Headings
The Pharmaceutical Industry
The Patient and Direct Action
A Charter for Cancer Patients.
The Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical industry funds various projects to marginalise all other natural health approaches to medicine so the industry can maintain its grip on public health.
We should not underestimate the determination of the pharmaceutical industry to maintain control over the public’s health. The industry will take all manner of questionable means to sell their products to hospitals and doctors. The biggest fine ever for corruption was imposed on a British pharmaceutical company for making false claims? The fine amounted to more than $3 billion.
The pharmaceutical industry keeps hidden unfavourable research results that would affect their financial investments.
They advocate an invasion inside the body instead of treatment of the whole person. Our hospitals find themselves slavishly confined to the ideology of conventional medicine. Doctors, consultants and nurses in the UK do exceptional work, display immense kindness and compassion, despite lack of access to a comprehensive NHS – Natural Health Service, which needs to exist side by side and fully integrated with the NHS (National Health Service).
Complementary medicine and naturopathy lack the financial and human resources to engage in comprehensive studies and research into what percentage of patients benefit from such approaches to dealing with cancer. There appears to be no parallel studies showing the benefits of alternative treatments to chemotherapy and radiation.
Conventional cancer treatments cut off the body from emotions, from the mind and the environment. Orthodox medical scientists frequently rubbish naturopathy regardless of the beneficial experience of alternative approaches for people with cancer. Patients also feel grateful they do not have to go through the painful impact of chemotherapy. Some patients, who adopt alternative treatments, find their cancer spreads to the point that they are incurable. The same principle applies to those who take the route of chemotherapy and radiation.
There is no such thing as side-effects from chemotherapy. They are full frontal effects Some will choose to make the current medical establishment the last port of call when all else fails. Others will start an exploration of both conventional and alternative treatments. They will base their decision on the four primary options –
- choose one,
- choose the other,
- choose both
- or choose neither conventional medication nor alternative nor both.
A person can express an act of kindness in allowing the cancer to spread. We should not quickly conclude the person who keeps quiet about their cancer lived in denial.
Earlier this year, my great aunt died from breast cancer. She got married at the age of 16 and lived with her husband for 70 years. She decided not to tell anyone of her disease allowing the cancer to metastasise and pass through the body until her death. Some people feel they have lived long enough and don’t wish to be a burden on others, themselves or hospitals for the sake of trying to live a little longer. The Buddha said: “Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live 100 years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.”
Doctors do their best to treat the disease but they rarely can treat the dis-ease among patients. If the medical profession changed the priority from addressing effects to addressing equally causes for sickness, they would go a long way towards people living a much longer, happier and healthier life. Then death would hold little or no terror.
Communication, sharing of experiences, the capacity to learn from each other and to experience mutual empathy contribute to the support of both emotional and molecular life to enable the development of healing. Doctors usually only meet with patients on an individual basis rather than offer support groups so that patients and families can share experiences with doctors/consultants acting as facilitators.
Patients and families never get to hear of changes that other patients have made in their lives that contribute to their healing, health and extending of life. Cancer is a social event while the individual often remains isolated from participating in a community of cancer workers and loved ones. Hospitals need a revolution to maximise collective care/collective co-operation with personal consultations as an extra.
The Patient and Direct Action
Physicians deal with the physical employing scientific methodology to address the variety of functions of the organs of the body, the structures and systems that the body work. Doctors work within a very limited remit. They have little in the way of knowledge, insights, practices and methods to address the whole person. This would mean direct knowledge of the processes going on outside of biological activities, namely states of mind, attitudes, habits and exposure to the environment.
A person goes to see their doctor to tell their physician they feel ill. The doctors arrange for tests to be taken to make a diagnosis. The doctor tells the patients that he or she has cancer or another disease. One in two people in the UK born after 1960 will be diagnosed with cancer. What does the person do when she or he faces a possible life threatening sickness?
Causes and conditions seem far removed from a consultation with a doctor, except perhaps the self-evident one liner such as stop smoking, stop drinking or cut back on sugar. They disregard causes and grasp onto effects. It is a huge error of judgement.
Doctors have become attached to the notion of a technical fix through an attack on the body using medication and surgery. In the case of cancer, hereditary genetics probably functions as a minor cause for cancer. Diet, lack of oxygen to the cells, lifestyle and environmental factors contribute much more to cancerous cells. The occurrence of cancer would be far less through wise living resulting in a major reduction in hereditary vulnerabilities. Cancer is mostly preventable.
The medical profession fails to grasp the significance of the impact of states of mind upon the functions of the body. If they recognise the impact, they will lack the training in mindfulness, meditation, reflection and inquiry to show their patients the practical steps towards inner peace and wise action in relationship to health. We are left wondering whether contemporary medicine and radiation contribute eventually to the killing of people rather than curing them.
Sickness, pain and injury form out of a kaleidoscope of causes including our psychology (addictions, habits and naivety), social factors (pressure, tension, stress) and environment, such as pollution of land water and air, chemicals and radiation.
I am reminded of the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. Friends of Jesus asked him tell them about the end of suffering, the end of the path. Jesus replied “Have you already discovered the beginning so you can seek the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be. Blessed is the one who stands at the beginning that one will know the end, and will not taste death.”
The Buddha made exactly the same point. He said the noble ones know the truth of suffering and pain, know the causes and conditions for its arising, know the way to change those causes and conditions for its arising and know the resolution. The end of suffering is found at the beginning of it.
Psychological stress and pressure, along with unhealthy diets, lack of oxygen to the cells, lack of movement, social circumstances and pollution of environment have a day to day impact on the sensitivities of the human organism. To separate the body from heart, mind and environment reveals a depth of denial and delusion that robs the opportunity for a genuine healing rather than a temporary adjustment to the current circumstances of the body.
There are five primary areas of consideration for the patient
- Condition of the body (what diagnosis, prescription and timetable for treatment?)
- Condition of heart/mind (does stress, diet, work, lifestyle and exercise need to change?)
- Condition of the family, friends and environment (is there support?)
- Condition of the health system (hospital, equipment, costs, track record)
- Condition of the doctor(s)/consultant(s), (knowledge, communication skills, empathy, attitude).
A patient suffering with a health issue, particularly a major one, will need to reflect to find an overview and necessary action as a contribution towards healing. Health and healing depend on much more than a medical prescription. Love, happiness, peace of mind, friendship, mindfulness, meditation, diet and much more make an immensely important contribution to health and healing.
Hospitals and the medical profession need a radical change in priorities to the current dependency on drugs that the pharmaceutical industry has cultivated. The entire range of hospital staff and patients need to form together in facilitated groups to listen and talk to each other about their experiences. The hospital needs to develop an ethos of the collective sharing together rather than a bunch of individual patients needing treatment. A problem shared is a problem halved, as the saying goes.
Many patients feel shy, nervous or vulnerable around doctors. There is a lack of confidence to ask questions or share various concerns. It might be too much to ask a sick person to reflect on wise steps forward.
A Charter for Cancer Patients. Areas to explore
Here is a Charter for Cancer Patients. The principles also apply to other patients. Here are 21 Areas for Cancer patients to explore. The list below applies to illnesses and injuries. In alphabetical order:
- Ask for a referral if you know of best known treatment
- Be clear of the benefits of what the doctor consultant can offer
- Be clear what the doctor or consultant cannot offer
- Before consenting to treatment, feel confident it is the best available in your area.
- Bring a list of short questions with you to the clinic or hospital.
- Discuss different treatments and best treatment.
- Do you have family or friends who can support personal change?
- Find out about the best drugs, effects of drugs and lasting consequences.
- Find out as much as you can about your specific illness.
- If uneasy to raise questions and concerns, is there anybody that can support you?
- Read the steps that other patients took to address a similar health issue.
- Make radical changes in diet, exercise, habits, lifestyle, if necessary?
- Remember that the different views of the doctor (s) about outcome of illness in the future are tied to the limits of their knowledge. Their views may change in the passage of time.
- Request copy of your pathology reports
- Request copy of your scans
- Request details for your treatment in the days, weeks and months ahead.
- See a second or third doctor or consultant, if necessary.
- See the same doctor or consultant, once decided upon, so you get to know the person
- See what other kinds of natural medicine and practice can support your healing?
- Seek out the best possible treatments.
- Seek out others to share your experience and listen to others.
A Meditation on the Body
(Readers may wish to read each sentence, mindfully and slowly, and take a pause for a few moments before reading the next sentence. Readers may wish to write lines on the body for a meditation to contribute to clarity and inner peace).
Sick or healthy, young or old, the body is not me, not myself, not who I am.
I meditate on the body as elements, as a formation in the field of existence, as an unfolding process.
I extend kindness and consideration to the body.
I give support to the body through wise diet, exercises to bring oxygen to the cells and to develop an upright posture to enable the organs of the body to be receptive and expanded.
I abide mindfully of the changing processes of the body while neither living in guilt over the past, nor in fear of the future.
May I have the capacity to acknowledge the wondrous incidentals despite the condition of the body.
May I be free of the spell of entrapment of identity around the biological makeup.
May I stay steadfast amidst ageing, sickness, pain and the intensity of sensations generating from the body.
May I live and die as a conscious human being with clarity and equanimity right to the last exhalation.
May I know a freedom, a liberation, a depth of peace not dependent on the condition of the body.
May all beings live happy and healthy lives
May all beings be free from dis-ease and disease.
May all beings live with wisdom