Alternative medicine for cancer raises death risk: study

A new study from Yale University reveals that taking the route of alternative medicine to treat a form of curable cancer rather than undergoing conventional treatment more than doubles a the risk of death.

One in three US citizens has engaged in some kind of alt-therapy with varying results, but when it came to cancer, the data alternative therapy will not save a life.

"We now have evidence to suggest that using alternative medicine in place of proven cancer therapies results in worse survival," lead researcher Skyler Johnson told the Yale News.

The researchers studied 10 years' worth of records from the National Cancer Database and found that 281 patients within that time who had early-stage breast, lung, prostate or colorectal cancer who opted for alternative therapy for their treatment.

Those patients were then compared to 560 others with the same diagnoses who opted for more scientific approaches like chemotherapy, surgery and radiation.

Patients who chose alternative medicine approaches including stuff like "herbs, botanicals, homeopathy, special diets or energy crystals - which are basically just stones that people believe to have healing powers," Dr Johnson told New Scientist, were two and a half times more likely than their modern medicine-opting counterparts to die within five years.

Among people with breast cancer, people who opted for alternative remedies were 5.68 times more likely to die within five years, while 41 per cent of patients receiving conventional treatment for lung cancer survived for at least five years, as against only 20 per cent of those who opted out of such treatment.

Also only 33 per cent of people using alternative therapy for colorectal cancer survived the next five years, as against 79 per cent of those on conventional treatments.