Quoted from Dr. D

Thanks for bringing this point up. I hadn't ever thought to discuss this important point.

Because in many instances, without it, people die unnecessarily.

Is that a ringing endorsement of modern oncology? No, but what do you propose instead to tell a kid with a pediatric leukemia that is highly treatable: to juice raw liver in take coffee enemas instead? Years ago I had a patient who had a stage three testicular cancer. This cancer is 100% curable with chemotherapy. His wife, a massage therapist, was pushing that he go 'completely natural.'   I politely explained that there were many, many options he could use to help control and optimize his results, but it would not be wise to forgo a treatment such as this, which was so reliably successful. They opted instead to do juice fasts and go elsewhere. Six months later they were back in my office, he riddled with metastasis, now taking that very same chemo to simply 'debulk' the cancer and help him survive a bit longer pain free.

Epic fail.

I'm currently monitoring two brain cancer cases who are bucking the odds for long-term survival. In both cases they received convention treatment plus a tailored regimen from me. I doubt if they had received only one or the other that they would be alive today, though I am certain that Gary Null and Joe Mercola would have told them that this was all a big mistake. Trouble is, where are these guys when the patient comes back with the recurrence. I can tell you they are no where in sight. That's when they send in the assistant to tell you that 'maybe it is time to do the chemotherapy.'

Antineoplastons work in a very small number of people. I've seen several patients on Bryzinski's treatment, with no concurrent chemotherapy, die. Movies are nice, but reality should also include what they don't tell you. People die on Gerson Therapy. Chemo is not the be-all and end-all and some people are going to die no matter what.

A primitive approach, IMHO, is to base your decision on broad sweeping conclusions drawn from consumer reading material that limits your ability to decide what is the right thing to do then and there.

My goals are quite simple: to get my patients from one side of the river over to the other. If I can do that with exclusively naturopathic modalities, so much the better. If in order to do that I need to combine modalities, well, that is part of the equation. If the only way that I would agree to ferry them across would be to require them to do only that which is acceptable to me I would not be much a ferryman, now would I?

Hopes, aesthetics and dreams are nice. I get up five days a week and deal with realities.

Big difference.

BTW, the Hippocratic notion of 'first do no harm' (primum non nocere) is not an accurate interpretation. It is more accurately, 'if at all possible, do no harm.' i.e it is a heuristic, not an algorithm. If it were a law then draining a abscess or giving a B12 injection would be a violation.