A Letter to Patients

About this site and bloodroot!

 

Bloodroot

When this site was first launched in the summer of 1997, there were no products, just information. The site started with 13 short informational pages in response to inquiries from persons, usually referred from Dr. Andrew Weil's site where there was a link to my personal e-mail. Unlike Dr. Weil, I am a one person everything and was totally unprepared for the deluge that ensued.

The inquiries then pertained mostly to bloodroot, an endangered species plant that was being overharvested by people who did not even know which part of the plant to use much less whether to use it internally or externally. I sympathized with patients, their frustrations and dilemmas, but I am also a passionate environmentalist so I grieved for bloodroot and tried to find my own position in relationship to the cancer dilemma.

Fashion

With cancer, there is always a flavor of the month. The best way to understand this is to look at the cancer clinics and hospitals in Tijuana. Each is built around the treatments that became so popular that the forces that be decided to eliminate the competition they posed to what Europeans call "school medicine." Hoxsey's work was moved to Tijuana forty-plus years ago, but laetrile, the Gerson diet, Ukrain, hyperbaric oxygen, etc., etc. all eventually also found their way across the border where the pilgrimages for cure continue.

Due to upheaval in my own life and some decisions with the web that cost me dearly, I have spent the last months trying to figure out where I belong in this turbulent world. I am still, as I have always been, sensitive to patients, their questions, concerns, and need for reliable information and help. However, I am also realistic in knowing that almost all patients are insufficiently prepared to manage the challenge of directing their own treatment, and I cannot fill the gaps via email and web articles.

I developed an herbal product line based on the research that went into the book—and though I am not a medical doctor, I am a quite competent herbalist. Patients are understandably wary of something that does not have the support of either their doctors or the approval FDA. However, there is nothing really that any herbalist can do to shift this. Modern medicine and pharmacology are huge industries whereas the truth is that the best herbs are usually like the best food: what grows right in one's own garden without chemical fertilizers and pesticides or elaborate adulteration.

All I can do is provide information, and this generally has to be in some historic context: "traditionally, this herb is used to treat . . ." More than this is not really permitted. . . and I personally am often between a rock and hard place because even if there were more latitude for expressing what I believe I know, individuals have to arrive at their own decisions, and I prefer to remain largely a source of information. . . and, on a small scale, to provide such products as are available to people who are able to use the formulas skillfully.

God bless and be well!

Ingrid Naiman

 

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