Abstract
To the Editor:
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond to the letter to the editor.
The objective of the article was to review case reports submitted to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Best Case Series (BCS) program by 4 practitioners from India who used ayurvedic or homeopathic therapies to treat cancer. The article focused on the number and variety of cancer types treated by the practitioners. We did not describe the interventions or individual case reports because our goal was to describe the NCI BCS process and the challenges associated with it. We also wanted to highlight the importance of researching complementary and alternative medicine interventions used by a significant percentage of cancer patients in India.
The agreement we have with practitioners who submit case reports to the NCI BCS program is to inform them before we write manuscripts of case reports. If we choose to publish case reports in the future, we will inform the practitioners before writing the manuscript. However, a significant number of the cases reported in our article have been published by the practitioners. We appreciate the effort of the practitioners and others who helped in compiling the cases.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.