The Mystery Behind Alternative Cancer Treatment

What Are Alternative Cancer Treatments?

From high doses of vitamins administered intravenously to varying levels of chemotherapy and radiation, alternative cancer treatments run the gamut in technique, according to medical professionals.

German facilities, said Frank Cousineau, the president of the Cancer Control Society who has spent years visiting alternative treatment facilities worldwide, often use hypothermia techniques and employ extracts from mistletoe against cancers.

But further details about the techniques are hard to come by — the clinics approached by ABCNEWS.com declined to comment or simply did not return calls — which makes supporters of the treatments harder to come by.

"[Alternative treatment] is a marking term that means anything anybody wants it to mean," said Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist who runs a site called quackwatch.com, which publishes information about alternative clinics. "It indicates it has not been proven, but people use it for different wants, and the implication by promoters is simply that it's a legitimate alternative."

Barrett, who has made it his job to warn cancer patients about the risks of alternative treatments, says he has spoken to people who have visited clinics in other countries and have suffered tremendously from unsanitary IVs and infections.

"I've asked people who are pretty involved in [the clinics] what the names of the doctors are or for medical records and 95 percent say 'no,'" said Barrett. "Once in a great while I've had someone offer records, but they were never traceable."

But Cousineau maintains that getting new cancer treatments approved is expensive and time-consuming for these clinics, which is why they choose to keep them under wraps — not because they don't work.

"I think the [clinics'] reputation is undeserved," said Cousineau, who is not a licensed physician. "The process to get a therapy of any kind approved in the U.S. takes a long time and is extremely costly. Just because they aren't approved doesn't mean they aren't working."