TCM Cancer Treatment Must Keep Patients Alive—and Able to Afford Care
When I talk with fellow patients, I often say that during cancer treatment, excessive profit-seeking by doctors and medical institutions is, in essence, taking life. Because for a patient, when one treatment plan drains the purse yet has no effect, the only option left is to abandon treatment. Many cancer families sell assets and go into debt for treatment; I myself had the same experience—during my mother's cancer treatment I nearly lost everything. Now that I study TCM treatment of cancer, I have to face this problem: if a TCM physician truly wants to save the dying and heal the wounded, then in treating patients his medical skill must not only be reliable enough to save their lives, but must also bring the treatment cost down to what the patient can bear.
Cancer is, for most families, a catastrophic disaster, truly capable of destroying a home. My own family is a cancer family; I have made many friends in cancer circles, and now I myself study TCM anti-cancer medicine. So I know full well the suffering of cancer patients and their families, and I feel deep sympathy for this group. I often regret that I lack the skill to bring the dying back to life and help patients defeat cancer. Many of my fellow sufferers not only need me to devise strategies for their illness; for patients who have already reached a dead end, I also have to help with their financial problems, because the plight of some people one meets in this circle is truly hard to bear with folded arms.
But today's Chinese medicinal materials are indeed expensive. Especially some of the actually effective herbs are not only costly but also excluded from the medical-insurance system, placing a heavy economic burden on patients. Medicine has never been a purely technical problem; it must also be an economic problem. The fundamental purpose of practicing medicine is to save the dying and heal the wounded; at a life-and-death moment, economic factors should not be the stumbling block. If a physician wants to walk through life without regret, he must stand in the shoes of those willing to trust him with their lives and comprehensively plan for them an effective regimen they can afford. If such a regimen is lacking, he should continue to study deeply to find it.
Being able to cure but at exorbitant cost counts only as clever skill; it is still far from the medical way of saving the dying that a physician ought to follow. A physician should have a compassionate heart for the suffering of the people. With such a heart, why fear that patients will bring malpractice suits against you? My own heart has always been at peace, because I have always treated patients according to this principle, and I do not believe that someone will take a knife to me.