The death of Steve Jobs, succumbing to his fight with cancer, made me contemplate the relationship of access to resources (of which he had much more than anybody else might have) and the choices made for the use of those resources.
Even though traditional medicine has helped me and my loved ones tremendously over the years, I have always been a proponent of the more natural way of approaching health and healing. I am sure that Mr. Jobs had all the help in the world when he was diagnosed with cancer a few years back to find all the options to handle this threat to his life.
Why, with all this information at hand, did he not opt for a natural way dealing with this problem, when there is much information available that shows that the non-invasive and non-toxic approach has a bigger chance of success?
I just listened to Dr. Mercola interviewing Dr. Nicolas Gonzales, who is treating patients with alternative methods for two decades. One quote of Dr. Gonzales might shed some light on the decision process:
The reason Linda McCartney went for a bone marrow transplant is not because she read the data and realized it would work for her. It’s because she believed in it – it was a faith issue. She was going to this priesthood kept in a temple in New York City. They had resources, and she could pay for them. So it was religion to her. Patrick Swayze to the best of the best – Stanford is the West Coast mecca. It’s a religious temple. When he went there, it was faith, even though there’s not a single piece of evidence they gave him that chemo would cure him and would lead to substantial results. He did it because of faith – irrational faith, because it’s the belief that academicians really have these special secrets that none of us have and none of the lay people (we mortals) know. Their special knowledge, wisdom, or rituals would make us better.
The fact that they don’t make us better – Landon died, Patrick Swayze died, Linda McCartney died; I could list 20 celebrities that consulted or called me, never did my program, and are dead because they went to the conventional route.
Why didn’t they do mine?
I don’t have a temple. I don’t even own a white coat. I can wear a white coat – a good one – but I don’t have one on purpose. I’m not part of the academic priesthood, so I don’t wear a white coat. Yes, I have a stethoscope and a medical office like any because I need that, but I’m not part of the academic priesthood.
Michael Landon picked that up right away. In fact, his press agent, Harry Flynn, wanted him to come and see me. Harry and I remained close friends. He was really upset, and one of Landon’s comments about me is that I wasn’t fancy enough. I wasn’t fancy enough, so he went to the priesthood. He went to Cedars-Sinai.
Admittedly, this is just one side’s opinion. We also have to look at the other side. Checking out what Wikipedia tries to tell us about Dr. Gonzales we find a very different picture. Even though the article appears unbiased at first glance, it fails to mention the long term survivors documented on Dr. Gonzales web site and in other publications. This author has personal experiences editing Wikipedia in the area of controversial subjects, showing that objectivity is not something that can be expected from a Wikipedia article on controversial matters – the version of those articles surviving is usually the one supported by the party with the bigger resources.
Back to the subject at hand – would Steve Jobs still amongst us had he taken the more natural approach to healing his cancer? This we will never know, but had he, he surly would not be worse off than he is now. And it might not have worked for him at all as the state of mind is one of the most important in all healing. Undergoing alternative treatment while being afraid that the orthodox treatment would have been the right. will negate all possible benefit.
Fear is, as the old German movie Fear eats soul (Angst essen Seele auf) teaches us, behind all things going wrong.