Cathy Hitchcock M.S.W. - Breast Cancer: What You Should Know (But May Not Be Told) About Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment

Please note: Our purpose is to facilitate and in no way replace doctor-patient interactions. This book serves to educatenot to diagnose or treat breast cancer. All attempts have been made to ensure that the contents are accurate at the time of publication.

Copyright 1994 by Steve Austin and Cathy Hitchcock

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from Random House, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York.
Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
www.crownpublishing.com

THREE RIVERS PRESS and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published by Prima Publishing, Roseville, California, in 1994.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Austin, Steve.
Breast cancer: what you should know (but may not be told) about prevention, diagnosis, and treatment / Steve Austin, Cathy Hitchcock.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77974-8
1. BreastCancerPopular works. I. Hitchcock, Cathy. II. Title.
RC280.B8A93 1994
616.99449dc20 93-49716

v3.1

To Dr John Bastyr,
the father of modern naturopathic medicine

According to current statistics, as many as one of every eight American women will develop breast cancer. That percentage has been steadily increasing, despite the best that modern medicine has to offer.

Few if any diseases invoke more fear and distrust than does cancer. Conventional treatmentprimarily chemotherapy, radiation, and surgeryleaves a lot to be desired in terms of both effectiveness and safety. Alternative medicine, which offers diets, nutritional supplements, herbs, and other modalities, is obviously less toxic than conventional therapy. However, if these treatments do not work, then choosing them over conventional approaches could be dangerous.

In this book, Dr. Steve Austin has done a beautiful job of clarifying much of the confusion and controversy related to preventing and treating breast cancer. Although one might expect a naturopathic physician to be biased against conventional treatments and toward natural remedies, Dr. Austin has clearly left any potential bias at home. I have known Dr. Austin for more than ten years and have always been impressed by his ability to sift through mountains of conflicting data in his search for the truth. When Steve Austin tells me something about medicine, I rarely feel the need to look it up myself. More important, he has never been afraid to report his findings, no matter whose belief systems they might threaten.

Conventional medicine has been criticized for being too dangerous, too expensive, and too often ineffective. These criticisms are sometimes well deserved. Nevertheless, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation have saved the lives of thousands of breast cancer patients. Natural medicine and other alternatives are appealing, and there are good reasons for recommending dietary changes, nutritional supplements, and other non-toxic modalities. However, in certain situations, these treatments should be used in addition to, rather than instead of, conventional therapy.