He finally decided to go home and take care of himself. Later, through a friend, he was introduced to a physician of Chinese medicine who began to treat him at a cost of about NT$30,000 per month. "I didn't have high expectations, and didn't think that I could avoid death. I only hoped that I wouldn't be too much of a burden on others, and that I could leave this world as peacefully and in as little pain as possible," says Lin. Since then, three years have gone by. He has discovered that, although he's getting progressively weaker, he has no major problems in getting around or living an ordinary life. In particular, he hasn't experienced the hydroperitoneum or pain commonly experienced by terminal liver cancer patients. "I'm over 70, and that can't be considered a short life, so I'm very satisfied." New frontiers in medicine
"Alternative treatments are not entirely without foundation," says a practitioner of Chinese medicine named Hsu, who treated "Little Chung." Although Hsu does not have a license to practice medicine in Taiwan, he says that his diagnosis and examinations are based on concrete statistical measures from diagnostic tests (such as "electrodermal screening") based on theories of Chinese medicine. "Chinese medicine is the product of thousands of years of accumulated experience and discoveries by our ancestors. These are the result of direct experimentation and clinical experience on patients. How can you say there's no scientific basis, or that there's no evidence?" This practitioner of Chinese medicine, who studied for four years in a medical school in Dalian in mainland China, states that there, Chinese medicine is even today favored over Western medicine for the treatment of cancer. Obviously it is by no means fixed what should be considered mainstream and what alternative. But others feel that people have excessive expectations of alternative treatments. Lai Gi-ming is a senior staff member at the Cancer Cooperative Ward at NTUH and director of the Division of Cancer Research of the Taiwan Cooperative Oncology Group of the National Health Research Institutes. He says: "In Western medicine, any method that has a success rate of less than 20% is considered ineffective. But among the general public, if alternative treatments are used in 1,000 cases and even one of these survives, people make a big deal out of it."
But on the other hand he does not completely deny the potential of alternative medicine. He explains: "In fact, at present there's a trend in the global medical community to seek 'alternative' solutions to many of the impasses faced by contemporary medicine." He has personally seen cases in which patients using urine treatments were able to improve their condition and extend their life expectancy. After doing further research, he extracted from urine a substance which can induce cancer cell differentiation, and he hopes it can be developed into a new medication for treating cancer.
Besides research and development, Lai also believes that health care professionals should look at things from the patient's point of view. They should take the initiative to provide information and guide patients in alternative treatments, so that patients don't blindly act on their own and suffer for it. Lai suggests that if patients request guidance in finding treatments, then doctors could inform them of several of the more reliable options and their underlying medical rationales.
Options include medications or foods which can strengthen the immune system or repress cancer cells; treatments which can induce cancer cell differentiation, causing the cancer cells to metamorphose from malignant to benign, and then to die off naturally; angiostatins, which can suppress the growth of blood vessels in tumors, to prevent cancer cells from spreading throughout the body by following the circulatory system; as well as treatments using Chinese herbal medicine. These have already been affirmed by the scientific community. Though they lack clear clinical evidence, and thus few practitioners formally offer them, for patients seeking alternatives these are more acceptable to mainstream doctors.
"If patients want to eat jack bean or the like, as far as the doctor is concerned, as long as these are not too expensive, there's no harm. In the West it is believed that the re-occurrence of cancer can be controlled or prevented through diet. Currently many health food products are being developed based on this idea." Doctor Lai adds that there has recently been a rumor circulating that cancer can be combated by eating pasture grass, and some patients have gone out into the countryside to pick it for themselves. He does not oppose this, provided it is only supplementary and patients do not abandon orthodox treatments. "In any case, pasture grass is high in fiber, it doesn't cost any money, and going out in the fields to cut plants is good exercise." Who knows the answers?
While some doctors are understanding, the overall environment generally disappoints patients who seek alternatives. Cancer victims desperately searching for new treatments or medications are unable to put much hope in local medical research or pharmaceuticals development.
The practitioner of Chinese medicine named Hsu states: "The government is very reluctant to invest in medical research and pharmaceuticals development. That is why many commonly used traditional and folk treatments lack laboratory confirmation of their effectiveness. Inevitably people are hesitant about using them." Thirty years ago, the effectiveness of a given treatment could be determined by doctors' experience and the conclusions of the general public. But things are not so simple today. Modern clinical pharmacology-the basis of Western standards of drug approval-says that the safety and effectiveness of a given medicine can only be determined by expensive and extended clinical studies.
Hsu says: "The private sector cannot afford such an investment of manpower, material, and money. The government must establish a special institution, supported by the resources of the state, to do the job. Right now the Department of Health only spends about NT$30 million a year on research into traditional Chinese medicine. This is why so many obviously effective treatments have not yet been accepted into the mainstream."
Take for example the recent stir involving the jack bean. Tung Ta-cheng, an expert in biochemistry, who eight years ago was diagnosed with carcinoma of the bladder, concluded on the basis of his personal research that jack bean is effective. But he could not get support for further research to garner statistical evidence and thus win the acceptance of the medical community. Ultimately Tung, now 84 years old, had to resort to putting out this product as a "health food" in order to avoid the time-consuming process of pharmaceuticals approval and make it available to cancer sufferers at the earliest possible time.
With regard to this problem, legislator Hsiao Chin-lan held a hearing entitled "How to establish a testing system for traditional Chinese medicines and encourage the modernization of folk treatments." She states that naturally there's nothing wrong with the Department of Health denying jack bean the status of an anti-cancer medication so long as there is no clinical evidence either way. At the same time, she says, it is also a fact that the DOH pays little attention to, and invests very little research money in, such potentially effective foods or plants.
During the jack bean controversy, someone wrote a letter to a newspaper stating: "As a cancer victim, what I want to say is that I work very hard and pay tens of thousands of NT dollars every year in taxes. But the National Health Insurance Bureau is so strict about giving out any of the four major types of cancer medications, while reports of scholarly seminars on the jack bean don't really tell me what I want to know. When all is said and done, is jack bean effective or not? How should it be taken? With regard to biological treatments, including organic foods, the medical community has the responsibility to inform the general public, and request that the government appropriate funds to do biochemical technology research to help citizens protect themselves against and treat cancer."
As far as cancer sufferers are concerned, it is unimportant what is considered mainstream and what is alternative. What they want is the opportunity to extend their lives. Cancer sufferers and their families all look forward to the time when, under government guidance, the mainstream and alternative can join forces to seek breakthroughs in the treatment of all forms of cancer. This would be a major contribution to the worldwide fight against cancer. The problem is, can those currently suffering afford to wait?