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Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 11, Number 4 (June-July 2004)
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia.
Updated from: http://www.health-science-spirit.com/cancerscience.html

How scientific are orthodox cancer treatments?

by Walter Last © 2004
Website: http://www.health-science-spirit.com

Treatment often causes more misery than the disease itself and in most cases is unsuccessful (THE CANCER CONSPIRACY by John J. Moelaert)

Research studies and unbiased statistical analysis show that there is no scientific basis for orthodox cancer treatments like radical surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy and that these treatments often do more harm than good.

The medical profession takes much pride in the rigorous scientific research that underpins its approach to cancer treatment. Someone newly diagnosed with cancer faces enormous pressure from our health care system to start immediately on a scientific medical treatment program that involves surgery, chemotherapy and radiation in various combinations. Being fearful and in shock, most individuals in this situation are no match for the overwhelming power of medical authority.

How would you react in this situation? You may be leaning towards natural therapies for simple health problems but for something as serious as cancer you may feel safer with the tested and proven methods of orthodox medical care. Nevertheless, if you have the chance, read the following before you make your final decision. You may then have a better appreciation of natural cancer treatment.

In this article I have assembled some little known facts about the science behind orthodox cancer treatment. In cancer research, success (expressed as a five-year survival rate) is established by comparing other forms and combinations of treatment with the results from surgery alone. However, the success rate of surgery has rarely been compared with the survival rates of untreated patients, and never with patients who adopted natural therapies. Therefore, orthodox cancer treatment is inherently unscientific. The overall supposed cure rate is not higher than can be accounted for by spontaneous remissions and the placebo effect.

In support of my position, I offer the following key statements and conclusions from medical and scientific publications.

“Studies appear to show that early intervention is helpful, because pre-cancerous lesions are included in early removals that frequently would notbecome cancerous if left untouched.” In other words, early intervention appears helpful because lesions are removed that are not cancerous but they are counted as being cancer, and that improves survival statistics. “Also, it does not matter how much or how little of a breast is removed; the outcome is always the same “1. This statement indicates that surgery does not improve survival chances; otherwise there would be a difference between radical surgery and lumpectomy.

Researchers have said it is complacent to continue subjecting at least 70% of women with breast cancer to a futile mutilating procedure 2. Furthermore, there is no evidence that early mastectomy affects survival; if patients knew this, they would most likely refuse surgery. 3

In 1993, the editor of The Lancet pointed out that, despite various modifications of breast cancer treatment, death rates remained unchanged. He acknowledged that despite the almost weekly releases of miracle breakthroughs, the medical profession with its extraordinary capacity for self-delusion (his words, not mine) in all truth has lost its way. At the same time, he rejected the view of those who believe that salvation will come from increasing chemotherapy after surgery to just below the rate where it kills the patient. He asked, “would it not be more scientific to ask why our approach has failed?” Not too soon to ask this question after a century of mutilating women, I would say. The title of this editorial, appropriately, is “Breast cancer: have we lost our way?“ 4

Basically, all types and combinations of conventional breast cancer treatment appear to result in the same low long-term survival rates. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that conventional treatment does not improve long-term survival rates. Even worse, Michael Baum, MD, a leading British breast cancer surgeon, found that breast cancer surgery tends to increase the risk of relapse or death within three years. He also linked surgery to accelerating the spread of cancer by stimulating the formation of metastases in other parts of the body. 5

An earlier German comparison found that untreated post-menopausal women with breast cancer live longer than treated women, and the recommendation was not to treat postmenopausal women for breast cancer. 6

This conclusion confirms a finding by Ernst Krokowski, a German professor of radiology. He demonstrated conclusively that metastasis is commonly triggered by medical intervention, including sometimes even by a biopsy or surgery unrelated to the cancer. 7 Disturbance of a tumour causes a greatly increased number of cancer cells to enter the bloodstream, while most medical intervention (especially chemotherapy) suppresses the immune system. This combination is a recipe for disaster. It is the metastases that kill, while primary tumours in general, and those in the breast in particular, can be relatively harmless. These findings have been confirmed by recent research which shows that surgery, even if unrelated to the cancer, can trigger an explosive spread of metastases and lead to an untimely end. 8

This follows earlier reports that radical surgery for prostate cancer also tends to spread the disease. Actually, prostate cancer was investigated in the first randomised clinical trials for any type of cancer. After 23 years, there was no difference in the survival rates of those who had surgery and the controls who did not have surgery, but those with surgery suffered more morbidity such as impotence or incontinence. 9

The late H. B. Jones, Professor of Medical Physics, was a leading US cancer statistician. He said in a speech before the American Cancer Society in 1969 that no study has proved that early intervention improves the chances of survival. On the contrary, his studies proved conclusively that untreated cancer victims live up to four times longer and with better quality of life than treated ones. Needless to say, he was not invited again. 10

Massaging Statistics
A recent epidemiological study confirmed the questionable value of conventional therapy by concluding that “medical interventions for cancer have had a negligible or no effect on survival”. 11 Even the conservative New England Journal of Medicine had an article with the headline, “Cancer Undefeated“. 12

Common ways to make medical statistics look more favorable are as follows. Patients who die during prolonged treatment with chemotherapy or radiotherapy are not counted in the statistics, because they did not receive the full treatment. In the control group everyone who dies is counted. Further, success is judged by the percentage of temporary tumor shrinking, regardless of survival times; if survival is measured, then only in terms of dying from the treated disease. It is not normally shown how many of the patients die due to the treatment itself. The current trend is to pick up pre-cancerous conditions very early and treat them as cancer. While this statistically increases the number of people with cancer, it also artificially prolongs survival times and lowers death rates, thereby making medical treatments appear to be more successful. However, there may also be a genuine component of improved survival, as increasing numbers of cancer patients opt for additional natural therapies.

An investigation of the records of 1.2 million cancer patients revealed that the death rate attributed to non-cancer death shortly after treatment was 200% higher than would normally be expected. Two years after diagnosis and treatment, this excess death rate had fallen to 50%. The most common cause for the excess death rate was listed as heart and respiratory failure. This means that, instead of dying several years later from cancer, these patients died from the effects of the treatment and helped greatly improve the cancer statistics because they did not strictly die of cancer. 13 This misleading reporting of cancer deaths has led to demands for more honest statistics.” 14

After an analysis of several large mammogram-screening studies found that mammography screening leads to more aggressive treatment with no survival benefits 15, even the editor of the Lancet had to admit that there is no reliable evidence from large randomized trials to support mammography screening programs 15. The significance of this statement goes far beyond the use of mammograms. It is openly acknowledged by the proponents of conventional medicine that they have no effective way of helping patients with advanced cancer. Until now the catch-cry always was ‘detect it early then it can be cured’. These mammogram evaluation studies demonstrate that it does not matter when cancer is detected, the conventional methods, and with this the whole multi-billion dollar cancer industry, are useless (my conclusion).

A 13-year Canadian study involving 40,000 women compared physical breast examinations with examinations plus mammograms. The mammogram-plus-examination group had many more lumpectomies and surgeries, with a death rate of 107 compared with 105 deaths in the physical examination group.16

Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a common, non-invasive form of breast tumour. Most cases of DCIS are detected through the use of mammography. In younger women, 92% of all cancers detected by mammography are of this type. Nevertheless, on average, 44%, and in some areas 60%, of these are treated by mastectomy. As most of these tumours are harmless, this needless treatment makes survival statistics appear to be better than they actually are. 17

While conventional diagnosis is invasive and may help to spread the cancer, a kind of electrodermal screening, called the Biofield test, developed by a team from eight European hospitals and universities, was reported in the Lancet as being 99.1% accurate in diagnosing malignancy in breast tumours. 18

A large meta-analysis of radiotherapy results for lung cancer showed that after two years there were 21% more deaths in the group that had radiotherapy in addition to surgery as compared to those who had surgery alone. The Lancet article 19 stated that the rationale is to kill any cancer cells remaining after surgery, but it is a shame that the facts do not agree with this theory.

Chemotherapy: Medical Russian Roulette
Chemotherapy for children with leukaemia and Hodgkin’s disease is the proud showpiece of the arguably only apparent success of orthodox cancer therapy. Now a long-term follow-up study shows that such children develop 18 times more secondary malignant tumours later in life. Even worse, girls face a 75 times (7,500%) higher risk of breast cancer by the time they are forty. 20 A main problem appears to be the development of deep or systemic Candida albicans infections shortly after commencement of chemotherapy. 21 If these infections are not appropriately treated, then relapses or future health problems are likely to occur.

Chemotherapy showed a clear dose dependency whereby the incidence of triggered leukemia doubled between low dose and moderate dose groups and then quadrupled between the moderate dose and the high dose groups. A study of ovarian cancer found that the risk of developing leukaemiaafter treatment with chemotherapy increased 21 fold or 2100%. Also, other tumours commonly develop after treating malignancies with chemotherapy.22 In a trial for multiple myeloma, no advantage was found by using chemotherapy as compared to no treatment. 23

The respected German biostatistician Ulrich Abel presented a comprehensive analysis of over 3,000 clinical trials on the value of chemotherapy for advanced carcinoma (for instance, breast cancer). Oncologists tend to use chemotherapy because this may induce a temporary shrinking of the tumour, called a response; however, it also tends to produce unpleasant side effects. Abel concluded that there is no direct evidence that chemotherapy prolongs survival in these cases. Abel stated: “Many oncologists take it for granted that response to therapy prolongs survival, an opinion which is based on a fallacy and which is not supported by clinical studies.” 24 Ralph W. Moss, PhD, in Questioning Chemotherapy, provides a detailed analysis of this subject. The overall conclusion of the book is that there is no evidence in terms of the majority of cancers that chemotherapy extends life. 25

However, even if chemotherapy could extend life for a few months, what about the quality of this life? Tom Nesi, a former Director of Public Affairs at the pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, wrote in the New York Times about the successful treatment of his wife, which statistically extended her life for three months. 26 Two weeks after the treatment, she scribbled on a notepad: “depressed — no more — please”. I am not surprised about reports that most oncologists would not have their own family members use these treatments.

Only recently have oncologists started to acknowledge what patients called “chemo-brain”, a distressing loss of memory and other cognitive functions. Psychiatrists have now found that cancer and its conventional treatment cause serious depression in 15 to 25 percent of patients. “The depression itself can often be worse than the disease” they say 27

The Full Treatment
Virginia Livingston (later Livingston-Wheeler), a remarkable cancer researcher and therapist, in her book, Cancer: A New Breakthrough 28, gives an account of one of the many patients she saw who had come to her only after receiving the full medical treatment for breast cancer:

“After discovering a small breast lump, she had radical mastectomy. None of the lymph nodes removed from the armpit were involved; all of the cancer had been successfully removed. To make extra sure that there was no regrowth in the scars, she received radiation treatment, and also her ovaries were taken out.”

“To her dismay, a year later several small nodules appeared in the old breast scar. Again she received radiation. More lumps appeared on the neck that called for still more radiation. In addition, she received male hormone therapy, resulting in acne and coarse facial hair. Still the nodules came back. Now she received chemotherapy with the usual side effects.”

“Before her hair could regrow, pain in her bones was diagnosed as bone cancer. More chemotherapy and hormone therapy was expected to help. However, several months later the bone lesions became worse and removal of her adrenal glands was recommended and performed. Hopefully, that would prolong her suffering for another year. After that the removal of her pituitary gland might give her a further three to six months to live.”

“By now her faith in her medical advisers was sufficiently shaken that she came to Dr Livingston for help. She asked to be examined without her husband being present, as she wanted to spare nun the agony of seeing her naked body, distorted, mutilated and shrunken with an immensely swollen abdomen and thin legs. Finally she whispered: ‘Doctor, shall I kill myself?”

A Conspiracy of Silence
Why are they doing this? With “they”, I am referring to what is commonly called “the Cancer Establishment”. I believe the answer was given by the eminent medical commentator and former editor of New Scientist, Dr Donald Gould, in a timeless article called “Cancer: A Conspiracy of Silence“. The subtitle summarises his position: “The commonest cancers are as resistant to treatment today as they were 40 or 50 years ago. Nothing is to be gained by pretending that the battle against cancer is slowly but surely being won.“ 29

This truth has been deliberately concealed from the general public. According to Gould, the reason for this conspiracy of silence is money. The public must continue to see the Cancer Establishment as a winner to continue providing money. One of the quoted scientists said that with tens of thousands of radiologists and millions of dollars in equipment one just gives radiation treatment even if study after study shows that it does more harm than good.

Gould also is of the opinion that patients who could be comfortable without medical treatment until their inevitable death, with medical treatment are made miserable in a pointless attempt to postpone death for a few unhappy weeks. But of course, that is how most of the money is being made. Gould feels that they poison their patients with drugs and rays and mutilate them with unnecessary surgery in a desperate attempt to treat the untreatable. Not much has changed since Gould wrote this article in 1976. In a recent Moss Report (April 2004) we can read that long-term survival from common cancers such as prostate, breast, colorectal and lung “has barely budged since the 1970s” 30. In summary, this means that there was no significant improvement in cancer survival rates in the last 70 to 80 years.

The Scientific Basis for Drug Approvals

It is also interesting to know the scientific basis for the approval of cancer drugs. Most of them come initially from the U.S.A. Commonly a company had to submit 2 favorable large, randomized trials to obtain FDA approval. ‘Favorable’ means that there must be a certain rate of tumor shrinkage lasting for at least one month. It was not necessary to show that the treatment prolonged survival, and it was not necessary to submit the results of any unfavorable trials for the same drug. Now these ‘strict scientific’ guidelines have been relaxed, and drug companies can get FDA approval on the basis of small preliminary trials, even if a large randomized trial may be unfavorable 31. In a remarkable statement about drug approvals an FDA spokesperson pointed out that any delay in approval did not mean unnecessary deaths because “all these treatments for advanced cancer don’t cure people” 32. However, and this is the important part, an individual cancer drug that does not cure people can earn billions of dollars for its drug company.

Perhaps the situation is even worse than ineffective treatments. A group of respected researchers reviewed all of the published statistical evidence of the outcome of medical treatments. It shows that the medical system is now the leading cause of death and injury in the US. Deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 were 699,697, for cancer the figure was 553,251, while for medical interventions it was 783,936 per year! Appropriately, the title of this study is ‘Death by Medicine” 33.

You may wonder why health authorities turn a blind eye to these massive drug fatalities, while concentrating their energies instead on suppressing food supplements and natural remedies. A symptom of this official attitude is the recent saga of PAN Pharmaceuticals when in 2003, the Australian government forced the largest Australian manufacturer of natural remedies into bankruptcy, allegedly because there was a possibility that some of these products might cause someone to get sick or even die. I see a main reason for this distorted official attitude in the fact that health departments and regulatory authorities are dominated by medical doctors who have been trained, partly with money from drug companies, to believe that drugs are beneficial and natural remedies potentially harmful. Despite a majority of western populations preferring natural remedies, basically all political parties promote dependency on pharmaceutical drugs. Therefore, as a first step to change this oppressive political climate we urgently need a political party that dares to promote natural health care rather than drug dependency.

We can find a clue for the cause of these appalling “Death by Medicine” statistics in an editorial by Richard Smith in the British Medical Journal. “Yet only 15% of medical interventions are supported by solid scientific evidence”, and “This is because only 1% of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound, and partly because many treatments have never been assessed at all” 34.

A good demonstration of the unscientific nature of medical research is the recent fiasco with hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Several decades ago it was shown in “rigorous scientific” research to be safe and effective; otherwise it would not have been approved. It was strongly promoted to protect against heart disease and cancer. Now every new trial shows HRT to be dangerous and increasing the risk of developing heart disease and cancer. What went wrong, why has this not been picked up earlier? Quite simply, the original research was conducted with the aim of generating profits, while recent researchers are not sharing in any of these profits. Therefore, I mistrust any research that is conducted with profit in mind. Unfortunately, this presently applies to most medical research.

The Way Forward

It is now 32 years since President Nixon declared the War on Cancer. Since then $US 2 Trillion has been spent on conventional cancer treatment and research, with the result that more individuals are dying of cancer than ever before 35. A similar assessment is given by Clifton Leaf, Executive Editor of the mainstream Fortune magazine. He asks: “Why have we made so little progress in the war on cancer?” and continues to point out that the propaganda about improvement in survival from cancer is largely a myth. Most of the improvement in longevity of cancer patients is due to life style changes and early detection. Early detection prolongs the statistical survival time without the patients living any longer. Even adjusted for age, the percentage of Americans dying from cancer is about the same as it was in 1950. More Americans will die of cancer in the next 14 months than have died from every war that the US has fought combined 36.

While there have been studies to evaluate the effects of various nutrients on different cancers, nothing of these 2 Trillion cancer dollars has been available for natural therapists to trial holistic cancer therapies. Even worse for natural therapists, they had to face a century of persecution. A large number of them was dragged before courts and ended up in jail. Would it not be more scientific to impartially evaluate the methods of natural cancer therapists rather than put them in jail?

In the U.S. basically all alternative cancer clinics had to relocate to Mexico. For a list of such clinics worldwide see http://www.cancure.org. A holistic cancer approach includes superior nutrition, herbs, electro-medicine and vibrational or energy medicine, emotional healing and mind therapy.

The only reported study that comes close to investigating a holistic approach involves the Gerson therapy in an evaluation of 5-year survival rates of 153 melanoma patients. Here 100% of Gerson therapy patients with Stage I and II Cancers survived, but only 79% with conventional therapy. With Stage III (regional metastases) the figures, respectively, were 70% and 41%; with Stage IVa (distant metastases) 39% with Gerson and 6% with conventional therapy 37

Here a few more gems from recent medical publications:

The most important advance in cancer diagnosis is needle biopsy, which is now the standard procedure. Until recently this has just been done on the ‘scientific’ assumption that it is harmless. Now (in 2004) a team in a prestigious US hospital found that 50% of needle biopsies caused metastatic spread of cancer 38. This means an awful number of patients have died due to this innocent-looking procedure.

“Screening for breast cancer with mammography is unjustified. If the trials are judged to be unbiased, the data show that for every 1000 women screened biennially throughout 12 years, one breast cancer death is avoided whereas the total number of deaths is increased by 6.” 39

A group of leading cancer surgeons (Drs. Baum, Demicheli, Hrushesky and Retsky) have shown that surgery triggers accelerated growth of metastases. They point out that from antiquity until relatively recently, surgery was routinely avoided for women with breast cancer precisely because of fear that surgery might spread the disease 40.

The deputy director of the prestigious Canadian National Breast Screening Study (C.J. Baines) wrote: “An unacknowledged harm [of screening mammography] is that for up to 11 years after the initiation of breast cancer screening in women aged 40-49 years, screened women face a higher death rate from breast cancer than unscreened control women, although that is contrary to what one would expect” and “shouldn’t women aged 40-49 years know that, 3 years after screening starts, their chance of death from breast cancer is more than double that for unscreened control women?41

The latest prostate cancer screening study (2006) confirmed an earlier study in 2002 showing that early detection and treatment does not save lives, only increases discomfort 42.

You may be wondering how there can be this contrast between scientific research and public perception of the benefits of conventional cancer therapy. The answer is that research findings are selectively interpreted (spin-doctored) and promoted (propaganda) by vested interests with easy access to the mass media.

Many natural cancer therapists claim a success rate of more than 90% in arresting and reversing cancer, provided that patients have not been subjected to orthodox treatments before. Most harmful appear to be chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Therefore, if you are confronted with cancer, I suggest that you resist acting out of fear and under pressure. The situation is hardly ever so urgent that you have to act immediately. Instead, do your own research from books, journals and the Internet, and then trust your common sense or intuition.

About the Author:
Walter Last worked as a biochemical research chemist in the medical departments of several German i sities and at Bio-Science Laboratories in Los Angeles, USA. He worked as a nutritionist and natural therapist in New Zealand , Australia, where he is now based.

He has written numerous health-related journal articles as v several books, including Heal Yourself and Healing Foods. His new book, The Natural Way to Heal (Hampton Publishing, 2004), is reviewed in this issue. His article, “The Medicine of Dr Hamer”, about Dr Ryke Geerd Hamer’s discovery shock-conflict mechanism underlying cancer development, was published in NEXUS 10/05.

Walter Last is retired and does not have a clinic. For informal health questions, see his website http://www.health-science-spirit.com for his approach to cancer treatment, click on “Diseases” to find his eight-part article, “Overcoming Cancer”.

References
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(2) Baum, M.: The Curability of Breast Cancer. Br Med J, 1: 439-42, 1976.
(3) Cunningham, L.: Mastectomy for so-called lobular carcinoma in-situ. Lancet 1: 306, 1980
(4) Editorial: Breast Cancer: Have we lost our way? Lancet 1: 341, 343-44, 1993
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(7) Krokowski, E.H.: Is the Current Treatment of Cancer Self-Limiting in the Extent of its Success? J Int Acad Preventive Medicine, 6 (1) 23 – 39, 1979
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(12) Bailar JC III, Gornik H.L.: Cancer undefeated. New England Journal of Medicine, 336:1569-1574 (1997)
(13) Brown, B.W., C. Brauner and M.C. Minnotte: Noncancer deaths in white adult cancer patients. J Natl Cancer Inst 85, 979-987, 1993
(14) Welch, H.G., Black, W.C.: Are Deaths Within 1 Month of Cancer-Directed Surgery Attributed to Cancer? J Natl Cancer Inst 94: 1066-1070, 2002
(15) Olsen, O.; Gotzsche, P.C.: Cochrane review on screening for breast cancer with mammography. Lancet 2001 Oct 20; 358:1340-2 and Editorial 1284-85
(16) Miller, A.B., et al.: Canadian National Breast Cancer Screening Study-2: 13-year results of a randomized trial in women aged 50-59 years. J Natl Cancer Inst 92, September 20, 2000, pp. 1490-99
(17) Ernster, Virginia L., et al.: Incidence of and treatment for ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 275, No. 12, March 27, 1996, pp. 913-18
Page, David L. and Jensen, Roy A.: Ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 275, No. 12, March 27, 1996, pp. 948-49
(18) Cuzick, Jack, et al.: Electropotential measurements as a new diagnostic modality for breast cancer. The Lancet, Vol. 352, August 1, 1998, pp. 359- 63
(19) PORT Meta-analysis Trialists Group: Postoperative radiotherapy in non-small-cell lung cancer: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual patient data from nine randomized controlled trials. Lancet 1998 Jul 25; 352(9124): 257-63 and Lancet 1998 Jul 25; 352(9124):250-1
(20) Bhatia, S., Robison, L.L. et al.: Breast cancer and other second neoplasms after childhood Hodgkin’s disease. N Engl J Med. 1996 Mar 21;334(12):745-51.
(21) Klingspor, L., Stintzing, G., Tollemar, J. Deep Candida infection in children with leukaemia. Acta Paediatr 86 (1) 30-6, 1997
(22) Klein-Szanto, A.J.P.: Carcinogenic effects of chemotherapeutic compounds. Progress in Clinical and Biological Research, 374, 167-74, 1992.
(23) Riccardi, A., Mora, O.et al.: Long-term survival of stage I multiple myeloma given chemotherapy just after diagnosis or at progression of the disease: a multicentre randomized study. Br J Cancer. 2000 Apr; 82(7):1254-60.
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(29) Gould, D.: Cancer – a Conspiracy of Silence. New Scientist 2 December 1976
(30) Moss, R.W.: THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter #127 April 4/04
(31) Moss, R.W.: THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter #86 (June 7/03)
(32) Moss, R.W.: THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter #122 February 28/04
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(36) Leaf, Clifford. Why we’re losing the war on cancer. Fortune 2004 :149(6):76-97..
(37) Hildenbrand, G.L. et al.: Five-year survival rates of melanoma patients treated by diet therapy after the manner of Gerson: A retrospective review. Alternative Therapies 1(4): 29-37, Sept 1995
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(39) Gotzsche PC, Olsen O. Is screening for breast cancer with mammography justifiable? Lancet 2000; 355(9198):129-134
(40) Baum M, Demicheli R, Hrushesky W, et al. Does surgery unfavourably perturb the “natural history” of early breast cancer by accelerating the appearance of distant metastases? Eur J Cancer. 2005 Mar;41(4):508-15
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We as a nation seem to rise to the battle, that is unless it involves our health.  In the case of our health we simply defer to people we deem smarter than ourselves.  We rely on their education and network to provide a solution to our condition.  We are a society driven by immediate gratification our health care reflects this today more than ever.

Health care today is driven by pharmaceutical companies and Insurance, we have invested a huge portion of our wages into our health insurance only to find we are then trapped by a system that is relentless in its ability to move money.  Today even the doctor has become a pawn in the game, they are trapped by the legal system into performing only those procedures in a tightly managed group otherwise they are not paid by insurance and stand to be sued.  We no longer have physicians working in the field of Medical Arts, today we have Medical Science – that is the science of control.

So what is the reality of our condition – that when we do get sick there is a predetermined path that our medical care system will provide under the insurance protection we have worked so hard to keep only to find that it does not work…

Take cancer for instance – we have two major modes of therapy today in 2007, they are chemotherapy and radiation.  This seems on the surface to be logical, we know chemo was developed in the 1940’s by the defense department as a biological weapon.  We are aware that chemo is delivered into our system with the knowledge that cancer cells multiply faster than our normal cells and therefore will be more susceptible to the toxic chemical.  I think this is where things start to get fuzzy for us, we think that chemo will somehow only effect the tumor when in fact the science is just trying to kill the tumor before killing the patient.  Has anyone ever explained that in cancer only about 2/3 of the cancer cells are in the state of fast mitosis at any given time and therefore 1/3 are at rest and will not be over exposed to the toxic effect.  You see what we do know is chemo kills but it is a very effective way of extracting dollars and providing hope that is within the scope of Medical Science.

I am going to leave radiation to wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy they seem to do a great job of explaining the short term and long term effects of having radiation therapy – it seems almost comical that radiation causes cancer.

“In 1971 Richard Nixon announced the War on Cancer, and promised a cure by the 1977 bicentennial. In each of the 25 years since, more Americans have died of cancer than the year before.

The failure of chemotherapy to control cancer has become apparent even to the oncology establishment. Scientific American featured a recent cover story entitled: “The War on Cancer – It’s Being Lost.” In it, eminent epidemiologist John C. Bailar III, MD, PhD, Chairman of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University cited the relentless increase in cancer deaths in the face of growing use of toxic chemotherapy. He concluded that scientists must look in new directions if they are ever to make progress against this unremitting killer.

Adding its voice, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, decrying the failure of conventional therapy to stop the rise in breast cancer deaths, noted the discrepancy between public perception and reality. “If one were to believe all the media hype, the triumphalism of the (medical) profession in published research, and the almost  weekly miracle breakthroughs trumpeted by the cancer charities, one might be surprised that women are dying at all from this cancer” it observed. Noting that conventional therapies — chemotherapy, radiation and surgery — had been pushed to their limits with dismal results, the editorial called on researchers to “challenge dogma and redirect research efforts along more fruitful lines.”

John Cairns, professor of microbiology at Harvard University, published a devastating 1985 critique in Scientific American. “Aside from certain rare cancers, it is not possible to detect any sudden changes in the death rates for any of the major cancers that could be credited to chemotherapy. Whether any of the common cancers can be cured by chemotherapy has yet to be established.”

In fact, chemotherapy is curative in very few cancers — testicular, Hodgkin’s,  choriocarcinoma, childhood leukemia.  In most common solid tumors — lung, colon, breast, etc. — chemotherapy is NOT curative.

In an article entailed “Chemotherapy: Snake-Oil Remedy?” that appeared in the Los Angeles Times of 1/9/87, Dr.  Martin F. Shapiro explained that while “some oncologist  inform their patients of the lack of evidence that treatments work…others may well be misled by scientific papers that express unwarranted optimism about chemotherapy.  Still others respond to an economic incentive. Physicians can earn much more money running  active chemotherapy practices than they can providing solace and relief.. to dying patients and their families.”

Dr. Shapiro is hardly alone. Alan C. Nixon, PhD, Past President of the American Chemical Society wrote that “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 1986, McGill Cancer Center scientists sent a questionnaire to 118 doctors who treated non-small-cell lung  cancer. More than 3/4 of them recruited patients and carried out trials of toxic drugs for lung cancer. They were  asked to imagine that they themselves had cancer, and were asked which of six current trials they themselves would choose. 64 of the 79 respondents would not consent to be in a trial containing cisplatin, a common chemotherapy drug. Fifty eight found all the trials unacceptable. Their reason? The ineffectiveness of chemotherapy and its unacceptable degree of toxicity.

Famed German bio statistician Ulrich Abel, PhD, also found in a similar 1989 study that “the personal views of many oncologists seem to be in striking contrast to communications intended for the public.”

Colorectal: no evidence exists that survival is improved by chemotherapy.
Gastric: no clear evidence.
Pancreatic: largest study “completely negative.” Longer survival in the control group untreated.
Bladder: no clinical trial done.
Breast: no direct evidence that chemotherapy prolongs survival. Use is “ethically questionable.”
Ovarian: no direct evidence, but probably a small advantage from cis-platinum regimens. But non-randomized comparisons “almost worthless for assessment of therapy.
Cervix and corpus uteri: no improved survival.
Head and neck: no survival benefit, but occasional “positive effect” from shrinkage of tumors.

Breast cancer activist Rose Kushner wrote that by 1981 “indiscriminate, automatic adjuvant chemotherapy was replacing the Halsted radical mastectomy as therapeutic overkill in the United States.” Thomas Nealon MD, Professor of Surgery at NYU School of Medicine, Concluded in 1990 that “The treatment of this tumor now has slipped from too much surgery to too much adjuvant therapy.”