Breast cancer: does mastectomy/lumpectomy “cure cancer”?

by Pat Bafford,


I ... completely disagree that any form of surgery used alone for breast cancer, whether mastectomy or lumpectomy is effective in curing cancer. I have read numerous accounts and personally known many women who had a lumpectomy with "clear margins" and then the cancer returned elsewhere a few years later. How can this be if the cancer was completely contained in the tumor with no spread to other parts of the body and the tumor was removed?


The answer is how natural medicine views cancer vs. how mainstream medicine views cancer. Mainstream medicine views cancer as the tumor; in fact, oncology means the study of tumors. Therefore, once the tumor is removed, the cancer is cured.


However, natural medicine views cancer as a systemic disease--an entire-body phenomenon, and most natural physicians know that in order to really cure the cancer, you must figure out what caused it and change that.


In other words, even if you catch the cancer early and remove the tumor (lumpectomy), the cancer will return unless you fix what caused it in the first place. I have copied an excerpt below from Dr. Lam's website (www.drlam.com) which I think elaborates on this line of thinking very well:


Modern oncology (the study of tumors) was founded based on the Halstead theory of cancer developed by W.S. Halstead. Halstead lived from 1852 to 1922. His primary focus on cancer was on the tumor and not on the patient as a living organism. Under this hypothesis, the removal of the tumor should remove the disease and cure the patient. But, if this theory was true, why does the age-adjusted mortality rate for breast cancer remain unchanged for the past 50 years despite advances in surgical techniques and aggressive cancer debulking operations? Halstead's theory is incomplete because its emphasis is on the tumor and ignores the patient. He looks at the tumor as the disease in and of itself, disregarding the overall body as a contributing factor.


While conventional medicine primarily treats cancer as a focal disease with localized symptoms, naturally oriented physicians think otherwise. They view the body as a closed internal ecosystem, and believe that the dysfunction of this ecosystem leads to the development of cancer.
Compare Healing Cancer Naturally.


No treatment, conventional or otherwise, can completely eliminate all cancer cells according to the naturally oriented physician. The reason is simple. Cancer is a systemic disease, and there are simply too many cancerous or pre-cancerous cells within the ecosystem of the body. Cancer is not a localized problem but a whole-body phenomenon of metastatic growth. Its growth process is affected by biological conditions. Non-genetically based cancer forms in the body because of toxins, the lack of oxygen, poor nutrition, and other factors such as hormonal imbalance. Whether the cancer in our body continues to multiply depends to a large degree on our body's biological terrain. It is this terrain that determines how the cancer is expressed.


Naturally oriented doctors often view cancer as a chronic, systemic and metabolic dysfunction of the genetically intracellular makeup. Tumors are only the symptoms of the submicroscopic dysfunctional causes. The root of cancer therefore lies in the progress of growth and metastasis, and not the tissue in which the tumor was first detected.


The naturally oriented doctor therefore fights cancer by optimizing the internal terrain and enabling the patient's internal system to destroy the tumor. It enhances the patient's health so that cancer cells cannot grow and multiply.