Comprehensive Cancer Care

Based on a series of medical conferences exploring new approaches to cancer, this guide discusses a wide variety of cancer-fighting modalities. Throughout, Gordon (a professor at Georgetown Univ. School of Medicine) and Curtin (Nobody Ever Died of Old Age) encourage readers to consider unfamiliar ideas, form effective patient/doctor partnerships and adopt empowered, informed patient attitudes. Often a cursory element in health guides, the case studies here genuinely support these themes, evoking the stories of cancer patients with vividness and force. The idea of integrating conventional and holistic treatments (acupuncture, diet and herbs, and meditation, among others) is not unique--several volumes on the subject have been published in the past year alone; moreover, the book treats a number of conventional and holistic tools with little detail. Instead, its true value is its focus on alternative cures, the often radical cancer-fighting tools only now being pioneered: antineoplastons, diet and detoxification programs, vaccines, etc. Both fascinating and helpful, this material points the way toward new possibilities for the remediation of even cancers currently accepted as incurable. Yet readers already stricken with one of disease's many variants may find it frustrating as well, since these methods are neither widely available nor, as yet, well supported by research and testing. (July)