What’s Happening in Cancer Treatment? Are We Making Progress, or Are We Stuck?Today we’re sharing another piece from our medical contributor, “Doc Gumshoe” — we have added the stock tickers to the companies he mentions for your researching convenience, but this survey of the state of cancer research — which will hopefully be good background help to folks trying to understand the basic science behind pitches for cancer cure stocks — is not a recommendation to buy or sell any company and, as always, the words and opinions here are his own.
In the past few weeks there have been a couple of news items that define the spectrum of cancer treatment today. At one end is the news that everyone has heard about – Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo a double mastectomy, based on her genetic profile. At the other end is the sentencing of a Los Angeles physician, Christine Daniels, to fourteen years in the slammer for putting her patients on a totally fraudulent cancer “cure” that resulted in the deaths of several patients.
I won’t say much about Angelina’s decision itself, except that to my admittedly skeptical viewpoint, it was more a matter of peace of mind than of medical necessity. Many oncologists have weighed in with the perspective that careful monitoring would in all probability have detected breast cancer in time for successful treatment. In other words, they would not recommend a similar course for all women with the BRCA1 gene.
Following Big Data
However, what her decision was based on illustrates a powerful trend in cancer treatment, and, indeed, in current medical practice: that is, increasing reliance on Big Data, in this case, on sequencing the patient’s genome and looking for correlations with genetic information about cancers. The cancer establishment likes this. They know how to do it. There is already a repository of genetic information about cancers, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), funded by the National Cancer Institute. According to some experts, including Dr Michael Yaffe of MIT, the new data that is being dug up by further genomic analysis isn’t much different from the old data already in TCGA, but the NCI is spending about a quarter of a billion dollars a year on this approach, which may or may not lead, eventually, to improved treatment. And let us not forget, please, that treatment is what it’s about. Not more data.
But it’s hard to wean human beings from doing what they know how to do. If you’re a hammer, you want to solve the problem by pounding on a nail. If you’re a drunk looking for your house keys, you look under the street light, because that’s where the light is better, even if you dropped your keys a hundred feet away.
And this approach is safe. There are no failures. The researchers program their computers, the results emerge, grants are renewed, and everybody is happy. Except, maybe, the cancer patients who are waiting for news of a cure!
Why Are People Willing To Be Fooled by the Likes of Dr Christine Daniels?
From where I sit, the short answer is that after being promised a “cure for cancer” by lots of people, from Nixon’s declaration of “War on Cancer” more than 40 years ago on, no “cure for cancer” has turned up, and the news that comes out from the medical establishment promises nothing like a genuine cure for cancer. So it’s not exactly unexpected that when someone with a legitimate medical degree promises a cure, people would believe it. Of course, there have always been fraudulent cures, pitched by hucksters and crooks of nearly infinite varieties. But the underlying soft spot they aim for is the public’s disappointment. There’s a widespread view that mainstream medicine doesn’t have really effective cancer treatments. Cancer treatment, overall, gets a bad rap.
There May Never Be “A Cure for Cancer.”
That’s because, essentially, there isn’t any such thing as “cancer” in the singular. There are many, many different cancers. Therefore it’s highly unlikely that there will ever be a “cure” in the singular. What links these multiple cancers is the propensity of cancer cells to continue to subdivide and multiply indefinitely, and also their greedy, invasive, destructive character. These common characteristics do provide a target for treatment, however, as we’ll see later.
Possible Reasons for People’s Dim View of Current Cancer Treatment
More Heart Disease Survivors Means More Cancer Fatalities
Cancer mortality rates are down, but not that much. One reason is a sort of statistical artifact: death rates from the chief killer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), are down sharply. According to the NIH, yearly heart disease mortality declined from 307.4 per 100,000 population in 1950 to 134.6 per 100,000 in 1999, and it has continued to decline steeply since then. For example, in my home state of Connecticut, mortality from heart attacks was 66.6 per 100,000 in 1999 and 41.5 in 2006. The American Heart Association calculates that if the CVD mortality rate had remained at its 1963 peak, 621,000 additional CVD deaths would have taken place annually from about 1996 onward – that’s almost 10 million people. But those folks who escape dying of heart attacks don’t live forever – lots of them survive to succumb to something else, frequently the big C.
New Drugs Are Usually Tested Only In Patients with Terminal Cancers
Another reason is that the new drugs for cancer have a huge hurdle to surmount to get approval from regulators, here or abroad. They have to demonstrate that at least they are not inferior to established treatments, which they can do only in clinical trials in patients with cancer. But these cannot be placebo-controlled trials, because it would be hugely unethical to put cancer patients in the placebo arm. Also, patients with newly-diagnosed cancers for which there are established treatments that work reasonably well are not going to consent to go into a trial where they might be on an experimental drug that might be a bust. So most new cancer drugs are studied initially in patients in whom other treatments have failed. That’s why sometimes you see that a new drug, approved by the FDA, results in only a few months longer life than the drug it was compared to. An example is a very promising drug from a booming biotech, Regeneron. Zaltrap improved survival by only a few months, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering decided not to use it, because it costs about twice as much per month ($11,000) as Avastin. But that doesn’t mean that in recently diagnosed, early stage cancers, drugs like Zaltrap might not be a significant improvement.
What Are the Real Numbers?
Here are the incidence & mortality figures for the most common cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute. These are what’s known as SEER Statistics (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results), and SEER data from the NCI are very well respected.
| Type of cancer | Projected new diagnoses 2012 | Expected deaths 2012 | Current fatality rate |
| All cancers | 1,638,910 848,170 men 790,740 women | 577,190 | 35.2% |
| Breast | 226,870 | 39,510 | 17.4% |
| Colon/rectum | 143,460 | 51,690 | 36% |
| Leukemia | 47,150 | 23,540 | 49.9% |
| Liver | 28,720 | 20,550 | 71.6% |
| Lymphoma | 79,190 | 20,130 | 25.4% |
| Ovary | 22,280 | 15,500 | 69.5% |
| Pancreas | 43,920 | 37,390 | 85.1% |
| Prostate | 241.740 | 28,170 | 11.7% |
| Skin (melanoma) | 76,250 | 9,180 | 12% |
(Note that the fatality rates are not part of the NCI SEER statistics – the expected deaths in 2012 are in patients whose diagnoses were made in previous years. The fatality rates in the new diagnoses are unknown at this time; those are my own calculations.)
The huge differences in predicted fatality rates are due to many factors – the aggressiveness of the cancer, the efficacy of the treatment modalities that are available, and the accuracy of the means of detection. The low prostate cancer fatality rate is partly due to the fact that this form of cancer progresses slowly, that detection of prostate cancer is effective (despite the efforts of the USPSTF to discourage PSA testing), and that radiation or, especially, surgery, for prostate cancer is curative in most cases. This is also true of breast cancer (and also despite the effort of the USPSTF to discourage mammograms in women in their 40s). The low melanoma fatality rate is also due to the relative ease of detection of this form of cancer. The high fatality rates for pancreatic, liver, and ovarian cancer probably have at least as much to do with the difficulty of detecting those cancers as with absence of effective treatment.
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According to the National Cancer Institute, fatality rates have slightly declined in the past ten years – nothing spectacular, perhaps 1.5% over a ten year period, likely due to a combination of better detection and somewhat better treatment. Cancer prevalence in the US is about 12 million – or rather, that’s the estimated number of persons who have been diagnosed with cancer as of 2008. The NCI designates them as “cancer survivors,” meaning that they have been diagnosed and treated.
Current Cancer Treatment
If the cancer is an identifiable, locatable solid tumor, the plan is to kill it or cut it out, and poison any remaining cancer cells so that they don’t have a chance to recur. The effectiveness of surgery has greatly improved, owing mostly to enhanced imaging capabilities, as well as improved surgical skills. Surgery is often the most direct, immediate, and definitive treatment for some cancers, i.e., solid tumors that have not spread or metastasized. In some cases, surgery does not need to be followed up by any kind of drug therapy. The patient goes home, is monitored for signs of recurrence, and can genuinely be considered “cured.” However, I repeat, that’s “in some cases…”
Chemotherapy consists of giving the patient toxic chemicals that the cancer cells absorb more avidly than do the patient’s non-cancerous cells. The calculation is that the cancer cells greedily take in more of the poison than do the normal cells, so that the cancer cells die while the healthy cells survive. Nonetheless, chemotherapy can be exceedingly rough on patients and, by itself, is rarely completely curative. However, in combination with surgery, chemotherapy can result in long-term remission amounting, in effect, to a cure. A widely used cytotoxic drug is cyclophosphamide, marketed as Cytoxan, by Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Mead-Johnson, and others.
Radiation therapy has also greatly improved in effectiveness, due principally to the immensely improved accuracy of imaging techniques. External-beam radiation, which is used in solid tumors only, can now pinpoint the tumor precisely, and by changing the angle of the radiation beam in all dimensions, most of the radiation passes through the tumor only, with surrounding tissue getting much less exposure. In some cancers (e.g., prostate cancer), it’s possible to implant tiny pellets of radioactive material directly in the tumor, killing the cancer while minimizing damage to surrounding tissue.
Other Strategies for Treating Cancer
As oncologists have learned more about cancer cells, they have tried to devise ways of getting rid of them without causing harm to neighboring non-cancerous cells.
Inhibiting the reproduction of cancer cells
Cancer cells, like all cells, reproduce by mitosis, or splitting. The difference between cancerous and non-cancerous cells, however, is that non-cancerous cells are subject to apoptosis, or programmed cell death. This sounds like a bad thing, but it’s actually a good thing for the health of the host organism – we grow new cells, so that most of cells in our bodies are relatively young and healthy.
However, cancer cells, left to their own insidious devices, will continue to reproduce endlessly. The process by which they do so is complex, but it involves dividing some of the cancer cell’s crucial components, such as chromosomes and microtubules. A number of drugs can significantly inhibit the process, and have shown great clinical benefit in some cancers. Many of these drugs are descendants of a compound which was first discovered in the bark of the Pacific yew tree and named “taxol” after that tree; since then, a number of taxol-based drugs have been developed. Taxol-based agents using this mechanism include paclitaxel (Taxol, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY)); docetaxel (Taxotere, Sanofi-Aventis (SNY)), Abraxane (a newer formulation of paclitaxel from Celgene (CELG)) and others. Other anti-mitotic agents with different mechanisms include vinorelbine (Navelbine, from Abbott (ABT)), capecitabine (Xeloda, Genentech), which inhibits DNA synthesis, and others.
Another way of preventing cancer cells from reproducing indefinitely is targeting telomerases in cancer cells. These protect the ends of genes (telomeres), but if the telomeres are damaged, the cancer cells stop replicating. It is indeed a promising mechanism of action, but the only agent so far that has shown any promise in that area is Geron’s (GERN) imetelstat (GRN-163L).
Inhibiting the capacity of cancer cells to foster the growth of blood vessels
Like all cells, cancer cells need nourishment to survive, and they get it by inducing the growth of blood vessels (i.e., angiogenesis). Several strategies have been developed to inhibit tumor angiogenesis and thus starve and kill cancer cells. One is to target vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, which cancer cells release in amounts far greater than ordinary cells. Alternatively, the receptors for VEGF can be targeted.
A widely used drug targeting VEGF is bevacizumab (Avastin, from Genentech and Roche, RHHBY). Avastin is FDA approved in the US for a range of cancers, but breast cancer approval has been problematic. It was originally approved for breast cancer in 2004, but approval was revoked in November 2011 because, although it did target VEGF, it failed to show survival or quality of life benefit in breast cancer patients. Genentech/Roche are currently conducting more than hundred clinical trials with Avastin to try to regain the breast cancer license; many or most of these are in combination with other established or emerging drugs. Avastin is approved for ovarian cancer in the European Union, but not in the U. S.
A breast cancer variant in which tumor growth is fostered by another kind of growth factor is HER2 breast cancer, which is more difficult to treat than others. HER2 stands for human epidermal growth factor type 2, which is triggered by tyrosine kinase. A few agents in particular target this cancer type – lapatinib (Tykerb, from GlaxoSmithKline), which is typically used with capecitabine (Xeloda, from Genentech), also trastuzumab (Herceptin, from Genentech). Both of these agents inhibit angiogenesis.
Mobilizing viruses to attack cancer cells
Strange as it may seem, this approach has shown some success, and some of the big pharmaceutical companies have anted up hefty sums to acquire biotechs that have promising oncolytic viruses – “oncolytic” because they lyse, or destroy, cancer cells by attacking the cell wall. The trick is to mutate the virus, so that it’s less dangerous to the human host and more lethal to the cancer cells. In 2011, Amgen (AMGN) made a deal with a company called BioVex for $1.1 billion for an oncolytic virus called BioVex, which has the capacity of attacking melanomas that cannot be treated by surgery and are consequently exceedingly difficult to treat. BioVex has demonstrated a fairly high success rate in treating these melanomas. It is based on the cold-sore virus, which is not a huge threat to the host.
There are quite a few other oncolytic viruses currently under investigation. An outfit called Cold Genesys, Inc, in California, is working on recombinant adenoviruses to target bladder, breast, ovarian, colon, and prostate cancers. Another California outfit, Genelux, is looking at attenuated vaccinia viruses, which have shown effectiveness in head and neck tumors and advanced solid tumors. (The vaccinia virus is used to vaccinate people against smallpox.) A Canadian firm, Oncolytics Biotech (ONCY), has an agent, Reosyn, based on one of the reoviruses, which is now in Phase 3 trials against head and neck cancers and is being studied in lung, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers. And an Australian biotech, Viralytics Ltd (VLA in Australia, VRACY pink sheets, teensy), has a couple of agents in clinical trials, based on the coxsackie virus, against ovarian, lung, gastric, and pancreatic cancers. An advantage of some of these agents is that they don’t have to be injected into the tumor cell, but can be given intravenously.
My guess is that some of these will turn out to be effective drugs.
The T-cell strategy
Yet another mechanism that is getting considerable attention is mobilizing the human immune system, especially T-cells, to attack cancer. There has been one very successful (as well as highly publicized) foray in this area, and the news is that the NCI is focusing a lot of attention, and spending a lot of money, on this approach. There was a New Yorker article by Jerome Groopman in April of 2012, which described this approach in three patients with leukemia. The approach entails harvesting a patient’s T-cells, modifying them so that they target the patient’s specific cancer cells, and then reinfusing them. The three patients had failed standard treatment and were not offered much hope, but the T-cell treatment has resulted in remission thus far.
This strategy would not in any way lead to the development of a drug that could be more widely used in cancer patients. And it sounds to me like a “last resort” type of treatment – maximally individualized and extremely expensive, but certainly worth further investigation. It’s an example of the “data-driven” approach that I mentioned earlier, and is perhaps its single success story.
Why Doesn’t Mainstream Medicine Pay Much Attention to “Miracle Cures?”
Most physicians have seen patients recover from serious illnesses for reasons they don’t understand. When you’re talking about cancer patients, the usual term is “spontaneous remission.” If the patient happened to be using some alternative treatment, not sanctioned by the medical establishment, that cuts no mustard with most doctors – they attribute it to the “post hoc propter hoc” fallacy, meaning that if event B takes place after event A, it’s tempting to say that event A caused event B.
However, it’s worth taking a look at the phenomenon of “spontaneous remission.” I don’t think it’s good science, or common sense, to accept that something happens without a reason. Something, or a combination of somethings, brings about spontaneous remission. A reasonable conjecture is that spontaneous remissions, as well as recovery from many illnesses, has a lot to do with our immune system, which is exceedingly complex and far from being completely understood.
So there may be components in some of those miracle cures that boost the immune system and result in those mysterious spontaneous remissions. However, before mainstream medicine accepts those alternative treatment forms, the mechanism of action has to be understood, and the results have to be able to be replicated. When that happens, the alternative treatments will be alternative no longer – they will enter the mainstream.
A miracle-touting website that popped into my inbox starts out with the scare headline – “did you know you have a 1 in 4 chance of dying of cancer?”
My answer: you have a 4 in 4 chance of dying of something. Our goal should be to postpone that eventuality, and to live a long, healthy, and happy life in the meantime.
* * * * * *
I’m having a good time writing these pieces, and I’m particularly enjoying the stream of responses. I’m gathering up some of these very interesting questions and responses and will try to address them in a future commentary. My best to all.
Michael Jorrin (aka Doc Gumshoe)
“Let food be your medicine” is a saying I concur with. Ask any oncologist if cancer can survive in an alkaline environment. I am told the answer is no. So why are the treatments not aimed at raising our body ph? Answer $$$’s. Follow the money, Do we not all know that insurance and drug companies rule? IMHO
Raising the body’s pH??? Leona, most cellular functions are driven by the actions of enzymes, complicated molecules that can only do their work if their molecular structure is intact. That structure is very dependent on the cell (body) maintaining a specific intracellular pH range, which is extremely narrow. Trying to change that would be akin to raising the body’s temperature, and as you know, even a small change has a significant effect.
Excellent and informative article on very complex and important topi! Thanks!
There are numerous purported cancer cures of interest and very believable testimonials.
Health Science Institute reports many which seem worthwhile…I have been a member of HSI for many years and find their newsletter very beneficial. The stories of suppressed
medical treatments are legion, and I find it hard to believe that a nation that could decide to send men to the moon and accomplish such a feat within ten years could spend almost a century and Trillions of dollars without finding a viable solution other than “cut and burn” radiation/chemotherapy.
Many thanks for very informative article.
George,
gmgorex@rogers.com
Cancer cures in the U.S. are readily accepted as long as they’re not too good. After all, we would not want to put a multi trillion dollar industry out of business now, would we !?
I have had the great privilege of being a doctor for thirty six years ,I have not made a great deal of money nor do I want to. I work in Europe,so maybe things are different in the U SA
But when I read so much negativity and suspicion towards the medical profession ,I do not recognise it as the profession to which I belong. As Michael Jorrin writes this is a very complicated and as of yet largely unknown science. No doctor in my experience would hold back or hide any piece of knowledge if he knew it would of benefit to others. To state otherwise is to judge others by your own standards
My wife Died in August of 2009 of misdiagnosed Acral Lentiginous melanoma. She is (was) of Danish and Irish ancestry. If she had seen an Asian or Black doctor i suppose the diagnosis would have been correct. As it was she had the condition for three years,it was misdiagnosed and in spite of the fact that she saw perhaps 8 people with post graduate degrees went through procedure after test after procedure for 5 months the disease remained unidentified and the course of the disease was missed. The initial recognition that she had cancer was from a laboratory, the MD who took the tumour off her foot is rated as the third dematologist in this city and he was still calling it a fungus. She was finally Dignosed by her oncologist 41 days before her death. Since her death I have heard horror story after horror story. There appears to be little or no vigilance on the part of G.P’ s I cannot understand this. A misdiagnosis or lack of a diagnosis can mean death. What in the name of God are they thinking?
I’m not sure about cancer drugs but Ian Cooper of Speed Retirement is relentlessly pumping BLGX (Biologix Hair Inc.) by saying “it treats the TRUE cause of hair loss” and the best opportunity to get in is now.
A good friend of mine has been a cancer researcher at a medical school for 30 years. His educated recommendation: eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, less red meat and refined carbohydrates.
He stresses this is for prevention & treatment both. Your best defence is your immune system.
A very fine posting, one of the BEST on the Internet, IMO!
You may wish to learn about a remarkable Canadian MD, Dr John Raulston Davison, of Winnipeg, Manitoba. As a cancer specialist he researched novel approaches, finally discovering materials in nine-day old fertilised chicken eggs in 1929, which greatly enhanced his patients immune systems and aided their recovery. His work was well-documented and peer-reviewed, however after his passing in 1943 attention moved to other researchers. It wasn’t until almost 50 years later that the pursuit of fertilised egg extract was revived by Norway’s foremost expert on egg research, Dr. Bjodne Eskeland. One product from this current research is Laminine OPT9; you can easily find more info at http://laminine.wikispaces.com/What+is+Laminine%3F, or at a PBS site, http://www.lamininepill.com/, or at my website, http://eggoflife.com/josephbc/
As its new formulation was developed in Norway, it was clinically tested in many European studies; every one reported some degree of positive results to one degree or another, without negative side-effects, except in those people who were previously intolerant of hen eggs. The point is not that this is a cancer cure, but rather that it enhances and boosts one’s immune systems so that one’s body is able to defend itself better and heal more efficiently. Dr Davison noted that while he was treating cancer patients, they began to report improvements in areas not under treatment, and that was using his original, less effective formulation.
In any event, I’ll conclude by saying that I turned 70 in February, 2013. I had a non-malignant melanoma cut off at age 36, and no occurrence since. I started taking Laminine on August 03, 2012, and today feel as I did at 45, and still able to carry on my residential contracting business. Laminine’s made improvements and recovery come about in dogs and cats formerly thought to be terminal or victims of old age; animals cannot generate anecdotal stories as people do. Wellness varies from person to person, but for sure we all know what life is like without it!
All best, Joseph, Victoria, BC
Where can I find Laminine in Victoria, BC? I just found out about this product and it fascinates me. If it truly works the way they say, I am ready to try it myself. It just makes sense that attending to the immune system is what we need. The body can repair itself given it has what it needs (in this case the full spectrum of amino acids). It is clear to me that all the enzymes need to be present in order to heal ANYTHING. I was looking at stem cell research and this came to me through another similar research. I have leaky gut and insomnia and if this works, I will tell the whole world about it, you can bet on that!
Dear Isabelle;
I regret the overly-long delay in responding to you, but I’d just left for Quadra Island, BC, to help my daughter Lela prep her house for sale in Spring, 2016, and I only got back a few weeks ago. There were more than 6,000 emails for me to sort through, and of course I missed a lot of the ones from some websites, such as this one.
I suggest you research this site http://www.cluuz.com/Default.aspx?r=10&list=y&yahoo=y&deep=y&p=true&c=true&ph=true&e=true&a=true&d=true&dt=false&q=Dr+John+Raulston+DavisonDr for several excellent articles about this very good man, who deserved the Nobel in medicine, and cured or greatly improved so many people.
My daughter Lela [lelafasciani@hotmail.com] is still serving people from her homebase, so you should write her after informing yourself. I’m nearly 73 and SWAMPED w/working in my residential contracting business.
All best,
Joseph E Fasciani
And speaking of insomnia…
I had from birth a blocked R nostril that reduced the flow of air to my brain by at least 50% or more, causing very severe sleep apnea. It was so bad that until I started on the Big L as I like to call it that I’d never slept more than 4.5 hours in my life. I was awake & alert the rest of the time, and never took naps. It allowed me to lead an unbelievably productive life, but I was difficult to live w/in a marriage, as well as crashing cars.
In spite of a nasty rhinoplasty operation in 1987-88 I still had apnea; over my life [I’ll be 73 in February] I’d fallen asleep while driving and damaged the first two cars, while TOTALLY destroying the last, a 6 month old Audi Fox. The remains afterwards looked as if a large bomb went off inside it: the front axle w/engine et al., was 150 feet down on the rocks, and the RCMP said I should never have survived it.
I was sent to the sleep lab at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, BC after that, where the attendent said he’d never seen anyone as badly off as I was; as I stopped breathing more than 200 times in the 4.5 hours of sleep I got, he wondered how I was still alive.
After taking 3 caps of the Big L as I like to call it for about four weeks my blockage was cleared, and I now sleep 6.5 hrs, which appears to be right for me.
There were other spectacular benefits such as reduced inflammation so I could move with far less pain and walk w/o a cane [as a result of a R knee surgery that took 10 years to heal, when I started using the Big L.
Anecdotal, yes, but the European medically reviewed tests and finding are NOT anecdotal, and can be found on the website I sent you, as well as through the Internet.
All best, Joseph
Cancer was virtually unknown a century ago, so would it not be prudent to ask, “what has changed” in our modern society in terms of environment and food supply? Our grand-parents were mainly farmers and produced much of their own food and most importantly, ate it in their NATURAL STATE, i.e fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains ground at the local mill, freshly slaughtered, grass fed animals etc. They did not eat highly processed foods that needed artificial chemical preservatives. Nitrites and nitrates are particularly suspect and dangerous, I personally do not eat processed meats as a regular part of my diet.
I realize that this is a highly sensitive subject and I have enough experience in my own extended family that people “convinced against their will, are of the same opinion still,” they either believe in the medical establishment’s approach of “cut burn & poison” in spite of its abject failure in total with tens of thousands of deaths yearly after following all the “approved” drugs and procedures, OR they try alternative therapies, many with total recovery based on radical changes in lifestyle. THERE IS THE KEY! It seems most people are of the opinion that they can “live as they please” and someday a “MAGIC PILL” will be discovered that will reverse the effects of their bad living habits, that is what keeps all the research institutes funded with millions of wasted dollars, no such panacea exists.
I am prepared to go on record as stating no such magic cure will ever be found because the only way you can deal with an “EFFECT” is by addressing the “CAUSE” and that is faulty diets, CHEMICALS in our environment, whether pesticides and herbicides in our food and water, (CHLORINE being an especially insidious poison) polluted air etc. not all of which we can totally control, but there is a tipping point where the bodies natural immune system become overwhelmed and cells are not able to cleanse themselves, and turn cancerous.
There is no mystery here, if you are unwilling to educate yourself, change your lifestyle and rely on the medical profession to restore your health then you will become just another statistic. DIS-EASE begins at the cellular cell, and CANCER is the ultimate witness that you are not getting maximum nutrition to the cell, or adequate waste removal out, and all that has to do with LIFESTYLE, precisely WHY there is a broad category of diseases that are appropriately dubbed “lifestyle diseases” because they are 100% PREVENTABLE!
Hunting for “magic cures” for diseases that are preventable is an exercise in futility and constitutes “wishful thinking” and resistance to change that is part of human nature.
For example, what do you think the statistics for lung cancer would look like 10 years down the road if EVERYBODY stopped smoking to-morrow? That of course is only ONE known (but major) causitive agent, and smoking also causes many other cancers, lung cancer just being the principal one. The simple fact is, there are “more people making a LIVING from cancer than are dying from cancer” and as long as people do not wise up and adopt a healthy lifestyle the status quo will continue. What I would say to “Aloysious” is that what particularly irks me is, that rather than espousing “freedom of choice” (hopefully informed) the medical establishment goes ballistic when a patient repudiates their destructive treatments in favour of natural therapies and subsequently dies. This is spite of the tens of thousands of patients who suffer though treatments that many oncologists would not choose for their own family and at best have their lives extended for a few months or at most years, and know of cases personally where people on their deathbeds, had they to do it over again, would chose NOT to take the medically prescribed treatments, particularly chemotherapy. THIMK, does it make any logical sense to employ therapies that are KNOWN to CAUSE CANCER, (radiation) or assume that POISONING the body with (chemotherapy) when the body is already toxic will restore HEALTH?
I particularly appreciated the insightful comments of Mino Tour, Leona87, Darrell Reid and Farmgirl as right on target, and the poignant persona; experience of Jim Gibson quite moving. In closing I would note for those who appreciate the information that two of the most acid forming substances people ingest are coffee and red meat. Read any major encyclopedia article on “caffeine” and you will perhaps understand WHY I have not had a cup of coffee in over 50 years, and eat very little red meat, and then only FRESH!
Are you aware of the substantial research that has been done in Europe, mostly in peer-reviewed Italian medical journals, that demonstrate the presence of sugars in EVERY form of cancer?
Also go to http://rense.com/ for the extensive archives there on this and related medical topics.
Good health and thanks for your good message!
Reading all your comments was a definite high! I’ve noted some of the specific semi-alternative treatment modalities that some of you mentioned, & in the next Doc Gumshoe installment I’ll be poking at some of them to see what makes them tick. A recurrent theme seems to be that clinical trials & subsequent FDA approval of drugs is artificially limited by Big Pharma’s reluctance to spend huge amounts of money on new drug development unless the prospects are that the drug will sell for big bucks, and inexpensive remedies don’t fit that pattern. Is there an element of truth in that? Yes, but not a whole lot. Currently, there are 38,929 clinical trials being conducted in the cancer field, and a majority of these are NOT being done by Big Pharma, but by academic centers, hospitals, and really small research outfits. They’re looking at everything you can think of. Many of these trials start out small and relatively cheap; when positive results turn up, the trials enroll more subjects and get more expensive, and perhaps, in the rare cases where strongly favorable results emerge, Big Pharma is ready to pounce with its billions – because the reward for anything that makes a difference is enormous.
I’ll be back soon with another Doc Gumshoe – Michael Jorrin
Check out Gersten Therapy http://gerson.org/gerpress/the-gerson-therapy/
Great article. would love to see you dive into alternative treatments and expose the fake ones from those with a track record of recovery and cure.
Take a look at INOVIO Pharmaceuticals Ticker symbol (INO). they won first in class for phase one for their Aids vaccine. Peer reviewed at universities.
They are in phase one and two and three for various block buster therapies… clinical trials for Aids , hep b, hep c , hemorrhagic fever…
They own 400 patents in synthetic DNA technology.
Using Synthetic DNA made from nano materials infused in purified water and hit with an electrical charge device before injection… it’s called electroporation… this is technology that will totally disrupt the biotech industry. Paradigmshift about to happen…
Watch the july 2 web cast here… cancer will be curred…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd4L45uvMR8
Here is more info from Univerity of Pennsylvania, Synthetic DNA
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23659301
Expert Rev Vaccines. 2013 May;12(5):537-54. doi: 10.1586/erv.13.33.
Synthetic DNA vaccine strategies against persistent viral infections.
Villarreal DO, Talbott KT, Choo DK, Shedlock DJ, Weiner DB.
Source
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Abstract
The human body has developed an elaborate defense system against microbial pathogens and foreign antigens. However, particular microbes have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to evade immune surveillance, allowing persistence within the human host. In an effort to combat such infections, intensive research has focused on the development of effective prophylactic and therapeutic countermeasures to suppress or clear persistent viral infections. To date, popular therapeutic strategies have included the use of live-attenuated microbes, viral vectors and dendritic-cell vaccines aiming to help suppress or clear infection. In recent years, improved DNA vaccines have now re-emerged as a promising candidate for therapeutic intervention due to the development of advanced optimization and delivery technologies. For instance, genetic optimization of synthetic plasmid constructs and their encoded antigens, in vivo electroporation-mediated vaccine delivery, as well as codelivery with molecular adjuvants have collectively enhanced both transgene expression and the elicitation of vaccine-induced immunity. In addition, the development of potent heterologous prime-boost regimens has also provided significant contributions to DNA vaccine immunogenicity. Herein, the authors will focus on these recent improvements to this synthetic platform in relation to their application in combating persistent virus infection.
PMID: 23659301 [PubMed – in process]
Fortify our immune system says it all. How? Eat lots of veggies and fruits, exercise to prevent CVD, follow the Basic Four Food Groups diet, take supplements as needed. I am 67 years old and in excellent health. :))
Thanks for sharing these informations to the readers. All the informations given in this page is new up to my knowledge. There are many patients waiting for the treatments.
was positive. They came up with no caecnr present. So my doctor was very adamant that he was not wrong and so I went back to the hospital two months later and they did their own biopsy which came back negative. In fact they were surprised that my Urologist even did a biopsy on a PSA that was only 2.0 and that had increased one point in a year based on my family doctor’s information. Here are some original mistakes to watch out for all of you who may experieince this: my family doctor who said my PSA went up one point in a year had both readings done by different labs, not good, and then when my Urologist decided to do a biopsy based on that information without doing his own PSA test to confirm. Clearly I should have been smarter and seen that error. But then there is so much money to be made from biopsies and radical surgery Urologists will guide you straight down that road. This was all a year and a half ago and my PSA continues to decline now to almost 1.0 which I check every thre months.
“…Something, or a combination of somethings,
brings about spontaneous remission…”
Or, as the doctor might say “what have you been eating lately? What have you added to your diet?”