Alternative therapy 'exploits' patients

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Alternative therapy 'exploits' patients

Friday, 24th November 2006, 07:24
Category: Healthy Living
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Cancer patients need protection from "vile and cynical exploitation" by the alternative medicines industry, an expert warns today.

Oncologist Professor Jonathan Waxman says up to 80% of all cancer victims take a complementary treatment or follow a dietary programme to help treat their illness.

But the rationale for the use of many of these approaches is obtuse or even misleading, he said.

Indeed the claims made by companies to support the sales of such products may be overtly and malignly incorrect and, in many cases, the products may be doctored by chemicals borrowed from the conventional pharmaceutical industry.

The reason that these products are accessible to patients is that they are not subject to the testing of pharmaceuticals because they are classified as food supplements.

Prof Waxman, of Imperial College London, said: "So why do patients take alternative medicines? Why is Science disregarded? How can it be that treatments that don't work are regarded as life saving?"

He believes it is because the complementary therapists offer something that doctors cannot offer – hope.

Describing the approach of some alternative medicine companies Prof Waxman said: "If you eat this, take that, rub with this, manipulate this bit of your cranium, avoid this, and really believe this then we can promise you sincerely that you will be cured. Yes, we can cure you.

"And there is such pressure on the patient who has failed to be cured by, for example, the shark cartilage, because sharks allegedly don't get cancer, or the sheep sorrel, because sheep sorrel eats up morbid matter.

"The patient has failed, not the alternative therapy, and the patient has let down the alternative practitioner and disappointed his family who have encouraged his 'treatment'."

The NHS Directory of Complementary and Alternative Practitioners lists 29 directories, which include
'Flower Therapy' and 'Dowsing.'

Prof Waxman said: "Alternative medicine is big business, with a market value in the UK alone of £250m in the year 2005. The current prediction is that sales will increase by 7% per annum.

"The rationale for the use of many of these approaches is obtuse — one might even be tempted to write misleading. It is difficult to provide any sort of objective rationale whatsoever for the sales of any of these products.

"Indeed the claims made by companies to support the sales of such products may be overtly and malignly incorrect as described with some pathos in patients' websites.

"In many cases the agents that are for sale may be doctored by the addition of chemicals borrowed from
the conventional pharmaceutical industry."

As well as the complementary medicines they take, many patients will have changed their diets in order to cure their cancers, said Prof Waxman.

He said: "They will have become strictly vegan, and believing that the cancers that they have result from changing
our lifestyles from that of our prehistoric ancestors, will consume vast volumes of vitamins hoping to replicate
a chimpanzee's diet.

"Of course, there is a convincing body of information that proves that there is a strong dietary basis to the development of cancer.

"However, we also know that once cancer has been diagnosed no change in diet will lead to any improvement in cancer outcomes."

Added Prof Waxman: "Why do patients change their diet? For some it is a way of taking back some control of a situation that is entirely out of their control.

"For others it is because of the pressure put on them by families, friends or vested interest groups to 'go organic'.

"It is time for legislation to focus on a particularly vulnerable section of our society and do something to limit the exploitation of our patients.

"Why not subject the alternative medicines industry to the level of scrutiny that defines pharmaceuticals?Reclassify these agents as drugs - for this is after all how they are marketed - and protect our patients from vile and cynical exploitation whose intellectual basis, at best, might be viewed as delusional.

"The current EU initiative to bring forward legislation on this matter is welcomed."

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