New Perspectives in the War on Cancer Vitality Sept 1999 By Helke Ferrie

While communism transformed itself unexpectedly, cancer now claims the lives of one in four, and one in two people will develop it. Some cancers have increased several hundred percent in the last 30 years, especially in children for whom it now is the leading cause of death, after accidents. The greatest, and most recent, increase is in hormone-dependent cancers of the breast, prostate, and testicles.

Cancer is the most expensive illness, cost for treatment having almost reached the U.S. $5 billion mark annually in North America. Yet over the past 40 years treatments have barely improved and survival rate is no better. Every 12 seconds a woman dies of breast cancer. Worldwide, nearly every family has been affected by cancer.

Two recent ground-breaking events in Ontario brought interesting new information on the battlefront in the war on cancer. Everyday Carcinogens: Stopping Cancer Before it Starts was a conference held in Hamilton in March, and the five-day Second World Conference on Breast Cancer was held in July in Ottawa.

Experts are in agreement that the causes of cancer are known and that the answer lies in prevention. But less than 3% of the annual U.S. National Cancer Institute’s budget is spent on prevention, and that amounts to the blame-the-victim variety, even though cancers un-related to smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, etc. have increased the most. No funds are spent on prevention at all from the $100-million budget of the Canadian Cancer Society; not a single grant application last year dealt with prevention. Internationally-acclaimed oncologist, Dr. Samuel Epstein of the University of Illinois, stated in his keynote address to the Health Canada sponsored conference at McMaster University in Hamilton: “Preventive oncology is an oxymoron. We have so much information on cancer prevention which we are not using. I wouldn’t give a damn if we didn’t do any more research for the next 50 years.” Epstein went on to say that “The worldwide cancer epidemic is primarily the responsibility of the cancer establishment, comprised of the American and Canadian Cancer Societies and the National Institutes of Health of both countries. On their boards sit people who are directly connected to the very industries that are known to produce carcinogens (ie. pesticides, drugs, and industrial xenobiotics).

More than 200 experts from 55 countries presented at these two recent conferences. Presentations included evidence to show that cancer is big, big business and access to the “market” (our bodies) is fiercely fought over pre- and post-diagnosis of cancer. Some pharmaceutical companies profit both ways: Zeneca’s annual revenues from the cancer drug Tamoxifen are at $470-million; the same company also makes over $300-million annually on the carcinogenic herbicide Acetochlor and other chlorine products.

Current treatments were mostly judged by the delegates as failures (“same old slash, burn, and poison,” as UCLA oncologist and surgeon Dr. Susan Love refers to the standard cancer therapies of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy) while interest was great in new and totally different treatment approaches.

On Mammography, Tamoxifen, Gene Theory

Several presenters focused on the danger from mammography and the failure of preventive drugs such as Tamoxifen which Dr. Epstein described as “a rip-roaring liver carcinogen.”

The scientists also exploded the prevalent myth that early detection is the answer. Rosalie Bertell, the internationally respected radiation expert, provided evidence to show that mammography causes more cancers than it detects, and that even those tumours which it does detect are at least seven years old by the time this crude method finds them. Regular mammographies cause cumulative radiation damage, especially in pre-menopausal women.

The second myth, that cancer is ultimately genetic, was rejected by all on the basis of world-wide epidemiological evidence which shows that the horrendous increase in cancer has happened in a mere two generations, faster than can be expected by evolutionary mutation. Dr. Susan Love puts it bluntly in the documentary film Exposure: “We have perfectly good genes, and then something comes along to screw them up.” That “something” are the environmental toxins on which the wealth of the world seems to depend from agricultural to military practices.

Cornell University ecologist Sandra Steingraber states: “A cancer cell is made, not born.” Documentary film maker, Nancy Evans, echoed this scientific fact poetically by observing: “We have become the bodies of evidence.” Medical science is in agreement that radiation causes cancer and has elucidated the biological basis for the carcinogicity of pesticides very well.

The path to cancer begins with a toxin entering the body where detoxifying liver enzymes begin their work. These can defuse water soluble toxins readily, but not those which bind to fat cells (e.g. pesticides). In metabolizing these toxins, liver enzyme systems act like a double-edged sword by also making toxins out of some of the chemicals not previously toxic (e.g. benzene). It is these metabolic toxins created by our enzymes that are able to bind with cellular DNA where they cause mutations and cancers. Once this process has begun, all other bodily defenses, such as tumour suppressor genes, are also destroyed. Then oncogenes are prevented from supervising correct cell replication and repair, and finally the so-called “spell-checker” genes are altered, causing them to mess up the DNA/RNA base-pair process. Cancer cells proliferate, create their own blood supply, thrive on estrogen, and finally kill the host.

All delegates agreed with Devra Lee Davis, internationally-renowned toxicologist and epidemiologist of the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., who spoke primarily on the need to adopt the precautionary principle. This would require that industry would have to prove that a new substance causes no harm; currently, North American law requires that citizens have to prove a substance is dangerous before it can be banned or restricted. In Canada, for example, between 1994-96 a staggering 1.4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the environment legally; of these, 280 million pounds were known carcinogens, each requiring to be banned through citizen action, one at a time.

Deadly Role of Radiation and Pesticides

The common theme of both conferences was that our current social and economic system is the ultimate cause of cancer. The requirements of human biology cannot be made to harmonize with the priorities of a world economy in which pesticides are of central importance. Our biology also stands no chance against the world’s enormous military death machinery which depends on radiation and heavy metals. Already thirty years ago, the World Health Organization declared that at least 89 per cent of all cancers were caused by pesticides, radiation, and other toxic chemicals in our environment.

Dr. Samuel Epstein, whose research was key to banning DDT, and whose assistance to Canada’s Health Protection Branch was recently vital in Dr. Shiv Chopra’s efforts to ban (carcinogenic) bovine growth hormone here, pointed out that all of us now carry more than 500 different compounds in our cells, none of which existed before 1920, and that “there is no safe dose for any of them”.

Breast milk in Western countries is so dangerously contaminated with dioxin, a carcinogenic byproduct of incinerating plastics, that it would not pass U.S. Federal Drug Administration safety standards, were it a bottled substance. In six months of breast feeding, a baby has absorbed the maximum life-time “safe” limit of dioxin in its cells.

For Steingraber, U.S. presidential advisor on cancer prevention and author of the best selling Living Downstream, cancer has “become a human rights issue” which can only be tackled with “old-fashioned political organization”. That is why “scientists are now going directly to the public” in order to expose “the deception at the heart of the chemical industry, namely that these pesticides are necessary”.

The earth has been made “chemically addicted” and all life is being poisoned, Steingraber states. Yet she is optimistic. Dry-cleaning fluid, which can cause many cancers including bladder cancer, which she survived, is among those substances that may be completely phased out in the foreseeable future. She is also impressed by the intensity and intelligence of the “wave of social change” in agriculture, animal husbandry (organic farming has become a multibillion dollar business), people’s increasing rejection of pesticides, as well as grassroots and international opposition to cancer as an inevitable price of progress. Davis ended her presentation with a quote from the Talmud which catches the spirit of these conferences poignantly: “It is not for us to complete the task. But we must begin it.”

Steps to Preventing and Curing Cancer

The following recommendations are drawn from the enormous amount of information these conferences provided; many are also part of the current publications of cancer researchers and the World Health Organization.

Avoid Known Cancer-Causing Sources:

1. Do not smoke, or tolerate smoking in your family’s presence.
   
   
2. Avoid excessive exposure to sunlight and ultraviolet rays.
   
   
3. Do not consider breast implants.
   
   
4. Do not use dark hair dyes; check out safe alternatives.
   
   
5. Avoid perfumes, air-fresheners, and perfumed deodorizers. If they contain benzene, aluminum, lemon-scented chemicals, or lack a full list of all ingredients to permit a check-up in a toxicology manual – do not use them.
   
   
6. Treat all cosmetic products with extreme suspicion until you have proof positive that they contain no known carcinogens; safe alternatives exist.
   
   
7. Avoid dry-cleaned clothes; contact 1-800-667-9790 for safe cleaners.
   
   
8. Avoid chlorinated water.
   
   
9. Do not drink fluoridated water, or use fluoridated toothpaste.
   
   
10. Avoid electromagnetic fields (EMUs), especially with children. EMUs have been linked to childhood leukemia and brain cancers. Use appropriate protection on your computer screen, avoid using a microwave oven; avoid living near hydro towers.
    
    
11. Do not use hormone disrupting or mimicking substances such as chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, fungicides and bug killers.
    
    
12. Do not use cleaning, polishing, renovation materials in your home that list unspecified “inert ingredients”. If they have toxic warning symbols, require calling “a doctor if...”, are “corrosive”, give special disposal instructions, or require “well-ventilated areas” for use – look for substitutes. If you cannot avoid some of these substances (e.g. oil paint, furniture stripper, car maintenance materials, etc.), wear the best charcoal-filtered mask available and minimize exposure, especially to skin and lungs.
    
    
13. Reduce consumption of salt-cured, smoked, and nitrate-cured foods.
    
    
14. Do not use the meat or dairy products from animals routinely treated with antibiotics and raised with hormones. According to Dr. Epstein, such milk products are among the most reliable cancer causing agents currently known. Safe, certified organic milk and meat products are widely available in health food stores and some grocery stores.
    
    
15. Never heat shrink-wrapped foods or food in plastic containers. The plastic molecules migrate into the food when heated. They are xenobiotics.
    
    
16. Avoid food additives, especially Red Dye No. 3 found in most junk foods and many pop products. Avoid emulsifiers such as carrageenin; do not consume hydrogenated vegetable oils or margarine.
    
    
17. Limit sport fish consumption to the guidelines provided seasonally by the government.
    
    
18. Do not drink or eat foods that contain sugar substitutes such as Nutra-Sweet, Aspartame, etc. and avoid refined sugar which usually contains silicon. Unpasteurized honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup are healthy substitutes easily available.
    
    
19. Avoid antibiotics unless your doctor has done the necessary test to identify the exact bacteria this antibiotic kills (except in extreme emergencies, e.g. meningitis); keep treatment period to a minimum.
    
    
20. Avoid prescription drugs unless your doctor also gives you a photostat copy of the full drug information from the annually updated CPS (Canada’s drug dictionary which every doctor has in the office) and explains this information to you; if the drug requires regular liver function tests, insist on discussing alternatives or keep treatment to the minimum.
    
    
21. Avoid birth control pills, anti-hypertensives, antidepressants, hormone replacement therapy in pill form (toxic to the liver), and do not take Tamoxifen preventively; get the full data on those drugs; check them out first on the Internet and at www.preventcancer.com.
    
    
22. Do not invest your savings and RSPs in known cancer source polluters such as Dofasco, Stelco, Algoma Steel, Domtar, Bayer Rubber, Shell, Nora Chemicals, Imperial Oil (these are just some of the worst offenders). Inform yourself about Ethical Mutual Funds, etc.
    

Doing Something Constructive about Cancer

1. Have your mercury amalgams removed by a dentist trained in the proper protocol (Call 416-410-6314 for recorded information about silver and mercury dental fillings.)
   
   
2. If you are overweight, have your hormone levels checked and find out if you have food allergies. Over-exposure to estrogen, lack of progesterone, thyroid problems brought on by pesticide exposure, or an adaptation to allergenic foods (often wheat products and refined sugar are frequent cause of obesity, which promote cancer through excessive estrogen and pesticide storage).
   
   
3. Exercise regularly and moderately.
   
4. Eat cruciferous vegetables (cauliflower, brussels sprouts, broccoli, etc.) preferably from organically grown sources; if that doesn’t fit your budget, wash all your fruits and vegetables in VegiWash (call Canadian Consumer Health Co. at 519-886-8588 for information on where to find this product). This will remove up to 97% of all pesticide surface residues.
   
   
5. Buy your foods in glass containers, avoid cans and plastic.
   
   
6. Take supplements, especially vitamins C and E, and minerals such as magnesium; check out the literature and take charge of your health. If you need hormones, consider primarily natural ones and/or transdermally administered varieties in the smallest possible doses; they bypass the liver.
   
   
7. Join a health or cancer activist group; for a full list call Canadian Environmental Law Association at 416-960-2284 (e-mail: cela@web.net) or contact Women’s Network on Health and Environment, 736 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ont. M5S 2R4. Join the Council on Canadians which has been extraordinarily successful in stopping corporate power from becoming total - 613-233-2773. Join Pollution Probe, respected internationally, they get things done – 416-926-1907.
   
   
8. Start a pesticide education group in your neighbourhood, demand from your MP and MPP mandatory toxicology disclosure of all chemical ingredients being sold today; approach your local golf course manager and discuss alternative ways of maintenance; go to your city council and get them to explore alternatives to chlorine in public swimming pools and to put a stop to the use of chlorine and fluoride in the water supply.
   
   
9. Read the Journal of Pesticide Reform for basic information. Subscribe to A Friend Indeed for reliable information on menopause and hormone issues (514-843-5730); join Consumers Health Organization of Canada and use their excellent library (416-490-0986). Read Steingraber’s Living Downstream, 2nd ed., 1999 (paperback). Read R.N. Proctor’s Cancer Wars, 1995. Don’t go shopping without Dr. Epstein’s Safe Shopper’s Bible, 2nd ed. 1999, or Additive Alert, Alive publications, 1999. The 1970s classic by Adelle Davis, Let’s Get Well is still an unsurpassed resource. If you have reason to be concerned about cancer, read Dr. Epstein’s The Breast Cancer Prevention Program, 2nd ed., 1999, and give it to your daughters, women friends and others.
   
   
10. If you have been recently diagnosed with cancer, search the web and the literature for the latest alternative treatments; your doctor is no doubt sincere, but possibly functions on automatic pilot, especially if he or she relies on drug representatives instead of the medical journals.
    
    
11. Thoughtfully consider, but carefully doubt all information (including this article) and start your own search. Only a determined consumer revolt and informed resistance will turn the cancer tide.
    

The cartoon on the first page of this article was supplied courtesy of Herblock On All Fronts. Copyright: Herblock Cartoons.

For decades the world’s finest minds worked to find the cause of cancer and, indeed, they found it where Rachel Carson told us long ago to look: in our tobacco-pesticide-chemical addicted and radiation-heavy-metal contaminated environment (see my Vitality article, September 1999). Those fine minds have since also proven the biology of cancer, and the merchants peddling its causes have moved into denial overdrive (see Vitality July/August 2000).

To prevent cancer requires transforming the world’s economic philosophy from exploitation to stewardship: children’s healthy brains will have to be more important than pesticide sales; industry will have to agree that healthy breasts and prostates are more important than sales of plastic products. Furthermore, Canadian agriculture will have to consider the high rate of stomach and colon cancer among our farmers more seriously than high yields dependent on toxic nitrates and atrazine (see Int.J.Epidemiology no. 28, 1999), and the Canadian government will have to stop manufacturing and selling their bone cancer producing Candu reactors. As well, we need to rid our homes, foods, and workplaces of the entire infernal list of industrial and everyday carcinogens (for this list call the U.S. Environmental Health Information Service at 1-800-315-3010, and see Scientific American, Feb.1998, “Everyday Exposure to Toxic Pollutants”). This is not proposing utopia – but disposing of deadly garbage, all of which serves only two purposes: to inactivate our natural tumor suppressor genes, and drive the world’s economy - a major part of which is the cancer industry. Our priorities will have to do more than shift: we need to welcome an earthquake.

To treat cancer effectively will require that doctors on professional automatic pilot and governments in bed with industry reject their puppet status and stop the puppeteers (cancer industry’s pharmaceutical companies, cancer research centres, and the cancer societies) from treating cancer as a gold mine.

There is such a thing as divine wrath – that anger that seeks to expose the Big Lie because the time has come for serious truth-telling. We need to look closely at those who confront the cancer machine, and offer cures and prevention. And those of us who have cancer need to think very carefully about what we are willing to believe and no longer willing to endure.

Chemotherapy & Radiation Endangers Patients

Since 1998 German medical science is in crisis because several internationally leading scientists committed major research fraud. Government appointed scientists are sorting out the damage. Reporting on this ongoing investigation, the science journal Nature described in its June 22 issue the clinical implications. German medical scientists manipulated experimental data so as to make a new technique for speedier recovery from chemotherapy in bone cancer patients appear authentic, thereby allowing higher doses. The new technique is fictitious as is the efficacy of high dose chemotherapy.

The survival rates usually cited are equally massaged: now five years after diagnosis is considered “survival” (it used to be seven years).

Dr. Zoltan Rona recently reported that the majority of chemotherapy specialists won’t allow their families to take chemotherapy. A whopping 81% of them would not consent even to drug trials. While chemotherapy has limited effectiveness in some types of childhood leukaemia and colon cancers (around 7% of those), it does nothing to enhance quality of life or prolong life in all other forms of cancers. The president of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Alan C. Nixon stated recently, “As a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incomprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good.” In 1990, U.S. $3.53 billion were spent on chemotherapy; by 1994 business was booming with an increase to U.S. $7.51 billion - while the cancer rates increased exponentially. The side effects are so debilitating that 20% of patients become suicidal, and recent comparative data show that high dose chemo does nothing to help breast cancer (Medical Post, June 1, 2000).

Yet another side effect is the high rate of miscarriages among the nurses and female doctors who handle and administer chemotherapy drugs (Medical Post Sept. 28, 1999).

The situation is no better with regard to radiation which is notorious for killing the cancer and destroying brains - especially in children (in prostate cancer it causes impotence). As for mammographies, it is now acknowledged that they do nothing for early detection, but can actually cause cancer.

Toxic Tamoxifen Genetic Myths - Mainstream Medicine Loves Science Fiction

In recent years, Tamoxifen was hailed as a great breakthrough in breast cancer treatment and prevention. Its huge international trial involved tens of thousands of women. Its developer, V. Craig Jordan won many prizes for it from the pharmaceutical establishment. With great humanitarian fanfare it was announced in 1990 that the trials would be stopped because observed benefits could not ethically be withheld from the world any longer. What they didn’t say, was that the trial was broken off because too many women were getting liver cancer. In fact, Tamoxifen is a carcinogen. In 1992, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that Tamoxifen appeared not to be so great after all. In 1999 the equally famous mainstream journal, Science, reported the drug’s carcinogenic properties. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies tell us that a new and improved version is in the pipeline based on beta carotene (!), the known cancer preventing nutrient, which slightly chemicalized could be patented.

Turning to the trendy illusion of the genetic basis for cancer and the sci-fi promise of manipulating the genetic code therapeutically, I was struck by an amazing synchronicity of events: on July 13 this year the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of an astonishing study; 90,000 identical twins were studied for 28 different types of cancer to determine whether genetics or environment play the greater part in the development of cancer. Not surprisingly, the conclusion is that “the environment has the principal role in causing cancer”. So, we have to clean up our backyard after all. That same day’s edition of Nature ran articles showing the immense efforts by scientists itching to find a genetic cure for cancer - even though our genes are exquisitely responsive to and dependent upon the environment.

Sci-fi medicine is irresistible it seems, even to money-strapped governments: Ontario’s health insurance plan covers genetic testing for hereditary cancers since April of this year. Yet, less than 2% of cancers have a hereditary component, and as oncologist Samuel Epstein has pointed out, that means that those people are more vulnerable to environmental toxins than the rest of us. We wouldn’t even know about such genetic vulnerabilities if our world was clean and fit for all our genomes.

One of the worst cases of deception is found in the official journal of the Canadian Oncology Society called “Cancer Prevention and Control.” It is, of course, financed by pharmaceutical giants Novartis, Smith Kline Beecham and by their colleagues at Health Canada. I read every issue. It literally has nothing - ever - on prevention, and as for “control,” just whom are they kidding? This nonsense goes to every doctor’s office, most of whom have not noticed that these emperors have been stark naked for a very long time.

There are many more lies, deceptions and misconceptions about cancer treatments worthy of the public’s attention, but there also is a lot of exciting news on treatments that work. Consult the list of books at the end of this article and attend the lecture on cancer by Dr. Carolyn Dean on November 26 at the Whole Life Expo. She will speak about her clinical experience with therapies that work. Known to many Torontonians, who were her grateful patients when she still practised in Canada, her passion for medicine is greatly assisted by humor: She told me she is a great believer in genetics and is looking forward to the discovery of “the gene for stupidity”.

Alternative Cancer Treatments That Work

Burton Goldberg, who publishes information on the science, efficacy and availability of non-toxic medicine, recently testified before Congress on a highly effective treatment developed by Dr. Joseph Gold in 1969 from a chemical called hydrazine sulfate. It blocks a liver enzyme generally enslaved by the cancer growth process, thereby promoting tumor growth. It works, but cannot be patented. When the clinical trials at the University of California in Los Angeles confirmed its efficacy, the National Cancer Institute undertook an even larger investigation. By deliberately disregarding the protocol developed by Dr. Gold, they wound up with a lot of dead people and successfully discredited hydrazine sulfate. Journalists brought out the truth by 1995. An FDA investigation confirmed it. The NCI succeeded in altering key statements in the report and lobbied Congress to ban the treatment - by November of this year. Goldberg and many other health freedom fighters went before Congress and revealed the details of the fraudulent report. We’ll soon know the result.

Dr. Abram Hoffer, who cured hundreds of cancer patients with a Vitamin C regime, tells of a National Institute of Health study done by a Yale University medical scientist showing that Vitamin C causes all manner of harm. Hoffer requested the sources, since annually more than 2,000 scientific articles are published on the clinical applications of vitamin C, none of them showing harm. The reply he received was simply, “Oh, that was just a mistake.” It was never corrected, however. (Curiously, it is common practice to provide laboratory animals, especially monkeys and apes, with 50 times the RDA of vitamin C to ensure they are healthy for the experiments.)

“Science and medicine advance funeral by funeral,” Burton Goldberg observes. New discoveries are implemented only as the establishment with its vested interests of prestige, careers and money, dies off - along with their patients. Treatments that work are dependent entirely upon patients who question, doubt, and refuse to go along with the status quo. Your doctor does NOT necessarily know best - you may be given chemotherapy simply because your doctor doesn’t want to be sued or have a fight with the authorities. In California, for example, it was forbidden by law to treat cancer by any other method except cut, burn and poison (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy) until July of this year, when the law was repealed through overwhelming public pressure.

In the early 1900s, W.S. Halstead (1852-1922) proposed the dogma that still informs cancer medicine: that the tumor is the problem and must be treated, not the patient in which the tumor has evolved. Consequently, the treatments offered are easily divided into those that treat the patient, so the tumor or metastases can be effectively reversed, and those which attack the tumor.

That said, it is very important to heed the wise statement by famed nutritional medicine physician, Dr. Arkins: “Patients with cancer who seek either orthodox or alternative approaches are entrusting their lives to doctors who are playing with half a deck.” For example, surgery by itself can be a highly effective cure. But nothing will replace a thoughtfully informed and critical patient.

Great insights and therapeutic modes arise wherever compassion and the quest for truth take precedence over complacency and greed. And indeed, the greatest breakthroughs in cancer therapy come from scientists trained in the mainstream. The coffee enemas, for example, which some “alternative” cancer therapies employ, were developed in rigorous double-blind studies in German universities before World War II, when it was discovered that coffee stimulates the liver to produce cancer fighting enzymes most efficiently when approached through the bowel. The science proving the effectiveness of nutrition in cancer therapy is published in all the top journals of the world; my filing cabinets are full of them.

Treatments developed by Max Gerson, Hulda Clark, Nicholas Gonzalez, as well as the Japanese macro diet, the oxygen therapies (see Dr. Majid Ali’s video) which dissolve tumors because cancer is an anaerobic phenomenon (Otto Warburg won the Nobel prize for that proof in the 1920s), Gaston Naesens’ 714-X treatment, Burzynski’s peptide therapy, the orthomolecular mega-vitamin therapies, and the herbal therapies all have a rigorous scientific basis and excellent clinical results.

But why so many therapies? Because carcinogens attack in different ways and different places, in bodies which have huge variations in predispositions, nutritional status, pre-existing bodyloads of toxins, and varying healing potentials. Yet, when you study the therapies that work (see list below and learn more at the Expo), they have three essential elements: they detoxify, they fortify the body, and they strengthen the immune system. In short, they renovate the damaged house, instead of searching for an intruder under the couch. They have understood the great 19th century doctor Sir William Osler’s observation, “The physician without physiology and chemistry flounders along in an aimless fashion, never able to gain an accurate conception of disease, practising a sort of popgun pharmacy.”

Conclusion:

I spent the summer immersed in books on the history of medicine – a very sobering experience that makes one grateful to be alive today - and came to the unexpected conclusion that we are living in the midst of the golden age of medicine. We have choices our ancestors never dreamed of. It takes an open mind and a fearless curiosity to benefit from what is available and the determination to protect that freedom of choice.

The following are recommended as first-line defensive action following a diagnosis of cancer:

W.J. Diamond et al., Cancer Diagnosis: What to do next, Alternative Medicine.com publishers (Burton Goldberg Group), 2000

W.J. Diamond et al., Cancer: An Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Cancer, Future medicine Publications (Burton Goldberg Group), 1992

R. Moss, Cancer Therapy: The Independent Consumer's Guide to Non-Toxic Treatments and Prevention, 9th edition, Equinox, 1999

Cancer Control Society, 2043 N. Berendo St., Los Angeles, CA 90027, phone 323-663-7801

Highly recommended:

M. Ali, M.D., his excellent lecture from this year's Total Health Show plus an in-depth interview by me are available on video from Consumers' Health Organization of Canada at 416-490-0986

Environmental Health Information Service of the U.S. government provides the full list of all officially recognized carcinogens. Call: 1-800-315-3010

H. Clark, The Cure for All Advanced Cancers, New Century Press, 1999. Available through Consumer's Health Organization of Canada where you can also obtain a video with her lectures and an interview done by me. Call 416-490-0986

S.S. Epstein et al. The Breast Cancer Prevention Program, Macmillan, 1997

M. Gerson, A Cancer Therapy, 6th ed., 1999, Gerson Institute. Call 619-585-7600, e-mail: info@gerson.org

A. Hoffer, Vitamin C and Cancer, Quarry, 2000

E. Nussbaum, Recovery from Cancer, Avery, 1992

P. Quillin, Beating Cancer With Nutrition, Nutrition Times Press, 1998

Organizations worthy of support:

CAPE: Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, 613-233-1982

Pollution Probe, 416-926-1907

FACT: Friends of Alternative & Complementary Therapies (they help find alternative health practitioners), 416-299-9569

Meanwhile, cancer incidence is rising exponentially — everything we touch or ingest is laced with known carcinogenic chemicals found in different concentrations and combinations in pesticides, food preservatives and enhancers, cosmetics, furniture, cleaners, and prescription drugs. Despite standard medicine’s high-tech-magic-bullet philosophy, mortality rates have not changed since the 1950’s, and recovery rates are equally dismal, with a few exceptions. Back then, one in 20 people was expected to develop cancer. Now, it is one in two.

And early detection is more myth than fact. By the time a mammogram finds a tumour, it is on average already nine years old and likely to have spread. Medical researchers at the University of Toronto, C. Baines and A. Miller, undertook a comprehensive worldwide analysis of the data for a 25-year period and found that the claims made for early detection are at best wishful thinking; at worst they are hazardous to your health because of the great number of false positive results leading to unnecessary aggressive cut, burn and poison protocols.

What has increased even more than the cancer incidence itself is the sophisticated art of bullshitting the public. For example, anastrozole (Arimidex) advertisements show a woman holding a star-shaped pill with the caption “Put survival in the palm of her hand”. In fat print below it claims “56.1% survival.” That percentage results from manipulation of non-facts: cancers for which this drug is used kill in a median time of 26.7 months. Taking this wonder-star pill prolongs life by 4.2 months — which is statistically insignificant (Moss, 2000)

About half of all prescription drugs are carcinogenic (Moore 1998) and most cancer drugs themselves are carcinogenic, such as the infamous Tamoxifen (Epstein 1999). In fact, Zeneca, the company that makes it and other cancer drugs used world-wide, qualifies all by itself as a first rate carcinogen – Zeneca is one of the world’s largest producers of pesticides.

More shocking is the fact that some cancer experts themselves avoid their own treatments at all costs. In the late 1980’s, the chief of staff of the world’s most prestigious cancer research centre, the Sloan Kettering Institute, when diagnosed with cancer, said: “Do anything you want — but no chemotherapy!” He had spent his life developing chemotherapy treatments. Another big wig of the same institute chose to send his mother to an alternative cancer clinic in Germany. Recently, oncologist R.E. Witts of the National Cancer Institute observed about the Manual of Oncologic Therapeutics (the practitioners’ source book for all mainstream cancer therapies): “One may hope that in another 10 or 15 years medical progress will make this read like an archaic document from the Middle Ages.”

Lies are fed by grand illusions and tend to be very lucrative. The editors of one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, The Lancet, observed on April 6, 2002, in a most damning editorial, that drug companies “have much to celebrate” because spending on drugs soared by 17% in just 2001 alone, bringing the total to US $155 billion — doubled since 1997. The scandalous connection between doctors, researchers and drug manufacturing, the editors concluded, “has put the whole of medicine in disrepute.”

And it is cancer that provides the biggest pot of gold on which research money, prestige and careers depend. Hence, it is hard to find an oncologist who is truly able to cure you, because he doesn’t know how: the focus is muddied by research priorities and information flowing exclusively from the drug industry. The former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) observed bluntly: “Everything is tainted [in medicine as a whole and cancer care in particular]. Almost every doctor in academia has something going on the side… I don’t know what they are getting legally as far as financial return, stock, money, whatever, is concerned. I have no authority to find out. I certainly don’t know what they are getting under the table.” (Moss 2000). For the most comprehensive overview of just how lucrative your cancer — not your cure — is, see Epstein’s books and the hot new mainstream publication by a professor of medicine who seems not to mind living dangerously: J.S. Cohen, Overdose (Tarcher, 2001.)

The truth shall make us free through knowledge of the facts. The truth shall some day also make us free of cancer. All the causes of cancer are known (see my Vitality articles Sept. 1999, Nov. 2000); we are capable right now of preventing all cancers, even the genetically mediated ones, and we have at our disposal truly effective treatments that work often even for the worst cancers. These treatments are comparatively cheap — bad news for the drug industry and many surgeons. And these treatments are not patentable, which, given the huge space cancer occupies in all of medicine, may cause a revolution. Medicine without patents means it returns to serving humanity and ceases to be the lucrative death industry it has become. Doctors who use non-patentable treatments and have no ties to any industry are the only doctors one can trust.

How to Search

The first step to recovery from any serious illness is a mental shift, without which positive outcomes cannot happen. That mental shift involves rejection of the victim stance and the decision to take charge. After all, with every second person likely to develop cancer, we are all in this together. Indeed, a good doctor works with you every step of the way. The standardized conveyor-belt delivery of therapy leads directly to the funeral home — “to a conventional death,” as one alternative medicine oncologist observed. Blind trust is equivalent to blind death.

Fortunately, information on treatments that work exists and is readily available. A bookstore is the best start. Websites given at the end of this article are goldmines, providing everything from the hard science to the cost of treatment. Truth in science and in life tends to be simple, elegant, uncomplicated, and of universal application. Whether your diagnosis is terrible and confirmed, or uncertain and possibly false-positive — you do not need to be an oncologist to make an informed choice. Cancer is an intelligible process that requires eyes wide open and totally focused attention.

Beyond doubt, the best single source of information is Cancer Diagnosis: What To Do Next by Burton Goldberg’s Alternative Medicine publishing company. Written by doctors specializing in cancer and untainted by industry connections, it provides an overview of cancer treatments, which ones work and why, what potholes of abysmal ignorance exist on the road of standard care, which tests are reliable and how to understand them. Most important for those already in the cancer mill, you learn in what limited circumstances the orthodox cut-burn-and-poison routines do work and how they can be made to work even better, with less horrible side effects. Indeed, there are a few childhood cancers, some forms of uterine and colon cancers, and a few special situations in which plain surgery and some chemotherapy, combined with high-powered nutritional regimes, do help.

As for everything else, Charlotte Gerson, daughter of the famous German cancer doctor Max Gerson, put it well: “If you can cure pancreatic cancer, I am listening. If you can’t, I am not interested. We [at the Gerson clinics] often cure pancreatic cancer, so you may want to know what we have to offer.” Indeed, the fastest killer of all cancers is metastasized pancreatic cancer, and standard medicine admits it can at best extend life expectancy by a few months. Therefore, anybody whose cure can be scientifically verified and duplicated will revolutionize oncology. This miracle is currently in progress.

Dr. Nicholas Gonzales

Several cures for cancer were developed over the past 10 years. Like the observations by ancient Greek astronomers, repeatedly confirmed, that the sun — not the earth — is the centre of our solar system, the discoverers of a new understanding of cancer were ignored or dismissed as lunatics. Then came Galileo. Sure, the Pope put him under house arrest, but he could not stop the big change. Like Galileo, Dr. Gonzales is from the establishment. Armed with an Ivy League medical education and mainstream publications, he studied under world famous immunologists and cancer experts. He wears only pin-striped suits. Like Galileo he has spent a decade in virtual exile. The New York medical licensing authorities tried to take his licence away. He kept on treating cancer patients, who didn’t go away to become statistics, but returned to life and told everybody. Now Dr. Gonzales is unstoppable. Curing cancer with nutritional and detoxification regimes, he is turning the world of cancer upside down. He has refused several six-figure book proposals. He is not interested in money or fame. Dr. Gonzales is a doctor down to the marrow of his bones — and that’s a divine obsession.

In 2000, President Clinton mandated that the National Institutes of Health commence research into complementary medicine. Harvard researchers had reported that half the population was using alternative medical care, and 7 out of every 10 cancer patients were secretly using them. Clearly, this was a popular movement demanding to be understood.

Then Dr. Gonzales challenged the medical establishment to investigate his treatment of pancreatic cancer. “If my results work, they work. If not, I’ll walk away,” he said. The preliminary results of this carefully controlled research project, fully supported by the NIH, were published recently — showing that Dr. Gonzales’ therapy, which focuses on organic nutritional protocols, vitamins and supplements, enzymes, detox regimes and NO chemotherapy, surgery or radiation, wins hands down over the orthodoxy. “I am offering a primary treatment for major cancer. You don’t do chemotherapy and Gonzales. You do one or the other. I have been referred to as the doctor of last resort — and perhaps I am,” he explained in an excellent New Yorker article (Feb. 5, 2001; available on Dr. G.’s website). He rejects the polarization between “complementary” and “evidence-based” medicine. For him there is only one medicine and it’s testable, verifiable, affordable, and it works. His wish is to be back at the Sloan Kettering Institute and see cancer care renovated totally. We may all get his wish.

The Gerson Institute

During World War I, a medical researcher at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Max Gerson (one of Dr. Gonzales’ sources), began to develop a nutrition and detoxification regime for cancer. Among his famous successes were Albert Schweizer and his wife. Having fled Germany under the Nazis, Gerson continued his practice and research in the USA. Following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. legislators were burdened by deep guilt and doubt, which led to their enthusiastic support of suggestions that radiation might also have some beneficial effects. Thus radiation and then chemotherapy, those attractively dramatic high-tech treatments, gained more and more support, while Dr. Gerson and similar researchers slowly became forgotten — until cancer overstepped the bounds of all epidemics ever recorded.

The protocols followed at the Gerson clinics are in essence the same as those of Dr. Gonzales. Because each patient’s treatment is so highly individualized with respect to their needs and the requirements of their type and stage of cancer, the reader is referred to the excellent websites given below. The newly published The Gerson Therapy is highly recommended. Both approaches involve radical dietary changes, and both require the patient to be fully involved at every stage.

There are other equally rigorously science-based cancer treatment centres (see books by Moss and websites), and some great mavericks, such as Dr. Hulda Clark, who works primarily with cancers caused by parasites, bacteria and viruses.

Space does not permit discussion of another fabulous school of medicine that seems to be from another planet: namely Chinese medicine, which cures many cancers by methods the West is only beginning to understand.

What they all have in common is not to cut, burn or poison, but to heal, build, and nourish. They focus on the biochemistry of the cancer and the healing processes the body can offer. Unlike the therapies of standard medicine, most of which are not scientifically studied but only statistically evaluated, biochemically based therapies are based on verifiable research. An observation by Professor U. Abel of Heidelberg University’s medical school in Germany points to the deep flaw in standard cancer care: “Arguing for the benefits of chemotherapy based on a few complete responses is like arguing in favour of gambling based on the profits of the winner.”

Our irresponsibly poisoned environment has created battered organs and cells which we have the power to restore with gentle, nourishing persistence. Every cancer patient healed is testimony to the fact that the world can be healed also.

R.W. Moss, Cancer Therapy: The Independent Consumer’s Guide to Non-Toxic Treatment and Prevention, Equinox, 1999.

R.W. Moss, Questioning Chemotherapy, Equinox 2000.

W.J. Diamond, MD, et al. Cancer Diagnosis: What to do Next, Alternative Medicine Guide, 2000.

W.J. Diamond, MD, et al. Definitive Guide to Cancer, Alternative Medicine Guide, 1997

M. Gerson, MD, A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases, Gerson Institute, 1999

C. Gerson & M. Walker, The Gerson Therapy, Kensington Publishing, 2001

H.R. Clark, The Cure for All Advanced Cancers, New Century Press, 1999

J. Gordon, MD, Comprehensive Cancer Care: Integrating Alternative, Complementary and Conventional Therapies, Perseus, 2000

S. Epstein, MD, The Breast Cancer Prevention Program, 2nd ed., Macmillan, 1999

T.J. Moore, Prescription for Disaster, Simon & Schuster, 1998

J.S. Cohen MD, Overdose: The Case Against Drug Companies, Tarcher Putnam, 2001

The following websites provide information on treatment, cost, prognosis, research basis, time involved etc:

Dr. Gonzales’ clinic in New York: www.dr-gonzales.com

Gerson Institute: www.gerson.org

Complementary Medicine department of the National Institutes of Health: www.cmbm.org (downloading their conferences is free.)

Prof. S. Epstein’s site – best source for information on prevention and proof positive for the corruption in the cancer establishment www.preventcancer.com

An excellent source for cell-based, non-toxic treatments is GET REAL. CANCER, call (714) 842-1777.

Since mammography is potentially cancer triggering and not very useful, thermography is preferable because it is non-invasive and can detect many types of cancer early and reliably. Thermography clinics in Ontario are organized through the North York Thermography Centre: (416) 636-2916.