arly half of all cancer patients turn to alternative therapies at least once during the course of their fight against cancer (Brigden, 1995). In more than 70 percent of cases, patients do not tell their oncologist that they are using alternative therapies. As many as 40 percent of cancer patients who turn to alternative therapies abandon conventional therapy entirely.
Cancer is only one of the illnesses for which people seek alternative therapies, but it is the one with the highest public visibility. It is a common disease, but many alternative treatments do little more than delay death, sometimes at the expense of considerable suffering (Lessons from antineoplaston, 1997, p. 74). The reason so many cancer sufferers seek alternative therapies is because of the failure of modern medicine to provide a cure.
So far, none of the alternative cancer treatments which have come and gone in the last decade have provided a cure for cancer regardless of numerous claims to have done so (Benjamin, Simo
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