A 1997 survey at Harvard University showed that 42 percent of U.S. adults with cancer had tried alternative or complementary medicine, compared with 34 percent in 1990. But they are not telling their doctors. Part of the reason is fear, and part is a lack of time, Relman said.
Doctors spend less time with patients.
Even when patients are educated about the experimental nature of alternative therapies, they often opt to use them anyway. Even the skeptics agreed that therapies designed to reduce stress may do a lot of good. We have to take some things at face value. Mary Ann Richardson of the University of Texas Center for Alternative Medicine Research said patients are hungry for knowledge. A lot of them have exhausted conventional treatment and they don't want to stop.