Cancer controversies and traditional medicines – Regina Leader-Post

Traditional medicine is explained by Dell Rice-Sylverster during the University of Victoria and Camosun College celebration of International Aboriginal Day in Victoria, B.C. June 21, 2012. LYLE STAFFORD / TIMES COLONIST

The story of cancer patient Ric Richardson, a Mtis man from Green Lake, challenges us to think about patient autonomy, medical traditions and Saskatchewan health care.

Just as crucial, his story forces us to reconsider the use and acceptance of traditional Aboriginal knowledge not only in medicine but in society more broadly.

After a diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer, Richardson opted to use Indigenous therapies for his terminal cancer rather than chemotherapy, arguing that the northern boreal forest served as his medicine cabinet.

Several reasons influenced this choice. Richardson felt that in the final stages of his life he would be suffering from the side effects of chemo. Hed also have to sacrifice valuable time with his family and at his job. This was unacceptable.

I would have thought that the quality of my remaining life should be the prime consideration, Richardson noted. He has usedteas made from plants in the region, including dandelion root and balsam fir.

Alternatives to the medical mainstream, which include traditional Chinese or Eastern medicine, Aboriginal medicine, as well as faith-healing and fake drugs have a long history. Some are legitimate. Some are not.

Accounts of alternative medicines share certain commonalities with Richardsons story.

In the 1970s, medical authorities waged a war against the unproven Laetrile, an almond derivative used to treat various cancers. Its supporters numbered in the thousands and they used clever arguments about patients rights, medical freedom and an overbearing medical establishment.

Laetrile was a natural product which gained even more notoriety when actor Steve McQueen travelled to Mexico for an illegal dose.

A second alternative was heroin. In the early 1980s, Kenneth Walker, a Toronto-based celebrity doctor and syndicated columnist who wrote under the pseudonym W. Gifford-Jones launched a campaign to legalize heroin.

Having lost close friends to cancer, Walker concluded the drug was one answer to the problem of treating end-of-life pain associated with terminal cancer. In December 1984, Jake Epp, the federal health minister, announced the government would legalize the use of heroin in cases of severe chronic pain or terminal illness.

A final recent alternative to the medical mainstream is vaccine skeptic Jenny McCarthy. She has challenged the medical establishment, conventional wisdom, and championed untested approaches to treatment.

McCarthy promoted the idea that vaccines cause autism and that chelation therapy was a cure. Both claims remain unsupported by medical consensus, yet the fact that she empowered herself using the internet, discovered new treatments and essentially thumbed her nose at medical elites ingratiated her to many people.

Terminal cancer is of course a different beast from vaccination. Yet these examples highlight controversies having to do with patient decision-making, and acceptance of different medical traditions and treatments.

According to The Dread Disease, the history of cancer embodies all manner of social and cultural tensions. These include class and colonialism, ethics and ethnicity. For author Jim Patterson, these tensions have often led to cancer countercultures, where patients have grown increasingly skeptical about orthodox medical notions of disease and about the claims to expert knowledge.

As the discussion about terminal cancer and integration of traditional healing practices with western biomedicine proceeds, we should be mindful of the history and debates. As Richardson rightly pointed out, much Aboriginal knowledge has been discounted or demonized. That needs to change.

All of this is to say that Richardsons story should not be viewed in isolation. Lessons may be drawn from Aboriginal history and the history of medicine. Cultural sensitivity must constitute an element of treatment. It certainly doesnt help that some physicians push back overly hard and rather patronizingly, too against patient-consumer agency and choice in the medical sphere.

Richardson recently noted, Obviously were on the right track and things are working well. His tumours had diminished in size. This, along with the positive response hes received from the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency, amount to progress.

Richardson helps us appreciate the complexity of patient choice in the medical marketplace and the use of traditional Aboriginal knowledge in society. He also stands as an example of the ways in which citizens can take ownership in the health care system and potentially influence it.

Lucas Richert is a lecturer at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde (Glasgow).