Viewpoint July 30, 2009, 8:09PM EST

Health Care in Crisis: Better Ways to Beat Cancer?

The American medical industry saves millions of lives every year. But its resistance to better ways to treat cancer may doom millions more

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Editor's Note: This is Part Five of a five-part series on the health-care crisis.

One fear that haunts everyone is that one day your doctor will say the five most chilling words a patient can hear: "I'm sorry, you have cancer." According to the American Cancer Society's Cancer Facts & Figures 2001, in that year an estimated 29,200 Americans were diagnosed with, and about 28,900 of them died from, pancreatic cancer. This is the story of one of the 300 "survivors."

Self-employed in the construction industry, for over 40 years, Ray Ellis built small car washes, graduating to full-service lube centers, full-service car washes, and dry-cleaning shops. As his and Henrietta's children grew up, they joined the family business, Kwik Industries. Ray handled sales and contracts, eldest son Mike was in charge of construction, and younger son Phillip dealt with last-minute problems at the properties and handle sales of supplies to their customers. Daughter Raynette managed the office. Such was the Ellis family's reputation that when Costco (COST) decided to experiment with adding car washes at its store locations, it turned to Kwik Industries for the construction.

Mike Ellis grew up the strong, silent type; his integrity was unquestioned, and his sense of responsibility knew no limits. An accomplished multi-engine pilot, Mike also loved snow skiing, jogged eight miles four to five days a week, and had never smoked. His family often remarked that Mike seemed to embody the healthiest lifestyle possible. That was until 2001, when at the age of 45 he started having pain in his abdomen.

Liver Tumors

Never one to complain, he kept the pain to himself until it became unbearable. He consulted with a doctor of internal medicine and a gastroenterologist, who ordered numerous diagnostic tests and determined that surgery was required. The gastroenterologist, after performing a Whipple Procedure, or bile duct bypass, on Mike's pancreas in May 2002, had bad news for the Ellis family: He'd found tumors in Mike's pancreas, and so many tumors in his liver that he said he quit counting them at 100. In the doctor's opinion, Mike was, at best, living out his last 45 days.

Raynette and brother Phillip reached out to the best-known cancer centers across America, but the response was always the same. Initial rejection—because these cancers are almost always fast and fatal—but if Mike was still alive in six weeks they would look again at his case. Reporting back to the original gastroenterologist on their failed search for treatment, Mike's siblings were shocked by the physician's response: "If Mike were my son, I would get him on a plane to Germany for treatment right now." He then cautioned them never to use his name in conjunction with the recommendation—almost as if he were committing an act of medical heresy.

In June 2002, Mike Ellis was checked into the Klinik St. Georg in Bad Aibling, Germany, to undergo cancer treatments. The Klinik offers both conventional and alternative cancer therapies, including heat treatment and herbal supplements, that are not sanctioned by the American medical establishment. Scheduled to last four weeks, the treatment was cut short by an infection arising from his bile duct bypass surgery. The doctors asked that he return for a second series of treatments as soon as possible, once the infection had been cleared up. They also added that he had responded remarkably well and would probably survive. Ellis returned to Germany in October that year, and this time the doctors reported that the treatments had been successful: His cancer was in full remission. The total cost of his treatment at this point totaled a mere $36,000. The Ellis family was surprised when Blue Cross of Texas covered his treatments in Germany.