{"id":1654,"date":"2014-09-23T13:42:26","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/?p=1654"},"modified":"2018-04-15T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2018-04-15T14:32:08","slug":"cure-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthicine.org\/wordpress\/cure-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Can’t Cure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_2862\"<\/a>Do you have an illness that can’t be cured? Do you have arthritis, Parkinson’s, or asthma? Diseases for which there is no cure. Do you have a cancer – and you are hoping for a ‘remission’ due to treatments of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, which even the doctors agree do not ‘cure’ cancers? Do you have a chronic headache, or any other chronic condition? Chronic diseases, by definition, cannot be cured. Why can’t we cure some illnesses? Why does the word “cure” not appear in many medical dictionaries and references?\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

When I researched the top 10 best selling drugs of 2011 – none of them claimed to ‘cure’ the disease.<\/a>\u00a0 Of the top 10 best selling drugs in 2008, none were promoted as a ‘cure’ for a disease. \u00a0I recently did a follow-up study of the top 100 best selling medicines of 2013. Of the top 70 best selling medicines in 2013, none cured the disease they were designed to treat. Of 100 medicines, only 3 actually cure the disease being treated, and only 5 attempt to cure the disease being treated. Those three medicines are all antibiotics. \u00a0Why do most medicines not cure? Why are the best selling medicines designed to ‘not cure’?<\/p>\n

We need a clear definition of cure. Our medical systems and medical researchers sometimes play ‘fast and loose’ with the word cure, using different definitions in different situations, for different illnesses and even different treatments.\u00a0According to Webster’s, cure is a noun, and a verb.<\/p>\n

Cure<\/strong> (n):\u00a0something (such as a drug or medical treatment) that stops a disease and makes someone healthy again<\/p>\n

Cure<\/strong> (v):\u00a0the act of making someone healthy again after an illness<\/p>\n

A cure ‘cures’ the patient, making them healthy again. We don’t need a cure for cancer, we need cures for cancer patients.<\/p>\n

According to Wiki, “Incurable<\/strong>” is defined thus: “A disease is said to be incurable if there is always a chance of the patient relapsing, no matter how long the patient has been in remission.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

Then Wiki defines cure rate<\/strong>:\u00a0“The proportion of people with a disease that are cured by a given treatment, called the cure fraction<\/strong> or cure rate<\/strong>, is determined by comparing disease-free survival of treated people against a matched control group that never had the disease.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

Cure rate and cure fraction are actually measures of survival rate<\/strong>, or survival fraction<\/strong>. They are used mostly with cancerous diseases. Instead of counting cures, we count “disease free survival”.\u00a0Cure fraction, and cure rate, are not actually ‘cures’. There are statistics for one-year cure rate, two-year cure rate, five-year cure rate, and so on, but if you search Google for ‘5 year cure rate’, you will get answers for ‘survival rate’. There is another serious problem with ‘cure rate’ as a cancer statistic, it ignores the actual deaths, and the cause of death for cancer patients. Cancer patients can die from cancer, from chemotherapy, from radiation, from surgery. \u00a0But cancer researchers and cancer\u00a0statistics often ignore these numbers, focusing instead of ‘cure rate’.<\/p>\n

From a healthicine perspective, you are cured when the illness is completely gone. \u00a0A cure only exists when the absence of disease can be verified. A cure is not necessarily complete recovery of health – many diseases and many treatments leave permanent damage.<\/p>\n

Cause and Progression of Disease<\/h2>\n

How can we tell if someone was cured? There are two\u00a0basic requirements:<\/p>\n

1) the progression<\/strong> of the disease has stopped.
\n2) the cause<\/strong> of the disease has been eliminated.<\/p>\n

And there’s the issue. Many treatments for illness, ‘incurable illnesses’, only treat the symptoms. \u00a0The aim is to remove the symptoms, in the false hope that this stops the progression of the disease. \u00a0But of course it’s possible for many diseases to progress ‘silently’ for long periods of time. We can only know that a disease is cured, when we have addressed the cause.<\/p>\n

For many diseases, most especially cancers and chronic disease, we don’t know the cause, and we don’t attempt to find\u00a0the cause. Our\u00a0medical systems often\u00a0treat illnesses as emergencies, where\u00a0action is more important than understanding. \u00a0Thus, for many illnesses, a cure is not possible – or at the very least, very\u00a0unlikely. This is a powerful reason why we can’t cure a disease – but there are many more, and numerous examples in each case.<\/p>\n

Why\u00a0we can’t cure a\u00a0disease:<\/strong><\/p>\n