hypothetical moral dilemma for a doctor

[jts]

I'm going thru a bunch of videos by Dr. Mayfield on his youtube channel, most are about one hour.

He posed an interesting hypothetical ethical question. Dr. Mayfield says on average the medical profession makes about one million dollars per cancer patient. Multiply that by the number of cancer patients. About one third or so of the population will get cancer in a lifetime, so I'm told. In a population of 300 million, perhaps a million per year. That works out to a lot of money for the cancer industry, a million times a million per year.

Now imagine you are a doctor in the cancer industry and imagine you are an ass hole and you come up with a way to completely reverse cancer for ten thousand dollars per cancer patient. We will assume this is real and not quackery and your cancer patients are restored to health. Now you find yourself impaled upon a serious moral dilemma.

You can get your cancer patients well and restored to health at affordable price and be a hero to your patients. But you thereby become a traitor to the cancer industry and maybe a danger to the very existence of the cancer industry. The cancer industry will fight back for its survival and they will put you down. You will have difficulty fighting them because you are one and they are many, and they have government on their side, and the full force of the law will descend upon you, and you probably will end up in prison as a criminal. At the least you will not be permitted to put the cancer industry out of business. And you can't blame the cancer industry, because they have a huge amount of business to protect, about a trillion dollars per year. As the saying goes, they are too big to fail.

Or you can be a docile, obedient, spineless servant of the cancer industry and go along to get along and enjoy a respectable, secure, lucrative life.

How would you proceed?

 

[william.scherk]

Can you give a link to Dr Mayfield on childhood leukemia?

[jts]

13 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Can you give a link to Dr Mayfield on childhood leukemia?

Perhaps you didn't notice, the question was hypothetical.

If you like, you can modify the question to exclude hopeless kinds of cancer.

 

[turkeyfoot]

1 hour ago, jts said:

I'm going thru a bunch of videos by Dr. Mayfield on his youtube channel, most are about one hour.

He posed an interesting hypothetical ethical question. Dr. Mayfield says on average the medical profession makes about one million dollars per cancer patient. Multiply that by the number of cancer patients. About one third or so of the population will get cancer in a lifetime, so I'm told. In a population of 300 million, perhaps a million per year. That works out to a lot of money for the cancer industry, a million times a million per year.

Now imagine you are a doctor in the cancer industry and imagine you are an ass hole and you come up with a way to completely reverse cancer for ten thousand dollars per cancer patient. We will assume this is real and not quackery and your cancer patients are restored to health. Now you find yourself impaled upon a serious moral dilemma.

You can get your cancer patients well and restored to health at affordable price and be a hero to your patients. But you thereby become a traitor to the cancer industry and maybe a danger to the very existence of the cancer industry. The cancer industry will fight back for its survival and they will put you down. You will have difficulty fighting them because you are one and they are many, and they have government on their side, and the full force of the law will descend upon you, and you probably will end up in prison as a criminal. At the least you will not be permitted to put the cancer industry out of business. And you can't blame the cancer industry, because they have a huge amount of business to protect, about a trillion dollars per year. As the saying goes, they are too big to fail.

Or you can be a docile, obedient, spineless servant of the cancer industry and go along to get along and enjoy a respectable, secure, lucrative life.

How would you proceed?

 

Is this a trick question? Id be a docile, spineless servant, of my patients, of course. 

Novartis championed Gleevec as a treatment for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. It saved my wifes life, I think. Ive asked if she would ever consider going off Gleevec and its as if I asked if she would like to jump in front of a speeding car. Ive observed her close relationship as a user of the drug and it has the effect of a "magical" potion. I really believe if she had no Gleevec she would assume a death knell had been struck and before the CML killed her she'd die of stress not having her "friend". 

Ive posed the question over Dr Drucker at Oregon Health and Sciences University and a Howard Hughes Medical investigator who discovered the connection and helped convert a fatal disease into a manageable chronic condition and whether he made out financially. He didnt make a penny but kept his job.  And how well another guy did who led a discovery group that eventually became Novartis went to Drucker to find the next new drug. He left the company. Phase 1 tests started and they found that once patients were on effective doses they got a 100% response rate. That never happened before. Its approved to treat 10 forms of cancer. Initially for a small group of 50,00 and now for 200,000+. 

So while there was a long list of people involved in the discovery and marketing of Gleevec, it came at great personal risk for the head of Novartis who threw a hail mary betting on a remedy for a rare disease. It was a win/win for the patient, Drs,, the company, and me.

In thinking about your hypothetical Dr I figure he makes his bed and lies in it. As for Gleevec, the generic brand came on market in August of 16. Novartis has made just about all the money they are going to make on Gleevec - generating $4.7B in revenue in 2012. If the cost was out of line on an economic basis I dont hear it from my #1. The drugs price is justified by its success. 

Can your asshole Dr justify success on the basis of an affordable price and derive all he needs and wants? Can his cost for finding patients justify his ROI? Is his treatment patented? Is it a proven measurable success? Is it found at oncologists offices, in medical journals or in a dimly lit back room? 

[jts]

3 hours ago, turkeyfoot said:

Is this a trick question? Id be a docile, spineless servant, of my patients, of course. 

Then you would be an enemy of the cancer industry and being docile and spineless would not work well for you.

---------

About gleevec.

Gleevec is a poison. Poisonous effects in more detail.

What I had in mind with the hypothetical question was something, perhaps hypothetical, that actually restores health. Poison won't do it.

In the links they don't say 'poisonous effects'. Instead they use euphemisms, often 'side effects'.

Notice that most of the information about gleevec on the web page is about poisonous effects. This is typical of drugs. A few lines about positives, many lines about negatives.

If we look for something good about gleevec, we find the following line:

"Gleevec (imatinib) interferes with the growth of some cancer cells."

My idea of beating cancer is not merely to make it grow more slowly but to remove causes and get it to go away.

I'm not mean mouthing gleevec; I'm just reading the web page. I didn't write that web page. All those bad things about gleevec were written by the medical profession. They did a good enough job of bashing gleevec; it doesn't need any additional bashing from me.

--------

Back to the hypothetical question.

I don't want to get sidetracked too much from the question in the first post in this thread. 

 

[Brant Gaede]

Water is a poison, including distilled water.

--Brant

[jts]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Water is a poison, including distilled water.

--Brant

Poison can be defined as any substance that cannot be transformed into living structure. Following this definition, water is a poison only in excess, gleevec is a poison in any amount.

 

[turkeyfoot]

Wow, you really jumped on that. So do you fantasize much? 

My reference to Gleevec was an attempt to align with your hypothetical Dr.

Wasnt Gerson therapy considered a last ditch attempt after interferon didnt work and/or after all contemporary medical treatments failed?

I watched a forensic documentary on Steve McQueen. It was clear to me his medical trip to Mexico consisted of coffee enemas, and massive amounts of fruits and vegetables. His death was caused by mesothelioma - lung cancer. The story goes his superiors punished him with a duty cleaning asbestos from -?. He was a heavy smoker too. up to 5 packs a day. He refused standard treatment. And he paid for it.

Your posing cheap, reliable treatment vs poison isnt the real crux of this dilemma. It has more to do with how people react to news of a fatal disease. I've read a few of your posts, so I am sure you understand much more than I (Im healthy, knock on wood) how treatment plans that aren't acceptable bring questions to bear on ones health. They can cause anxiety, frustration, and helplessness.

On a side note, funny but still true. Ive been dealing with marina operators over an issue with a boat. Ive been a wrench for 35 yrs and like to know about the systems I have in order to take better care of them. (Do you see the parallels?) At the moment, Im caught between 2 "professionals" knowledge about boats in general. The past week has been like trying to drink water out of a fire hose but Ive determined what the issue is, how to diagnose and fix it - all reliably and cheaply by myself. There are people who put themselves out there as experts and have no business doing it. There are others who will talk till the cows come home with no serious intent at following through.

I would solve what you can and find an outlet for what you cant. There are a lot of quacks. No easy answers but worth the effort.

 

[turkeyfoot]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Water is a poison, including distilled water.

--Brant

Bill Hasst, a legendary snake handler injected himself daily with snake venom, developed immunities to the poisons, saved 21 snake bit victims with transfusion of his own blood and lived to over 100 yrs old.

What doesnt kill you makes you stronger. Distilled or regular? ;)

[BaalChatzaf]

6 hours ago, turkeyfoot said:

Bill Hasst, a legendary snake handler injected himself daily with snake venom, developed immunities to the poisons, saved 21 snake bit victims with transfusion of his own blood and lived to over 100 yrs old.

What doesnt kill you makes you stronger. Distilled or regular? ;)

As sssserpent and ssssnake handler named Hassssssst?!  If only Ripley were alive. 

[turkeyfoot]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

As sssserpent and ssssnake handler named Hassssssst?!  If only Ripley were alive. 

 Believe it or not.

http://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/ninja-of-serpents/

Same principle. Reminds me of the show How do things work.

Antivenom is derived from snake poison injected into horses/goats then harvested/purified and delivered.

Albert Calmette, whose mentor was Louis Pasteur, co-created tuberculosis vaccine and developed the first snake antivenom in the 1890's. 

In other news.

http://www.floridatrend.com/article/906/farewell-to-these-famous-floridians

There been no double blind studies or academic papers..  Or not since 1907. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2358716/

"The indicated practicability of inducing acquired immunity was subsequently verified by other investigators (Phisalix and Betrand, Calmette, Kaufman) and is now fully established."

The chance of dying from a snake bite are about zero in the US compared to approx. 90,000 deaths around the world.

Science is great!

[william.scherk]

21 hours ago, jts said:

I'm going thru a bunch of videos by Dr. Mayfield on his youtube channel, most are about one hour.

The full name of the video-producer is Donald D Mayfield. He lived a fairly long life, making it to age 77.  He claimed the title "Doctor" due to his education in Traditional Chinese ['Oriental'] Medicine, Naturopathy, and other whoopee**.  He was not a medical doctor. 

Quote

Dr. Mayfield says on average the medical profession makes about one million dollars per cancer patient.

How does one verify his figure?  Can you link to the video you cite without reference, please?

-- "the hypothetical" is based on an 'alternative' reality in which the 'doctor' is an expert. That expertise is not in evidence.  Of the hundred or so videos on his legacy Youtube site, some few are related to his beliefs about cancer. Here, for example is "Cancer-Causes, Treatments or Cures?"

+++++++++++++++++++++

** from the still operating Whole Health America site:

He is licensed in Florida as a doctor of Oriental medicine which is one of the  broadest licenses in natural medicine in the U.S.A. 

     Dr. Mayfield has almost forty years of experience in the natural health field. He has studied in six countries besides the United States including Germany and Austria where some of the most advanced natural therapies have been developed.

     He began when natural medicine was far from popular and those doing it were referred to as "health nuts". The Pharmaceutical industry was referring to vitamins as expensive urine makers and of no value for health. Most people believe that drugs were the "magic bullet" to solve everything. There were very few companies making natural products. 

     Dr. Mayfield started out in the field of Theology and counseling with a degree in Theology and a Bachelors and Master degree in Psychology and counseling. As his involvement in natural and energy medicine developed he added Doctoral degrees in naturopathic and Oriental medicine, NMD and DOM. 

     Dr. Mayfield went on six study trips to Germany and Austria to study German Energetic Medicine as well as homeopathic medicine and Mexico to study advanced homeopathic medicine. He completed a two year program in psychiatry and counseling in Cleveland at the Cleveland Psychiatric Institute under Case Western University School of medicine, Department of Psychiatry. He completed studies with the Occidental Institue Research Foundation and the Southwest School of Asiatic medicine. 

     He completed a program for a Bachelor of Science degree in applied clinical nutrition and a Fellow in the same. He holds a diplomate in Homeopathic medicine  from two years of study along with a diplomate in Acupuncture. He has been practicing in Florida since 1978.

Edited January 31, 2017 by william.scherk

[jts]

Dr. Mayfield is new to me. I have not yet gone thru his videos. Most of them are about an hour and going thru all or most of them takes time. I was impressed by him in that he has a better understanding of disease than most doctors. But he is into homeopathy which I see as quackery. He has a 6 hour presentation about cancer but does not mention Gerson therapy and has little in the way of success stories.

On the positive side he updates Dr. Tilden's theory of toxemia in the light of modern knowledge. Some of his videos are very good, some not so good. But I didn't go thru all of them yet.

I don't see 77 years as a long life.

I don't judge doctors by whether they are medical. I judge doctors by how well their patients do. I don't let government judge doctors for me.

About cancer. For the purpose of the hypothetical ethical dilemma question, it is not necessary to have an exact number of dollars the cancer industry gets per cancer patient. It is plenty. The cancer industry would lose if a way could be found that would reverse most cancers completely with no poisonous effects and near full health could be restored for ten thousand dollars, or less if you do it at home. Dr. Mayfield suggested a few hundred dollars.

More than that. If most cancers could be so easily and inexpensively reversed, the cancer industry would lose bigger yet in the long term because preventing cancer would be easier than reversing it.

 

[turkeyfoot]

There are no more successes coming from Dr. Myer. Jerry, you seem to be searching for a solution that will make a difference in your quality of life. If so I hope you are able to find it.

I dont think anyone has referred to imatinib as a poison. My Gleevec girl and I celebrate 14 yrs of life this June.

[jts]

5 minutes ago, turkeyfoot said:

I dont think anyone has referred to imatinib as a poison.

Can you find a web page about imatinib that does not list poisonous effects?

Perhaps nobody will use the word 'poison' and instead they will use euphemisms. Calling it a poison would not be good marketing.

Imatinib is a chemotherapy drug. The whole idea is to be a poison. Chemotherapy is poison therapy. The purpose of chemotherapy is to to kill the cancer tumor by poisoning it, preferably without killing the patient.

In the most optimistic scenario, the cancer tumor goes away and the patient survives the poison. But the cancer tumor was a local manifestion of a general condition. This general condition that resulted in the tumor is not corrected by the poison and is made worse by the poison. If the general condition is not corrected, you should not be surprised if another tumor appears.
 

[BaalChatzaf]

Just now, jts said:

Can you find a web page about imatinib that does not list poisonous effects?

Perhaps nobody will use the word 'poison' and instead they will use euphemisms. Calling it a poison would not be good marketing.

Imatinib is a chemotherapy drug. The whole idea is to be a poison. Chemotherapy is poison therapy. The purpose of chemotherapy is to to kill the cancer tumor by poisoning it, preferably without killing the patient.

In the most optimistic scenario, the cancer tumor goes away and the patient survives the poison. But the cancer tumor was a local manifestion of a general condition. This general condition that resulted in the tumor is not corrected by the poison and is made worse by the poison. If the general condition is not corrected, you should not be surprised if another tumor appears.
 

But it is the local manifestation and it possibility of metastasis  that must be addressed. And a cancer can be caused by a local phenomenon.  Consider a cosmic ray hitting a chromosome causing a mutation that produces a cell with run-away growth.  That is the kind of cancer that can be caused by exposure to ionizing radiation.  The poor suffering  bastards who helped to cap the disaster at Chernobyl,  almost to man died of cancers induced by the radiation to which they were exposed. Everyone of them  dead of some cancer or another within two years.  And they knew going in they were on a suicide mission. 

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

But it is the local manifestation and it possibility of metastasis  that must be addressed. And a cancer can be caused by a local phenomenon.  Consider a cosmic ray hitting a chromosome causing a mutation that produces a cell with run-away growth.  That is the kind of cancer that can be caused by exposure to ionizing radiation.  The poor suffering  bastards who helped to cap the disaster at Chernobyl,  almost to man died of cancers induced by the radiation to which they were exposed. Everyone of them  dead of some cancer or another within two years.  And they knew going in they were on a suicide mission. 

One cosmic ray can cause a cancer?

We live in a sea of background radiation.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Each case of polio generated today's cost of a million bucks.

Therefore Salk and Sabin didn't have any incentive to create their vaccines--and didn't?

--Brant

the polio "industry" had them assassinated?

[jts]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

But it is the local manifestation and it possibility of metastasis  that must be addressed. And a cancer can be caused by a local phenomenon.  Consider a cosmic ray hitting a chromosome causing a mutation that produces a cell with run-away growth.  That is the kind of cancer that can be caused by exposure to ionizing radiation.  The poor suffering  bastards who helped to cap the disaster at Chernobyl,  almost to man died of cancers induced by the radiation to which they were exposed. Everyone of them  dead of some cancer or another within two years.  And they knew going in they were on a suicide mission. 

The cases of people on a suicide mission at Chernobyl and also Fukushima are exceptional. The body has defenses against cancer. It is only when the causes of cancer are so great that the body's defenses are overcome that cancer becomes a problem. The vast majority of the millions of people who get cancer (to the point of it being a problem) were not exposed to such extreme radiation.

I don't believe a single tiny cosmic ray is sufficient to overpower the defenses of a normal person. The normal human body is not that fragile. We evolved to survive imperfect environments.

About preventing stage 4, meaning it spreads. If the general condition is not improved, I would expect stage 4 to be at best merely delayed, not prevented. If the causes remain and in fact are added to (by chemotherapy), how can the cancer tumor not come back and come back worse? Causes produce effects.

Surgery can be useful but should be followed up by removing causes (deficiencies, excesses, imbalances, etc,) to correct the general condition that caused the local manifestation known as a tumor. The cancer industry will lose repeat business but to hell with them, you gotta look out for yourself.

 

[jts]

19 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Each case of polio generated today's cost of a million bucks.

Therefore Salk and Sabin didn't have any incentive to create their vaccines--and didn't?

--Brant

the polio "industry" had them assassinated?

Vaccines are big business, first in the vaccine itself multiple times per person, second from the health problems they cause.

If you are damaged by a vaccine and can prove it, you can sue the vaccine company in a special court. If you win, the tax payer pays, not the company. The vaccine industry has a hell of a good deal. I hear this special court costs the tax payer lots of money. Probably would cost the tax payer even more money if more people knew about this special court.

I hear that part of the deal if you win is you gotta keep your yap shut.

Nope, I'm not making this up.

Vaccines are homeopathy (preventing a disease by a small amount of it), usually seen as quackery.

 

[turkeyfoot]

3 hours ago, jts said:

Can you find a web page about imatinib that does not list poisonous effects?

Perhaps nobody will use the word 'poison' and instead they will use euphemisms. Calling it a poison would not be good marketing.

Imatinib is a chemotherapy drug. The whole idea is to be a poison. Chemotherapy is poison therapy. The purpose of chemotherapy is to to kill the cancer tumor by poisoning it, preferably without killing the patient.

In the most optimistic scenario, the cancer tumor goes away and the patient survives the poison. But the cancer tumor was a local manifestion of a general condition. This general condition that resulted in the tumor is not corrected by the poison and is made worse by the poison. If the general condition is not corrected, you should not be surprised if another tumor appears.
 

Your self imposed definition of poison is yours not mine. The science is there all you have to do is vicariously observe its effects (90% effective clinical studies) and the patients health (my Gleevec girl). I think youre confined by an outlook you have taken looking at your own health. And you look at mine (my Gleevec girl) as a casual bystander while suffering none of the effects of killer leukemia.

Ive given you ample evidence of snake venom saving lives. Is anyone busy following snake bit victims over a lifetime with vigilant monitoring and trying to find connections between taking an antivenom and what follows from their once fragile hold on life long after? No. The observation was symptoms reversed and the patient immediately benefited.   

Youre putting all of your energy into suggesting that the "poison" used to save a life is as bad as the illness trying to take it. My experience is quite different.

Would it be fair to say the conventional medicine you sought hasnt been the elixir that provides you with a positive health outcome? Not the case for my Gleevec girl. 

Might it also be fair to say that IF the paradigm for the cancer industry and its practitioners shifted in the direction you express that you might, might only then find the elixir that you search for? 

You may also be glamorizing a conclusion that meets the need for you to stay in control of the situation. For example, a particular malady may not rise to the level of attention for researchers willing enough to do the work thereby leaving some diseases untreated or ignored.

Back to the question I posed for my Gleevec girl.

I found clinical trials are in progress to test whether CML patients who have gone into remission on TKI's can stop the "poison" without the cancer returning. After a 12 month follow up it was found that a molecular relapse occurred in 39% of patients. Its driven by by patients who assumed risk, as they did by willingly taking the drug, gambling on a better outcome. 

I understand you on some level. That is a Dr prescribed statins for high cholesterol. Phhhttt. I brought it down from 240 to 197 within a year with diet and exercise. Oh and good genes yada yada. I went on a strangely partial med diet partial do what you like wing it thing. I imagine I could have gotten it so low I might have compromised my health. And I have been having dreams and fleeting thoughts of dying and/or suffering debilitating illness. Because in my circle of friends and acquaintances talk always turns to what ails them. I have nothing to contribute but because I am the same age I worry. Then i get on my elliptical and pump hard.  Strangely my wife looks at my responses and thinks of me as her rock. Im sure she means hard headed. 

 

 

[Brant Gaede]

On 1/30/2017 at 8:49 PM, Brant Gaede said:

Water is a poison, including distilled water.

A basic principle of pharmacology is the dose makes the poison. One can elaborate off that base.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

9 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

One cosmic ray can cause a cancer?

We live in a sea of background radiation.

--Brant

Yes. But the probability of a charged particle (alpha particle) or a neutron hitting the chromosome just right to cause a lethal mutation is very small. Some genetic errors can be corrected by the internal  processes of a cell,  some genetic errors  produce non-lethal modifications, and others have a high probability of producing a lethal mutation. Some errors are internally corrected.  That is why enough of us live to an age where we can reproduce. 

We are not safe and the universe is not  benign.  As Ayn Rand found out the hard way.

[jts]

13 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

A basic principle of pharmacology is the dose makes the poison. One can elaborate off that base.

--Brant

Then I disagree with pharmacology. Some things are poison in any amount.

 

[jts]

11 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Yes. But the probability of a charged particle (alpha particle) or a neutron hitting the chromosome just right to cause a lethal mutation is very small. Some genetic errors can be corrected by the internal  processes of a cell,  some genetic errors  produce non-lethal modifications, and others have a high probability of producing a lethal mutation. Some errors are internally corrected.  That is why enough of us live to an age where we can reproduce. 

We are not safe and the universe is not  benign.  As Ayn Rand found out the hard way.

The probability of a rock from the sky hitting you is very small. Do you worry about that?

Ayn Rand smoked and got lung cancer as she deserved. (Greg the moralist probably would say.) If she had lived more rationally, the universe would have been more safe and benign to her.