Cancer is a terrible thing—life-changing, exceptionally difficult to treat, and appallingly arbitrary. MIT graduate Dr. Jacqueline Acho’s CANCER CULTURE: Fixing the Landscape by Infusing Empathy is an attempt to reckon with a condition with which she was diagnosed in February 2020, and to which she ultimately succumbed in 2022. The book is presented as a compendium of her writings by her family, and while it contains many worthwhile insights, there are some pronouncements that ought to have been excised.
Acho’s opening principle is that we should be more empathic. Asserting that “we are all built for connection,” Acho posits, quite reasonably, that a lack of empathy is ultimately responsible for many of the problems humankind faces today, from junk food marketed at children to environmental disasters caused by unthinking business practices. Acho also pinions Big Pharma, noting the centrality of the profit motive and the manner in which research into some diseases is prioritized over others. Immunotherapy and cancer vaccines rightly receive a hearty thumbs-up.
As a collection, there is a somewhat disjointed feel to the chapters that is offset in part by organizing them into a broadly chronological structure. Some deal with Acho’s experience of cancer care and treatment. Initially resistant—as anyone would be—to the “harsh treatment” of chemotherapy, Acho underwent the process, only to find it was not terribly effective against late-stage ovarian cancer. Acho therefore turned to naturopathic alternatives of every sort.
Acho is careful to hedge, stating that she is not a medical doctor, and that the “nontoxic” therapies she advocates “work in my experience.” The list of modifications she made to her lifestyle includes some obviously worthwhile elements. Few of us would find fault with getting more sleep or laughing more, and vitamin C therapy has been shown to improve quality of life in cancer patients. However, some of the therapies she champions are highly dubious, such as terrain theory, which remains a central component in the armory of those wishing to deny the efficacy of the germ theory that has been at the forefront of medical science for over a century. Nor can dabbling in “Off Label Pharma” be recommended for anyone; prescribed medications are prescribed for a reason.
The segue into attacking conventional cancer medicine (“chemo […] empowers cancer cells and pollutes already challenged bodies”; “traditional oncology does not understand the cancer markers”; “The traditional cancer researchers are not saving us”; chemotherapy drugs are described as “frontline poisons”) is understandable, given the dreadful hand Acho was dealt. They are especially understandable given the substantial side effects that come with chemotherapy (sometimes for limited health gains), but they risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Compared to, say, immunotherapy, chemotherapy is “crude”; but it can also produce lengthy extensions of life, or even full remission—and sometimes in advanced cancer cases. For a few cancers, it is still the only game in town, so, in spite of its shortcomings, we remain some way off from consigning it to history. The hope is that such alternative therapies that have evidence for their efficacy will improve patients’ lives and, in the best cases, contribute to quantitative improvements in their situations.
Towards the end, Acho traveled to Istanbul, where she received low-dose chemotherapy combined with “nontoxic therapies,” gaining peace and, as she says, “a chance to live.” One can only be glad to read this. Cancer’s countless tragedies are horrific, and Acho’s argument against giving “traditional chemotherapy without supportive measures” is to be heartily applauded. It is only when brickbats get thrown unfairly in the direction of oncologists and caregivers that the book gets lost in the weeds.
In CANCER CULTURE: Fixing the Landscape by Infusing Empathy, Dr. Jacqueline Acho provides many insights regarding her cancer treatment, though some of her pronouncements are dubious.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader