I know this isn't really related to religion...

Today my Mom told me she had been diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and she asked me to find some information about it. Apparently my Step Father was unwilling to be honest with her about what he found when she asked him.

What I found was nothing short of devastating, I called her up and tried to be as honest and as positive as I could. Medicine is always advancing and they caught it far earlier than they typically catch it.

My Step Father instead printed out Herbal Medicines and mentioned them when I was talking to her about treatment and the less comfortable conversation about mortality rates.

My question is how to break it to her that Herbal Medicine will only ruin her chances at survival.

Any advice would be appreciated...

I personally have this problem myself with my mother's arthritis and acupuncture and it's very difficult to convince someone when they are not rational thinkers. Luckily for me, it's just arthritis, so whenever she decides to visit an acupuncturist, it's just couple of bucks wasted and she gets a good ol' placebo.

It's probably better for doctors to do the talking and support them (assuming your doctor is a good doctor and doesn't support pseudo-crap practices). It is argument from authority, but it does work. Whatever you say is gonna be met with doubt for the same fallacy.

is this herbal remedy being done instead of other treatment?

the best chance for your mother's survival is not herbal treatments. her doctor should be able to explain this to her better than you can, but something simple you can say to her that might help her to understand why herbal treatments are not likely to be effective follows: her cancer will affect her bodies ability to absorb nutrients. it is very unlikely that she will be able to process the herbal remedies she is given and furthermore may actually stress her liver and pancreatic function leading to negative effect.

if she is interested in alternative treatments there may be clinical trials available to her that study the effects of hemocyanin (specifically Keyhole Limpet Hemocyanin) on antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity. basically doctors try and create cancer vaccines using hemocyanin cells from another organism (the keyhole limpet) and cancer cells from a patient to train the immune system to fight cancer in the body of that patient.

see if your mother's doctors know of any such ONGOING trials. if they really have caught this early, she may be a good candidate for such treatment.

i am not interested in giving you or your mother false hope, but this treatment is a real alternative (unlike herbal medicine) that has shown promising results.