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The world lost a true visionary yesterday with the passing of Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple. I remember back in the late 80’s when I was a young computer programmer/designer fresh out of grad school using the (Apple) MacIntosh computer for the very first time.
The MacIntosh user interface was so intuitive and such a leap ahead of the predominant Microsoft DOS operating system (remember? type commands at the green screen prompt) that I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
This new and emerging user interface in the 1980s that is taken for granted today rocketed the task of computer design light years ahead and allowed the development of computer systems to at last be something users could be involved in and easily understand.
There is no doubt that Steve Jobs’ passing at 56 years old was premature. He had much more to contribute to the world and I for one feel the world has been cheated now that he is gone.
Pictures of him in his final days showed a frail, shockingly thin frame consistent with a person who had undergone chemotherapy treatments for cancer.
While every single detail of Mr. Jobs’ cancer treatments over the years are not publicly known, one can’t help but wonder if his chemotherapy and radiation treatments contributed to his demise.
Just a few weeks ago, Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Senator Edward Kennedy died at age 51 from a heart attack. Her brother, Patrick Kennedy said that her many years of chemotherapy to treat lung cancer took a severe toll on her health and weakened her physically to the point where “her heart just gave out.”
Is Conventional Treatment for Cancer Worse Than the Disease?
It seems that chemotherapy/radiation treatments causing death rather than preserving life are becoming more common.
Radiation in particular ups the risk of heart problems in women undergoing conventional treatment for breast cancer. The May 2000 issue of The Lancet reported that women who had undergone radiation for breast cancer increased their odds of dying from other causes, usually heart related, by 21% compared with women who had not undergone radiation with the 20 year survival rate for breast cancer improving by only 1%.
Does that seem worth it to you? It sure doesn’t to me.
Chemotherapy is another conventional treatment for cancer that seems to hasten people’s death. The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death in the UK reported that its review of 600 cancer patients who died within 30 days of treatment revealed that over one quarter had in fact been killed by the chemo and not cancer.
The extreme toxicity of chemo treatments is what causes the rapid demise, usually infections such as the very serious neutropenic sepsis.
In the case of Mr. Jobs, this appears to be what happened. According to reports from multiple sources, he had received chemotherapy treatments in recent months at the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto California and his devastating physical deterioration from these treatments almost certainly contributed to his quick passing.
Would You Ever Use Chemo or Radiation to Treat Cancer?
If you received a cancer diagnosis, would you ever agree to chemotherapy or radiation treatments or would you explore nontoxic alternative therapies?
I, for one, would not consider conventional cancer treatment as such an approach to disease seems more than a little misguided. How can use of toxic chemicals and/or radiation possibly be beneficial when both of these treatments actually have been shown to cause cancer in the long run?
It seems that a more holistic approach to cancer would be wiser than the slash and burn approach of conventional cancer treatments.
In his article A Holistic Approach To Cancer, Dr. Tom Cowan MD writes:
“… the job of the doctor is to distinguish between the therapy and the illness. What I mean by that is if you get a splinter in your finger, and then your body makes pus to get the splinter out, is the pus the therapy or the disease? We know that pus indicates infection and the presence of microorganisms, and we learned in medical school that doctors should kill the pus. But I don’t think it is that far of a stretch to see that if you have a splinter in your finger, the pus is the therapy for the splinter. If you don’t take the splinter out, the pus will do it for you. If you mistakenly think that the pus is the disease and you destroy the pus, the splinter will stay and your body will attempt this process again. If you destroy the pus again, your body might repeat this process three or four more times. Then you have a chronic infection as the body keeps trying to remove the splinter. Eventually it will either succeed, or it will encapsulate the splinter, which is a tumor, a new growth. It is not a cancerous tumor but a benign cystic tumor of the splinter. The understanding that the pus is the therapy allows you to predict what is going to happen in the future.
Now think of this example. Joe Bloke is a smoker. In other words, he puts a bunch of splinters in his lungs every day. Twice a year Joe gets cough, fever, mucus–all to get the splinters out of his lungs. I prefer to say “cough, fever, mucus” rather than “bronchitis” because the word “bronchitis” separates you from the reality of the situation. His body is producing an inflammatory response–it is making a mucus-pus-fever response to cleanse his lungs of splinters. If Joe goes to a doctor who makes the mistake of thinking that the response is the problem, he will give drugs to stop the bronchitis–which is actually the medicine. So Joe will be left with the splinters. That scenario will happen twice a year for thirty years and then Joe has a big bag of splinters in his lungs, and we call that lung cancer.”
Holistic approaches to cancer help resolve whatever caused the cancer in the first place. Conventional chemo/radiation treat only the “pus” of the cancer as described by Dr. Cowan.
Stopping cancer symptoms by “killing” the cancer cells with chemo or radiation is not in any way a cure as Mr. Jobs tragically discovered in his long running quest to regain his health.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
Source: Doctors Rely on Chemo Too Much
But, folks! If we didn’t use conventional chemo, etc. treatments, how would the Big Pharmaceutical companies make their billions? (kidding!) “The power that created the body can also heal the body.”
That is so true. Just last night we were having the discussion about how even if Big Pharma could make drugs that cured us, why would they? It would put them out of business. They make their money by indirectly keeping us sick. And that’s not conspiracy theory, my friends, they don’t even make an attempt to hide it. We are all just too busy and distracted by our own daily drive for survival in this country to have the energy enough to care and see the truth. Even with cancer treatment, they make huge money by prescribing standard treatments like radiation and chemo. Not to mention how the hospitals have to sell the treatments to pay off expensive equipment and specially trained technicians. It’s a business, plain and simple.
Having said all that, I want to believe that I would choose a non-invasive path to treating my cancer, but in the face of family pressure, and my own fear, I just don’t know how I would feel.
Where did I JUST encounter the phrase “the tumor is not the cancer” and treatment won’t change until the medical profession realises that? It might have been this [temporarily free!] documentary: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/02/food-matters-the-movie.aspx?e_cid=20111002_SNL_Art_1 (caution: raw vegan bias. Otherwise good).
The growth of a tumor is a sign of failure in the body’s healing process. With so many cells in our bodies, mutations happen every minute but apoptosis keeps them under control. Cancer is when apoptosis fails, immune response fails, inflammation prevents the body from maintaining itself… Cutting out the tumor is invasive, damaging (just when the body is already overwhelmed), and misses the point to boot!
Having recently lost my father-in-law to pancreatic cancer I know how the panic of the diagnosis can impact treatment choices. Perhaps this changed definition of cancer would pierce that fog and lead to different care choices. I don’t know though, since I’m not in that position, thankfully.
Never in a million years would I consider chemo or radiation. My approach would vary slightly depending upon the type of cancer (tumor or blood/systemic) but I would treat it nutritionally and naturally.
That’s all well and good for an adult to choose an alternative treatment but it is impossible for a mother to choose one for her child. Two mothers I know are dealing with cancer with their children and they had/have *no choice* but to undergo chemo et al. They were immediately assigned social workers and if they did not bow to the chemo, their children would have been removed from their homes to undergo it via a foster family. No option there!
Are you serious? This is outrageous!! I am speechless…
Yes, I am serious and yes, it is outrageous. If you bristle at the state knowing better than you what is good for your child, please sign the petition at http://parentalrights.org/
It’s the same with vaccinations. As much as people like to think we have a choice about getting them ourselves or giving them to our children, really, we do not. If you adopt from a foreign country, for instance, entrance can only be gained after all in the family are innoculated. Same when American’s travel outside the USA. And those school nurses? Most of them will drive you up a wall until you vaccinate. We think we have choices but in reality the gov’t has the upper hand. Ultimately, it would seem, we have no choices in much of anything and that includes the foods we eat and the right to grow them, the animals we keep and how we treat them for disease and and how we feed them (grass or grain), and we simply have no power at all about the economic devastation encompassing our nation. It’s getting scary.
Thank you, Sarah. I’m on your wavelength, it seems. This is a topic near and dear to us, lately. I am 56, my husband is 61 and we can say, unequivocally, we would never do chemo for cancer. Ever. At best, it has a 2-3% “success” rate while devastating your body’s ability to “create more pus.” We believe the body heals itself when allowed, but only when living a healthful lifestyle, eating good foods. You are what you eat.
We believe cancer is a fungus and quite possibly the result of a vitamin deficiency (movie World Without Cancer). Oddly, the USDA outlawed bitter almond trees which is where you get B17. Around the same time, the FDA outlawed selling vitamin B17 in any form. B17 is recently available again as are raw bitter almonds and I’m not quite sure of the reasons for this. I believe the USDA’s move to have all almonds pasteurized was a move to destroy the beneficial properties of almonds, bitter almonds in particular.
I find it VERY interesting to review the recent cancer society debacle where one of the societies (can’t remember which one) decided to recommend that a very early discovery of breast cancer cells may not need extreme conventional treatment, that the body will heal itself. We all have cancer cells all the time and, when those cells live in a healthful environment, the bad cells routinely commit suicide.
Well, big pharma went crazy and made the society (who gets big pharma funding) retract!
Hal’s father was a 13 year survivor of lung cancer after having a lung removed! He died, prematurely we believe, from leukemia. Where did he get leukemia? From all the xrays they did afterwards during “checkups” to see if he had any more cancer in the other lung!
The only thing we would consider doing is surgery to remove a large tumor and there is a slim chance we might use very pointed laser radiation. But those are big ifs and we are reading all we can.
In the past 3 years, Hal lost his mother to brain cancer (she was on every old lady drug you can think of, ate only industrialized food), his baby sister to breast cancer (took every conventional treatment available including double mastectomy, would not hear of alternative medicine) and his older sister to lung cancer (found late, died almost immediately, did all the conventional stuff during her last months). If Hal lives past age 69, he will be the longest lived person in his family’s known history. We are working on it! I’m not done with him, yet, lol!!!
One more thing, then I’ll shut up: I recently watched House of Numbers on Netflix about HIV. Very very interesting. Even the scientist who “discovered” the virus says the body will heal itself, that everyone carries it and, when left to our own devices, our bodies kill it. The documentary points out that most “AIDS” patients die of the treatment. Having lived in Key West for 30 years, I’ve lost countless friends to the treatment. Color me unhappy about that!
Thanks again, Sarah. Great post! I’m off to read Mr. Cowan’s article now.
I can’t even imagine the circumstances that would drive me to chemo, but perhaps there is one. Radiation, exquisitely well targeted? Possibly, but not likely. In Steve Jobs case, the really clincher for him, I believe, was that he was on immuno-suppressive meds following his liver replacement a few years back. That gave his cancer the green light, with no obstacles. From all I’ve heard, he was a truly nice guy. Rare in business.
The average treatment costs $350,000+. I think my father would have lived many more years if he had done nothing. Instead his last years were painful and miserable. I HATE the cut, poison and nuclear blast treatment.
Thanks for sharing, Sarah. It makes me want to explore what options are out there if I ever get cancer.
I don’t see how this is post is so offensive to people. If you were part of Steve Job’s family, I’d understand, but this is just a timely blog post considering the dangers of chemo while his passing is on our minds.
Exactly what I thought. Now is the time to think about this type of stuff when we are grieving about the loss of such a visionary such as Steve Jobs. Thinking about whether to accept conventional cancer treatments for the first time when a cancer diagnosis is staring you in the face is not the best time to make such decisions.
Steve Jobs’ family is not the only one to have lost someone to cancer. This is a very painful topic for a lot of people.
Fwiw, I believe would carefully use medical treatments if I had cancer. I avoid doctors on issues of health, but I think it’s unwise to dismiss them when you’re dealing with actual illness.
Right, but my point is Sarah isn’t showing up to your loved one’s funeral raising these questions. And she’s not pointing fingers either. She was very respectful of Jobs and speaks from the passion of minimizing the pain and death that may possibly be unnecessary (speaking of the damage conventional treatments may cause). From the distance of the internet, she is helping us consider what alternative options there are. She is not dismissing conventional medicine, she’s asking, is this all we’ve got?
These kinds of posts are so heartbreaking and can really cause harm!
If you’ve never been faced with a cancer diagnosis, you DO NOT know what you would do. If you’ve never heard those words… “You’ve got cancer.”, you cannot know what goes into a treatment decision.
To adamantly state “I would never…” indicates someone who is not considering there are options other than their opinion.
I AM a cancer survivor. Cancer is a horrible disease. It attacks all sorts of people, those who use natural remedies and eat whole, nourishing foods, those who don’t and those who land in-between.
Not all doctors are evil, cold-blooded monsters. Some are caring, giving people (with their own families) who desperately want to help the sick.
Not all medical interventions are evil and should be shunned. Each day, more and more options become available and more and more they can be used in an integrated health approach that does not decimate the body. More and more practitioners are opening up their minds and efforts to including natural and nutritional interventions alongside (or in some cases instead of) the older choices.
My friend, a lovely, wonderful woman, did not choose chemo or radiation, but only natural, holistic cures, including juicing and herbal, natural treatments. She died a painful and drawn-out, wasting-away death. When it came, her death was actually a relief to her and her family because she was out of torment. We cannot blame her frail body and her eventual death on chemo or radiation. It was not even used. The disease itself ate away at her body in spite of doing everything right with natural and nutritional interventions.
My cancer story is different. My cancer was different, my choices were different. I was hit suddenly and critically with an acute form of cancer and if not for emergency life-saving medical interventions, INCLUDING chemotherapy, I would be dead now. In fact, I came close 5 times during the first 5 weeks of treatment, but continuing on was the right choice. Did chemo save my life? No, but it was one tool that God used.
I am now 7 years in remission after 18 months of chemotherapy. Do I recommend it for everyone? No. But everyone’s situation is different and they must consider all their options and what is available to them. Even in my own cancer, there were major advances while I was still undergoing treatment! And I was able to incorporate nutritional, herbal and natural remedies to support my body while undergoing chemo treatment.
Posts like this are critical of others choices and options and are ill-informed because they do not take into account the myriad of circumstances, twists, turns and individual concerns that go into making such a life-altering decision.
Each person is different. Each cancer is different, even if it’s the same diagnosis as someone else, it’s in YOUR body which is unique and has unique needs and can not be addressed by a general statement such as “I would never…”
I hope and pray you never get the chance to make that decision for yourself or help your loved one make that decision, but if you do, I hope you will take into account, prayer, faith, and mercy and consider ALL the options, good and bad, and weigh the risks before closing the door on something that may save a life and teaching others to do the same.
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How is it possible that writing a post about THINKING for oneself causes harm? Are we to blindly accept chemo/radiation without considering the long term risks to other parts of the body or even premature death from such a decision?
You imply by your critical words that those who CHOSE chemo and or radiation did not think for themselves. What gives you the right Sarah? You weren’t there in my hospital room when I heard those words. You are next to a mom or dad who is told their child has cancer. What gives you the right to criticize what you do not know?
This is what causes harm, someone who has no knowledge of the individual, the situation, the diagnoses and the available options, out here telling others what to do.
If it were you, or your kids, you have the right – for yourselves. However to chastise someone else and wrongly assume that they “blindly accept [ed] chemo/radiation without considering the long term risks to other parts of the body or even premature death…” is offensive and irresponsible and brings your other teachings into question.
You have completely misconstrued what I’ve written.
Then I guess I did, too, because that’s exactly how I read it. In my interpretation, it seems you wrote from a decidedly inflammatory viewpoint, and per usual are unwilling to accept that your readers felt it. I’m not saying I disagree with you, nor am I saying I buy your thoughts hook/line/sinker; I’m just saying that an ounce of humility might benefit you, especially when you’ve both never been in the position about which you write AND you’ve clearly upset a reader who has.
Yes, they have, Sarah.
Again, it is JUST A DISCUSSION. Stop reading the post and go somewhere else for your entertainment. Life is about choices, that’s all that is being talked about here. You are feeling overly criticized in a discussion about a topic that was NOT INTENDED TO TARGET YOU PERSONALLY.
You made the decision you made about your care, if you feel good about it that should be enough for you.
I have been wondering this exact same thing as I lost a dear friend too “chemo” this summer. Alot of people do not realize what options are out there, so I for 1 think this message is important toget out. My dad survived pancreatic cancer with just the surgery to remove the tumor. 3 1/2 yrs later he is still cancer free. Keep spreading the news. Often people don’t like their ways challenged but making them aware of options just might save them!
Just because someone says they wouldn’t choose chemo or radiation, and think of it as poison doesn’t mean they are critising those who choose to use it.
Sarah was very considerate and not at all “telling others what to do.” She used words as “It seems that…” and “I, for one, would not consider…” She should not be blamed if a reader is using high strung emotion to criticize her post. Granted it’s an emotional topic, but to consider her manipulative or ill-willed to bring up this topic or to assume that her readers can’t logically consider her viewpoint?…Shame on us. This blog post isn’t titled, “What you absolutely must do in every situation where cancer arises…” but the hypothetical, “Would you ever use Chemo/radiation?…” She is not assuming that people who choose chemo don’t consider their options, but since it is the standard treatment, why not ask about it and mull over its validity (while not invalidating it altogether).
Wow Sara. Sorry you’re taking a beating from some people on this. I appreciate you standing strong on your beliefs about this, even while showing a great visionary the respect he deserves. Signed, A Mac-user all the way!
I agree!
Agreed. Typing on my Mac right now.