If we, as a society, could allocate just an additional $120 million each year toward research and development of new cancer treatments, that would seem like a great idea. Because there is a lot of money out there already directed at existing therapies, running clinical trials of proven concepts and supporting the refinement of effective treatments already in existence, it also seems like a great idea to take this $120 million and direct it toward new concepts and approaches that are not yet mainstreamed into Western Medicine. This is the reason, I suspect, that over the past twenty years or so, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) has morphed into Integrative Medicine and has been granted enormous research subsidies and acceptance within many mainstream health institutions. Allocating even a mere $120 million is a huge responsibility, so it also seems like it would be a great idea to carefully vet the areas on which the funding will be spent.

Here is some amazing news: the actual amount of government funding for research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2015 and 2016 has reached $369 and $378 million annually, according to the National Institute of Health. This should be a Golden Age of Medical Advancement! Sizable annual funding being made available outside of the mainstream of modern medicine must be the answer to why there has been no definitive Cancer Cure.

Only it isn’t. And the reason is that there are no effective (or even rational) cures outside of mainstream modern medicine. I’ll explain that in a moment, but first I want to address one of the central issues as to why CAM options are generally the wrong place to look.

Believing does not make it so.

Let me blow your mind with one of my favorite observational statements: Belief and knowledge are not the same thing, though it is often impossible for individuals to separate them. When a person believes something, that person equates it with knowledge — otherwise the lack of faith in that object of belief opens a gap of questioning. It takes a strong internal directive for someone to say, “I believe this to be true, but I acknowledge it might not be.” This goes for not just religious belief, but for any “accepted” truth. I, for instance, believe that my thoughts originate in a very specific area of the brain, down at the cellular level; I cannot claim absolutely that I know how (or even why) that process works. The great thing about scientists is that the very nature of the scientific method requires the acknowledgement that accepted truths are malleable and constantly changing. Belief-based systems, on the other hand, rely on Dogma, which is the root of all ignorance. This is not relegated to religious belief, but extends to most of the pseudosciences and many philosophies (of both mind and body systems).

That dogma continues to influence so many people is nothing short of a cultural failure of Critical Thinking Skills. Dogma is the instigator of brainwashing, both intentional and unintentional — presenting something as objectively true and real without proof (or even credible evidence) is all too common, and yet people are inclined to accept such ambiguous claims without question because it is something most of us are trained to do from early childhood onward.

Success with CAM treatments is almost universally tied on the belief of the patient that the treatment is doing something, which is to say that there has been no physical success of the treatment at all. While the patient may feel better, which is certainly a good thing, it is an emotional and psychological response to the treatment rather than an actual intervention against the illness or condition. Many people certainly believe that their belief is a key component to their healing. Empirically speaking, however, that is a most dangerous prospect because it is a measurably false assumption.

Here is a stunningly sad story of a woman who, after watching The Secret (a movie dubiously marketed as a documentary and promoted by Oprah Winfrey), chose to look outside of the medical community for healing her breast cancer. Oprah heard about this woman and brought her onto her show, then actually argued that the woman should use modern medicine to treat herself while utilizing The Secret on a personal level. Here is a clip of that interview:

Kim Tinkham is dead now because she did not want to “give her right breast.” She made a horrible, horrible mistake based on a dogmatic belief that The Law of Attraction was somehow a real thing. As illustrated (I think quite effectively) toward the end of the video below, which goes into much more detail on this story as well as offering more information on a variety of proponents of Alternative Medicine, The Law of Attraction should be equally applied to all sorts of bad things, like getting cancer or dying in the Holocaust, which ultimately is the dark side of dogmatic belief known as Victim Blaming. Throughout Alternative Medicine there is a highly consistent use of Victim Blaming: if the treatment did not work it was because the patient did something wrong. Kim Tinkham was blamed for falling off the alkaline wagon, rendering her treatment moot. But alkaline diets and alkaline water have been shown repeatedly — whenever proper studies have been done — to do absolutely nothing for cancer treatment.

There is also a huge discrepancy between what is considered “Alternative” and what is considered “Experimental.” There are always many experimental treatments being researched because there are proven mechanisms for why they should work or they are based on the foundations of observational success (we see they work, now we need to understand how and why in order to ensure they are safe and maximize their effectiveness).

Which brings us back to the point about there being no effective cures outside of mainstream modern medicine. The reason for this is not only simple, it the source of a virtually endless stream of popular Internet Memes. The name given to effective and proven treatments is “medicine.” Once a therapy can be shown to work, genuinely, the establishment embraces it. It may take years for a concept to move toward accepted use, but there are a myriad of good, life-saving reasons for this. And those reasons are why research funding is so necessary, and why every penny counts.

Billions of dollars have gone into the pockets of snake oil salesmen and the ignorant enthusiasts who actually believe their own sales pitches throughout the Alternative Healthcare Industrial Complex. In 2009, the American Society of Hematology published a paper that stated, “Globally around 50 billion Euros are spent every year for alternative procedures and remedies.” According to an article on the National Institute of Health website, “A national health survey in 2007 revealed that more than $34 billion is spent on CAM annually in the United States.”

That is money directly siphoned off of the path to a Cure.

Watch the video below for a keen analysis of Alternative Medicine or visit this page to watch the video of Dr. David Gorski’s talk when you have an hour.