Is It Right For A Doctor To Profit From The Misery Of Cancer?
Opinion by Nurse Mark
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Doctors are not allowed to profit from selling drugs, right? Everybody knows that – doctors just write a prescription for whatever medicine is best for the patient, and that’s it – they don’t sell the drug or make profits from it, right?
Wrong!
There is one kind of doctor who is allowed, even encouraged to profit from the sale of drugs, and those profits are often so large as to be obscene.
Those doctors are cancer doctors – oncologists – and they are allowed by law to buy chemotherapy drugs from the drug companies and to re-sell them to desperate cancer victims at a “set” profit. That profit is regulated, supposedly to keep doctors from charging whatever the market will bear. To get around this restriction, chemo doctors usually get deep discounts off the “wholesale price” and then bill the insurance companies (or the unfortunate patient without insurance) for the retail sticker price.
With many chemotherapy treatments costing thousands of dollars per day, and with little or no solid proof that the treatment is doing anything more than making the poor patient miserable, this might be called “quackery” – a name that oncologists give to natural treatments with far better proof of effectiveness – yet it is perfectly legal.
Most chemotherapy is outright toxic – it works under the supposition that because cancer cells grow more rapidly than healthy, normal cells they take up (absorb or ingest) substances more quickly than normal cells. This is not far off the mark for many cancers, and most early (and many current) anti-cancer drugs – “chemo drugs” – are toxins that exploit this characteristic of cancer. The idea is that the toxin can be given and will kill the cancer before it can terminally poison the patient.
Sometimes it works.
Often it doesn’t.
Chemo drugs that are claimed (usually based on “research” done by or funded by the drug companies) to statistically extend “mean survival time” by some amount – usually mere weeks or months – more often really just makes the patient’s life seem longer with horrid side-effects.
Is it possible that the best function of many of these drugs is to extend life long enough for the patient’s wallet (and probably the life savings of the patient’s entire family, including future generations!) to be completely emptied?
We understand the fear that a diagnosis of cancer brings to someone. The fear of illness, of disability, of disfigurement, of pain, of death.
We understand that life is precious – invaluable. No mere coin has greater value than a human life – no price can be set.
Yet oncologists set an exorbitant price on human life every day with their wildly profitable patented drugs.
Could this be why un-patented natural treatments are not recommended by your oncologist? Could it be that treatments given freely to us by Mother Nature simply don’t generate the big profits that drugs do?
If an oncologist knew of a simple, non-toxic, effective treatment that could stop many cancers in their tracks and even make them wither up and go into remission, should he tell his patients about it? Even if it doesn’t make him a profit?
Should the oncologist trade thousands of dollars a day in profit by toxic chemicals for whatever reasonable amount can be charged for the teaching and coaching that will help a cancer victim learn the simple dietary changes that can cause a metabolic shift that puts cancer on the run and turns that patient from a victim into a survivor?
Certainly an ethical cancer doctor should do those things – but will he?
Let’s be honest – there are plenty of people who have been told they have cancer, given chemotherapy, and now are told they have been cured. There are some cancers for which chemotherapy is proven to be highly effective.
Some cancers, in their early stages, will go away on their own.
But there are also plenty of people who have endured the misery of chemotherapy and lived not a day longer than they would have lived without it.
Even if a cancer patient elects to try the chemotherapy regimen (assuming they can afford it) that the oncologist is offering, there are natural (but un-profitable – read “inexpensive”) treatments and strategies that work synergistically with conventional treatment to improve outcomes and lessen or even eliminate the nasty side-effects of many conventional chemotherapies and that will often allow smaller, less toxic doses and regimens to be equally effective.
Someone facing a diagnosis of cancer and the chemotherapy that will inevitably be offered might want to ask the oncologist about a proven dietary strategy which will cause a metabolic shift that will stop many cancers in their tracks. This metabolic state literally starves most cancers to death, while actually providing improved nutrition that will correct a host of other health problems too.
Ask the oncologist about using a metabolic technique called Dietary Ketosis In The Treatment of Solid Tissue Malignancy – better yet, print out this free medical paper (references and all) and show it to your oncologist. If your oncologist gives you a blank look, or pooh-pooh’s it saying “that mumbo-jumbo diet stuff doesn’t work!” (or words to that effect – we’ve heard ’em all…) then just smile and nod your head and resolve to book a Brief Telephone Consultation with Dr. Myatt just as quickly as you can – for it is Dr. Myatt who wrote the paper and teaches other doctors on this subject!
Why would Dr. Myatt offer an important scientific paper for free or make Brief Telephone Consultations available so inexpensively? Because she and all of us at The Wellness Club believe that it is morally wrong for cancer treatment to be a for-profit cash cow – especially when those for-profit treatments cause so much misery and provide so little benefit.
And after all – if someone is willing to spend thousands of dollars a day and endless days in a treatment center having toxic chemotherapy drugs dripped into their veins don’t you suppose it might be worth it to them to spend 20 minutes in a telephone call with the doctor who wrote the paper on a simple and effective dietary change that could help turn the misery of that chemo treatment into a success in the battle against their cancer?
Wouldn’t it be worth trying a diet that is easy to follow (no complicated juicing schemes or odd food “rotations”), delicious (no pond-scum tasting “health drinks” or monotonous rabbit-food), and inexpensive (no special, unobtainable, order-only-from-us specialty foods) if there was a chance that it could halt the cancer and enhance the effect of the chemotherapy?
Finally, here is a “news-flash” for anyone who hadn’t figured it out: We are all terminal! We are all going to die of something, sometime. It is up to each of us to make the very best of what we have until that time comes.
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus – Let Us Live While We Live
Our goal at The Wellness Club is to help people to live while they live.
The Latin phrase “dum vivimus, vivamus” is thought to have been an Epicurean motto, and has been attributed to the Latin poet Horace (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS 65-8 B.C.). It is generally translated as “While we live, let us live!”
The meaning of this phrase was expanded on by the Puritan pastor, author and hymn writer Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) in an epigram on his family coat of arms, which included this motto:
“Live whilst you live,”
the Epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures
of the present day.
“Live whilst you live,”
the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my views, let both united be;
I live in pleasure whilst I live to Thee.
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus – Let Us Live While We Live
References:
- “How Medicare’s Payment Cuts For Cancer Chemotherapy Drugs Changed Patterns Of Treatment” Health Affairs, Published online ahead of print 6/17/10, content.healthaffairs.org
- “Medicare Cuts May Have Led Docs to Prescribe More Chemo” HealthDay News, 6/17/10, consumer.healthday.com
- “Medicare Cuts Increase Cancer Treatments, Study Finds” David Cameron, Harvard press release, 6/17/10, hks.harvard.edu
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