,” stressing the importance of all aspects of lifestyle such as nutrition, physical activity, and stress and symptom management. IO emphasizes the importance of the physician-patient relationship.
Dr. Rosenthal states further: The fundamental conclusion posed by Thompson’s book is that there are a great many complementary therapies that, when combined with conventional therapies, can improve the outcome, improve the quality of life of the patient and give the individual some sense of participation in the process. That is what integrative oncology is about.