A homeopathic doctor was removed from the Order of Physicians for having taken care of his patient, suffering from breast cancer, only by herbal medicine.
You can choose to laugh or cry about it. In the Maritime Alps, a homeopathic doctor was struck off for a period of two years by the Council of the Order of Physicians, for having failed in his ethical obligations in the care of a patient with breast cancer .
The case, as of summer 2016, is reported by Le Parisien. The practitioner is criticized for not having contacted the hospital and for not having prescribed any examination for this patient, and for having thus comforted his patient in the illusion that she could escape conventional treatment without loss. of major chances.
To his patient, the doctor thus contented himself with prescribing various herbal preparations “with an oncological aim”, based on black radish, milk thistle, walnut or arnica. More surprisingly, he injected mistletoe extract into the breast, around the tumor. The family decided to file a complaint in September 2012, six months before the patient died of her illness.
Data acquired from science
“The only circumstance that Mme F. would have renounced the chemotherapeutic treatment does not exonerate Doctor D. from his responsibility. He had to provide the person concerned with care in accordance with his state of health and the data acquired from science, by calling on competent third parties, if necessary, which he did not do ”, slice the judgment, cited by the daily.
According to the code of medical ethics, physicians’ freedom to prescribe is limited by “data acquired from science”, validated by clinical studies and community judgment. This is the case, for example, of recommendations issued by the National Cancer Institute (INCa) and the various learned societies of oncology. The doctor who departs from it must thus be able to justify his decision, and inform his patient of the risks he runs in the event of refusal of optimal treatment.
The place of “alternative” medicine
As a general rule, if food supplements and plant products (phytotherapy) can be integrated into the care of a patient with cancer, they are subsidiary and cannot replace conventional treatment: surgery, radiotherapy. , chemotherapy, immunotherapy, etc.
In breast cancer, it is unfortunately not rare that patients who are adept of medicines ” sweet “ refuse chemotherapy. With, the key, a loss of chances. Even when consumed in addition to conventional treatment, herbal medicine must be monitored by a medical team, otherwise it may cause drug interaction problems.
This is not the first time that the indiscriminate practice of alternative medicine has put a patient at risk. Last May, a scandal had moved Italy. Only treated with homeopathy since the age of three, a seven-year-old boy had died of infectious complications from an ear infection. A simple basic antibiotic treatment would probably have been enough to avoid it.
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