Speaking as a physician, I accuse you of scurrilous conspiracy mongering of the lowest sort. I don't dismiss alternative treatments out of hand, and I don't know enough about the facts of this case to make an informed judgment, but I do know that I have never once met a physician who would "pretend" to look for a cure for cancer with no intention of finding one.
I do no research to speak of myself, but many of my colleagues have devoted their lives to finding cures for cancer and other deadly diseases. There is not one of them who would conceal a proven life-saving treatment.
Especially ridiculous is the popular notion that the AMA suppresses medical discoveries for the financial benefit of its members. Only half or less of us belong to the AMA anyway, and none of us would obey an order from them to treat any patient with anything less than our best available science.
This kind of conspiracy mongering is usually a distraction put forth by greedy quacks who are looting the pockets of desperate patients with terminal illnesses. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.
-ccm
In 1968 a team of scientists were developing a very promising cure for cancerous tumors. It basically consisted of injecting less-than-hair-width fibers near the tumor. They would grow around the tumor and slow releasing drugs would emaciate the tumor.
That project was squashed by the FDA. Why? The bottom line is that a few FDA agents wanted to fill up their success-case file drawers to justify their jobs -- that's all it was. That was thirty three year ago. How many hundreds, perhaps thousands or tens-of-thousands of people have needlessly suffered and died prematurely because of a few criminal FDA agents sought to fill their file drawers?
But please, let's don't put on the 'holier than thou' mantle. We all know physicians take an oath to do no harm; their objective is honorable-- it's to save lives, correct? Therefore, we can state categotically that "no physician would EVER intentionally do any harm to a patient', right? Was that a 'no' that I heard...what's that....you can't agree with the statement because you don't know them all or the statement is inaccurate because you've heard of a guy, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who goes by the nickname of Dr. Death?
Rather than getting into the "I accuse you of ________" and my retorting about your thin-skin or shoes fitting and wearing them, yada yada yada, would you mind having a reasonable discussion on this, or any other case? For instance, Doctor...if a patient is given a sentence of death--in this case, apparently, it was a foregone conclusion that the 'treatment of the medical profession's choice' would cause additional tumors in the brain, does it really make any difference what treatment he/she seeks or is given (other than injecting death)? Or even in other cases, where a patient wants to smoke marijuana? Who gives a damn at this point? The person is dying, for crying out loud.
What I see, and many others do as well, is that a bunch of special interests trying to exert total control to maintain their little fiefdoms. It is something akin to a guy struggling across the bloody desert; finally making it to an oasis-- where there's water to wet his dry, cracked lips and to quench his parched dry throat; he struggles mightily with the last ounce of his being to make it to the edge of the pool while begging for something moist to wet his lips and parched throat. Just as he gets there and manages to flop his hand over the edge of the pool, an EPA agent stomps his boot down on the guy's wrist and says, 'Sorry, sir...not until we've done a complete water purity analysis test'.
Now this EPA bureaucratic agent happens to be one of the really good guys....so he gently, carefully drags the guy over to the over to the shade of a palm tree and props the man up.....and then proceeds to watch him die while he patiently waits for FEDEX to deliver the results of the water purity test!
The insistence that this child be put through procedures that the parents had studied and rejected as too damaging for him (they were concerned with quality of life issues for little Thomas, too)--loss of vision, brain damage, normal growth rates are the three things I recall them talking about before--and then having met the FDA's guideline that when he's 14 days' from dying, it's ok to try something else. And for the bastards to use the words "compassionate use or authorization'! Are you the least bit offended by this? Isn't there something wrong with this picture?
Well, of course, there is. But I don't see a group of doctors or lawyers or much of anyone else demanding action by the government representatives we elect to put a halt to this bullspit!
And one other thing, Doc....if your shorts get twisted in a wad over that, you'd be strangling yourself if you heard what many patients say about doctors after they leave their offices--about how rude, how abrupt, how they don't let you ask questions, and heaven forbid how doctors allow their staff to overbook doctor's time while the patient can just sit there and rot as their time means nothing; that when finally taken back to the 'room', they get to experience even more of the wasting their time waiting for Doc who is so more important!