Do Not Pin Your Hopes of Beating Cancer on a 'Miracle'

Patients and families often ask me about the efficacy of folk remedies. Usually behind each remedy lies a miracle story of a cancer patient's recovery, but in my ten-plus years of practice I have never seen a single verified case of anyone reproducing such a cure.

I have encountered nearly 100,000 cancer patients over the past decade; among so many, not one reproduces that miraculous effect. That alone says it all. These "miracle" remedies are simply not reproducible, and the recovery stories behind them are hard to verify.

Cancer is a world medical problem and is not easily dealt with. The more loudly and confidently a claim touts a treatment's high success rate, the more suspicious it is. Patients and families should treat such everywhere-available information cautiously and not pin recovery hopes on these "miracle stories," lest they miss treatment and lose their lives.

The overwhelming majority of survivors I have seen succeeded through comprehensive treatment plus personal lifestyle changes and dropping bad habits. Survivors who succeeded on a single factor are extremely rare. Any anticancer approach that already works is precious. Some patients, though a regimen is clearly effective, grow impatient with its speed and insist on changing doctors and treatments, only to harm themselves.

Doctors may, by their training, lean against Western or Chinese medicine, but patients and families should hold no bias for or against either. I am frustrated by pure TCM-haters and pure TCM-fans alike. I have always stressed that treating cancer needs multidisciplinary cooperation, combined Chinese and Western medicine, integration of medical care and nourishment, and joint effort by doctor and patient. When the patient is reasonably fit, comprehensive treatment offers the best survival odds.

What cancer patients and families most need is a Chinese-Western oncologist with solid expertise and rich clinical experience—not folk remedies. A young doctor once told me that her greatest feeling working in oncology is that a cancer patient is a complex of diseases: all manner of physical and mental problems can arise, any of which may kill. So the oncologist must be broadly experienced to help.

I believe an oncologist should not simultaneously care for more than 300 cancer patients. Even that is the maximum for a vigorous middle-aged backbone specialist; older, frail doctors should care for fewer, because each patient demands enormous effort to address their many problems.

Our country is still developing, and residents' economic means are limited, so the doctor-to-patient ratio is unreasonable; most doctors see far more patients than they can handle. Consultations can hardly be thorough, and long-term attentive care is largely impossible. This directly affects Chinese cancer patients' survival: among nations, China's five-year survival rate is relatively low.

So a cancer patient who meets a careful, patient doctor may live longer. Most advanced cancers eventually kill; no doctor on earth can guarantee a cure for advanced disease. But existing treatments can prolong life and improve its quality.

I think the most important thing cancer patients and families can do is to face reality rationally, adjust expectations, and build the best long-term partnership with their doctors, striving for the longest survival and best quality of life—not hunting everywhere for miracle cures.

Patients following standard comprehensive treatment mostly achieve long survival; some even live to a natural age. Long-term survivors have rarely succeeded without comprehensive treatment.

I have also tracked down the heroes of many folk-remedy stories. A very few did respond to a remedy—but usually the effect was not as magical as legend, merely sustaining them for a while before failing. More patients on folk remedies were also receiving comprehensive treatment, so it is hard to credit the remedy rather than combined Chinese-Western care.

Take the so-called cancer star said to have beaten cancer with raw potato juice. When I tracked him down, I learned he had surgery, chemotherapy, and Chinese medicine, and only additionally drank raw potato juice. His deified story began nine months after diagnosis (nine months proves nothing). It was originally promoted by his son-in-law, a man prone to exaggeration, and then passed on until it became magical. When I visited him, he had unfortunately already relapsed over half a year earlier.

To verify such tales, I once traveled the country tracking down patients and the so-called remedy donors. As for the most famous donor of the Oldenlandia-Scutellaria barbata combination, I found him and he flatly denied the online exaggerations came from him. He was tormented: people treated by his deified regimen, when it failed, cursed him.

Later I realized I lacked the energy to verify every such legend and gave up. The pursuit taught me that rumor is far more powerful than reason. I believe similar rumors and remedies will keep appearing, but I also believe nearly everyone who follows them fails.

A female patient who once pinned her hopes on such a miracle said something before she died that I remember vividly: "Comprehensive treatment gives the wider road." It was blunt, and it came from her heart after a bloody lesson.

She was a bank clerk who hunted everywhere for folk remedies for her colorectal cancer. Doctors had given her over two years to live; she died in less than six months. On her deathbed she hated most a charlatan-style TCM who had preached to her the saying, "Those said to be incurable have merely not found the right technique."

I hope no one pins anticancer hopes on such "miracles," and even less lets such deified tales delay proper treatment.