WEDNESDAY 21 JUNE 2000

DR JOHN LATHAM

  585. I call Dr John Latham, representing New Approaches to Cancer.

  (Dr Latham) Thank you, Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me. I had testicular cancer as a 22-year-old medical student. My style of practice is based not only on my medical knowledge but on my awareness of being the patient's advocate at as many levels of being as possible. I have survived 40 years and two months. As a statistic, only 5 per cent of people with malignant teratoma of the testis survive for five years. I advocate research into what patients feel, think, know and do for themselves. I advocate Patient Power in place of assumptions and medical arrogance and "Doctor knows best". This will be fairly hard hitting. It is not anger: it is passion now, but it was anger. "The person who has the illness is more important than the illness the person has", so quoted Sir William Osler, Professor of Medicine at Oxford at the beginning of the last century. I wonder how many of you are happy to be a statistic? I am not. How long have I got Doc? The answer to such questions are filled with vital opportunities lost. Giving a person three months, two years or whatever, based on statistics leads those people to find it immensely difficult to live longer than that prescribed time. At a cancer support group I attend regularly people know that they are supposed to die by next week or next month and very often they do. Such is the power of their illness, the power of the word cancer and the power of the doctor's statistical knowledge. What a missed opportunity. If instead the emphasis were put on patient empowerment, putting the patient back in the driving seat and saying something like "The length of time you live may depend on a number of factors. Nobody can say how long you will live because nobody knows what measures you will take for yourself to boost your immune system, for example, by dealing with the circumstances in which you found yourself when the cancer arose. How are you feeling emotionally? How is your diet? How is your state of health generally? Is more rest and relaxation needed? Is more exercise needed, vitamin and mineral supplements, counselling? All these matters can be helped by appropriate counselling, nutritionists and touch therapists—massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and healing. This is the Bristol Cancer Help Centre approach alongside orthodox medicine and it is also the New Approaches to Cancer approach. If we listen to people with cancer they are entirely consistent. They know when their illness arose and how and why. They know that they reached a climax of unwellness because ... and they know what that because is. They know, and especially with hindsight and after the shock has died down, what to do if given the right opportunity and approach to explore their own thoughts and feelings. I wonder how many of you have attended cancer support groups. How many scientists have looked at the individual context in which cancer arose? How many scientists have read a book like Remarkable Recoveries, on what extraordinary healings can tell us about getting well and staying well, by Caryle Hirshberg and Marc Ian Bavasch, Headline Publication 1995. This contains the stories about deep spiritual change, switching on the immune system again after the trauma of cancer. The immune system is hardly ever mentioned by doctors in cancer and over the last few years whilst attending cancer support groups and sitting in with oncologists I only ever hear of a negative attitude to the person's initiative in wanting to know what it is they can do for themselves. This is very sad and makes the people with cancer very upset and angry, helpless and dependent. If it were not assumed that the patient will automatically have orthodox treatment, but if instead the patient were asked what they felt was the most appropriate kind of approach for themselves and perhaps offered some options, many patients would choose a range of therapies to kill the cancer cells whilst at the same time stimulating their own immune system. Somehow patients seem to know this whilst doctors have forgotten. Please may we continue to hear what patients say and feel and appreciate what they really want.

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

  586. A little earlier one of the witnesses told us that patients do not get straight answers to straight questions. How do you square that with the approach you advocate?
  (Dr Latham) The arrogance is the problem that gets in the way. If we are not prepared to say "I don't know", then we will get into tight corners. We should be prepared to say "I don't know", maybe "But I'll find out", maybe "There are answers but I don't know the answers, maybe you need to explore that with a counsellor". I do not think doctors should be expected to have all the answers.

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. We must finish there and thank you for coming to tell us about your own personal experiences and your wider experience since then.