I have heard about a controversial drug which was restricted for using and later was found to be effective in treating the persons bearing the pancreatic cancer.The name is thalidomide, I think.

The controversial drug does not help cure the situations of the pancreatic cancer in individuals, instead the benefits of the same has been established for reducing the associated effects that can possibly arise due to the presence of the said cancer disease. The drug referred to here is the Thalidomide which was previously banned as it was found to cause hazardous effects in the newborns. When the dreaded drug was administered as a experiment on some patients suffering from the advanced stages of the pancreatic cancer they were found to significantly regulate the weight loss that is commonly associated with the disease. This loss of weight can also hasten the occurrence of deaths and after this drug was administered it successfully arrested this severe muscle wasting. This was evaluated by a group of British scientists and at present identical tests is being carried out globally to gauge the once-banned drug’s impact against cancers of the lung, brain and blood. Incidentally pancreatic cancer is one of the most untreatable forms of cancer in which hardly one out 20 patients survive five years after getting the diagnosis.

Well as it has been evident that individuals who go on to develop the pancreatic cancer are rarely going to overcome there condition and the conventional medications can be said to just prolong the inevitable, I would like to know the role of the alternative approaches in the said condition. Do they offer any consolation?

What you say is absolutely true as when people find that even the last resort would not necessarily be able to provide them with any relief in such conditions especially they might look for whatever options that can be tried out to obtain some respite from the conditions. Therefore there certainly are many alternative therapies which also claim themselves to be more beneficial than the conventional medications but as far as any suitable tests or evaluation process are concerned very little has been done so far in this regard so that anything can be conclusively depicted. However if patients who are affected by the said disease are interrogated they might offer their personal experiences with the treatment they solicited with any of the several approaches that are prevalent as the alternative therapies by the likes of visualization therapy, prayer, acupuncture, green tea and Chinese herbs but as said any definite answer is quite hard to find by. It can be said that these approaches are necessarily free from causing them any side effects which might be pronounced in the conventional medication but regarding the permanent efficacy of these therapies very little is known. However as the old saying goes wherever there is life there is hope so it is better to leave the decision of the selection of any alternative approaches to the affected person themselves rather than guiding them towards unknown paths.