I am an OAP (not Odious And Putrid, just an Old Age Person) and writer and fortunately in good health. I was caregiver to my mother (some twenty years ago) and my wife (just three years ago) who succumbed to cancer. Due to these sad events having taken place in Europe and North America, respectively, I was in a position to tell the difference of the medics' treatment of patient and caregiver on both sides of the Atlantic. In Germany the doctors were completely honest and trusted me to have the strength of dealing with the truth of diagnosis and prognosis of my mother's condition, while the doctors in Canada left me and my wife completely in the dark. They fudged and obfuscated the diagnosis as well as hospice care, never lost a word on prognosis, and even denied the availability of an adjunct medication that could have prolonged my wife's life and potentially resulted in a remission of her cancer.
It was this lack of honesty and openness that caused more grief and pain than the facts that there is no cure for cancer at present and that my wife was dying. Consequently, I investigated present cancer treatments, Big Pharma and the media as well as the future of cancer treatment and wrote a book about it. It is not a happy book although it ends on the positive note of Lifeline - the case for effective cancer immunotherapy. I have pledged to donate 50% of all compensation I receive as the writer to the research of cancer immunotherapy.
Some 20 million people diagnosed with cancer and more than 10 million dying globally every year after having been "effectively treated" is unacceptable. This has to change!
