Page 1205 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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In Australia, breast cancer has been referred to as the silent killer. Few people understand that 2,500 women each year die of breast cancer. That is six every day. Worldwide, six million will get breast cancer in the next 10 years. In Australia, 100,000 women have breast cancer at the moment, over the next 10 years another 100,000 will get breast cancer, and 25,000 will die of breast cancer in the next 10 years, unless something changes. Since the 1960s, there has been an improvement in early detection of breast cancer, largely from the encouragement of education in self-discovery. But, regardless of the medical treatment, the outcome has usually remained the same.
Dr Contreras, from Mexico, gave some figures on the results of treatments for cancer. He said that super-radical mastectomy had been a massive failure and surgeons were now abandoning that treatment. Treatment of cancer - colon, rectal, gastric, breast, ovarian, cervical, head and neck - with chemotherapy largely made no difference to the results. As to the treatment of pancreatic cancer, the chemotherapy actually has a negative effect on survival against the control studies. He mentioned - and this was true of most of the scientists who appeared during the four days of the conference - that orthodox treatments tend to be too aggressive, they are highly toxic, usually non-selective, and mainly immuno-suppressive. They can be administered for only a limited time because of their toxicity and its inherent dangers.
The more up-to-date treatments that were presented at the congress were usually non-aggressive and low- or non-toxic. They were selective; they were protective of immunity, and they frequently achieved long-term remission. What that means, in my estimation, is that people no longer had their cancer, but scientists presented their cases by saying that they frequently achieved long-term remission. It was interesting that Dr Contreras reported that 60 per cent of oncologists who themselves contracted cancer refused orthodox treatments. When questioned as to why this was, they maintained that they were different from their patients. Dr Contreras said that the doctor-patient relationship of old times had been lost, especially in oncology. He said that it requires teamwork and mutual affection. Love for the patient is the basis of being a good doctor, and I would certainly agree with such a principle. His message to doctors was, "Treat your patients as you would treat yourself".
There is no doubt that the medical profession has a history of vehemently objecting to new treatments, to new propositions. Later, many of these propositions are taken aboard by the medical profession. I well remember Ignaz Semmelweis's discovery that it was not a good idea to go from the mortuary to the delivery room without scrubbing up. He presented evidence regarding childbed fever, but was hounded by the medical authorities of the day to such a degree that he finally committed suicide. Fortunately, his supporters continued with his valuable work and saw it brought to fruition, and many mothers and children were saved.
One of the most remarkable statements I have heard was to do with William John Harvey, who was a young medical intern around the time the medical authority of the day, Galen, said that blood ebbed and flowed through the body like a tide. William John Harvey showed, after studying bodies, cadavers and so on, that the blood pumped through the
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