Can Alternative Therapies Treat Cancer?

Doctor and breast cancer survivor Liz O'Riordan addresses misinformation around managing the disease

- ALYCE COLLINS

AS A FORMER CONSULTANT breast surgeon who has battled breast cancer three times in the last 10 years, Dr. Liz O'Riordan knows a thing or two about treating the disease.

She has had a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a hormone blocker to fight the cancer, and she will have to stay on treatment for life. For O'Riordan, 50, there was no question about trusting conventional medicine, but the same can't be said for everyone as there has been a rise in people attempting to treat cancer through alternative methods.

Australian model Elle Macpherson, 60, made headlines in September by announcing that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 and turned down chemotherapy for a holistic approach instead.

Former MTV presenter Ananda Lewis, 51, was diagnosed with the disease in 2019 and refused a mastectomy. She recently said that her cancer has metastasized to stage 4.

Newsweek reached out to representatives for Macpherson and Lewis for comment.

Previous analysis suggested that there has been an increase in complementary and alternative medicine use over the last few decades, from around 25 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent after 2000.

And a 2023 study found that over 52 percent of cancer patients used CAM, with 5 percent delaying their treatment in order to try it out first.

O'Riordan, who lives in the United Kingdom, told Newsweek that she started looking into the subject online after her diagnosis in 2014 and was "horrified by the amount of misinformation" that she found.

"While a mainstream doctor can never promise a cure, there are alternative and homeopathic practitioners who will falsely promise one," O'Riordan said. "I've had several patients who turned down some treatments to stop it coming back and I really struggled with it. I found it hard to understand and I got really angry with them. I thought I should put some common sense out there to help people understand."