"Chapter 05: Complementary Medicine at MD Anderson" by John Mendelsohn MD
 
Chapter 05: Complementary Medicine at MD Anderson

Chapter 05: Complementary Medicine at MD Anderson

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Identifier

MendelsohnJ_01_20050103_C05

Publication Date

1-3-2005

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Overview; Overview; Definitions, Explanations, Translations; Discovery and Success; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; The History of Health Care, Patient Care; Technology and R&D; Patients; Patients, Treatment, Survivors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Disciplines

History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History

Transcript

James Olson:

: Can I ask you about alternative, or integrated, or complimentary medicine and its rise in the last 20 years or so I guess.

John Mendelsohn, MD:

: It’s been around for a millennia, and when you have cancer, you’d like to do everything you can to get rid of it and there’s no question, the American public spends as much on alternative medicines as it spends on prescription medicines. Our approach is to arm the patient with whatever they think they need. I am – I know that quality of life has improved. If you are interested in alternative medicine and use it, whether it’s yoga or exercise, or it’s meditation, your quality of life improves whether you have cancer or not. And if you have cancer, you have extra stresses on you. Whether the alternative medicines are going to turn out to be therapeutic in the way chemotherapy is, still needs to be worked out, but we’re doing research on it. Green tea, in Asia, is felt to be a good treatment for cancer. So we’re studying green tea here at Anderson. We studied laetrile and proved that it didn’t work. You don’t hear as much about laetrile anymore. We decided to set up a place of wellness a number of years ago and Lorenzo Cohen [oral history interview] has moved into that and is trying to develop scientific research. The most interesting paper he’s come out with in the last year is if you practice yoga and you have cancer, you sleep better. You don’t need as much sleeping pills and you get better rest. That’s important. That’s very important. That’s not going to cure the cancer, but it’s going to make it easier to cure the cancer. And it’s going to give you a lot better quality of life. That’s the kind of thing we’re learning.

James Olson:

: Was this market-driven in the beginning in the sense that – I’ve interviewed Dr. Cohen, and he’s – when I look at kind of how it worked with – at NIH it’s almost this groundswell of – it’s already happening out here and our patients are already doing it, so we’ve got to find out just what they’re doing I guess.

John Mendelsohn, MD:

: We published the first study on that. It was in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. We learned that over 70 percent of our patients were taking an alternative medicine ,and of those only half told their doctor about it. And the doctor needs to know that because some of these interfere with the chemo they’re getting. So the NIH – I interrupted you – what was your question? I think market driven or patient driven? I think it’s patient driven. I think there were people in medicine interested in this, but the patients said to us, hey, we need help on this too. And we listened.

James Olson:

: Was there any controversy among old-timers about it?

John Mendelsohn, MD:

: I don’t see a lot of controversy. I see an anxiousness to be sure that if there are proven methods to treat the cancer that can produce cures or prolongation of life in a substantial number of patients, I see concern that patients will get diverted and not accept those. This becomes a big ethical dilemma with kids. A kid with leukemia whose parents don’t believe in giving them chemo, and 70 percent of kids with leukemia are cured with chemo. So what do you do if you’re a pediatrician and a kid with leukemia comes in and the parents say, ‘no, I want to take some alternative medicine. I don’t want to take chemo.’ What’s the obligation? These are huge ethical questions. You can’t – can you force the parents? These are huge ethical questions you can talk to pediatricians about.

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Chapter 05: Complementary Medicine at MD Anderson

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