MH writes: “Do you know about the writings from Lorraine day, M.D. Orthopedic surgeon and Christian regarding alternative Health modalities? I know she does not advocate use of eastern religiously based health modalities which she views as the antichrist, but she has good arguments against modern day medicine’s approach to dealing with diseases. . . .
“She does advocate the use of conventional medicine for trauma and congenital defects, but believes that most disease originates first from the spirit eg eating poorly, living poorly, stress, sinful behaviors that wreck our spirit and then our bodies. She’s done extensive research biblically and medically on why our current healthcare model for treating chronic, degenerative diseases is failing and will continue to fail. Please fully the read the article she writes on this and would love your commentary on what she says on your blogs. Thanks for researching this critical issue.”
Dr. Lorraine Day is a problem. For all of her “extensive research” on how our current healthcare model is failing, she’s allowed none to be conducted on her natural methods. From what I can find, there is no study or any conclusive evidence that the natural diet Dr. Day prescribes for the cure of cancer actually works. The only thing she offers are “testimonials” which mean next to nothing. There are just too many reasons why people believe alternative methods work to jump to any of the conclusions that Day does in her work.
Yes, she talks a good game, but cancer is a deadly serious business and anyone who has lost a loved one to this dreaded disease knows just how much harm these unfounded claims can do to the lives of the suffering as well as their loved ones.
For those who have never heard of Dr. Day, she is an orthopedic surgeon who practiced at San Francisco General Hospital. She first came into the news in 1989 when she authored the book, AIDS: What The Government Isn’t Telling You, and resigned from her position because she thought the risk of getting AIDS was too high. In 1992, she found a small lump in her breast which was biopsied and found to be cancerous. She was advised to have more surgery and undergo radiation, which she did. According to her video, Cancer Doesn’t Scare Me Anymore, she then began eating a vegetarian diet which involved drinking large amounts of vegetable juice.
Nine months later her cancer returned. Realizing diet wasn’t enough, she turned to a variety of alternative methods – 40 in all – trying each one to see which worked.
That didn’t work either because the tumor soon grew to the size of a grapefruit. At one point, it was so large she claims she had to support it with her hand when she walked. In addition, she began to manifest symptoms of Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis on the left side of her body. She also developed allergies to all foods except three and whenever she ate anything else, “I would collapse and have to be on oxygen,” she says.
Finally, one day, when she was on her death bed, the Lord answered and “impressed” on her mind how, many years ago, dehydrated patients were rehydrated through the colon via a slowly dripping enema. “The colon can absorb water and even nutrition in the form of wheat grass juice, carrot juice, or green leafy vegetable juice. That’s the way I stayed alive for the next few days until I could drink. At that point of death, I had decided to trust God with my life and He showed me what to do.”
Over the next few weeks and months, “I started to understand the rest of the 10-step plan,” she says. “Sometimes the information would come to me through the mail anonymously. . . . Finally, the entire plan became clear. From the time I started on the whole 10-step plan with 100% commitment, it was just eight months until all my cancer was gone. It went away slowly, one day at a time. Then it took an additional ten months for me to regain my strength. So in 18 months I was totally well and cancer-free.”
She has been selling her 10-step program ever since. It consists of 1) nutrition – knowing what to eat to heal the body and boost immunity; 2) exercise; 3) sunlight; 4) water; 5) abstinence – what cancer patients should abstain from; 6) fresh air; 7) sleep; 8) trust in God; 9) an attitude of gratitude, and; 10) benevolence.
Day believes all cancers are caused by a weak immune system and that all diseases are caused by a combination of three factors: malnutrition, dehydration and stress.
Some of the claims on her videos are so over-the-top that the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division made her remove some of them, including the claim that she had cancerous cells following her second surgery and that doctor’s “sent her home to die” (many questions have been raised about the medical reports she makes available to the public – questions she refuses to answer). She was also forced to stop claiming that “chemotherapy doesn’t work for anybody” (which is obviously untrue) and that people can decrease their incidence of cancer by 33 percent if they follow a vegetarian diet, exercise regularly and decrease their alcoholic intake (no evidence of this).
Day also attaches outlandish claims to the supplements she sells and was forced by the FDA on several occasions to retract some of these claims.
Even worse, when she’s criticized by anyone, she apparently has a bad habit of smearing them personally rather than addressing the content of their criticism. This link to Stephen Barrett’s report on Day goes into detail about how she attacked him by regurgitating a variety of erroneous claims made about Barrett by alternative practitioners who don’t like his work at Quackbusters.
Thus far in my lifetime, I have known several people who died of cancer, and even more who survived. None of them did so via alternative methods (although some definitely tried them!) and all relied on conventional means. Some had grueling experiences with chemo and drug side affects; others had an easier go of it. But all of them experienced the profound emotional trauma of being forced to face death long before they (or their loved ones) were ready to do so.
This is why I believe that to claim a particular method or treatment can cure cancer, when it has not been tested and proven to do so, is one of the most uncharitable things a person can do to their neighbor. Not only does it build false hope in people, but it can also prevent them from seeking tested methods that at least have a fighting chance of working.
The Catholic Church has it right when it requires the faithful to use ordinary means to fight any life threatening and/or contagious disease, which is considered to be an act of charity because of how it spares our loved ones from what amounts to nothing more than additional suffering.
Dr. Day is right that our current healthcare model has problems, but she would be doing humanity a much greater service if she took this fight to the healthcare industry where it belongs rather than create more problems by touting unproven cures to the desperately ill.
