The FDA has a very difficult job to do balancing proven, effective drugs against the patient's urgency. They have relaxed many stringent rules in the face of AIDS drugs.
No doubt alternative medicine has value but let's hold it up to the light of research and do double-blind studies before we cause unnecessary pain, damage and expense. The reason conventional drugs are so expensive in the U.S. is because of all the R and D. Anybody can cut up some organic roots and make a claim but it takes painstaking work to decifer the truth about each drug and its numerous effects, side-effects, routes of metabolism, etc. This has become a sacred cow to many Americans. Too bad. They stand in the way of clear evidence instead of hearsay arguments.
Yep...I know all about those new drugs and how well the FDA works....NOT. I know of an orthopedic surgeon who with others had come up with something for arthritis--course they'd have been in the poor house dancing to the FDA's fiddle. Ditto the doctor and scientist I knew who came up with a treatment for lip blisters...alas, there aren't enough patients in the world who suffer with this crap to warrant the big $$$$$ spending declared necessary by the FDA, though most of what it was all about was approved for use in domestic pets.
Kay, its my firm belief and conviction that there is a segment of the medical/pharmacological fields that find it to their advantage to not find a cure for cancer! Multi-billion dollar or is that trillion dollar industries!
When a patient has been given 14 days to live, after having gone through surgical procedures and then radiation/chemo which only caused additional cancerous growths to appear, what chance is there that anything will turn around.
I can tell you, I 'lived' with my best friend's death due to cancer and the marvelous wonderful treatments she got.....touch the skin and it looked like someone beat the hell out of her; no appetite, nauseated, dry heaves, diarrhea, loss of bladder control. I saw her go from an out-going person, who was a talented artist, who put on classes around town and added on to her home so she could hold classes there to someone who merely wanted to die to get it over with.
When a doctor says you got a year to live regardless of what we do, why do we have to stand on rules and regulations? Why would we worry that a person might take a drug that wasn't quite pure enough, or one that might make them a little high? This is as insane as telling my 89 year old Dad, who has drank coffee since he was weaned from his Mother's breast, to quit drinking coffee cause its bad for him.....who gives a damn at this point in his life--like he's got to worry about dying!