Getting It Right

Getting It Right
by Chris K. H. Teo, Ph.D.

bookoncancer.com

Getting it Right - Knowing the Truth Can Change Your Mindset and Set Your Free !

                            Preface: My Guiding Light

This book took a long time to get into print. It is not because I took a long time to write it – in fact, I completed the manuscript within a month, but rather I needed time to find my path. Am I doing the right thing? The finished manuscript was kept aside for some months. I was unsure if I wanted this book out. Many people may construe that by writing this I am anti-medicine or anti-doctors. I am not. I tell patients to seek doctors’ advice if they think they get cancer. I do not see patients without their medical reports. I generally ask patients to explore all possible options and evaluate them accordingly. Whether patients undergo chemotherapy / radiotherapy or not, is entirely their own decision. We have to respect whatever decisions they make. They are fighting the battle of their life. My role for cancer patients is to provide unbiased, honest and truthful information about what they need to know.

This book is therefore, NOT about criticising medicine. Medicine has indeed helped mankind in many ways in the past and it is going to do the same in the future. But medicine does has its limit – particularly so in handling chronic diseases.

This book is about truth. It provides facts as I know them – documented in established medical journals and books by medical experts themselves. In writing this book, I would like to be as fair and objective as possible. I have read, researched and observed cancer patients for a decade now. I need not have to offer my own opinions at all. I have read widely and what I need to say or see happening, have all been written by medical experts themselves. Hence, this is a book of quotations based on my reading of medical journals and books. Take for example the advice by John Lee et al. found in their book that is available from the local bookstore: What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer. The authors wrote:

· Some chemotherapy does prolong life for a few months, but generally at the high price of devastating side effects. The use of chemotherapy is purely a gamble, and we don’t think it’s worth taking. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes it makes things worse. Chemotherapy is an attempt to poison the body just short of death in the hope of killing the cancer before the entire body is killed. Most of the time it doesn’t work.

Dr. Jeffrey Tobias is a cancer specialist at University College, London. He trained in Cambridge, U.K. as well as the Harvard Medical School, USA. In his book, Living with Cancer, Tobias wrote:

· There is no use pretending that brain tumours are truly curable.

Dr. Tobias should know better. It appears that when it comes to brain cancer, undergoing surgery gives almost always the same sad story of recurrence.

Such comments may be offensive to some people. But, the authors could be saying the truth. Facing or hearing truth sometimes hurts. Championing truth could be risky – as medical history has taught us. Knowing this, I had to do a lot soul searching. But something inside me seems to bug me to bring forth this book. I have the responsibility to share what I know with those who do not know and those who wish to know.

Albert Einstein said:

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, But because of those who look on and do nothing.

In this book, what is being said about modern medicine can equally apply to the alternative and complementary medicines. When it comes to business and ethics, it does not matter if we have a M.D., N.D., or Ph.D. – we all have our biases, prejudices, weaknesses and failings as human beings. Integrity, honesty and wisdom do not automatically come with these initials.

Contents

Preface:  My Guiding Light.

Chapter 1 Medicine is a noble profession.

Chapter 2 Is Modern Medicine the Only Proven and Scientific Therapy?

Capater 3 Is Traditional and Complementary /Alternative Medicine a Quackery?

Chapter 4 Medicine is Supported by Rigorous Scientific Testing in Randomised Placebo-controlled Studies - Its Implications to the Layperson.

Chapter 5 Are Research Data Always Reliable and Proven When Published in Peer-reviewed Journals?

Chapter 6 Are Drugs Perfectly Safe After FDA Approval?

Chapter 7 Protecting Public Safety or Safe-guarding Self-interest?

Chapter 8 Can Medicine Cure Cancer?

Epilogue What Some Doctors Say About Medicine.