[ChristopherE]

I agree with all of these sentiments but I would add a few from our own experience (not particularly terminal illness, but that's likely coming soon with my wife's mass in her lung that we still can't get diagnosed) but with the medical machine in general. We have several special and medical needs children so we're constantly dealing with doctors and hospitals.

I think it's important to do your own research on different treatments and therapies. But the reason we do so is not to get our hopes up but to inquire of our doctors about the treatments. We have two questions. "What about _____?" which is usually followed by "why not?" And once in a while we get the response of "I don't know, let me look into that" and end up trying something that they hadn't considered. It helps us knowing that no stone goes unturned and maybe it'll help the doctor even by learning about (always accepted, not alternative) techniques he/she hadn't really looked into yet.

While we generally trust all of our doctors, in two cases we've found physicians that were barely competent by this method. In both cases, they arrogantly attempted to dismiss concerns or questions but when pressed they made up answers simply to dismiss us. (we say "made up" because we were given responses that directly contradict research and even the monograph put out by the drug company. But fortunately, this is the exception and not the rule.

As for alternative cures, the only way (in my opinion) those can be believed is if you put on your tinfoil hat and believe that the medical establishment is evil, every last man. If alternative cures worked, they wouldn't be alternatives. My son is severely autistic. If only I'd spend more time listening to the Internet I could use these alternative cures and he'd end up being a heart surgeon, I'm sure.

I often wonder why people do that? Sometimes it's the patients (or parents of patients if minor) but it seems to me that it's almost always friends or relatives that try to hook you up with pipe dreams and fantasies. Why is it so difficult for people to accept our realities?

[voltagex_]

>I often wonder why people do that? Sometimes it's the patients (or parents of patients if minor) but it seems to me that it's almost always friends or relatives that try to hook you up with pipe dreams and fantasies. Why is it so difficult for people to accept our realities?

Lack of education and a (worrying) growing mistrust in science and the scientific method.

[koide]

Also a factor is that some illnesses are awful and the treatments are inhumane. They're the best current medicine can do, but it's far from what you'd like the solution or paliative to be.

Thus, turning to alternatives is not necessarily mistrust in science, but a desperate search for something tolerable that could work.

Another possible factor that helps here is that many doctors are as inhumane as the treatments they recommend, and in some cases are not up to date in the latest science, so you end up having to educate them.

Although I agree that the decision to look for something else has to come from the person in the trenches, not as a well meaning (really?) suggestion from an outsider. Some people do want to fight that fight in addition to the normal fights Pieter mentions.