I recently read a book by a pancreatic cancer survivor in her forties, Heather Miller. I was intrigued by the title when I saw it on a list of newly self-published books I receive by email every week. The title is I've Got This: My Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer Journey and How I Manage to Stay Alive, published in 2023.

Diagnosed two years prior, Miller underwent aggressive medical treatment and is now cancer-free. While thankful for the lifesaving care she received, her conclusions about the medical industry are similar to mine. In the chapter titled "Feelings about the Medical World," she writes:

Although I was blessed to have the best doctors I could ask for, I believe that doctors' hands are tied in some situations. I do not believe that they are able to suggest things outside the box that may work, and I feel that big pharma influences their practice. . . .

We see so many different organizations looking for donations to cure cancer. We see them every day on billboards, TV commercials, social media and the list goes on. I joined Pan Can [Pancreatic Cancer Action Network] because they are doing their best to help find a cure for pancreatic cancer. It is a great organization. . . . There are so many wonderful organizations, but the truth of the matter is that the pharmaceutical industry has more than enough money to research a cure, in my opinion. They would just prefer that you fund it with your donations instead of theirs. Plus, if they find a cure that involves a healthy diet rather than expensive chemotherapy drugs, then they don't make as much money. They are interested in medicines they can patent, not foods and vitamins that you can buy at your local grocery store. It's a business and we have to realize that is exactly what it is. We need to fight for ourselves and take our healthcare into our own hands, rather than trusting that our doctors are allowed to have our best interest in mind. In some cases, if doctors give you alternative advice outside of how they were trained, their career could be in jeopardy. In many cases, they learned what they were taught in many years of medical school, and they are doing their best with the tools that are allowed. It's sad, but I believe it's the truth. I would like to see more focus on preventing cancers through healthy eating and supplements.

If you'd like to support a pancreatic cancer survivor, I recommend purchasing Miller's book. I have no affiliation with her; I simply respect that she's a cancer survivor who wants to help others. She devotes several chapters to her recommended diet and supplements, which you might find beneficial.

Despite the enormous amount of money being poured into cancer research, I believe the medical community hasn't uncovered more underlying causes of cancer because they're not looking in the right place. Medical research is time-consuming and expensive, and the main goal is to create patentable drugs—which are costly and intended to kill cancer cells, not necessarily identify the cause of the disease.

What Miller states as her opinion is supported by the following news article, which provides staggering data that I found eye-opening. Published on September 6, 2023, in Nature, the story is titled "The gross imbalances of cancer research must be addressed: A zealous focus on discovery should not come at the expense of improving basic intervention."(5)

The article states:

Global cancer-research ecosystems invest billions of dollars in the development of oncological medicines and technologies, such as robotics and radiotherapy, yet comparatively little into programmes that aim to advance affordable, equitable and high-quality care and outcomes. The extraordinary growth in public and private expenditure on cancer discovery science and technologies, fuelled by the huge profits of cancer biopharmaceutical companies, has failed to create more opportunities for research in neglected areas. Instead, funding opportunities are narrowing. By 2026, an estimated US$307 billion will be spent on cancer-drug research and development worldwide, with 55% of this in just four areas: breast, lung, prostate and multiple myeloma (blood cancer).

The impact of such investment has been extremely variable. Significant improvements have been made in some adult blood-cancer outcomes, for example, but changes in survival for stage 4 solid adult cancers, including breast, lung and prostate cancer, have been modest and uneven. The rate of improvements in outcomes for cancers of the pancreas and upper gastrointestinal tract has been glacial.

A plethora of cancer medicines approved for market every year do not deliver clinically meaningful benefit. Of the 161 approvals for solid adult cancer therapies by the US Food and Drug Administration since 2017, only 35% were graded as delivering substantial clinically meaningful benefit on the European Society for Medical Oncology Scale, a standardized tool for assessing new anticancer therapies.

As I said in the Introduction, pancreatic cancer is expected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S. by 2030. I can understand why, since most research funds are being spent on breast, lung, prostate, and blood cancers. And it's unbelievable that only about a third of the cancer therapies approved over the past seven years provide "clinically meaningful benefit." Curiously, the article doesn't define that ranking, so it's unclear what that phrase means. I assume it refers to drugs that actually work.

The harsh reality of conventional medicine's exorbitant costs and limited ability to develop better cancer treatments should be a huge wake-up call to everyone. If my suspicion is true, that viruses play a more significant role in causing cancer, then conventional medicine is falling behind. Based on what I've read and shared in this book, the medical establishment has no cure for many common viruses, and if treatments do exist, they can be expensive and difficult to obtain.

So, these shortcomings have led me to the following conclusion: It is imperative for us to develop our intuition and innate healing abilities so that we can do for ourselves what the medical establishment can't.

I eradicated the Epstein-Barr virus naturally by combining the suggestions in Medical Medium with my own protocols. I found the virus relatively easy to kill by ingesting—not diffusing—a few drops of medicinal-grade essential oils every day for thirty days.

While a variety of general health benefits are attributed to essential oils, such as stress reduction, better sleep, and improved mood, making any serious medical claims about their ability to cure disease is a slippery slope. Since I'm not a medical doctor, I don't have the authority to make such claims. As someone who was diagnosed with a medical condition, all I can do is share my anecdotal evidence and say that an essential oil helped me heal my case of Hashimoto's. As I said earlier with regard to cancer research, I'd like to see more clinical studies of essential oils as well.

A note about antibiotics: Routinely prescribed for bacterial infections, antibiotics are able to kill bacteria because they can penetrate their cell walls. Antibiotics can't penetrate the protein shell that covers viruses, so they don't work on viral infections.

Essential oils, on the other hand, can do what antibiotics can't. To me, essential oils are nature's broad-spectrum antimicrobial medicine. I mentioned some of my uses of oils in From Actor to Healer: Alan Rickman's New Life as a Spirit Guide, Book Two. For years, I've used medicinal-grade essential oils to heal a variety of ailments, although Epstein-Barr is by far the most serious one to date.

While Anthony William recommends melissa oil (also called lemon balm) for EBV, I found that oil ineffective on the particular strain of virus I had. What worked for me instead was clove oil. So, I believe that healing protocols must be customized for each individual.

If we, as spiritual healers, can identify the underlying causes of—and natural solutions for—specific conditions, as Anthony William has done with the Epstein-Barr virus, then we can share our knowledge to help one another. We can look for ways to collaborate with medical professionals the way the medicine man and the Navajo doctor worked together in the opening quote I shared. We can push for more research into other probable causes of cancer, e.g., viral infections.

Now I'd like to return to pancreatic cancer and share what I've learned from Alan.

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(5) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02609-2