All patients in search of a solution for their health problems are faced with the “standard care” seemingly operant response they receive from the health care providers they choose to see. This situation applies to all maladies and diseases afflicting humanity, but it assumes a particularly scary appearance when the phrase applies to cancer treatment; to the point that the specification ”care” seems to completely disappear from view. In fact, one could even conclude that such a noun was never part of the oncology nomenclature.

It is fair to assume that one would experience at least a reasonable amount of ease and comfort while receiving any form of care, as the word seems to imply. In oncology unfortunately, the meaning is totally bastardized into meaning ”we are going to try and possibly save your life, however we can.”

Supposedly the “save your life” promise is the detail intended to make you accept a terrifying future. If anybody thinks that the term “terrifying” is excessive and inappropriate, that person is completely and sadly mistaken.

What is aggravating beyond belief is that most people actually buy such a ridiculous, as well as tragic, proposition.

In our local area, there has been an advertisement airing on radio recently, with a pretty clueless patient in her “late twenties,” saying that following her diagnosis of breast cancer, her oncologist at this “wonderful” clinic told her she was facing the battle of her life, but that she would get through it. She happily stated that she actually did, and that she wanted everybody to know she was not afraid any more. However, she did not mention how she felt about the Damocles’ Sword hanging over her head, with the diagnosis “in remission.”

Based on this “Hurray for Poison” infomercial, compared to real life stories of relatives and friends dropping like flies under standard cancer care, one should at least stop and wonder for a while about the actual meaning of the phrase “in remission”.

The real problem is that Medical School training is intended to preclude imagination and independent thinking, if not thinking altogether. A Medical Internship is intended to train a physician on how to practice medicine. During the years of this indentured servitude, interns are overworked beyond reason, to a point where thinking is no longer part of the living function. Consequently, once the habit is introduced, it is never abandoned, and a life of medical practice continue as a series of pre-planned motions, controlled by operant conditioning.

Keeping all of this in mind, and knowing how a health care provider arrived where he/she is today when trying to treat a patient, it is then easy to understand how the subject “needing assistance” translates into receiving “standard care,” according to what the physician learned when he/she was a student; and following his/her pre-implanted notion that patients are not at all educated people, capable of thinking for themselves.

Explained in simpler terms, patients are viewed by physicians as cattle, waiting to be herded, and all needing to be treated according to pre-set rules, a.k.a “standard care.” Furthermore, such rules are the ones learned during the school years, rarely updated or modernized, given exception to advancements connected to the names of new drugs, of which the curative characteristics are assessed with information received from Drug Companies' sales representatives.

Even assuming that the claimed semi-miraculous properties of the drugs being proposed are almost real, patients are still individuals; and results, as well as side effects, are not necessarily consistent. That is where “standard care” takes another turn and becomes trial and error, otherwise known as “blind shots”.

Still, a physician can do no wrong, as long as he/she follows the AMA’s pre-established guidelines for “standard care” and does not dare to drift ever so slightly from them; even if he/she realizes that, in doing so, the life of the patient is going to be seriously endangered. After all, loyalty to the organization and preservation of the system comes first.

It is almost as if “standard care” represented a code of honor imposed by a system that demands total and unquestioned loyalty. As a result, what dominates the actions of a healthcare provider is not genuine concern for the patient’s well being, but the fear of loss of privileges and of large revenues.

It is true that we all need to make a living and support our families, but can one do that in spite of the pain and suffering one causes? On the other hand, should an individual drifting from the principle of inflicting “standard care” be penalized and rendered incapable to provide for his or her family? Simply because he/she dared to violate specific and a priori mandated guidelines; even though his/her move actually saved another human being from unnecessary pain, suffering and possibly loss of life? Is it justified to penalize and torment such a daring individual in the name of preserving glorified and generally accepted rules of so called “standard care?”