Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
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Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
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A friend has advanced pancreatic cancer and she wants to raise money to go to Mexico for an alternative therapy based on apricot kernels that a Cohrane review says has no benefit. She is desperat
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Forums » Open clinical » General clinical » Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
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Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
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Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 18/7/2012 4:05 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 13
First: 20/3/2012 Last: 11/3/2013 |
A friend has advanced pancreatic cancer and she wants to raise money to go to Mexico for an alternative therapy based on apricot kernels that a Cohrane review says has no benefit. She is desperate and has a young family. Should I send her the Cochrane review or let her have some hope? Her conventional therapy makes her feel horrible. I have told her to apply the same criteria she should do to conventional medicine- what are the risks and benefits because taking a treatment that can harm you with little evidence of benefit is not worth it. I encouraged her to tell her consultant who snorted but said he would support whatever she did. It will cost lots of money but should I just let her be...or be more strongly against it with the evidence in hand? I am not sure she wants evidence. I think she just wants hope. |
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Re: Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 18/7/2012 5:53 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1784
First: 7/3/2009 Last: 18/5/2013 |
Instead of the mentioned treatment. have all conventional experimental treatments been exhausted? What about John Hopkins center? If I remember they had a study running with creating antibodies against the tumor cells. And even if she wants to try the apricot kernel therapy, can't she have it near her home instead of Mexico? |
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Re: Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 19/7/2012 12:33 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 93
First: 18/3/2011 Last: 4/3/2013 |
It is a good point as to whether there are new trials taking place. These supposedly natural cures in a more drastic setting often have more appeal though I think when people are disappointed that chemo has failed them because their cancer has come back. So they would rather go for something less 'poisonous'. But the Mexican border is full of these places isn't it? There are diet clinics for cancer- all sorts- near enough for desperate wealthy Americans to go for miracle cures. The reigulating authorities are presumably not so strict in Mexico. |
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Re: Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 19/7/2012 1:20 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 339
First: 17/12/2011 Last: 15/5/2013 |
Difficult. It might depend on how well I knew the friend. I would try to be honest but not burden them with science or bad news. Hope spring eternal to the human breast and I would not want to remove this. There come a time in illness when the emphasis changes from cure to palliation and then to a realisation from the patient and the physician that death is inevitable. I think that if the pancreatic cancer is advanced then worsening illness may decide what happens. |
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Re: Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 21/7/2012 12:03 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 106
First: 13/3/2012 Last: 9/5/2013 |
Sadly, it is often only when the cancer is advanced that patients are ready to consider changes of any kind in their lifestyle, treatment or attitude in general. At this point, actions often appear desperate, the patient clutching at anything that offers the promise, if not the fact, of a more appealing outcome than the medical profession can offer. For most people, change is embraced only when the situation has reached a point of no return. It is for the courageous, the fringe people, often considered the weirdos, and freaks, who want to make drastic changes in their lives as a step towards prevention. Sadly, the world will rally around someone who is terminal and desperately trying to claw back their lives through chemotherapy or officially unacceptable alternative methods that some people have actually used successfully. Yet, when people want to change and improve their lives before any illness, especially cancer, grabs hold, there is very little physical, emotional or financial support to make the changes before the situation is desperate. At this point, your friend needs hope and, support, emotional more than anything, to know that she is not fighting this phase of the disease by herself. Many patients with different cancers have turned the tide and have survived when doctors have declared them terminal. So the possibility of your friend doing the same is there. The potential is there. Lack of hope destroys that potential and subsequently her life. If by supporting your friend you are able to nurture that hope in her, you have changed her life, even if you feel you cannot save her life. Follow your heart when it comes to what you should do for your friend. At this point in time, science is probably the last thing she wants to hear. It appears it hasn't cured her at this point so she probably doesn't want her last bit of hope to be shattered by a science that professes to know everything, dismisses information that is different or outside its current paradigm, only to have to recant decades later, and accept the rejected as valid. History reeks of such things. Give your friend love and hope. Don't deny her the things that you know you can genuinely give. There is more to a person than an earthly body that is not doing so well.
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Re: Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 21/7/2012 5:24 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1280
First: 9/12/2011 Last: 14/5/2013 |
Yes, B-17 offers absolutely no hope or any chance to improve. At least what I read, Dr Tim, and John D will concur probably. DuaneF |
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Re: Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 21/7/2012 9:39 AM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 1
First: 21/7/2012 Last: 21/7/2012 |
I have had a patient who went to Mexico, different tumour and I am not sure what the treatment was, but the treatment was ineffective and the patient came home much weaker and very much for the last stages of terminal care. I would think the stage your friend is at would colour my response. Does she want to spend time and money on treatment which has no evidence base and potentially miss time here with family and friends and if there is progression while she is away come home potentially much more sick. |
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Re: Would you try to stop a friend with advanced pancreatic cancer from getting B-17 treatment in Mexican clinic?
posted at 21/7/2012 6:29 PM BST
on bmj.com
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Posts: 958
First: 15/7/2011 Last: 15/5/2013 |
I am not a Doctor but it seems wise to say to your friend do not go to Mexico. The treatment is not effective according to respected medical journals. Whilst you want to give her hope this treatment is false hope. |
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