Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A cautionary tale, May 2, 2007
On her website, Mina Dobic tells of a patient who died of a broken heart. I know little about medicine, but I do know for a fact that a broken heart cannot kill. If it could, I would have died months ago. Most days I feel as if my heart beats not by pumping, but by breaking.
S-- his name is now irrelevant-- was my best friend, my best teacher, my closest family member. He was diagnosed with a malignant tumor on his duodenum that had metastasized to his liver and also possibly to his pancreas. The doctors thoughtlessly told him he had 2 years to live. He thus decided to forgo chemotherapy and treat himself wholly through macrobiotics, with Mina Dobic as his counselor.
She met him once professionally, two more times socially. She prescribed him an extraordinarily strict regimen that had him up at dawn. He embraced it immediately. It seemed to make sense: starve the cancer, allow the body to regenerate by ingesting wholesome natural ingredients. Although S right away found Ms. Dobic's book of recipes confusing and imprecise, he wrote to all his friends about how excited he was for the physical and spiritual changes he would undergo.
Very quickly, the soups and ginger baths and vegetable drinks became too difficult for S to prepare on his own. His mother came from overseas to help him. His health then began to decline precipitately: he had horrible night sweats; he lost weight at a startling rate. He periodically spoke to Ms. Dobic over the phone, and, as his body weakened and his fear increased, he grew to dislike her increasingly; it was his opinion that Ms. Dobic didn't appreciate the gravity of his case and, possibly, that she was using him to reach his famous and well-established friends.
After less than a month on Ms. Dobic's macrobiotic treatment plan, S could no longer stand up unassisted. He also could not sleep from the pain. Writhing on his bed, he would let out desperate whimpers that I didn't think human beings could make. According to S, Ms. Dobic at the time claimed that he was right on track to being cured and that his apparent decline was in fact a sign of "fantastic" progress. He rapidly became delusional, jaundiced and emaciated. His mother had to give him daily enemas. His teeth browned, his cuticles bled, his starved body became covered in sores. On one of his last days, barely able to speak, he begged a friend to kill him.
S died after adhering dutifully to Ms. Dobic's instructions for 2 months. He was only 36 years old. Ms. Dobic never visited him once, from the day he started the treatment to the day he died. She never came to make sure that he and his mother were preparing the food the `proper' macrobiotic way in a proper macrobiotic kitchen. She never came to check that the squashed cabbage leaf compressed to his liver was at the correct place on his abdomen. She never came to offer a bit of moral support and comfort to all of us who, clueless and scared, were trying to care for him.
A week before S's death, some friends and I contacted her and implored her to visit him. We insisted to her that this no way reflected his disillusionment with macrobiotics or with her, and that, in fact, she was the only one whom S and his mother trusted. She called us arrogant and illiterate and then proceeded to telephone his terrified, overworked mother and whine about receiving "hate mail."
Ms. Dobic finally did come to visit S and his mother-- several hours AFTER he died. Why, I don't know. In my opinion, she was useless then. Certainly she and her cronies can give me a good explanation. But I cannot, under any moral code-- Western, Eastern, Judeo-Christian, atheist-- respect a healer or counselor who refuses to see a client until he dies.
Nor can I believe that the macrobiotic treatment is more humane than Western medicine. The pain S endured was unbearable to watch; I cannot begin to imagine what it was like for him to experience. Perhaps Ms. Dobic and her followers will argue that S didn't `believe' enough in his own healing, that his years of taking anti-depressants were irreversible, that, even with powerful pain killers, hospital care would have been just as bad. They'll probably argue that I'm arrogant and simply blind to the lustrous truths of natural healing. Fine. But, still, why not visit him?
I have read this book; I must agree with all the negative reviews. For Ms. Dobic to assert that her system for curing cancer `naturally' is superior to the admittedly flawed one of experiments and controls, of fact versus faith, is indeed the very definition of arrogance. I have never met this woman, and I hope I never do. I assume that she responded to S's situation out of ignorance and self-preservation, and not out of malice. I do know some of her friends (many of whom have written testimonials below) and I must say that they seem completely indoctrinated; they revere Ms. Dobic with a religiosity that I once found puzzling and now find offensive. I imagine that once Ms. Dobic reads this, she will yet again contact all these friends and her celebrity clients to flood this web page with glowing praise. So be it. This story is the truth as I saw, heard and lived it. There are other witnesses.
I tell this story so that someday perhaps some sick, scared people may scroll down and read this and consider all treatment options, as frightening as they may be. Perhaps they may spare themselves from the hell that S endured and spare their loved ones from the confusion, guilt and anger that his family, friends and I must live with every day. My heart may be broken, but it knows the truth.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
"Promoting good health" is not the same as "curing cancer", July 25, 2007
Please note that there is a big difference between subscribing to a macrobiotic diet as part of a healthy lifestyle and using it to cure cancer.
Macrobiotics may indeed promote general well-being and good health. But it is a tragic mistake to believe that it can rid the body of cancer.
I only write this because I lost a dear friend to cancer who tried to cure himself by following the precepts in Ms. Dobic's book. Her claims with respect to the macrobiotic diet's ability to cure cancer are inflated and dangerous.
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Useless Charlatan, August 20, 2007
This woman - the macrobiotics expert - is, from what I understand, simply a dietician at a luxury hotel in Southern California. That's a euphemism for a "cook for rich people." She's not a doctor - of any tradition or discipline, either Western or Eastern medicine.
This book, and this woman's work, is beyond insulting to one's intelligence, common sense, and plain, old-fashioned logic.
I am all for using different traditions and disciplines for curing and healing. A friend's father died from a rare form of leukemia several years ago. Nothing could cure him, but it was Eastern medicine (REAL Eastern medicine) that made his final months much more bearable, helping to ease the pain and suffering he had to endure.
What I find most offensive and appalling - so awful that it makes my blood literally boil - is the fact that this dietician, untrained in any form of medicine, claims she can cure cancer. A dear friend had cancer last year. This friend saw several noted oncologists, all trained doctors obviously. He also saw experts in the field of Eastern medicine. No one had the arrogance or gall to tell him he would ever be cured. They may have differed on the amount of time the friend had left to live, but no one claimed they could cure him. Only Mina Dobic.
Is this dietician - again not a doctor of any discipline or field - somehow capable of performing biblical miracles? Clearly not. So where did she find the arrogance to claim she could cure him of a fatal cancer? I wouldn't mind if she sold him her menus and recipes, as a simple dietician, in an attempt to aid him somehow. What is wholly irresponsible is the fact that she sold her menus and recipes to a man who was clearly dying, a man who was clearly desperate for any small shred of hope - and she sold it to him as his salvation. Fine, sell your menu to whoever wants to pay, but don't tell your customers it'll cure them of fatal cancers! Because that is exactly what she did to my friend, whatever she claims in this book or in life.
Furthermore, it seems as if she borrows heavily from East Asian sources for her recipes and meal-plans. As an Asian-American, I have to ask: if miso and ginger, and so many ingredients she plundered from East Asia have such magical and mystical properties, why are there such high cancer rates in Japan, South Korea, and China? Or rather, any cancer in Asia at all? If all we needed to do was think positively and eat Asian foods, well, I guess no one in my family will ever die from cancer, using this dietician's ludicrous logic. It's just another form of exoticism, arrogance, and racism that is mind-bogglingly insulting.
I have nothing against macrobiotics. If it aids a relatively healthy person to live an even healthier life - more power to you. But what this woman did - promise a dying man that macrobiotics would CURE him of his incurable cancer - is entirely unforgivable. At the very least, she should be ashamed. But she probably doesn't have the intelligence or the introspection to ever do so.
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