HALF OF US will eventually get cancer, but how many will be able to see several dozen doctors and then feel confident rejecting accepted medical advice?
In a recent interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine, Australian supermodel Elle Macpherson said that she followed exactly that. She informed the journal that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago but turned off chemotherapy in favour of “an intuitive, heart-led, holistic approach” to treatment.
The publication claims that Macpherson considered the choice for several weeks following advice from “32 doctors and experts”. She eventually chose a non-pharmaceutical solution guided by her primary care physician, a specialist in “integrative medicine”.
Macpherson is now in clinical remission, happily known as “utter wellness”. It is useless to try to evaluate the riskiness of her decision to avoid treatment without knowing vital information on the degree of her cancer, the contemporaneous risk factors, and the advice she got. She underwent a lumpectomy, the first operation to remove a worrisome lump, for instance, which some doctors have claimed might have been enough treatment.
Still, the narrative has become a lightning rod on the internet, drawing increasing numbers of those who reject “conventional medicine” and those who try to defend it from relentless criticism.
What causes this mistrust? With its divisive arguments on the severity of symptoms, benefits of lockdowns, and safety of vaccinations, several academics point to the COVID-19 epidemic as a cause of “science scepticism” rising worldwide. Furthermore, the internet realm of “wellness” is being utilised as a cover for anti-science opinions and even conspiracist thinking.
For Black and minority ethnic populations, fear of doctors – extending to an unwillingness to accept screening for cancer and even treatment – reflects public health and medical institutions’ decades-long failure to interact with them and ensure equality of treatment in many nations.
Particularly in the UK, allegations of months-long delays in beginning vital cancer treatments have caused mistrust of the National Health Service’s capacity to cure cancer.
All of this means that should you be diagnosed with cancer today, your choices could appear less defined than they did in the past. In addition to the usually terrible experience of chemotherapy, it’s not surprising that Macpherson’s narrative of “non-pharmaceutical” options has attracted such interest.
Macpherson isn’t quite typical of the great majority of people living with cancer, though, and this should be considered. Her estimated net worth of US $95 million allows her to afford to have several second opinions and then refuse chemotherapy; her riches serve as a safety net. Further complicating Macpherson’s narrative is her “ingestible wellness” company, WelleCo and her love relationships with the notorious anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield, whom she dated from 2018 to 2019.
Most people run the danger of refusing medical treatment. Those with cancer who opted for alternative medicine for their primary treatment were more likely to die within five years than those who chose conventional care, according to a 2017 study.
According to a more extensive study released the following year of almost 2 million cancer cases in the US, the use of alternative medicine was linked to rejecting traditional cancer therapy and thereby doubled the probability of dying within five years.
Indeed, reflecting new treatments, research, and awareness that personalised, focused responses are the most beneficial, oncologists are increasingly choosing to use less chemotherapy or to avoid it completely.
However, for now, at least, the guidance of groups such as Cancer Research UK is clear: alternative medicines have no scientific or medical proof of their ability to treat cancer. Amid general suspicion of medicine, Macpherson’s story emphasises a favourable outcome without providing the necessary background and has the potential to inspire people to follow a dangerous road.
Though everyone could be in danger of cancer, The Body, as Macpherson was known at the height of her modelling career, always had a higher chance of surviving it than most people, independent of her decisions, thanks to her enormous finances.
