In this paper, I will share my thoughts on health care and what I believe to be an alternate, healthier approach to it. The recent diagnosis of my Dad's prostate cancer and the discovery of cancer in Missy's Dad's tongue earlier this year prompted me to rethink this subject and research it further. What follows is my perspective. Hopefully you find it to be a reasoned, objective, and enlightening perspective. I don't expect it to be acceptable to or endorsed by others who come to this subject from a different personal history. However, I hope that for those who can accept some of what follows, this paper will raise awareness of health choice options that may someday provide you with significant health and quality of life benefits.

In this paper, I will use the term "conventional medicine" to cover normal or mainstream medical treatments or practices including "leading edge" treatments operating under the same paradigm as non-leading edge treatments. It is my opinion that conventional medicine is fundamentally misguided and flawed. Many of its problems arise from or at least are exacerbated by the larger culture in which it operates but mainly its problems are conventional medicine's own creation, they are rooted in its nature and history.

The problems I see with conventional medicine include at least the following:

• It is based on an inappropriate paradigm. It lacks a positive definition of "health" defining it as the "absence of defects, pain, or disease." As a result, its orientation is towards correcting defects, pain, or disease when these are usually symptoms of a larger system (i.e., human body) problem. To be precise, conventional medicine practitioners are not "health care providers" they are "injury and illness handlers". Conventional medicine tends to see the body in its individual parts, as it is in the parts where defects, pains, and diseases are identified, and it creates specialists for each of these parts who are then allowed to be fairly ignorant of the greater, functioning whole. The vast majority of the practitioners of conventional medicine receive almost no education or training in preventative medicine–healthy nutrition, environment, and lifestyle–or of the operation of the immune system. The former assumes a positive definition of health, the latter concedes that the true healer is the body itself not the doctor.
• Doctors of conventional medicine are typically placed on pedestals and often see themselves belonging there. They do not wish to be challenged by the "ignorant masses" who didn't undergo eight years of medical school training and internship. Under cultural pressure they often give the façade of allowing patients to make "informed choices," but the doctors present the only allowable choices and make their personal preference clear to their patients; applying significant pressure on the patient to see it the doctor's way. Society contributes to this mentality because we want doctors to be demigods. We don't want them to make mistakes because it'd be our health that suffers. We want them, not us, to have responsibility for our health. (We can always sue them if we don't like the results–assuming we live.)
• Doctors of conventional medicine often consider themselves "healers." I believe this view is incorrect. Doctors cannot heal their patients only the patient can heal him or herself. Doctors can at most facilitate or complicate healing.
• Practitioners of conventional medicine seek to apply high-tech and/or high-skill solutions to most any health problem. This substantially raises the cost of medical treatments. The latter is acceptable to patients as the costs are "absorbed" by insurance companies. Indeed, there is even something a little flattering about receiving expensive treatment. The former is desired by our culture as we prefer quick fixes, magic bullets, and leading edge technology to making unattractive lifestyle changes and breaking unhealthy habits. High-tech, high-skill solutions being the best solutions makes little sense from an evolutionary perspective. Why would a species evolve whose individuals physiologically can live to about 110 years, yet who will require some distant future technology to live much past half that age?!?. Note that nearly all medical historians attribute the significant increases in life expectancy made over the past century to improved sanitary conditions (including fresher food and cleaner water), not to modern medical practices.
• Practitioners of conventional medicine have been given (and have taken) responsibility for an important societal resource; our health. They and their supporting structures (research laboratories, physicians trade groups, pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, insurance companies, hospitals, etc.) form an institution that has a near monopoly on that resource. Any institution that has a monopoly on a valued resource will tend to become bloated, rich, powerful, impersonal, arrogant, and aggressive towards any infringement on its turf. (Examples of the latter; conventional medicine physicians dissuade self-help cures and it is illegal to help another with medical treatments or even give medical advice without a license.) These qualities don't serve the consumer as an individual nor do they serve the greater society as alternate approaches to health care are marginalized and under-explored.
• There are a lot of brilliant people in the institution of conventional medicine, though I believe their effectiveness is hampered by operating under an inappropriate paradigm, but there are many more not so brilliant and even not so competent people in the institution. There is a lot of money to be made and a lot of positions to fill, so there are many under-qualified applicants chosen to fill them. This lowers the competency level of the institution. This phenomenon is not peculiar to conventional medicine, it happens in any profitable industry in which demand for highly skilled workers far exceeds the supply (I see it frequently in the information technology industry).

Though Americans have the greatest access to conventional medicine including the most leading edges of it, and we are quick to call on conventional medicine (giving it responsibility for our health), and, in my opinion, America's conventional medicine practitioners are the best skilled and trained at what they do in the world, Americans have one of the lowest life expectancies of developed nations (in 1996 we ranked 20th). One can claim that's not conventional medicine's fault, that it is our less healthy diets, lifestyles, and environments that lowers our life expectancies. I think that's largely the case. However, as conventional medicine assumes the all-inclusive mantle of "health care provider" it demonstrates a lack of leadership in addressing our inadequacies in these fundamentally important areas. Conventional medicine is either demonstrating incompetence, irresponsibility, or both.

My personal history and research have led me to the above beliefs about conventional medicine. In almost every case of dealing with conventional medicine over the past six years, I have experienced or seen significant levels of incompetence. These were not just mistakes, which people can be expected to make, but incompetence encoded in defined processes or standard practices. I've experienced this with major as well as minor health issues. I didn't see incompetence with every person and every process associated with conventional medicine in every case; however, I did see it in each case and usually at more than one level (from among receptionists, nurses, anesthesiologists, and surgeons or their associated processes).

I am a skeptic who is generally open to receiving information from any quarter on most any topic (the more information I have to work with, the better able I am to discern between the accurate and useful and that which is not). I will continue to listen, with skepticism, to what conventional medicine says on matters of health. Conventional medicine can facilitate improving one's health and usually does more good than harm; though that corner was only turned about 80 years ago and many of today's "cures" are still worse than the disease. However, in the future I expect to seek help from conventional medicine only in times of injury and emergencies–not in cases of disease or problems arising due to aging except as a last resort.

Just because there are many problems with conventional medicine doesn't mean there is something better than it. My ignorance of anything more effective is why I continued to use conventional medicine. I am now convinced (though as an open-minded skeptic, even when I am "convinced" I may still change my beliefs based on future data) there is a better approach to health care. "Alternative medicine" is a broad category covering everything not (yet) included in conventional medicine. (What is "conventional medicine" depends on one's time and place.) Any medical incompetent can do anything medically unconventional and then be technically accurate in claiming to be providing "alternative medicine." Finding effective alternative medicine places significant responsibility on the individual for one's own health concerns.

The alternative medicine to which I am now committed, and that which I am discussing in the remainder of this paper, puts a great deal of trust in the physiology of the human organism. If a person gets what humans were evolved to expect and need, he/she will be healthy and thrive. Ill health is a symptom of a system out of balance. Re-balance the system and the symptom will likely disappear. The alternative medicine I embrace seeks to uncover and correct dietary deficiencies, unhealthy habits, emotional stresses, and environmental toxins that lead to disturbances in the human system, it strives to nurture and excite the body's immune system to help it do its job, and it addresses serious symptoms in a way that has little or no negative impact on the rest of the human system.

This year, on the strong recommendations of friends, we began seeing a naturopath/homeopath for support with health concerns. Dr. Susan Delaney (N.D.) has helped us with three different health concerns and we've been delighted with the results. We first visited Susan when our family was struggling with Eric having intense, emotional, destructive outbreaks that were growing in frequency and intensity. We met with her for an hour and a half discussing various aspects of our histories, behaviors, diet, environment, and mental and emotional states, then did a few follow-up phone calls. On the basis of our discussions, we made a dietary change (eliminating the little refined sugar there was from Eric's diet), a lifestyle change (we stopped watching TV shows or movies containing violence we'd sometimes watch as a family), and used homeopathic remedies. The results were quick and impressive. It is almost guaranteed that conventional medicine would have shuffled us in and out of a doctor's presence (though we might have spent a long time in the waiting room) who would have prescribed Ritalin; the current and over-used drug of choice on "difficult" children–despite its serious and dangerous side effects. Compared to conventional medicine, Susan is more personal, caring, accommodating (she'll have long discussions with us over the phone) and effective. In addition, her help costs much less than that of conventional medicine physicians (though for us, she is more expensive as insurance doesn't reimburse us for using her services). Because of all her advantages, we consider Susan our primary family physician and are choosing to see and pay for her when we want help with health concerns instead of getting "free" (i.e., insurance covered) help from conventional medicine practitioners.

A skeptical response to my position is, "if there were better health alternatives to conventional medicine, conventional medicine would adopt them for its own (as it is in the business of improving health)." There are at least three major reasons why it is extremely difficult for conventional medicine to adopt alternative approaches. First, the paradigms on which conventional and alternative medicines are based are incompatible. Someone who believes the earth is the center of the universe cannot have much of a conversation about planetary motion with a heliocentric astronomer. Conventional medicine cannot just adopt some of the practices of alternative medicine. Scientific practices need to fit into an accepted scientific model or theory. These alternative medicine practices require a different scientific model. Change the model or theory and everything else based on that model becomes open to question. It is very difficult and disruptive to change paradigms; yet that is what is needed for conventional medicine to accommodate alternative medicine practices. This paradigm difference blinds well-meaning practitioners of conventional medicine from accepting and recommending alternative medicine treatments for their patients. (There are physicians who are familiar with both paradigms and who find ways to merge them. These are typically alternative medicine physicians who were schooled in conventional medicine practices and who will use those practices as one of their "last resorts.")

Another reason conventional medicine is resistant to acknowledge the success of alternative medicine is that conventional medicine is institutionalized. Institutions are social organisms. An organism's first priority is for itself–self-preservation. Placing greater emphasis on preventative care or simpler, natural remedies would greatly reduce the need (and therefore the size, power, and money) of the institution of conventional medicine. The institution will resist that change. For example, consider conventional medicine's approach to birthing, a basic natural phenomenon. It is well documented that midwife assisted births, especially homebirths, have much better outcomes than hospital births (measured by the number of medical interventions, the mother's satisfaction level, additional post-natal medical care needed for the baby and mother, and infant and mother mortality rates). Yet where and how do the vast majority of women in our culture birth? Why? Our cultural mentality about the nature of birthing is that it is a risk-filled process that must be carefully managed, controlled, and overseen by a doctor who will "deliver" the baby. This inaccurate, unhealthy belief system is fed by practitioners and supporters of conventional medicine (including insurance companies that won't cover homebirths in many states) because to do otherwise would cede a portion of their raison d'être.

A third reason why conventional medicine is reluctant to adapt alternative medicine theories, treatments, and practices is that it would require the practitioners of conventional medicine, those highly skilled experts who have already spent 8 years in schooling and training, to "go back to school." These are people who have already made a huge investment to be where they are (including being admired by the masses) and who have large professional demands on their time and energies. Even for conventional medicine practitioners who are open to the idea, there is insufficient motivation and perhaps humility for the additional commitment needed to learn about alternative medicine.

These three reasons aren't publicly acceptable reasons for conventional medicine proponents to deny the efficacy associated with alternative medicine (they are likely not even recognized by those proponents). The conventional medicine institutions make the case that alternative medicine treatments are "unproven" and inadequately tested and researched. The first claim is a red-herring. It is only in math, logic, and the physical sciences that "proofs" exist. Doctors cannot honestly and accurately guarantee the success of any medical treatment on any particular patient. The second claim is part of a double standard. Conventional medicine endorses using "untested", "experimental" treatments, but only if they are its treatments done to improve or push the leading edge of conventional medicine. Funding for medical research is almost entirely controlled by the conventional medicine institutions (including government agencies) as are the rules for what constitutes adequate tests and research. Consider the case of acupuncture which to me and practitioners of conventional medicine seems a weird technique based on a faulty theory. When introduced to the West, acupuncture already had a centuries old track record of being effective for a variety of health concerns. Yet it is only very recently, thirty years after learning of the ancient practice of acupuncture that had been widely and successfully used in a country of more than a billion people, that Western conventional medicine has begun to accept and recommend its limited use–though even that is still controversial. So the institution of conventional medicine makes the rules, manages the money, and doesn't want anyone else to play. The very existence of alternative medicine, let alone its rapid growth, speaks volumes about the level of dissatisfaction many people are having with conventional medicine.

To be clear I am an unabashed supporter of science and the scientific method. I believe it is the best, perhaps only effective way of coming to understand our world. But note that any approach to understanding or improving health, conventional or alternative, can be scientific. Likewise any medical practices or technology may or may not be supported by evidence gathered through sound scientific efforts. Most medical practices and technologies--both conventional and alternative--are not supported by science. Relatively few medical practictioners are scientists.

Let us now turn to the specific case of how the two health care paradigms address cancer. It was this investigation that solidified my conversion to alternative medicine. President Nixon declared "war on cancer" in 1971 and despite enormous funding in research and many "promising advances," the war on cancer waged by conventional medicine is being lost. Death rates from cancers are up and there is no marked improvement in cancer survival rates. (The New England Journal of Medicine dated 5/29/97 cites the 6% increase in cancer deaths since the start of the cancer war as evidence of this [quote] "qualified failure." It is projected that 1 of 3 Americans alive today will eventually have cancer.) What is conventional medicine's response to repeated failure? More of the same. The conventional medical approach to cancer hasn't changed in any fundamental ways for several decades, it's still based on surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Conventional medicine is stuck in an ineffective paradigm. There are two thriving entities in this state of affairs: cancer and the cancer industry (which now collects over $30 billion a year in treatment costs).

What is cancer? The following is taken from An Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Cancer. This description is consistent with conventional medicine's description of cancer as given in the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book.

Cancer is a disease process in which healthy cells stop functioning and maturing properly. A mishap occurs inside these cells probably with a mutation in the genetic blueprint, the cells' DNA. The altered DNA makes copies of itself and passes its information and gene sequencing on to other cells, which then become cancer prone. As the normal cycle of cell creation and death is interrupted, the newly mutated cancer cells begin multiplying uncontrollably, no longer operating as an integrated and harmonious part of the body. In its simplest terms, cancer represents an accelerating process of inappropriate, uncontrolled cell growth–a chaotic process within the order of biology. Normally, DNA mutations are repaired or rendered harmless by the immune system. Every one of us, every day, generates hundreds of thousands of cancer cells that are usually recognized and corrected by our immune systems. When undesirable genetic alterations remain uncorrected–as will happen when the immune system is inadequately effective due to its being suppressed, weakened, or overwhelmed–then a cancer process can potentially escalate to its next stage of uncontrolled rapid growth. It does this by making copies of itself, a normal function of DNA, except in this case the mutated and undesirable DNA is copying itself. As more cancer cells are generated, the process continues to expand to form a tumor. The normal mechanisms of cell growth, replication, differentiation, and maturation then become unregulated, leading to chaos in the body.

Practitioners who take an alternative medicine approach to cancer have had many remarkable successes. (Remarkable by conventional medicine standards.) These physicians tend towards holistic approaches in which the patient's diet, lifestyle, and environment are made more harmonious with human physiology, the patient's immune system is strengthened through vitamin and mineral supplements, herbs, and homeopathic treatments, and the growth of the aberrant cancer cells is slowed, stopped and reversed by making it more difficult and even "undesirable" for them to grow. (Just as moss finds it "undesirable" to grow when moisture is removed from its environment and sunlight is added.) Many of the leading practitioners of alternative medicine were schooled in conventional medicine, indeed they have a long and personal history with conventional medicine's approach to cancer. It was that personal history of seeing loved ones suffer through destructive conventional cancer treatments then die that motivated them to look elsewhere for more effective cancer treatments. These doctors bring to their patients awareness of both approaches to dealing with cancer. They sometimes recommend a conventional cancer treatment, but that is not frequent and it comes as part of a larger treatment plan that seeks to preserve the patient's quality of life. (For example, side effects of chemotherapy or radiation are lessened or eliminated.)

Conventional medicine practitioners without an understanding of alternative medicine will necessarily violate the Hippocratic oath, "First, do no harm." Their invasive treatment techniques are destructive because they are seeking to destroy. Their patients will suffer some health damage as part of the treatment with the hope that there is more unhealth destroyed than caused. (Impacts to quality of life because of the unhealth caused by the conventional cancer treatments are rarely tracked and are not considered a measure of treatment success.) The tools people use are limited by their knowledge of them. If the only tool you have is a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. When my Dad asked a surgeon for his thoughts on his cancer condition the recommendation was surgery. When he asked a radiologist it was radiation.

Generally the tool people apply to their health problems is conventional medicine. For most people it's the only tool they know. They consign themselves to living in a system with a long, unsuccessful record (in the area of cancer). Use of any other tool would be, for them, "experimental". What is not often recognized and accepted is that every patient, including every cancer patient, is a guinea pig. One doesn't know how the patient will respond to any particular treatment or to no treatment. Everything the patient does or doesn't do is an experiment. Fear of "experimenting with one's health" is misplaced fear. Yet I believe it is this fear (as well as ignorance of alternate choices) that keeps most people reluctant to trying alternative medicine. Of those that do try it, many do so out of desperation due to the failure of conventional medicine. The number of such people is growing as the general satisfaction level with hospitals, HMOs, and physicians is declining. Multiple studies of the profile of people who use alternative medicine indicate they tend to be younger, have had more formal schooling, and have higher incomes than those who rely solely on conventional medicine. I see this as a healthy sign for it is the young and educated with disposal income who tend to set future societal directions.

What are my thoughts on my Dad's approach to dealing with his cancer? Given his life experiences and circumstances, it will be very difficult for him to see an alternative medicine cancer clinician as his primary cancer physician; indeed even to see one at all. So far, Dad has chosen the least invasive treatment of conventional medicine; hormonal treatment. Prostate cancer growth is believed to be stimulated by testosterone so the treatment he is getting involves taking drugs to block testosterone production, a treatment called androgen ablation. (To me, that seems a short cause and effect chain that is typical of conventional medicine's treatment of symptoms. I would want to understand why the level of testosterone was a problem now when it wasn't before? Was there a change in the level? What caused that? What are the side effects of this unnaturally reduced or eliminated testosterone production? Etc.) Dad and I talked about one drawback to this treatment; that is, although in 80% of the cases treated with anti-testosterone therapy the cancers initially disappear, they almost always return in 1-3 years and when they return they can grow independently of testosterone. Would that situation be worse? Would a likely cancer reoccurrence and any treatment side effects in the meantime be worth trading for the 80% chance of a 1-3 year reprieve from cancer? Fortunately for Dad, he has almost simultaneously converted to a near vegetarian diet (for his back and leg problems) and regular exercise. These diet and lifestyle changes are two aspects of nearly all alternative medicine cancer treatments. High fat, meat based diets tend to cause testosterone levels to rise to unnaturally high levels (for our species) so the low fat, high fiber vegetarian diet will reduce testosterone levels (without drug side effects) and reduce body fat. Less meat means less toxins in the diet (as toxins tend to become concentrated in fats, especially fats found high in the food chain) and this toxin reduction, weight reduction, and moderate, regular exercise all improve the health and performance of the immune system. I believe Dad's prognosis is good. He can be one of those few for whom the cancer doesn't return. (Conventional medicine, not looking beyond its own treatments of symptoms in isolation of the human organism, can't identify what types of people or lifestyles enhance the likelihood of remaining cancer free after androgen ablation.)

Missy's dad, Jack, had a very poor prognosis due to the cancer in his tongue. He was two days away from a scheduled surgery that would have removed most of his tongue and left him unable to speak, eat, or drink ever again. A biopsy a week before the scheduled operation revealed new details about the expected impact of the surgery. His conventional medical team postponed his surgery in favor of chemotherapy. That treatment seems to have eliminated the tumor and it is hoped that the radiation treatment he is now undergoing will eliminate any remaining cancer.

I'm hopeful for Dad. His cancer was found in its early stages and it is localized. I'm hopeful his positive diet and lifestyle changes and the less invasive conventional cancer treatment he is undergoing will improve his health. Prostate cancer tends to be a slow-growing cancer. Many more men will die with it than from it. I believe years from now Dad will look back on this period of his life as a frightening time, but also as a time in which he made changes in his life that dramatically improved his health and quality of life.

In life there are few guarantees. We have a strong desire for truths and certainties but unless we recognize the elusiveness of the former and the close-mindedness induced by the latter; unless we learn to live with ambiguity, uncertainty, open minds, and skepticism (above all about our own belief systems) our health–in its broadest sense–our happiness, and our human effectiveness will suffer.

© 1998 frantzs@geocities.com