Free Republic

We need to De-Politicize Cancer ... for Farah. Here's a recent article I wrote for Blog Critics: "I watched Farrah’s Story, knowing full well it would make me sad, and it certainly did do that, but it also was so much more than just another sad celebrity story. It was Farrah’s gift to us - to her generation of Baby Boomer men and women. It was her way of giving us a Paul Harvey-esque “end of the story.” We are left with a wake-up call - the reality that if it can happen to Farrah, it can happen to any...

A 16-year-old cancer patient 's legal fight ended in victory Wednesday when his family's attorneys and social services officials reached an agreement that would allow him to forgo chemotherapy. At the start of what was scheduled to be a two-day hearing, Accomack County Circuit Judge Glen A. Tyler announced that both sides had reached a consent decree, which Tyler approved. Under the decree, Starchild Abraham Cherrix, who is battling Hodgkin's disease, will be treated by an oncologist of his choice who is board-certified in radiation therapy and interested in alternative treatments. The family must provide the court updates on Abraham's...

New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers. If you would like up-to-date information on any plans for clinical trials of DCA in patients with cancer, or would like to donate towards a fund for such trials, please visit the site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board. We will also follow events closely and will report any progress as it happens. It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA),...

A 16-year-old Virginia boy who suffers from Hodgkin's disease has been told by a state judge he must report to a hospital this week and accept treatment deemed necessary by his doctors. The boy and his parents have chosen to pursue alternative treatment. It consists of a sugar-free, organic diet and herbal supplements supervised by a clinic in Mexico. On July 21, juvenile court Judge Jesse E. Demps ruled that the boy's parents, Jay and Rose Cherrix of Chincoteague, were neglectful and that they must continue to share custody of their son, Starchild Abraham Cherrix, with the Accomack County Department...

The case of a mother who took her 9-month-old child on the lam, frantically searching for alternative therapies as state and medical authorities demanded kidney surgery for the boy, unfolded before the public last week like a high-drama television show. But at bottom, it pitted the rights of a mother and father against the power of the state.Baby Riley While rare, such disputes typically involve parents who decline treatment for their children based on religious beliefs. Tina Carlsen has now refocused those questions. The issue is not opposing treatment but whether a parent may look beyond traditional medicine for help....

A while back, I wrote about Airborne, the "herbal" concoction designed by a schoolteacher that is touted as preventing colds and the flu if taken preemptively or lessening their severity if taken early on in the course of a cold. I concluded that there was no evidence that it did what Victoria Knight-McDowell, a schoolteacher and the creator of Airborne, claims. Now the company itself seems to be admitting as much. It turns out that the company commissioned a study to "prove" Airborne's efficacy, and its results did seem to show a mild positive effect on colds. Unfortunately, the study...

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican clinic where Coretta Scott King died has been closed, U.S. Embassy officials said Friday. Mexican officials were not immediately available to explain why the Santa Monica Health Institute in the Mexican beach resort of Rosarito, 16 miles south of San Diego, was shut. Judith Bryan, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, said the U.S. consulate in Tijuana was helping patients find new facilities. King last week traveled to the beachside clinic. She was seeking treatment for advanced stage ovarian cancer and a stroke she suffered several months ago. The clinic specializes...

Texas Officials, Parents Spar Over Girl's Cancer Treatment Parents Think Doctors Have Not Been Upfront About Treatment Options UPDATED: 11:41 am CDT June 9, 2005 CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- A judge has postponed until Friday a ruling that could prevent doctors from treating a 12-year-old girl who was taken from her parents after Texas officials accused them of not doing enough to treat her cancer. It's the latest maneuver in a dispute over the medical care of Katie Wernecke, reported KPRC-TV in Houston. Her parents, Michele and Edward Wernecke, said their daughter's Hodgkin's disease is in remission and she doesn't...

A DECADE AGO, Congress passed a law shielding makers of dietary supplements from regulatory scrutiny. The consequences of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 were entirely foreseeable: largely uncontrolled sales and marketing of vitamins and herbal remedies without advance approval of their safety and effectiveness. According to a new report by the Institute of Medicine, the foreseeable has come to pass. The report deals broadly with alternative and complementary medicine, which has become a giant industry in America, worth $27 billion a year; visits to alternative-care providers now exceed visits to primary-care doctors. --snip-- An estimated 15...

Biodynamic food is grown out of a spiritual understanding of nature A bakery is fighting plans for a phone mast because it claims radio waves will ruin its "cosmic bread". Artisan Bread say emissions from the antenna will disrupt "subtle forces" which help to make the loaves. The bakery plots planetary movements and uses a special calendar to work out the best time to make the bread. But it is claimed the shop in Whitstable, Kent, would lose its special licence because the mast is too close to the premises. Bakery owner Ingrid Greenfield, who supplies exclusive shops including...

Herbal alternatives are under attack. Download and print flyers. The flyers urge consumers to tell their congressmen and senators to attend the JUNE 17th Herbal Alternatives Congressional Briefing to learn the truth about herbs & health. It is critical that Congress attends this briefing because: HERBAL ALTERNATIVES ARE UNDER ATTACK. News headlines misinform and mislead decision makers. Products you depend on for your health could soon be banned. MANY CAPITOL HILL STAFFERS AND POLICY MAKERS DO NOT UNDERSTAND NATURAL HEALTH INDUSTRY ISSUES. Since DSHEA was passed in 1994, about 50% of Congressmen and Senators and 80% of Congressional aides have...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly two-thirds of American adults use some form of complementary or alternative medicine ranging from prayer to herbs, a U.S. government survey showed on Thursday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted the survey of 31,000 U.S. adults, asking about 27 types of therapies such as acupuncture and chiropractic, the use of herbs or botanical products, special diets, and megavitamin therapy. About 36 percent of those surveyed said they had used one or more of those approaches. When prayer was considered, the number rose to 62 percent. Women, people with higher education, those who had...

The Ongoing Problem with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine In spite of statements to the contrary by its director, the NCCAM continues to fund and promote pseudoscience. Political pressures and the Center's charter would seem to make this inevitable. Ethics and the public interest are compromised. Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) was established in 1998, seven years after the creation of its predecessor, the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). The OAM had been formed not because of any medical or scientific need, but because Iowa senator Tom Harkin...

WASHINGTON -- Shark cartilage and mistletoe as possible cancer treatments? Ginkgo biloba as a means of preventing dementia? Milk thistle to cure chronic hepatitis? Prayer and positive energy to fight brain tumors? Those and other alternative approaches to modern medicine are undergoing scientific scrutiny at the federal government's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Bethesda, Md. The center, an arm of the National Institutes of Health with a budget of $114 million, was created by Congress in 1998 to examine unconventional ways to heal the body, mind and spirit. In the process, it has become a frequent target...

Sunday, November 24, 2002 By Anita Vogel LOS ANGELES — Medical schools were once the bastion of traditional medicine, based in well-researched scientific techniques. But nowadays the scalpel is making way for the acupuncture needle. Once considered far outside the medical mainstream, non-Western techniques like acupuncture have broken through traditional barriers. Now alternative healing techniques like yoga and prayer are among a number of required classes at prestigious medical colleges around the country like Columbia, Yale and University of California at Los Angeles that branch far from traditional classes. At the University of Arizona, students are even being taught horse-whispering...

C B C . C A   N e w s   -   F u l l   S t o r y : Tobacco destroys brain cells: study Last Updated Mon May 13 16:44:53 2002 PARIS-- French researchers say they've found the first direct evidence that smoking destroys brain cells. Scientists at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Paris studied four groups of rats given high, medium, low and no doses of nicotine. INDEPTH: Smoking Up a Storm The study is published in the The Journal of Neuroscience. The rats were allowed to absorb...