Publication Date: Wednesday Feb 11, 1998

To your health: Be informed when considering alternatives

Q. I am interested in finding out about alternative health treatments for cancer. My doctor has not been very forthcoming with information. What is a good resource that I can trust?

A. While Western medicine has traditionally shunned anything to do with alternative or complementary medicine, that stance has changed somewhat in the past decade. In part this is due to the fact that thousands of patients leave conventional medicine in search of alternative cures each year, and the Western medical world is being forced to investigate these therapies. Today it's possible that your doctor is curious about alternative treatments as well, but may not know enough about any one system to be advising patients about it. The world of alternative medicine is vast and complicated, and we are deluged with information in books, anecdotal accounts and the Internet to the degree that it's difficult to determine the value of what we're reading or hearing.

If you are looking for some basic guides to alternative medicine and the variety of treatments encompassed by that term, The Health Library has several good books that can serve as introductory texts to the subject.

"The Medical Advisor, The Complete Guide To Alternative and Conventional Treatments," by Time/Life publishers, is over 1,100 pages and is organized to introduce the reader to the major schools of medical disciplines including conventional Western medicine and alternative/complementary therapies. The bulk of the book (over 800 pages) serves as an encyclopedia of ailment, and treats alternative therapies in a respectful manner. While it is obvious that the most weight is given to conventional Western medicine, the book gives the reader an idea of what they could expect from the other medical disciplines.

It also provides the reader with the tools to question and evaluate the claims made by other medical practices. Pertinent to your question about cancer, the authors make it clear that in the area of complementary therapies and cancer, complementary therapies offer no cure: "Even the most promising unconventional therapies do not cure cancer and should never replace standard treatment. Instead, supportive therapies should complement conventional care."

The last third of the book is devoted to a pharmacopoeia of conventional and natural medicines. This is particularly useful if you find yourself drawn to the myriad health products and herbal supplements in the health food store. The list includes prescription drugs as well, providing warnings of toxicity and possible interactions in using natural products which are often viewed as completely safe by consumers because they are "natural."

Another book that approaches alternative medicine with genuine respect and openness is "Dr. Rosenfeld's Guide to Alternative Medicine," by Isadore Rosenfeld. This is a good book for those who want to explore the realm of alternative medicine but want a guide from the world of Western medicine.

The author is candid about what he believes are useful therapies and those he believes are useless or worse, fraudulent. The section on diet therapy and cancer addresses most of the current alternative diets for curing and preventing cancer. He is very thorough about how these diets fared in scientific studies, and what he views their real value to be.

The Internet is rife with alternative health information, but the vast majority of information out there comes without the credentials of scientific study and usually someone stands to make a lot of money on the products or systems being hyped. Rather than try to address any of these in particular, it is probably more useful to point you to The American Cancer Society's page (http://www.cancer.org/alt--therapies/overviews) where they have done a good job of educating Web users about how to evaluate information on alternative methods and cures that they find.

Whatever material you find should be reviewed with your doctor. Stanford University School of Medicine is co-sponsoring an all-day symposium, "When Your Patients Ask About Alternative Medicine," on Saturday, Feb. 28, with the Northern California Cancer Center. For information about registration and fees, call 510-429-2504. To submit a question, write to The Health Library c/o The Palo Alto Weekly or e-mail us at Health--Lib@hosp.stanford.edu. The Health Library resources are not intended as a substitute for medical care. The main branch is located at 248 Stanford Shopping Center. For more information, call 725-8400 or point your Internet browser to http://www-med.stanford.edu/healthlib/. The Health Library is a community service of Stanford University Hospital. 

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