Why do people get drawn into alternative medicines?

As the title says. Why?

Cancer is a very personal subject for me. I have had 2 sted-dads die from it. My wife has it. Her brother and father has it. And my daughter has recently been diagnosed with it.

There's so many different alternate medicines out there for cancer alone. Yet there's no evidence that any of them work.

Take this guy for instance Dr Sircus
Look at how many books he's selling all claiming to be the cure for cancer.

Plus there's other "doctors" giving out other cure all potions.

If they really are a cancer cure then why aren't there studies done? Why don't the writers of the books spend some of the money conducting the studies to back up their claims?
If they had a cure for cancer they could make millions. Nobel prize for instance was an instant $1.4million (in 2009).

I know that I'm very likely to outlive my daughter (I'm soon to be 37 and she's 11). Between my wife, her brother, father and daughter they have tried so many of these "miracle cures", yet they still have cancer.
Are they just 4 people they don't work on?
Is the whole cancer alternative medicine a scam?

I would also like to point out that I don't believe ALL alternative medicine doesn't work (before someone jumps on me).

a reply to: TerryDon79

Humans need hope. Hope is a very dangerous thing, but if it's a life hanging in the balance then hope is sometimes the best thing you have to cling to.

a reply to: TerryDon79

Because the main stream approach to cancer is nothing but a very profitable slow decline into death.

Sadly our medical industry has been built up on a very simple premise, keep people "healthy" enough to take medication into their graves.

This combined with the food industries job of making people sick enough to need medication and voila you got yourself a trillion dollar a year industry.

My stepfather has just been given 2 months to live, a year and a half after his original diagnoses. I share your pain of having to witness someone go through "conventional" treatment.

There are many alternatives that are worth looking into. What it boils down to is strengthening (not destroying) your immune system. Getting proper nutrition and removing the toxic environment that cancer thrives in. Sadly once the chemo/radiation approach has begun there are far too many side effects to manage.

originally posted by: GreenGunther
a reply to: TerryDon79

Humans need hope. Hope is a very dangerous thing, but if it's a life hanging in the balance then hope is sometimes the best thing you have to cling to.

I understand hope. I truly do.

But if people are so adamant that something works, why not prove it?

originally posted by: elementalgrove
a reply to: TerryDon79

Because the main stream approach to cancer is nothing but a very profitable slow decline into death.

Sadly our medical industry has been built up on a very simple premise, keep people "healthy" enough to take medication into their graves.

This combined with the food industries job of making people sick enough to need medication and voila you got yourself a trillion dollar a year industry.

My stepfather has just been given 2 months to live, a year and a half after his original diagnoses. I share your pain of having to witness someone go through "conventional" treatment.

There are many alternatives that are worth looking into. What it boils down to is strengthening (not destroying) your immune system. Getting proper nutrition and removing the toxic environment that cancer thrives in. Sadly once the chemo/radiation approach has begun there are far too many side effects to manage.

But finding cures would make them (elites, dragons, elves, lizards, nwo, whatever) rich.

Take any of these alternate medicines to cure cancer. Lets say iodine. If they done a study and the tests found that iodine cured more people of cancer than chemo/radiation then the price of iodine would sky rocket and they would still be making a bucket load of cash.

FYI I'm in the UK. We have free health care. Everything is free (unless you go private).

Alternative medicine has its place, but I don't think cancer is a disease that it should be used on except as supplemental to known treatments.

originally posted by: Bezelel
Alternative medicine has its place, but I don't think cancer is a disease that it should be used on except as supplemental to known treatments.

I would agree with that, mostly.

Like I said in my OP, I'm not against alternative medicine. I used to get serious back ache when I was taxiing. The thing that helped the most (even better than a good massage) was acupuncture. Lasted for longer than a trip to the massage place too.

a reply to: TerryDon79

We simply have a differing view of the cancer industry and it is global.

They do not want to create a cure.

The elites are already rich, the true elites control the monopoly money that they print. Keeping people sick is about control.

Fun fact you may not be aware of is that cancer was actually spread through the polio vaccine in the form of a little known cancer causing virus named SV40. That is simian virus 40, meaning they created at least 40 virus's while developing the vaccine. They knew about this in the 60's and continued using the vaccines that had SV40 in it until the 90's at least.

Also worth noting is that it is transgenerational and lies dormant in the body until the immune system becomes weak. May be a big part of the rise of cancer in children.

Spreading cancer since 1960

There have been legitimate cancer treatments that have been shut down. Gerhson Therapy, Willhelm Reichs orgone therapy, Royal Rife machine.

a reply to: elementalgrove

While some of that may be valid, I would have to disagree on the increase in child cancer. The only increase I can see correlates to increased population, increasingly bad diet and the main reason, we can detect it easier than we could 50 years ago.

a reply to: TerryDon79

The alternative medicine industry has grown into a profitable entity that offers hope to those that have exhausted mainstream treatments and are left without options. I'm sure there are altruistic healers out their, and on the other side of the spectrum, vermin that prey upon those seeking a miracle. Insurance coverage factors into some experimental and alternative treatments; denied coverage demands the desperate to at times come up with vast sums of money to pay for treatment/services.

Some forms of alternative and holistic medicine have provided relief where little was found prior, but big insurance loves the profitability of the treatment over the cure. Those that profit from the misfortunes of others is the scum of the earth IMO.

a reply to: Boscowashisnamo

While I agree on some points I'd also like to point out that the ones actually selling the books and whatnot for whatever price for alternate medicines are also as bad as companies who profit out of illness. To me they're the one and the same, just after money.

I can't really comment on insurance as, as I said, I'm in the UK and we get free healthcare.

a reply to: TerryDon79

Cannabis treatment have shown effective results in fighting cancer

Cannabis has been shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory

www.cancer.gov...

The biggest reason?

Desperation.

Another, almost as common reason? Cost.

a reply to: TerryDon79

I will attempt to explain.

First of all, most of the treatments for cancer which are recommended by medical organisations, are either fantastically invasive, or involve some pretty terrifying side effects. Sitting in a room with an IV bag full of toxic fluid running into ones arm is a prospect that a healthy person would turn around and fly the finger at after all.

Hair loss, muscle degeneration, run away weight loss, lethargy, physical agony...these are not things that people are generally willing to experience. If they are offered a solution which claims to save their lives without first removing all joy from those lives, most people, absent any particular capacity to examine the claims made for their validity, will take the softer option.

Luckily, when I say most people, I am actually not referring to most people, because most people these days can work out that the odds of defeating cancer with herbal remedies and yoga are about as good as the odds of winning the lottery while being hit with lightning, and struck by a comet at the same moment.

The main reason that these alternative therapies tend to get a look in, therefore, is largely fear. It is understandable to fear the regulation treatments for various types of cancer. Removal of affected tissues, toxic and radiotherapy, brain surgery in some cases. These are big, scary moves, involving pain, healing time, and no certainty of success in all cases. Then you have the other situation, where a tumour or other cancerous material is considered to be placed such that it is inoperable, or where a condition is considered terminal.

People with terminal cases of cancer, or inoperable tumours, are in a very different situation to cancer patients for whom there is a treatment option, or several thereof, available. They are literally told by their doctors, that there is not a great deal that can be done, other than to mitigate for symptoms as they appear, that otherwise than that, the only thing that remains to be done is to ensure that the patients affairs are in order, that their bucket lists are as near to done as can be...

In that situation, a person could be forgiven for turning to practically any potion, lotion, ointment, tincture, herbal remedy, massage therapy, acupuncture, chakra healing technique, fasting, meditation, and any other new age mumbo jumbo you could name, because mainstream science at that point, or at least, it's representatives, have already essentially told them that their tool kit contains no instrument for their salvation.

HOWEVER, it is wise to be careful when listening to a terminal diagnosis from a single doctor or even a single hospital, or even a single nations medical establishment.

In the case of tumours considered inoperable, most of these tend to be deep in the meat of the brain, because their placement makes the invasive process of excising them very dangerous. Removing a cancer which is killing the patient, by paralysing them in the process, or damaging their memory centres, or their communications capability, or straight up killing the patient, is not in the least in the interest of the patient, and results in poor outcomes, and for that matter, lawsuits. So, these cancers are considered inoperable. There is, however, a treatment being looked at by the Germans, if I recall correctly.

Since plunging scalpels into brain flesh is not recommended, the trick is to reduce the amount of collateral damage done to the brain, by whatever invasive technique is necessary to perform the procedure. But how do you remove a golf ball sized tumour, without damaging surrounding tissue too much? The Germans have devised a treatment which works thusly:

A hole is bored in the skull, wide enough to admit the base of a very long, thin needle. This needle is pushed into the skull, through the brain, and into the tumour. Once the tip pierces the tumour, a solution of iron particles is injected into the tumour. The patient then lays down, with their skull between two electromagnets. Iron particles being magnetic, means that when the electromagnets begin to pulse, the iron particles move around. This is called agitation.

This agitation causes heat to build up in those particles, and therefore the tissue immediately surrounding them, destroying the tissue of the tumour, and only the tumour. And here is the best part. Although the patient will require several treatments between the magnets, they only ever require one injection, per tumour treated. This means that rather than having to have several penetrations of the brain case, there is only ever one, per tumour.

Once the treatment plan is complete, the following things should have happened. First of all, the thermal damage done to the tumour by the agitated iron particles, will have broken the tumour down into inert, dead pieces, destroying its physical form, and any active bodies within it, without collateral damage to the surrounding brain tissues. Those pieces and the iron particles themselves, then flush away out of the body, by way of the same processes which remove any other material from places in the body. The patient would eventually flush said articles down the toilet, presumably.

Then we come to the crux of the issue. Depending on where one happens to live, one may be living under a system in which one must pay for ones own medical care, at point of issue, or by instalments. I do not live under such a system, thankfully, but there are those who do. If you do, then effective, up to the minute, state of the art treatments will cost a VAST amount, a prohibitive amount, one might say. This means that someone who is less well off will not necessarily be able to secure the very latest, most effective treatment for their condition, and may not even be offered that treatment, or made aware of its existence by their doctors, especially of that doctor is of the sort to get aggravated with patients who have little by way of monetary resource.

So it is important to know, not just what treatments are being offered, but what treatments are medically and physically possible, even the ones that you cannot afford. Why? I will be honest, if a patient lives in a nation where healthcare is not considered a right, then the main reason to be made aware of a treatment that a patient cannot afford, is so that the family know that the system under which they live is flawed, and so that they can protest about it.

But even if you happen to live in a nation that has taxation paid healthcare (you know, a halfway civilised nation) then the fun does not quite stop there. Because healthcare is provided from a pool of taxpayer money, some hospitals will recommend a cheaper treatment, over a more expensive, and more effective one. They might also fail to make a patient aware of an expensive procedure, available in another country, or through private practice.

And to return to the main thrust of your thread, the above are all reasons why someone would turn to alternative therapy. It is simpler to get hold of, generally cheaper, involves less toxic materials, and less bodily invasion, and therefore, less fear.

... because if everyone were healthy, then a lot of moneymakers would be out of business. the health industry wants to make money off of you. pharm companies want to make money off of you. if there isn't sickness (or simply the fear or being sick) then those companies would become bankrupt. a lot of people reject this and refuse to support them, so they turn to alternative medicines.

a reply to: TerryDon79

cancer is on the rise and it is because people believe in the current consrtuct that the people in charge feed us(no pun intended) If we were allowed to have complete control over the food and medicine that goes in our bodies we would have lower cancer rates. INstead we eat drink and consume all the things the tbtb would never touch.

a reply to: TrueBrit

So in essence it comes down to fear, price and lack of other options?

a reply to: TerryDon79

Largely speaking, yes. There probably are those out there who adopt alternative medicines out of some misguided ideological issue with all things mainstream, or because their religion demands it, or some other flim flam, but those are a statistical anomaly, rather than being a statistically relevant demographic.

originally posted by: DOCHOLIDAZE1
a reply to: TerryDon79

cancer is on the rise and it is because people believe in the current consrtuct that the people in charge feed us(no pun intended) If we were allowed to have complete control over the food and medicine that goes in our bodies we would have lower cancer rates. INstead we eat drink and consume all the things the tbtb would never touch.

I don't believe that at all. Some say fast food causes cancer. I've seen them (what people call the tptb) eating fast food. There's also the ones you see smoking, drinking, taking painkillers and a whole list of other things.

I don't believe in that side of this, sorry.

originally posted by: elementalgrove
a reply to: TerryDon79

Because the main stream approach to cancer is nothing but a very profitable slow decline into death.

Well spoken. Absolutely true.