Living in the part of the world I do, seems that most here depend on what we would call alternative therapies. For example, the drugstore across the street from my apartment not only carries some traditional western medicines, (no prescription necessary for drugs such as cipro, amoxicillin), to all manner of dried critters and herbs that would be necessary to cure what ails you. Write down what you are want as far as regular medicine, the druggist may or may not understand what you are looking for. Go in with a description of symptoms, and the druggist will mix up a batch of critter, herbs and what ever to "cure" what you have. Very common to see him in consultation, sitting around a table in the middle of the store, working with the customers on their remedies.

But, do they sell a real cure, a hope of a cure, or a placebo.

My wife insists they are selling a cure. At least once a week I get soup that has stuff from the drugstore across the street, some sort of mushroom concoction that doesn't taste too bad. I'm not on any medications, so I don't worry much about any interactions. It does seem to give me an energy boost, and makes her happy, so I go ahead and eat.

Both my wife and co-workers have given me various sorts of herbal pills to take to ward off the cancer returning. Going the "it can't hurt" route, I go ahead and take the stuff, (after investigating what it is) and make them happy. Again, I'm not on any medications, so there's no interaction that I'm aware of.

I think what some of these alternatives hold out to patients is "hope." When I was dealing with my first wife's battle with cancer I was in a support group for caregivers, and the rage then was shark cartilage. Several in the group were doing that therapy and understood that it may be quackery, but it gave them hope. My wife holds to hope that the stuff she gives me will prolong my life, and I guess I can't take that away from her. If I don't take the herbal stuff, the cancer comes back, then she'll say I'm to blame for not taking my medicine.

But then, the Chinese get along quite well on their traditional medicine, average life expectancy is like 72.5 years. And, they've been doing this herbal medicine thing for hundereds of years. If you saw some of the living conditions, you would be surprised anyone lives that long. And a few years ago back, who would have known that the extract of a certain "taxus yew" plant would be a very effective cancer drug (taxol).

There's a lot of quackery going on, selling "hope" not a cure, but I think maybe western medicine doesn't know as much as it thinks it does. Thing is, how do we know the "Quack" from the "duck"
Bob