The effect of celebrities speaking out about cancer treatments

I cannot believe that People magazine (at the top of your reading list, I'm sure) published an open letter by Suzanne Somers to Christina Applegate, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Among other things, in this letter, Somers says "There are more options than the ones presented to you in the oncologist's office." Suzanne Somers is herself a breast cancer survivor who used herbal therapies during her own cancer treatment and is an outspoken advocate of crazy (in my opinion, take it for what you will) hormonal modulation to promote youth, including continuing to take her estrogenic hormones after her cancer diagnosis because she reportedly, "knew more about hormones than the doctor treating her for cancer." (Editorial comment from Noelle: !!!??!?!) This program is given the pseudo-scientific name of "bioidentical hormone replacement."

I feel that by giving her letter "big name" press coverage, you grant some legitimacy to her support of non-evidenced based medicine, further growing mistrust between cancer patients and their providers. The real goal should be to prove (or disprove) the efficacy of the herbal and other nontraditional therapies, then bring those that work into routine clinical practice. Rather than viewing conventional medicine and alternative therapies as mutually exclusive, we should view all possibly effective therapies as the same thing: drugs which need to undergo rigorous clinical trial evaluation to be proven effective.

In a much shinier and happier update, remember that Olympic swimmer with testicular cancer who was delaying his cancer treatments to participate in the games? He will be swimming tonight, 200 breast, Eric Shanteau. He's not favored to medal, but I am still rooting for him.