Quacks?

Through the years, there's been a fair amount of quackery around the issue of cancer treatment. Cancer is big business, where death-defying hope floats on floods of desperation-drenched dollars. The smell of blood brings out the jackals. So it should not come as a surprise that there are hypes and shills and tricksters out to appropriate, any way they can, some share of the millions of dollars spent to forestall the fate the disease foretells. Remember Laetrile?

However, there are some therapies that are still in preliminary, even pre-trial, stages, which seem --despite seemingly unbelievable claims-- to hold real promise. I have links under "My Enemy's Enemies" to discussions of three extremely promising treatment regimes: the (so-called) Kanzius treatment, described on 60 Minutes in April, which uses radio-frequencies to heat nano-particles of gold attached to cancer cells to kill the cells; granulocytes, upon which some work is at present underway at a center near where Lila lives, and a drug called Trovax, which already has had some trial success. I have mentioned all these to her. But I do not know if she has mentioned them to her doctors, and I wish I did know.

This poses a dilemma for me; well, a couple of them. I have done some inquiries, and have uncovered these several off-beat, but apparently legitimate, treatments, and if they are known to her physicians, I'd like to know why she isn't a candidate for them. I am under no illusions about the seriousness of her condition. Stage Four. Extend life and provide comfort. Still, if there's a chance, why not?


Cui Bono? It is not hard to understand why folks flock to quacks, especially if the (cancer) establishment is hostile to developments which, if they did work, could arguably reduce the hefty annual incomes the cancer profession docs command for their arcane services... Prison guards don't want pot decriminalized, either. In another context, but just as truly, it has been remarked how difficult it is for a man to see, much less decry, the lie on which his job--his livelihood--depends. Mencken? Sinclair Lewis? Yeah, I guess I have a bit of an attitude...So?

There is another dimension of the dilemma, which is that proffering suggestions of this sort might be taken as a sort of patronizing or condescension, the implication being that MY reseach has turned up things YOU couldn't--or didn't--find without my help. Or that I was trying to take over. Lila has not accused me of any such thing, but I can see how someone might.

We didn't speak today. Lila sent an e-mail, mid-afternoon, saying she felt too shitty to talk or write. Worse than yesterday. She huddled with the oncologist or the radiologist today, trying to get at the sources of the crippling pains she undergoes virtually all the time.

Lila gets the vent procedure tomorrow, presumably after her (last?--for this course) radiation treatment. I don't think they'd keep her in hospital o'nite unless there were a complication. I left her a message on her cell, asking her to make sure she had her cell-fone when she was admitted.

Then there's the holiday. Due to conditions beyond her/my/our control, I may not actually hear her voice again til next week, sometime.

Nothing I've ever done or known has prepared me for this.