Okay, so now my blood is up. I’ve been trying to get some rest after the most intense year of my life, but some things just require a girl to blog. Rant. Shout. Petition. Mobilise. Incite. Send out a rallying cry for some semblance of sanity to prevail when it comes to alternative healing for people living with cancer.

Within a few weeks of my own diagnosis I became aware of the restrictions, prohibitions and sheer censorship of alternative cancer treatments. In order to access these treatments you need to join an underground movement of cancer warriors who share vital information and help each other navigate a network of brave arse-on-the-line practitioners, including qualified doctors and nurses, who are engaged in covert operations to save lives.

Much as I would love to disclose copious details of this network to all the cancer peeps who read my blog it would be unwise for me to do so. But I can tell you this:

I own a Rife machine* (banned by the FDA in the USA but shipped to me from that country), which uses resonant sound to break down tumours and destroy cancer-feeding parasites.
I have mega-dose Vitamin C infusions – a well regarded cancer treatment in other countries that is essentially prohibited (or at least seriously frowned upon) in the UK because it isn’t approved by NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) – at least once a month in a London clinic.
I regularly receive two other illegal remedies I prefer not to name, both of which are natural and administered legally in other countries that recognise their efficacy. One of these is supplied to me by a qualified nurse and the other prescribed to me by an oncologist abroad.

*Royal Rife was using this technology to cure cancer in Germany in the 1950s, but his laboratory was razed to the ground (‘by whom?’ you might well ask) and he was witch hunted as a ‘quack’ until he lost his mind.

So what’s got my blood up enough to write this blog on New Year’s Day?

Ten months after travelling as far as Mexico for hyperthermia, which uses heat to attack tumours and boost the immune system (as happens when you get a fever), I was delighted to find two clinics offering this treatment on my door step in the UK. It has been a long search, despite the fact that this has been standard treatment for cancer in countries like Germany for over thirty years.

No sooner had I checked out their credentials with other cancer patients, who were extremely positive about their experience, than I heard they had both been shut down by the CQC (Care Quality Commission) citing ‘poor management’. Reasonable as it may sound, this nebulous explanation is simply code for ‘we-don’t-control-this-so-you-can’t-have-it’ to us more seasoned cancer peeps. We just roll our collective eyeballs as another one bites the dust.

The next thing to outrage me was this: a fellow cancer blogger called Fiona Shakeela Burns, who used natural methods to cure herself after being given a few months to live – and who happens to be a medicinal herbalist – recently received a call from Trading Standards instructing her to take down her blog about her personal story because it is “not allowed”.

I repeat. The blog she has written about how she healed her own cancer naturally (an outcome ascribed to “spontaneous recovery” by her bewildered oncologist) is not allowed.

Not. Allowed.

Seriously. I am this close to speechless. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! It’s insane. Barking. Nutty-nut-nut. Do-bloody-lally. I would laugh it is wasn’t so tragic. People are dying. Many unnecessarily. And Trading Standards wants to deny them a bona fide story of hope? It would beggar belief if we couldn’t make cold, depressing sense of it:

Firstly, there is the 1939 Cancer Act to contend with. With the exception of radioactivity and ionizing radiation this Act prohibited advertisements or publications that “offer to treat any person for cancer, and to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof.” As of December 2014 this is the sole remaining provision of the Act and, because of it, fines and prosecutions for blogs like Fiona’s still take place. Which gets my revolutionary goat.

Secondly, conventional cut-it, burn-it, poison-it cancer treatment is a multi-billion dollar industry and that is a multi-billion reasons not to cure this devastating disease. Furthermore, you cannot patent herbs, heat or vitamins – which is exactly what Big Pharma are now pushing for because even they recognise the healing power of nutrients and natural substances.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating the purely natural approach or joining the anti-pharmaceutical brigade, which tends to see evil stalking the halls of the whole industry. That is neither my position nor my point. I have always adopted an integrated approach, combining low dose targeted chemo and selective use of radiation (to a tumour threatening to paralyse me) with a variety of other drugs and natural treatments. I don’t think the stand-off between these paradigms is helpful to cancer sufferers and firmly believe in the power of collaborative dialogue over self-righteous advocacy in just about any disagreement I can think of.

However, what I do object to – fiercely, deeply and judiciously – is the obscuration of valid treatments or real examples of recovery that offer hope to the hopeless and healing to the desperately sick.

I object to the closure of clinics offering an effective heat therapy with no serious side effects when radiation therapy has been causing secondary cancers, and significantly increasing the death toll, for decades.

I object to high doses of vitamin C being withheld on the basis they might be harmful when one of the most harmful toxins known to man, chemotherapy, is administered as a matter of course.

It. Makes. No. Sense.

I object to drug companies paying people to look for and block information about how to actually heal cancer (yes it happens).

I object to the unnecessary and unjustifiable censorship of someone brave, caring and generous enough to share her personal story of healing with the world.

I object to needing to travel abroad, at significant expense after I had to stop working, to receive the infusions, vaccines, metabolic protocols and immunotherapy treatments that have undoubtedly extended my life, as well as improving its quality, since I was diagnosed.

I object to the staggering lengths some people have to go to, not least the parents of children with cancer, to access potentially life-saving treatments.

Most of all I object to the calculated, patronising, largely inexcusable and ultimately fatal shrinkage of our options when we need them most.

So, if you share my objections or have had similar restrictive experiences as cancer patients, please comment below. Perhaps, if there is enough of a ground swell, I might shout louder and more publicly. I might do more than whine about it on my blog. I might start yelling from the rooftops. I might start kicking up a right royal stink.

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P.S. Since Fiona is still waiting for a formal letter telling her to take the blog down, I am sharing it now in solidarity for as long as the link is live: Cancer-U-Can

You may also want to read this moving blog by a fellow cancer warrior about the “medical tourists” who make their way to Mexico because they can’t find the treatments they need at home: A month in a Mexican cancer clinic

And if you are up for signing a petition to repeal The Cancer Act you can do so here. It needs a much bigger ground swell of support: Cancer Act petition

The Cancer Warriors