I’m not one for taking drugs in any form. If a natural remedy exists which will do the job just as well, I’ll choose it every time. However, where there is no reliable alternative remedy for a health disorder, especially a serious one, I keep an open mind to allopathic treatment which has shown to produce good results.

Conventional cancer treatment is a case in point. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I refused to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I had heard how toxic and harmful these cancer treatments were, and how many people suffered doing them. I saw how my own brother suffered and ultimately died. However, there’s no denying that modern medicine also saved many people from succumbing to cancer. Two of my other brothers are still alive today, more than 20 years after their own bouts with cancer, thanks to conventional cancer treatment and excellent doctors.

I’m doing very well myself today, since I agreed to place myself under the care of a very dedicated and caring oncologist who is also sensitive to my preferences. He, in turn, is open to alternative remedies and gamely shares natural remedies which he has learnt from his patients with other patients. Presently, he’s learning all about the healing power of essential oils, seaweed and aloe vera from me :)

If you’ve been following this blog long enough, you’ll know that I’ve never promoted any form of conventional cancer therapy. However, something I came to know about a couple of days ago offers real hope to liver cancer patients worldwide, so I feel I should share it here.

Liver cancer is one of the most lethal cancers, highly resistant to chemotherapy and with only one in five patients suitable for surgery. From the time of diagnosis, few survive six months. Approximately one million people die from liver cancer annually. Curiously, 80% of those fatalities happen in the Asia-Pacific. For this reason, the Asia-Pacific Hepatocellular Carcinoma Trials Group was set up in 1997 by doctors from Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia. This organisation now has 29 medical centres in 14 countries. It has completed several clinical trials and demonstrated an ability to get the patient numbers and meet the strict international standards needed to get a new drug to market. Some of the trials extended patients’ lives significantly or improved their quality of life in their final months.

Clinical trails allow patients to have access to promising, expensive drugs and medical treatment which they would otherwise not be able to afford. This year alone, three clinical trials for liver cancer have been lined up by the Asia-Pacific HCT Group, covering the entire spectrum of liver cancer, from localised small tumours to those that have spread beyond the liver. Two are early-stage trails of fewer than 100 patients, while the third is a phase 3 trial involving several hundred patients with multiple tumours in the liver.

In this trial, a radioactive drug called SIR-sphere will be injected into the main artery carrying blood to 90% of the liver, to shrink the tumours. An earlier phase 2 trial on this treatment showed great success. One 54-year old patient, Mr. H.S. Gui, participated in the SIR-sphere phase 2 trial in July 2008, which involved 35 liver cancer patients from around the Asia-Pacific region. His cancer had been recurrent and inoperable. After the SIR-sphere phase 2 trial, he is cancer-free today.

SIR-sphere costs around US$18,000 per dose. After getting a dose of this drug, Mr.Gui was given another drug called Sorafenib, which costs approximately US$7,000 per month. This particular drug can prolong the lives of most patients by about three months, and shrink the tumours for a lucky few. Remaining cancer cells were burnt off with radioablation.

If you live in the Asia-Pacific region and you’d like to find out more about these liver cancer clinical trials, you may want to contact the Asia-Pacific Hepatocellular Carcinoma Trials Group, or the National Cancer Centre of Singapore.