The Cancer Patient’s Bill of Rights

“You have cancer.” These three little words drum up anxiety, stress, and a sense of doom. Being diagnosed with cancer can leave one feeling hopeless and without any control. Instead of feeling empowered and in charge of your body and treatment program…a cancer patient is told how the cancer will be treated vs. figuring out a treatment program that resonates with the person.

THIS IS WRONG! As Americans, we deserve to have a say in how we want to be treated for cancer.

Instead, Big Pharma dictates how cancer will be treated in the United States. Our medical doctors must follow this protocol or be stripped of their medical license.

Worse yet, many of these heroic doctors who have chosen a non-toxic path for treating cancer patients have been labelled a “quack” and run out of the United States.

In 1989, Jonathan Collin, M.D., recognized and condemned the way people are unfairly exploited when given a cancer diagnosis. He berates, “exploitive human experimentation (and) callous clinical trials…conducted in our major treatment centers.”

As a result, Dr. Collin created a bill of rights for cancer patients.

The Cancer Patient’s Bill of Rights

~ paraphrased by Susan Silberstein, PhD, Executive Director of the Center for Advancement in Cancer Education

1.The right to choose one’s own therapy, regardless of its provenance or its experimental or controversial status.

2. The right to fair evaluation of all treatments, including those from independent investigators of modest means, and elimination of FDA requirements for lengthy multi-million dollar testing procedures.

3. The right to humane and efficient medical care, and to protection under the 1964 Helsinki Declaration requiring that patients be the primary benefactors of trials and not mere guinea pigs in randomized experimental trials for the sake of obtaining new therapeutic agents.

4. The right to know as much about one’s condition as possible, including the reasons for selecting or rejecting a particular treatment plan, the risk-benefit ratio of relevant therapies, the curative or palliative nature of the plan’s goal, non-toxic treatment alternatives, and the ready availability of a patient’s medical records.

5. The right to insurance reimbursement for any reasonably priced physician-prescribed therapies, whether conventional, experimental, alternative or complementary, with the criteria of treatment propriety established by the patient and doctor, not by insurance or government agencies.

6. The right of the public to an open, universal tumor registry, reporting treatment validity, with access unrestricted other than to protect patient anonymity.

7. The right of physicians to be free to treat patients competently as they mutually see fit, free of harassment or malicious lawsuits in the name of routing out quackery.

I am still trying to get my head around why a cancer patient would even need a Cancer Bill of Rights when we live in America…the land of the free, home of the brave. Where are the medical freedoms for cancer patients?

More importantly…Why are we even having this discussion?

Because if you are diagnosed in the United States with cancer…there are no medical freedoms for your treatment.

Instead, cancer is treated like a death sentence. Fear is delivered along with the diagnosis to go along with the Big Pharma way or you will die.

Glen Warner, M.D., oncologist states:

We have a multi-million dollar industry that is killing people, right and left, just for financial gain. Their idea of research is to see whether two doses of this poison is better than three doses of that poison.

My conventional doctor told me it was sad that I would not live to be a mom for my children. He told me if I do not follow the conventional treatment plan of chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, Tamoxifen; I will die. This is a travesty!

Research shows the opposite: The majority of cancer patients die from the conventional treatments rather than the cancer.

Professor Hardin B. Jones, Ph.D., University of California shares:

My studies have proved conclusively that untreated cancer victims live up to four times longer than treated individuals. If one has cancer and opts to do nothing at all, he will live longer and feel better than if he undergoes radiation, chemotherapy or surgery.

Until the United States embraces other alternative, non-toxic, cancer treatments; cancer patients will need this Cancer Patient’s Bill of Rights.

Let freedom ring!