Although she has had a recurrence of breast cancer and thankfully is seeing a physician rather than seeking naturopathic treatments.
Unfortunate news. We've just heard that the S-in-L has rejected chemotherapy for a more "natural" approach as taught by her training. While rejecting chemo can be a rational choice, she is far too young for the choice to be made on "I've lived a good long life and expect to be dead in soon either way." Doing so for naturopathic reasons is not rational. Any more that rejecting vaccines is rational. The motivations for either are not really comprehensible to me. Alas, rational is not always enough.
I have a friend whose mother died of cancer very quickly and painfully after deciding on the 'green tea and making my body less acid' snake oil approach. He gets very,
very angry at people who promote that kind of choice at the expense of tried and tested but (as I know from experience) aggressive, unpleasant and life altering treatments that do actually work.
My cancer treatments cost the NHS hundreds of thousands of pounds. A vaccine against the HPV that triggered it costs a few pence. Who's making the money there?
Still on vaccines, I recently posted this on facebook in a vaccination discussion:
It was originally posted in a local history group entirely unrelated to the topic, but I suggested people opposed to vaccination read the caption and think about the implications.
I'm off to Vietnam and Cambodia later this year. I look forward to getting my jabs to stop me getting some of the illnesses that are endemic. I am tempted to photograph the procedure so I can make the anti-vaccine crowd froth at the mouth!
