You could also link to countless videos of people having spontaneous remission. Without a controlled study and verification, it just doesn't mean that much. Many such videos are trying to sell a product. If you want to sell me a product, then do a controlled, scientifically sound study that shows your product works. You can bet that if something like baking soda (just as an example) had curative properties superior to what pharmaceutical companies were using then they would be optimizing it as a chemo drug. For all the complaints about "unnatural" chemotherapy, it is based mostly on natural things such as plant alkaloids and antibiotics. I think diet and nutrition can and does play a large role in prevention but once a particularly aggressive form of cancer is spreading throughout your body it's far too late for that. I also disagree somewhat with you about modern medicine. At least technology, treatment and medicine has improved greatly over the past 100 years. Even cancer treatment has improved greatly over the past few decades. That doesn't mean it is perfect (far from it) or that there aren't huge improvements to be made. Modern medicine is in many ways still very primitive. But it is obviously improving and I believe it will continue to do so. Now if we could just get politics out of medicine...

Risk factors also need to be better understood. In the case of my wife, she was at greater risk because of having four children and breastfeeding them all (breastfeeding one or two decreases the risk of cancer while breastfeeding more increases the risk, the same is true with having children in general). She was also at greater risk because of being of Filipino decent and living in North America (I can only assume this risk is related to genetics in combination with some other factor). While these are certainly lifestyle choices they aren't the sort you would typically link with cancer. The reasons that these are risk factors is not well understood.

Prevention is certainly important but all the preventative steps in the world won't eliminate the disease completely. Next to that, early detection is extremely important for any potentially valid treatment, whether traditional or alternative. I think that if my wife's cancer had been caught before spreading to lymph nodes then her story would be different.

Life and death decisions cannot be made lightly but can only be made with the best information available. No matter what decisions are made, if they don't work out as hoped, you will look back with some regret, guilt and a sense of what if...