Terry Thompson’s Blog

If the conventional approach to cancer treatment is not producing positive results fast enough, why is medical science not directing its energies and intelligence toward a change in strategy?  The fact is that those operating where the rubber meets the road are advocating change.  Researchers want to make something better for the physicians.  Physicians want to provide something better for their patients.  But, the environment of institutionalized medicine is not conducive to change.  The American health industry has been building for years to become the world leader in its field.  Millions of people benefit daily from its immeasurable successes, although many are victims of its inattention to their particular needs.  Regrettably, the growth of any such industry generates a bureaucracy that is resistant to change.  Like an obese person who can’t alter his diet regardless of what his body is telling him, the medical science bureaucracy does not change easily regardless of the urgency.

Therefore, a cultural barrier exists between the hands-on medical science community (those who do the research and treat the patients) and institutionalized medicine (regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical corporations, medical centers, and grant organizations).  This conclusion is supported by a survey project presented at the 2005 convention of the Society for Integrative Oncology.  The “Survey of Cancer Researchers and Practitioners Regarding Complementary and Alternative Medicine” included 321 respondents from a wide spectrum of oncology labs and clinics.  Of the researchers surveyed, 83% expressed interest in collaborating with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners.  Ninety-six percent of the CAM practitioners were interested in collaborating with cancer researchers.

When asked what the researchers and practitioners saw as the most significant obstacle to CAM research and practice, the single factor most frequently identified was lack of funds.  As I alluded to in earlier posts, the grants to research prospective conventional cancer treatment enhancement are plentiful and measured in billions of dollars.  But, grants for CAM research are extremely scarce.  Indications are that the brightest and most talented of our medical community are finding it very difficult to break through the establishment for support of much of anything outside the parameters of conventional medicine.

This situation is not likely to change until those of us at the grass roots level insist that the cancer research funding organizations we support increase their support of CAM research.  Giving to those few foundations that support CAM research exclusively should also be considered.  Then we need to convince our friends and families to do the same.   

When I was a youngster, my family raised chickens for a supplement to our income.  The poultry industry was prominent in our part of the country, and I grew up well versed in the ways of chickens.  In a “house” of several thousand chickens, there would always be a few dozen “culls” that would eventually die prematurely or be ”culled” out and destroyed because they couldn’t survive in the chicken mainstream.  These culls were usually small, late developing, and not able to compete for position and time around the feed troughs and water sources.  Had the other chickens accommodated the cull, it would have thrived and perhaps become the top chicken of the bunch.  When I see the inability of complementary cancer therapy to compete for research grants and places at the mainstream medical science table, I am always reminded of my chicken raising days and the plight of the cull chicken. 

The enormous amount of money that has been infused into cancer research over the recent decades is mind-numbing.  I have highighted this in recent posts.  Granted, some of the money has funded prevention projects that have helped to reduce the number of cancer victims.  Some has been earmarked for modernization of equipment, facilities, and analytical systems.  Some has gone for scholastic research.  But, most of the funds have the ultimate objective of pursuing a cure for cancer with chemicals, radiation, and surgery.  Of course, good has come out of efforts to advance conventional medicine, and we should be grateful for any advancement.  Insight into genetic technology, highly improved screening systems, deeper understanding of the malignant cell, less intrusive surgery, radiation accuracy, and better chemical compatibility and synergy are just a few of the major advances from conventional research.  However, the issue is that these breakthroughs have not produced anything close to a cure or even an appreciable decrease in the mortality rate.  Yet, every year, increasingly more money is collected from taxes and donations to be poured into seemingly bottomless pockets of those on a seemingly endless search.  And hardly any of it is being directed to potential opportunities outside the venues of conventional medicine. 

Complementary therapy research is seen as not being on the leading edge of medical science and has a less appealing rate of return on the sponsoring organization’s time and investment.  We need more influence and incentives from the funding agencies to encourage institutes in complementary-related research.  However, little change is likely until there is a groundswell of demand from the grass roots for this research.  We who care about complementary cancer therapy and integrative oncology have to help the cull chicken acquire the resources to grow. 

Anyone who has followed even a few of my blog, Twitter, and Facebook posts knows that one of my greatest hopes in life is to see a significant reduction, if not and end, to chemotherapy as the cancer therapy of choice.  Integrative oncology seeks to complement conventional treatments such as chemotherapy lessening its duration and side effects.  The purpose of natural complementary therapies is to make chemotherapy more effective in killing the cancer cells, thereby reducing the prescribed number of doses and accompanying devastating damage to the body.

So, you can image my shock to learn that two recent studies show that patients with certain types of cancer can benefit from longer term use of certain chemotherapy treatments.  These results will be presented to the 2010 annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology.  Many oncologists will no doubt return from that meeting to their practice with the green light to prescribe longer periods of chemotherapy for their patients.  Ralph Moss’s Cancer Decisions report (www.cancerdecisions.com) states that the New York Times raised three concerns about the long-term maintenance therapy.  First, the studies did not reveal any improved rate of survivability.  Second, we can’t determine in advance the extra adverse effects of the prolonged treatment.  And, third, the cost of such virtually unending treatment could be astronomical.

It is amazing that, in spite of all the effort of integrative oncologists to reduce the dependence on chemotherapy, conventional researchers find that the best use of their time and our money is to test the extended use of such harmful and historically unsuccessful treatment.  I believe the defeat of cancer as we know it is impossible until the medical community and the general public become serious about vastly expanding research into complementary therapies.

What do you think?

In an earlier post, I highlighted the tremendous amout of money that is being infused into the various cancer fighting institutions such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the American Cancer Society (ACS), the Komen Foundation, etc.  Americans provide over 6 billion a year in taxes and donations through these organizations for cancer research and care.  This is good.  But, regrettably, hardly any of it goes toward any effort other than a traditional, conventional approach to cancer.  The billions of dollars are almost entirely spent on chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery projects.

Real hope must lie in more than the limited successes that conventional treatment has produced. Real hope will come with substantially more resources directed toward Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research, and that isn’t happening.  The objective of CAM research and practice is not to replace conventional medicine, but to enhance it, reduce its harmful effects, and shorten its duration.   This concept of complementing conventional cancer treatment with natural, non-toxic therapies that strengthen the body and mind is commonly called integrative oncology.

 In 2008, NCI was allotted $5.6 billion from its parent government organization, the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Of that tax-funded amount, only $122 million went to CAM projects.  That was about 3% of NCI tax receipts that went to CAM projects.  Grants and donations to ACS totaled just over a billion dollars in 2008.  Four small CAM research grants sponsored by ACS came to about a million dollars or about one-tenth of one percent of all ACS sponsored grants.  CAM-related research grants provided by the Komen Foundation accounted for about one million dollars of the $60 million allocated for all projects in 2008.  This was less than 2% of all monies raised by Komen going toward any kind of CAM research.  My best estimate is that CAM cancer research receives only about 1% of all cancer research grants in America.  That amount will not change the course of cancer treatment.

Unless and until we become seriously committed as a nation to exploring possibilities outside of the conventional areas of chemicals and radiation, we will just be extending the unsuccessful strategy of the cancer war indefinitely.  The new strategy for the war on cancer must be funded at a much greater level. 

Dr. Michael McFarland is an acquaintance of mine and a fellow lake-dweller here in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  He is a prominent ophthalmologist who gained world-wide attention 20 years ago with a new and controversial methods for doing cataract surgery. 

Cataract surgery goes back as far as the 6th century BC.  The first references to the procedure in the Western World are found in the Latin document De Medicinae in 29 AD.  Through the centuries, rather bizarre methods were used to remove the blinding condition.  By the 18th century, European doctors were successfully extracting cataracts, but not until the 1940s was the concept introduced to replace the lens with an artificial, intraocular lens.  By the late 20th century, the state-of-the-art was to use a single stitch to close the incision used to replace the lens.  Dr. McFarland, however, was frustrated as a relatively new surgeon that the single stitch was causing more problems for patients than any other part of the surgery.  He came up with a beveled incision technique where the pressure of the eye itself would keep fluid from leaking and allow the cornea to heal.  He performed the first no-stitch surgery in 1990. 

The initial reaction from the ophthalomologist world was that the procedure was ridiculous.  One leading doctor in the field told Mike that he was going to leave a trail of blindness from one border to the other.  Dr. McFarland invited many of his colleagues to observe him perform the new technique in his own clinic.  Soon those in the profession began to accept the procedure and trained to use it in their practice.  Today, the no-stitch technique is the standard practice all over the world.  It permits cataract surgery patients to recover faster with less pain and fewer complications. 

I know it’s not a perfect analogy, but this breakthrough in cataract surgery is the kind of breakthrough we desperately need in the cancer war.  I believe that the integrative oncology movement among a dedicated handful of doctors is the testing ground for a future breakthrough in the quest for victory over cancer.  The shift by conventional oncologists toward acceptance of certain complementary cancer therapies is still accompanied by skepticism.  Some fringe ideas are quickly ridiculed by those respected in the field just as was the no-stitch procedure.  I long for the day that a Dr. Mike McFarland of the practice of oncology will surface with a breakthrough therapy for cancer.  Such a doctor will have to have thick skin for the initial waves of criticism, but may ultimately set the standard for cancer treatment. 

I invite your comments.