The Ministry of Health and Welfare yesterday urged cancer patients to seek standard treatment at hospitals that provide certified cancer diagnosis and treatment, rather than arbitrarily believing in uncertified alternative therapies.
The ministry’s appeal came after Wu Yuan-hung (吳元宏), an attending physician at Taipei Veterans General Hospital’s (TVGH) radiology department, on Monday wrote on Facebook about a man with colorectal cancer who believed in a so-called “natural treatment” and died of metastatic cancer in 2013.
Wu’s post included a photograph of a large tumor more than 20cm in diameter protruding out of a male patient’s anus.
He described the man in the photograph as a patient surnamed Fan (范), who had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2009 and sought treatment at Wu’s hospital, the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center, and Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, where doctors recommended that he undergo surgery.
However, Fan approached Hsu Da-fu (許達夫), a self-proclaimed “doctor,” who advised him to accept “natural treatment,” practice qigong (氣功) and consume electrolyte water and a herbal extract product called Tien Hsien Liquid (天仙液).
Fan spent more than NT$1 million (US$33,131) on these alternative therapies for three years, but the tumor continued to grow, until he returned to seek treatment at TVGH for the large tumor shown in the photo, Wu said.
Hsu boasted that he did not get a surgery when he had rectal cancer, but did not mention that he had received a complete session of concomitant chemo-radio-therapy (CCRT), Wu said.
He said studies suggest that about 10 to 40 percent of colorectal cancer patients can control the disease for many years after getting CCRT, like Hsu, but the standard treatment is to operate after CCRT.
“Hsu won the bet, but that does not mean he should guide other patients to bet their lives like he did.” Wu wrote. “He advertises those cases that have won the bet, but more patients have lost the bet, like Mr Fan, who was left with a broken body and an empty wallet, crying in the dark as they slowly withered.”
On the same day, Wu also posted a screenshot of a post on Hsu’s Facebook page advocating a unique treatment and urging cancer patients to make an appointment at his clinic in Taichung.
Wu asked the health ministry and the physician association whether Hsu’s post was legal.
Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Tsai Sen-tien (蔡森田), who is also a doctor specializing in head and neck cancer, yesterday said that many patients had high chances of being cured but postponed proper treatment due to their beliefs in alternative therapies, only turning back to standard treatment when the cancer had reached a terminal stage.
“This is not treatment, but deception,” he said, adding that giving patients improper and uncertified treatment advice when they are ill, and likely in a fragile state of mind, is an intolerable form of deception and can significantly reduce patients’ survival rate.
He urged cancer patients to seek standard treatment at one of the 57 hospitals nationwide that provide cancer diagnosis and treatment to receive better care.
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