Day +269 : Common Misconceptions About Cancer

I am fine today.

On my blog Day +262, I posted a newspaper cutting where the chairman of Malaysian Oncological Society (MOS), Dr Gurcharan Singh Khera, warned the potential risks of taking natural supplements indiscriminately. MOS has a very informative though brief website that provides valuable information to cancer patients.

One of the attractive sections is “Common Misconceptions About Cancer”. I extract the most frequent misconceptions that I encountered from friends and relatives after I was diagnosed with the disease:

Many people suspect my disease is caused by my diet. See what doctor says:

Doctor, what food should I avoid?
Food is not the most important cause of cancer. Neither is it an important modality in the treatment of cancer. It is important that cancer patients observe a diet high in protein, calories and vitamins while undergoing treatment. However, that is a far cry from saying that "this food will prevent cancer" or "that food will cause cancer!"

People sent me document warning me how damaging the conventional treatment could be and advised me to go for alternative treatment – taking organic foods, vitamins, mushroom and many other 'magic' foods, and stop taking many other foods such as sugar, dairy product, meat etc. See what doctor says:

I don't want to undergo cancer treatment because 'good' cells are killed.
Cancer treatment is a judicious combination of surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and molecularly targeted therapy. There is no such thing as medical treatment (for any disease, including cancer) that is devoid of side effects, just as there is no such thing as a free lunch. However, most side effects of cancer therapy are temporary, reversible and manageable. Much progress has been made in the control of nausea and vomiting, which is a frequent side effect of treatment. 'Growth factors' (G-CSF, erythropoietin) are available to combat bone marrow suppression, which is another common side effect of cancer therapy. And the list goes on… If cancer is left untreated, there will be great suffering. Death will ensue within two years in most cases.

I received countless proposals to go for one form or another kind of alternative therapy. See what doctor says:

What about alternative therapy?
What about it? There is no alternative civil engineering, no alternative computer technology and no alternative chemistry. Any treatment for cancer has to be subjected to the rigours of scientific enquiry. This inevitably means a slow, laborious, intellectually honest process that starts in the laboratory, proceeds onto animal studies and finally studies on humans. There is only medicine that works and has been proven, and medicine that is not proven and may not work.

The full article can be viewed here. If you have friends or relatives who are diagnosed with cancer, please refer this to them. I believe this would help them to clear a lot of unnecessary doubt.

The MOS website is at http://www.malaysiaoncology.org/.

See you next post :-)