Chemotherapy from The Scottish Review Barbara Millar wonders (13 November): Why dont we challenge the medical profession more often? One persuasive answer was given by Michael Gearin-Tosh in his 2002 book, Living Proof. Gearin-Tosh was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1994 and his doctors urged him to lose no time in undergoing chemotherapy. As an academic, skilled in the rigorous analysis of language and literature, this rush to submit to something without questioning bothered him. Warned by a US medic that chemotherapy would make him a goner, he asserted himself, applied his analytical skills to the medical literature, dared to ask some direct questions, and concluded that the meagre extension of life that chemotherapy was likely to offer did not merit the accompanying reduction in the quality of that life. To say no to chemotherapy was hugely difficult, even for someone as highly educated and articulate as he. If you have no medical training, how can you possibly believe that your temperament and instincts are significant when, as he puts it, a world of zillion-dollar research sees your illness as a vast problem? According to the standard prognosis for his condition at the time, chemotherapy was the only option and might give him two near-normal years, but he was likely to die in the third. He published his book eight years after diagnosis, having adopted a radical dietary regime, and lived for a further three years. He wrote of his sense of emancipation when the act of performing simple Chinese breathing exercises indicated to him that he need not be passive – that he had a role to play in determining his own health. He deplored the bullying attitude of some of the medics he encountered and this is a tendency which sadly continues today, as Chris Woollams, the man behind the rigorously researched and hugely informative Canceractive website, can testify. Much that Woollams has reported has since become mainstream thinking but he has had to fight accusations of quackery and self-interest along the way. Neither Gearin-Tosh nor Woollams rubbish modern medicine but both point out the need to resist its bullying tendencies with a healthy dose of assertiveness. Rosemary Burton
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 06:48:56 +0000
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