The monks' pains over cancer, HIV - Vanguard

By Victoria Ojeme

In this interview, the Director, Pax Herbal Clinic and Research Laboratories of the Catholic Monastery, Rev, Fr. Anselm Adodo, explains the relationship between orthodox and herbal medicine and how cancer can be cured through herbal treatment.

What is the Catholic Monastery all about?

A monastery is a place set apart from the active world where people have time to reflect and pray. This is a Catholic Monastery. So a Catholic Monastery is a place where a group of Catholic monks live, to make time for prayers, study, meditate and reflect. There are different monasteries: Buddies Monastery, Hindu Monastery, even Muslim Monastery.

Apart from the meditations and studies, what else do monks do?

Monks do different activities to help themselves, to feed themselves because Saint Benedict said that? monks should feed by the works of their hands and they should also be models of hard work; and even though they are set apart, he emphasised that their reflection should bear fruit in activities and labour.

Like each monastery adapts to the environment, the work they do is conditioned by the environment they live in. For example, here in Ewu monastery, we have farm, poultry, we do a lot of agriculture, we study, and we teach; we give people spiritual reflection, people also come for retreat.

In addition to the things we do, twelve years ago, we started a herbal centre; normally every monastery has a herbal garden, but, in Ewu, it happened that we went further to develop a health centre, we developed healthcare in a traditional way, it is a way of promoting the culture to show that there is something worthwhile in it.

For some time now, there has been agitation over licence to herbal producers because of dosage problem. Do you have licence for the drugs? you produce?

*Rev. Father Adodo?Medicine has gone astray from original purpose

Actually the history of herbal medicine is the same history of medicine generally; it is rather unfortunate that we are now demarcating. Medicine is actually one and it has the same function, that is, to provide remedy to sicknesses and diseases. Traditionally, people have their own ways of giving dosage.

It is a method. So the complain about dosage is actually more from those who have not sat down to study the background and culture in which herbal medicine has grown. The idea of dosage in orthodox medicine is not the same as it is in traditional medicine because when you are dealing with synthetic chemicals, you have to be precise. If you want 10ml, you have to take 10ml because that?s what your body needs to carry out the right healing process because those chemicals can be very dangerous in the body system.

It is a different story when somebody is eating pawpaw and you say ?take one slice? and the person takes three slices;? it will not do any harm to the person or you tell somebody to take one cup of orange juice and he decides to take three because these are natural fruits meant? for the body.

So the idea of dosage is made by those who think they are more knowledgeable and they are not patient enough to listen to what subscription is. I think it is arrogance and pride that brought this conclusion, otherwise western medicine is derived from traditional medicine.

What are the treatments people receive here?

We run a general practice where people come with different complaints; malaria, typhoid, circulatory problems. We analyse each case and then prescribe medication, we have developed over 12 to 13 years and there are different stages of this medication.

We are actually running a comprehensive system, we have a clinical centre like the health centre; we have the research department where we have micro-biology laboratory, chemistry laboratory, coordination laboratory and specialists in those areas, we even have pharmacists. So our process goes through different stages before you finally have the finished product which we now prescribe and monitor the reaction and how the body responds to the treatment.

For those who need to be referred to other areas for further investigations, we also do that. This is a clinic, a clinic is where people come to make complaints and the physician decides what step to take and we keep a record of all our patients.

We don?t go about announcing what we have cured, we just make sure all our cases are documented and allow external bodies, if and when they are ready, to come and see the documents. That is why we don?t advertise or go about making claims, we help those who come here and leave it to them to tell whoever they want to tell.

Apart from malaria that you mentioned, what else do you cure?

We treat typhoid, malaria; we have specialists here in infertility, cancer, HIV, infections, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, syphilis.

Do you have cases of breast cancer here?

Yes, and it is alarming. It is an epidemic; it is a situation that government should handle with a lot of seriousness and declare an emergency because the rate at which it is occurring is very high. It appears common but the fact is that there is more incidence of breast cancer in the past five years.

We were told in the past that everyone will die of one cancer or the other; the older you get, the more likely you would get cancer; but now you see people in their 20s and 30s who have cancer. It is no more a disease of old age, it is becoming a disease of people from all walks of life; I believe something is wrong somewhere and we have to look into it seriously.

In your own analysis, what do you think is the cause?

It has been said on many occasions even by World Health Organisation, that there is a link between diet and cancer. Lets look at it the way it was done in the case of smoking and lung cancer so that we will be able to pinpoint which particular diet and substance in the food that we eat, in the colouring we add into our food, in the cream we rub on our skin, is there a particular substance that can be identified as causing a particular kind of cancer?

I assure you this can be done if there is sincerity on the part of the government and those carrying out researches. Cancer is caused by diet, lifestyle but the challenge for us is to link a particular cancer directly to a particular food or life style or stress.

We know that stress is one of the major problems in the modern day life and we know that if the immune system is weak, the body is prone to a lot of diseases. So could it be stress?? Can we carry out a study of those who sleep three to four hours, and eight hours and see what kind of sickness they suffer from?

I suppose researchers don?t do much on this but I am encouraging that these are the things we need to do in our various centres. Those who put herbal and traditional medicine out of the picture are wrong because here we say western medicine must work closely with the traditional healers in order to make a way forward. Health issues are multiplying, the system in place is too foreign; it doesn?t really suit? the mindset and the culture we live in; so we need a new thinking.

This is what we have been promoting and we have also been doing a lot of research, we are not just complaining but we have made a concrete proposal about health policy in Africa and Nigeria. Cancer requires a lot of attention; for now, I believe? the increase in fast foods? in the cities and remote villages is not helping us.

Do you think cancer should be treated with herbal than with western medicine?

Yes, looking at the history of medicines; most of the medicines that were discovered like penicillin, it was from observation of some fungi growing on plates. So it was actually nature that provided penicillin and has been one of the most revolutionary drugs that medicine has ever discovered.

The same thing with many of the other substances like insulin for diabetes, they didn?t come from? observations in the ??laboratory from mixing chemicals, they actually came from studying and looking at nature. Although medicine can claim to be the originator and claim the credit for that, the reality is that it is nature that provided these medicines and I believe that medicine has gone astray from its original purpose.

We are now focusing more on machines and experts who will operate these machines and carry out one test or the other; lets stop deceiving ourselves, there is need to come back to the roots; because that is where our problems are located and it is also where the solution is located.

In the last 30 years, there has not been any major drug discovery; they are only recycling the same drugs. From Chloroquine to Capquine, we are recycling the same substance, so I believe we need to go back to nature, to its root in order? to find remedy to? cancer and hypertension.

We know that medicine works but we should also remember that we pay a big price for the cure that you get for medicine. You may take a drug for ulcer, it may cure you but then the drug that cures the ulcer elevates your blood pressure, so you start taking hypertension drugs and truly it lowers your blood pressure, but the side effect is that you now have diabetes; then you start taking drugs for diabetes.

As you control diabetes, you have another problem; maybe it has affected your kidney and the circle goes around. So what is the purpose? I have seen a drug for asthma where the drug indicated that the side effect is sudden death and sudden stroke, don?t you think it is better you keep the asthma and survive than to treat the asthma and have sudden death? So you can imagine such a drug prescribed by doctors, it shows how we think and its also tells us that something is wrong somewhere.

This issue of doctors recommending the cutting of breast as cure for cancer, is there no other solution?

In medicine, it is officially stated that there is no cure for cancer; so the cutting of? the breast is to prolong the life a little bit. We are working with Howard University Hospital in America where we do a lot of research on cancer. They told me they have made a lot of progress in the last 10 years and the progress is that they have been able to prolong a cancer patient by six months.

To them that?s a lot of achievement. I told them in Africa that is nothing, what is six months?? Cutting of the breast I suppose works in 1-3 percent cases and most cancer anyway has? already spread beyond the supposed affected areas.

So cutting of the breast is not the solution. There are few lucky cases where it has not spread, you may cut off the breast and it may work. Even in those cases because they are not sure, they still have to carry out chemo and there is also evidence which is very clear scientifically? that????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? chemo has 1-2 percent success rate and about 80 percent dangerous side effect which is well documented. I suppose, out of frustration, physicians? have to do something because the mentality of bio-medicine is that doctors are meant to do something; whatever it is, just do it. It is a wrong attitude to health care and it causes more damage.

That is why I believe medicine is not just science. Medicine is actually culture; most of the medical practice is culture. The scientific part is the one that belongs to pathology, biology, but that will make up 20 percent, the remaining 80 percent is culture, so many people are alive based on how many surgeries they have done in life. African people value their bodies and I have seen a lot of women that were told that they would die in four months if their breasts are not removed, and all they told? the doctor? was, ?No problem, let me stay the way I came?.

Nigerian medical practice is being tempted to operate outside the culture of Nigeria. Already, there is gap between the people and hospital ideas, people are seeing hospital in a negative sense now because it is like a foreign thing which came from outside and is not considering the culture.

As a medical sociology, this is the area that we have been very much keen about, when you see a doctor who tells his patient with breast cancer that her breast should be cut off. It is unfair to use such language, A doctor should be able to call his patient aside and get his or her view when it comes to matters like taking off some part of someone?s body? Because it is assumed that the physician and the patients are colleagues, they need to discuss.

So if a doctor calls a patient and says ?we have to cut your breast?, that manner of approach is against our culture because it is against our view of the body and the medical system has to look into that. But we are not doing all that, we are just imitating what is practised in other cultures.

American medicine is modified according to their culture and genuine medical practice in Africa must continue to consider the culture, we must use the right language and the right attitude for people to change their ways of life.

At the moment, there is too much monopoly of health care by medical practitioners, a medical doctor should engage himself with treating the patient not into administration and controlling how money is? spent; that is one of the reforms and practices we need.

Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/07/the-monks-pains-over-cancer-hiv/

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