Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcription has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors and ommissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes to Life show on UK Health Radio. I’m Robin Day, host for the show and founder of Yes2 to Life, the UK’s integrative cancer care charity, helping people with cancer understand and access the benefits of integrated medicine for the last 20 years. As some of you may know, the reason I set up Yes to Life was my experience of supporting my own daughter, Bryony, through cancer three times, as a child, as a teenager and finally as a young adult. As much as anything, the stark contrast between what support was available beyond conventional care and what was actually easily accessible to us was one of the key factors driving the foundation of the charity. And whereas I feel we’ve been able to make a significant contribution to improving accessibility for adults, the picture for children is not as good. The limiting factor holding back progress in integrative care for children is the law, which is far more complex and difficult to navigate than in the case of consenting adults.

Robin Daly
Today’s show is intended to move things forward in this area and to that end I’m hosting two expert guests. The first is Rob Verkerk. Now Rob’s a regular guest on the show addressing a wide range of topics, but today he’s going to speak about those legal issues surrounding children’s cancer care, where the dangers lie and where and how there is scope for progress. I was speaking to Rob at the offices of the Alliance for Natural Health, of which he’s the founder and scientific director.

Robin Daly
Hi Rob, thanks so much for coming on the show, shed some light on the legalities of working with children who have cancer. So before we get stuck in, I’d like to mention the listeners who may be aware of you in your role as super broad spectrum scientists with an enormous wealth of knowledge and understanding multiple areas of science, including of course cancer, that not content with that generous ambit you become one of the leading experts in health and medical regulations in the UK, Europe and beyond.

Robin Daly
So this positions you ideally for our investigation today into a lot of children in the UK who have cancer. So thanks very much.

Rob Verkerk
It’s an absolute privilege, as always, Robin, to be talking to you.

Robin Daly
So as many people are aware every practitioner who wants to help support people with cancer has got to contend with the 1939 cancer act and we actually dedicate an entire radio show to this subject which you’ll remember and I recommend listeners to go and look it up by going to our website yestorlife .org .uk scrolling down the home page to find the link to the radio show page and there you can search for shows featuring Rob as my guest. So at one time the act had the effect of deterring almost all practitioners from helping people with cancer but fortunately many have now found ways to work with the act that enable them to provide great support. But in the case of children there’s an additional layer to contend with and this still means that tragically most practitioners won’t take on children. Would you explain why?

Rob Verkerk
Yes. Look, it’s a very tricky area for everyone concerned. And right at the heart of it is this concept of patient centered care. And of course, in relation to children, you’ve got the critical issue of where the consent lies. And of course, written into law is this notion that if you are under 16, a single parent or guardian can essentially have consent over what you’re doing. And that’s based on this idea of capacity. The fact is that if you don’t have capacity because you’re too young, similarly, if you are suffering dementia or any other mental health issue that might affect your mental capacity to understand the implications of a treatment,

Rob Verkerk
others have to consent on your behalf. Within the UK, and it’s a very, very important piece of law that was heard in the 1980s. It’s called the whole areas referred to as the case that Victoria Gillick, a very concerned mother, nothing to do with cancer, but actually to do with contraceptives, who responded to a circular that her local health authority had put around instructing GPs that they could prescribe contraceptives to people under 16 without parental consent. And basically she launched a campaign and then went to the high court, lost her case against it because obviously she was deeply concerned that it would open the doors to the abuse of children. And she lost the case in the high court, but won it on appeal.

Rob Verkerk
And then fundamentally what we deal with in the UK today is the House of Lords interpretation of that. And in essence, it goes like this that First of all, a child under 16 can be determined to have sufficient capacity, but that would depend on their understanding of the implications of their treatment. When you apply that to, say, a 10 -year -old with leukemia, and you’re looking at a specific treatment, there may be an array of different treatments. You may be looking at a monoclonal antibody treatment against chemotherapy, for example. It may be determined that that 10 -year -old doesn’t have the capacity to understand the differences between those two treatments, but the parent might. The further complication becomes if you have two parents who don’t agree, and of course, then the Protection Act gets brought in, the courts get brought in, and make a determination about what’s best for the child.

Rob Verkerk
In our view, that would be a situation you want to try and avoid at all costs, because the court always leans towards an extremely allopathic view. We’ve seen many cases where parents have seen fit to really support a more of an integrative treatment approach involving complementary or alternative treatments. Another parent disagreeing with that in the court basically take the line that you have to then take that kid into care and submit them to a full -blown allopathic treatment that may also have some pretty devastating side effects. That’s one of the complications. Coming back to the reason why so few people are offering treatment is because essentially, if you look at the Cancer Act itself, obviously it relates to advertising, so it relates to how you present what you are doing. The classic workaround that is being used is if you don’t present what you’re doing as being a treatment for cancer, and instead you present it as a treatment for the body, you are operating outside the remit of the Cancer Act.

Rob Verkerk
It’s interesting that as we all develop an increasing understanding of this extremely complex range of diseases that we give one term to, cancer, the more we understand that it is really very much down to the terrain. We see an immune dysfunction as being one of the areas of it, but if you can then support the immune system, if you can restore functions that are harmed even by conventional treatments, and you can support the body’s detoxification mechanisms, you are not treating cancer, you are supporting parts of the body that are under stress because of the dysregulation that we see manifested in many different forms of cancer. The difficulty is that everyone, particularly if you see a life -threatening cancer in a child, For many reasons, childhood cancers can be more aggressive and can require more action. You inevitably are going to be focusing more on the need for treatment than you are for bodily support.

Rob Verkerk
If you have someone in their 60s, 70s or 80s, it’s a much easier argument to say, we’re just supporting the body and particularly we look at a less aggressive breast cancer, a less aggressive colon cancer, prostate cancer. Many men will die with a degree of it and not even know about it, very, very different with children. That’s because of the need for treatment and the need to directly address the metastases that are developing in children. It becomes much harder to argue that you’re not treating and then you are caught in the UK by these two critical areas. One is who is licensed to deliver those treatments and what are the approved treatments that are controlled through nice guidelines. For any medical doctor or oncologist that is outside that remit, they basically are risking their license, they’re risking being struck off. This draws into the fray another area, which is the whole area of innovative treatments.

Rob Verkerk
What some people are obviously drawn to is the possibility that there might be a new novel therapy. We see this particularly in terms of monoclonal antibodies and immunotherapy, we’re going to see it as a very, very big area in the coming months and years with mRNA vaccines because that is a huge area of development now. Of course, there aren’t any mRNA vaccines that are yet approved, but it is quite possible for children to be guinea pigs and I use that term not pejoratively. They become part of the ends, the numbers in, for example, phase two trials with relatively small numbers in order to look at whether you can get a positive result.

Rob Verkerk
That is all agreed through ethics committees. If you can get an unlicensed developmental innovative treatment through an ethics board, that’s also an opportunity. For many people, of course, the risks are even more uncertain, but if there is a toss -up between what has been labeled a terminal cancer, which itself is sometimes a questionable diagnosis, it often really drives people to look at alternative therapies because they are given no other hope. You can see that the possibility of an innovative treatment and experimental treatment, and as I said, that whole area is going to be changing dramatically as we move forward. If we look at the number of mRNA vaccines that are currently in phase one, even in phase two, we’re going to be moving to phase three and some of those are very specifically designed for children.

Rob Verkerk
As far as a technology platform is concerned, even for people who have been disappointed by the performance of mRNA vaccines for SARS -CoV -2, I think, in my view, it’s difficult to deny the potential value of mRNA vaccines for very aggressive cancers that are able to directly talk to antigen -presenting cells and dendritic cells and kick off, if you like, where the possibility exists. I have the same position about GMOs, I’ve spent 25 years of my life challenging the outdoor release of GMOs, but I would support the use of GMOs for very specific medical purposes, particularly for life -threatening illnesses. I would put mRNA vaccines at the same category because of the possibility of personalizing them, individualizing them, and of course, dealing with the uniqueness of particular cancers. It is too early to say if they are really going to deliver the groundbreaking results that the Moderna and everyone else is talking about.

Rob Verkerk
Fundamentally, another area that we need to concern is how the evidence base is interpreted by the people who make decisions, whether it’s the doctors, the oncologists, or the courts. The difficulty at the moment is those decisions are based on a very classical view of evidence -based medicine in which you get randomized control trials and particularly meta -analyses. The studies of multiple RCTs all pull together as being the top of the pinnacle, in other words, the most powerful evidence. Then as we go down that evidence hierarchy, we start looking at cases and case control studies and observational studies. That’s where it becomes really difficult if you are an individual who’s had people that you know who’ve had the experience of positive results from so -called alternative or complementary treatments.

Rob Verkerk
You are then being told by oncologists, sorry, there’s no evidence, but you’ve had the experience. It’s important to remind people of the original work of Professor David Sacker, who is the founder of the evidence -based working group that came up with the whole thing. As he said in his paper published in the BMJ in 1996, guys, you’ve got it all wrong. What I said is you should take into account the best evidence, but also clinical experience. That’s the bit that’s been forgotten. Conveniently forgotten. It’s a complex domain. The key is that whatever treatment a child is undergoing… So, doing nothing in terms of the microenvironment of the tumor, the wider environment of that child in the field that has been labeled alternative complementary medicine is always going to do a disfavor to that child.

Rob Verkerk
So bringing in these complementary supportive treatments, even if there is a more conventional or even experimental treatment going on has got to be for the greater good, but it is critical that everyone understands the complexity of the legal environment you’re dealing with and really, really important those treatments are never positioned as anything other than being supportive.

Robin Daly
Okay, so just say you’re a practitioner listening to this now who’d like to be able to help children, what advice would you give them?

Rob Verkerk
Well, again, it’s how you present. The Cancer Act specifically is around your presentation, your advertising. So really important to be suggesting very, very unequivocally in any communications, verbal communications, and certainly in terms of how you advertise on websites or anything else that you are not doing treatments. The fact that you are supporting children who happen to have cancer and other diseases is important. Obviously, the more that you are able to dilute anything to do with cancer in terms of the overall sphere of interest, if you put yourself out as being someone who specializes in children with cancer, your exposure is going to be so much higher. Whereas in practice, what generally happens is that if you can keep the term for these supportive therapies, if you can keep the term cancer off websites and all the better, a lot of people find that the vast amount of work that they get is actually through referrals.

Rob Verkerk
That is one of the best ways of doing it. If you do include the word cancer anywhere, really, really important that you make it absolutely unequivocal that this has nothing to do with treatments and that you make specific statements ensuring that you support the notion that you can have a disclaimer on that that says that this is for educational information only, but also that you strongly recommend anyone presenting with cancer is seen by a registered medical practitioner or oncologist.

Robin Daly
Okay, one last important question. With the arrival of telemedicine, one of the advantages that came our way, thanks to COVID, we can now actually consult a practitioner anywhere in the world who are working on the different regulations to us. Does that give us a freedom? We didn’t have that.

Rob Verkerk
before? It certainly does because the practitioner that’s operating outside the jurisdiction, even if they’re giving advice and guidance into a different jurisdiction, means that the licensing authorities, that the legal remit does not translate to that other jurisdiction. The important thing is that when it comes to children, that’s when the Protection Act can be brought in because if you are relying on advice, guidance from a US practitioner and you are not following what the evidence -based medicine pyramid says you should be doing that is you could have the courts brought in and this, you know, where it tends to happen is where there is disagreements amongst parents or guardians who say you’re not acting in the best interests of the child and then the courts can then order that allopathic treatments are provided. So you still got to be quite responsible, you can’t just say I’m immediately outside of it because if you’ve got a child involved, you have a remit to act in the best interests of that child.

Robin Daly
But it certainly gives an option for adding in complementary support for the terrain of the child. Alongside the conventional meds, 100%, yeah. Well, that is a real plus, you know, that’s something, a really good thing for parents to feel like they have, because at the moment, it’s just like it’s bleak. So thanks very much for making that all very clear. And I hope that clears a lot of things up for the listeners. Thank you very much, Robin. I hope that was a help in clarifying the way things stand in regard to the law, where and how we can act with confidence and where to take care. Unfortunately, the law is never the clearly delineated situation that it aims to be, and it’s always open to interpretation. Hence, the experience of someone such as Rob, who both understands the law and has provided support in real life scenarios is extremely valuable.

Robin Daly
My next guest is a practitioner, again, a regular on the show, functional medicine practitioner, Jo Gamble. Jo has been highly creative in developing ways to work with children that are genuinely helpful and that don’t carry any risk of falling foul of the law. In this, she’s building ground for others to walk on, be they other practitioners or parents. All right, Jo, brilliant to have you back on the show again.

Jo Gamble
I love it and lovely to be back.

Robin Daly
Yeah, thanks very much for contributing to this extremely important topic. Rob Verkerk already helped us explore the background against which practitioners such as yourself are operating and in my opinion it’s a cruelly challenging one. So add to this the fact that cancer is becoming increasingly a disease of the young and you’ve got a recipe for increasing suffering. So Rob and I, we’ve already discussed the fact that practitioners have found that there are ways of supporting people with cancer without falling foul on the law, but is this also true in the case of children? Are things improving?

Jo Gamble
I think what’s so challenging where children are concerned is obviously not just mentioning the enormity of what a diagnosis means to a parent of a child who is going through their cancer journey, but the lack of support that’s given from the medical professionals. So as I’m sure you’ve discussed with Rob, our job as practitioners is not to treat the cancer. That’s the job of the oncologist. But what our job is to do is support. Well, we double the work where children are concerned because we’re supporting both the child and the family. So, so often what happens in the circumstance of a diagnosis, whether it’s a diagnosis that requires a child to be on long -term hospital stay like some of the leukemias or the neuroblastomas where they might be in hospital for a big chunk of time versus some of the cancers where children might go in for their chemo and come home again just like they would in adult services.

Jo Gamble
But in so rare circumstances is any advice given around diet other than a basic booklet. The last one I saw was one that was funded by the memorial to Diana. It’s like gives an idea how old it was. And it was covered on the front with jelly beans and brightly colored cakes and biscuits. And that’s the sort of information that they’re given. And any advice that’s given around diet seems to be very like calorific based. You’ve got to keep their calories up because we know that a lot of children do lose a lot of weight through treatment. So I’m not arguing with it, but you know, we know that there’s different ways to achieve that calorie requirement. And in the same booklet, you know, advice is given around sorts of foods to avoid from a harmful implication. Like I had a family that was told, take your kid to McDonald’s because McDonald’s has a five -star safety rating, but don’t eat it local Indian because they might only have a two -star safety rate. And that’s the sort of advice that generally is given.

Jo Gamble
Now, appearance gets massively disempowered in their child’s cancer journey. You know, they’ve gone from, I’m going to look after my child at home or me and my partner or me and my, you know, wider family or me in the nursery or me in the school too. Almost, I’m going to hand over the care of my child to the hospital. Now, as a parent of a child that spent a long time in hospital or in and out of hospital, I know how disempowering that is. And really what I want to come out today is, a, there are things that we can do, things that a parent can go forth with. And second of all, how can we empower that parent, that grandparent, that loved one, that there’s actually things that they can do to support that child on their cancer journey. And this isn’t just about giving them over to the hospital and with that kind of warts and all.

Jo Gamble
You’ve got no control over their food. You’ve got no control over their sleep. You’ve got no control. That is so painful for a family. So, what I generally work with a family is go, what little bits can we gain control over? And actually, food is one of those bits. And emotionally supporting the family in that journey is such a powerful thing that we the practitioner can do. Whatever the outcome of that child’s journey, empowerment is so important.

Robin Daly
Right. Yeah. It’s an important word. Okay. So you’ve already mentioned this sort of two things we can talk about here is two areas. One of them is, well, empowering the parents, but also we need to help empower practitioners because many of them are completely disempowered in relation to children. So maybe we start with the parents and so they may have already found out an awful lot of that was not possible, you know, but really we want to talk here about what is possible to say. So do you want to sort of start off on your kind of top tips if you like in terms of the kinds of help? Yeah. Absolutely.

Jo Gamble
So first of all, a parent couldn’t want to do this, but depending on the age of the child or young person, we’ve also got to bring them in. And this is where as a practitioner working with children, you’re working with so many different people here. You’re working with the child, you’re working with the parents and you’re integrating with the hospital by maybe communicating with them what you’re doing. So it’s a much bigger task, possibly why many practitioners weren’t a mile away from this. So what I always say is, we need to know what makes the child happy because, you know, these children may have had a really healthy diet before their diagnosis, but they also may have had a limited palate before their diagnosis. But we also need to understand that cancer treatment, whether it’s steroids or some of the chemotherapies, can alter sense of smell, taste. Children are feeling really nauseous. So we might not be dealing with what we were dealing with before.

Jo Gamble
And what I always say is, when working with children, this is the same with any child, Robin, small wins. That’s all we’re after, small wins. We’re not looking at it as such a big project that us as parents are setting ourselves up to fail. So I’m going to tell you about Ben because it’s probably easier to apply this. So Ben was a little boy who was diagnosed with Rhabdomyosarcoma, so an aggressive childhood cancer. And I met with mum, first of all, and, you know, they’d been given all the spiel from the hospital and told just to give Ben whatever he wanted to keep his weight up. And mum said that felt wrong to her. So my first question is always, what does the child like? Tell me about the child because I don’t always get to meet the child straight away. Ben was an avid Harry Potter fan, avid Harry Potter fan.

Jo Gamble
So as a practitioner, I was like, right, we’re going to use Harry Potter. So what I said was, let’s start with things that Ben can choose, because again, he’s been disempowered. He’s had his freedom of right taken away. So again, like I said, I have to work a lot harder with children. So we did breakfast from Gryffindor and we did snacks from Hufflepuff. And we did, and I’m going to embarrass myself with my lack of Harry Potter knowledge in a minute. So I’m going to stop at this point, okay? So I did him a big visual, got all my, like I used all the technology out there to make all the graphics in Harry Potter style writing and did various different pictures. Things that I used quite a lot of packeted things, but healthier packeted, not just thinking here about organic, but thinking about better fats, better proteins, less refined sugars in there. Things that they could take to the hospital with them.

Jo Gamble
And I presented to Ben his four different sets of food. So breakfast, snacks, lunches, and dinner and the four houses of Harry Potter. Well, you can imagine, yeah, I’d bought Ben. I’d bought Ben straight away. I’ve done it for another child with footballers. Now that one’s even harder for me, Robin, because I know absolutely nothing about footballs. So I have to integrate my skills about what I know or don’t know about Harry Potter together with what I know around food to go. This is what children need. They need it to be creative. Similarly, I’ve used cookbooks and made cookbooks. And when I say made, I’m talking quite basic, where children can sit and flick through the cookbook and choose, because as soon as you give empowerment to the child, they’re able, and maybe it is something really basic, but they’re able to be a part of their journey.

Jo Gamble
Now in this world where children have lost, they’ve lost so much with that cancer diagnosis. They’ve lost friends or connection with friends. There may be lots going into school. They’ve maybe lost, you know, seeing their siblings. What’s the one thing we can all control in and out of control world? Food. So actually what happens is children get very controlling around food and then parents get scared. They’ve not eaten. So then what happens is we’ll give them more and give them more. And I mean, I’ve seen it all. I’ve had a child, he went through neuroblastoma treatment, didn’t start working with him until he finished his conventional and neuroblastoma is such a long treatment plan. And he got to the end and he would eat white bread and marmite, so toaster marmite and potato waffles, but there had to be a certain brand of potato waffles. And that was it. That was it. That was his whole diet when I got started with him.

Jo Gamble
And for him, I went and did home visits and we worked step by step by step to increase his repertoire. When I finished with him, we’d got 50 foods. I was like, mum, you can keep going now. You can do this. But again, mum was so brightened. All she did was fed him. Mum might have toast for breakfast, mum might have toast for lunch, and potato waffles for dinner. So, that poor boy was so nutrient devoid, but mum didn’t know what to do. And there was no support through the hospital. So, you and I both know, there’s so much science out there about the power of food, about, you know, hallmarks of cancer, about taking people on a journey. But actually, I wanted today to be about practical steps that parents can do to make a difference. Whether it’s whilst their child’s in active treatment, we can work with the requirements of, you know, no salad leaves or no raw foods.

Jo Gamble
Easy, that’s super easy to be able to do. We can work with the child and actually engage the child. We can work with the family. Now we’re the family. And to me, that’s worth every moment of being on this journey. Fantastic.

Robin Daly
Okay, well look, that’s a very inspiring look at nutrition and any other areas in which you think there’s scope for supporting a child in other ways.

Jo Gamble
100%, I mean, when we look at sort of the hallmarks of cancer, like I said, the job…it’s the job of the oncologist, pediatric oncologist in this circumstance to treat the child’s cancer. But we know that many pediatric cancers come fast, come furious and frequently relapse. Why? Because children are in rapid growth, because quite often these cancers are very aggressive, because many of them are being treated, like rhabdomyosarcoma, they’re using the treatment protocol from the 80s. And I know this because I’ve got so many parents lobbying through Goldman and through charitable work to try to have more money put into pediatric cancer research. But let’s just take one of those sort of hallmarks of cancer and think about genomic instability. Now, certainly if the doctors think that the cancer that they’re working with is of a genetic origin, that will be the job of a geneticist to investigate that. And I’m no geneticist, so they are the experts where that’s concerned.

Jo Gamble
But when we think about genomic instability, our genomics sit just above our genetics, they’re still inherited. But the expression of that genome can be influenced by the environment we bathe it in, something we call epigenetics. Now, in the words of Dr. Ben Lynch, I’ll use his explanation because he’s so much better than me explaining it. Take a dirty gene and bathe it in a dirty environment, and we can create a problem. Take the same dirty gene and bathe it in a clean environment, we can clean up the expression of that dirty gene. So, understanding genomics as in each of our individual genomics is an amazing way to support the environment of that young person. And that might be to encourage more of certain antioxidants or reduce exposure to certain chemicals. It might be to include more omega -3 rich food in the diet, because that young person is more prone to pro -inflammation. It might be that we need to encourage more retinol rich foods, as opposed to beta -corotinoids.

Jo Gamble
So, retinol is active vitamin A, beta -corotinoids come from orange vegetables. And some of us don’t make that conversion. If we fall into that category, it’s about 40% of the population. Our parents lied to us when they said, if you eat your carrots, you’ll see in the dark, because you need retinol for good night vision. And some people don’t make that conversion. So, the more we understand our genomics, the more that again, we can support that optimal environment around them. Understanding our genomics can come from a simple swab of the inside of our cheek. Once you’ve got that data, you’ve got it always. But again, it really can help parents to understand some of the whys behind their child’s journey. And again, they can use those genomics, maybe a little bit during treatment to make decisions around food, but a big bit post treatment to support them in their long -term health and well -being.

Jo Gamble
And again, when a parent looks an oncologist in the eye and says, why? And they just get told, I had one family who had a child who had neuroblastoma, and then a child who had leukemia. And she said to the oncologist, why? And he said, lightning struck twice. That was it. They were the only words that he could say. Whereas actually, both children have survived, thankfully. But when mom understood the children’s genomics and hypomethylation, and she was like, hallelujah, I have information. She says, and if nothing else, it helps me to sleep at night. So, that’s something else I think us as practitioners can be involved in to educate parents, really allow us to teach them about their child’s genome, and then support the environment around that genome. And I think that’s such a powerful part of that journey. It doesn’t matter where it is, doesn’t matter if they do it at diagnosis, post treatment, five years down, like it’s never too late, never too late to support the environment around the genome.

Robin Daly
Fantastic. All right. Well, there’s some very empowering stuff there. So, look, we haven’t got a lot of time left, but I wonder if you could directly address practitioners who maybe, you know, they don’t take on children and just tell them well, reasons why they could and how they might be able to help. I have to do it briefly, I’m afraid.

Jo Gamble
And all I would say is use your creative skills. So, a lot of practitioners in circumstances, it’s your fear that stepping in your way, and it’s about bringing creativity to life, whether it’s sitting and doing something that the child can colour in fun food photos or have a rainbow of different colours of the phytonutrient spectrum. Never be overwhelmed and never think that your little bit of an input can’t make a massive difference to the child and the family’s journey.

Robin Daly
Yeah. Okay. And I mean, the most important word that you’ve brought in here is this empowerment. And I completely agree with you. The big message here is this immense disempowerment that happens for the parents and for the children. And I think this is where these, you just mentioned these very small steps. And, you know, this is something we appreciate very much, yes, to life, because we’re going to helpline by helping people. And sometimes we do just offer some very small thing to somebody who’s on the brink of hopelessness. And that small thing leads them forward. And before they know what’s happened, they’re taking another small step. And they’re building on that. And oh, yeah, that does help actually. And it can actually turn their situation around from a very tiny bit of momentum, a huge momentum can build.

Robin Daly
So I very much appreciate what you said there. And yeah, I want to see practitioners empowered, as you say, to feel like they really can help and, and to get on with it. And the more they do it, the more they’ll find out actually, they can, and hopefully not to be scared off in the ways that they have been. And we’ve learned just how much can be done with adults with cancer, that practitioners such yourself, you’re one of the pioneers, after all, leading forward as the first functional medicine practitioner in this country, you’ve been creating the ground for lots of people to be able to help people with cancer in a way they never did before. They were just too frightened. So I really, really hope that this becomes true with children as well, because I got to they need it.

Jo Gamble
And sadly, with the environment that we’re living in today, this need is only going to increase. The number of pediatric cancers is going up. So if we don’t work to bring this skillset out, then sadly, that’s children that aren’t getting their needs met. And we need to meet children’s needs, whether that’s through the education system or the social care system is like, and we need to meet this part of their cancer journey for them, their parents, and the wider population group hit by pediatric cancers.

Robin Daly
Brilliant, well thanks so much, it’s great to hear somebody like yourself is talking with such a good understanding of what the needs are and how they can be met, so thank you very much indeed Joe.

Jo Gamble
Brandon, thanks for helping.

Robin Daly
I sincerely hope that today’s show will provide inspiration to practitioners to go beyond a blanket no to supporting children and to start to look to find ways to safely work with children. Either of these may seem very limited at first. Some support is infinitely better than none. If there is one area of integrative cancer care in which the science has moved ahead massively in recent years, it is in understanding how vital the emotional support and connection of a good practitioner can be, quite apart from any practical care they offer. Children and parents have largely been abandoned due to fear up to now and this is a situation we must try to change. For parents or carers listening, I’m hoping that what you’ve heard today gives you reason to pursue integrative support and not to lose the hope that there are things that you can actively do to improve the prognosis and the quality of life of your child.