Quotations from Never Fear Cancer Again

Most cancer research dollars have been wasted by asking the wrong questions, looking in the wrong places, and recycling the same failed approaches while expecting different results. Conventional cancer treatments damage health, cause new cancers, lower the quality of life, and decrease the chances of survival. In fact, most people who die from cancer are not dying from cancer, but from their treatments!

The Author: Raymond Francis, a chemist and a graduate of MIT, found himself in a hospital battling for his life. The diagnosis: acute chemical hepatitis, chronic fatigue, multiple chemical sensitivities, and several autoimmune syndromes, causing him to suffer fatigue, dizziness, impaired memory, heart palpitations, diarrhea, numbness, seizures and numerous other ailments. Knowing death was imminent unless he took action, Francis decided to research solutions for his disease himself. His findings and eventual recovery led him to conclude that almost all disease can be both prevented and reversed. This is what he wrote: “I brought myself back from the brink of medically certain death at age forty-eight. At age seventy-four, I am in superior health. I never get sick and feel and function like I am in my twenties, with boundless energy and a sharp mind. I have only one cold in the last twenty-four years.”

Root Causes of Chronic Diseases

There is only ONE disease (but given many different names by doctors)!

The body wants to be well, it knows how to be well, and it will be well if only we give it a chance. To give it a chance, our job is to give the body what it needs and then not interfere with its work.
Because cancer is a process and not a thing, attempting to surgically remove it, poison it with chemotherapy or burn it with radiation doesn’t work. The cancer will likely come back because the process of producing cancer is still operating.
There are two reason why cells malfunction: deficiency and toxicity. When cells don’t get what they need to function properly or when they get too much of something that interferes with their operations, they’ll malfunction. To get well and stay well, it is necessary to remove the deficiencies and toxicities and restore cells to normal function.
Health is your responsibility. For those willing to accept responsibility for their health, miracles happen.
We dramatically increase the number of cancer cells … What is driving this explosion? Our junk-food diets, living in a sea of manmade toxins and electromagnetic fields, high-stress lifestyles, lack of exercise, exposure to artificial light and health-damaging medical treatments.
The reality is: We are now eating a diet, functioning in an environment and living a lifestyle that promotes cancer.
These … factors also shift the body’s internal environment to one that promotes the growth of cancer. You must change your internal environment into one that supports health rather than one that promotes cancer.
You must learn how to give your cells the nutrients they need, how to reduce your toxic load and how to live a lifestyle that supports health rather than disease.
Cancer can be prevented and reversed by addressing the underlying causes.

Medicine’s Failure to Cure Cancer

The disease we fear the most: cancer … and the treatments are worse than the disease. There is a reason why people fear cancer the most: conventional cancer treatments don’t work.
More Americans die of cancer EACH year than all the servicemen and women who lost their lives in World War II, Korea and Vietnam put together.
Every 30 seconds more than one person is being diagnosed with cancer. And more than one person dies every minute.

Why Researchers Failed to Find a Cure for Cancer

Most cancer research dollars … have been spent trying to find new moneymaking treatments for cancer rather than finding what causes cancer and discovering natural cures.
New cancer treatments are constantly being developed, highly publicised and tested – but none of them work.
Cancer researchers are asking the wrong questions, looking in all the wrong places and recycling the same failed approaches while expecting different results.
There is little money to be made in preventing or curing cancer. The money is in diagnosing and treating cancer.

Consequences of Medical Failure

Conventional cancer treatments damage your health, cause new cancers, lower your quality of life and decrease your chances of survival.
They are both ineffective and dangerous.
You can cut, poison and burn the symptom all you want, but unless you turn off the cancer process – you still have cancer and it will come back.
Today, most people who die from cancer are not dying from cancer. Most cancer patients die from their treatments.
You can actually live longer and better if you do nothing because “doing nothing” does no further damage to your already sick cells.
Journalist Upton Sinclair wrote: “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Medical Treatment for Cancer

Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation all suppress the immune system and cancer grows and metastasizes when the body’s natural immune defense are depressed.
In almost all cases, conventional treatments actually make matters worse and work against long-term recovery.
Conventional medicine has little to offer the cancer patient except high costs, pain and perhaps a few additional weeks of miserable, low-quality life – yet doctors are telling us it is effective.
If your cancer has metastasised, and most have by the time they are diagnosed, you need to know that conventional treatments will not help you.

Surgery

Surgery is known to promote the spread of active cancer cells throughout the body by a process called tumour spillage.
Even a diagnostic needle biopsy can spill cancer cells into the bloodstream or lymphatic system and spread active cancer cells throughout the body.
Removing a primary tumour reduces the body’s natural production of cancer-fighting substances. The tumour stimulates the production of antitumour chemicals; removing the tumour stops their productions. The growth of distant clusters of inactive cancer cells is no longer inhibited, allowing whole new cancers to grow.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy drugs and radiation are themselves carcinogenic, causing entirely new cancers a few years later. Chemotherapy drugs are some of the most powerful carcinogens known.
Chemotherapy increases your risk of dying from cancer as well as from infection.
Chemotherapy kills only the cancer cells that are the most susceptible to the drug. The tumour shrinks and your doctors declare success. However, the cancer cells that are more drug resistant don’t die. They continue to multiply and the cancer comes roaring back.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) … defines “effective” as achieving a 50 percent or more reduction in tumour size for 28 days. Does that sound effective to you?
Despite the fact it has been known for decades that chemotherapy doesn’t work, neither doctors nor patients seem prepared to give it up.

Medical X-rays

X-rays are a type of ionizing radiation, and is one of the best-known and universally recognised causes of cancer.
Radiation damages DNA and switches cancer on, yet conventional medicine remains in denial, insisting that diagnostic x-rays are safe, even though it is an established fact that ionizing radiation is not safe.
Dr. John Gofman, a medical doctor, nuclear physicist and renowned radiation expert … concluded after decades of research that x-rays are an essential cofactor in more than 60 percent of all cancers.
Gofman estimated that more than 80 percent of all breast cancer is caused by chest x-rays, mammograms and other x-rays for spinal, back and neck problems.
Radiation damage to genes is cumulative over a person’s lifetime and as small exposures accumulate, the risk of developing cancer goes up.
CT-scans are particularly dangerous because their excessive amount of x-ray exposure. A single full-body CT scan exposes a person to a total radiation dose close to the dose linked to cancer in Japanese atomic bomb survivors. Each additional scan adds significantly to a person’s total lifetime radiation exposure.
Children are especially vulnerable to radiation and should be protected from x-rays.

Cancer Statistics Are Misleading

Cancer statistics have been manipulated …. The following are a few examples of how the statistics are being falsely manipulated.
Lung cancer is the top cause of cancer death in the US. Lung cancer kills more people than colorectal, breast and prostate cancers combined. Deaths from lung cancer are not included in the statistics!
Skin cancers are not life threatening, but they are included in the survival statistics!
Other non-life-threatening, precancerous conditions, such as ductal carcinoma-in-situ are also included in the survival statistics.
To hide medicine’s colossal failure to deal with cancer ….(they) have invented an entirely new definition of the word “cure.” “Cure” is arbitrarily defined as being alive five years after diagnosis. This means if you die five years and one day after diagnosis, you have been cured. This phony definition is deliberately deceptive. It makes the survival statistics look better and fools a lot of people into thinking that conventional cancer treatments can help them.
As a result of collapsed immune systems, cancer patients develop infections, such as pneumonia and many die from these infections. The death is then recorded as being death from pneumonia or other infection and not from cancer or the toxic chemotherapy drug that actually killed them.
To hide its failure, the extent of deceptions in the cancer industry is so colossal that even clinical-trial studies on cancer are rigged to give misleading results. For example, say there is a 90-day trial of a new chemotherapy drug. People in the chemotherapy group who die before the end of the 90-day period are dropped from the study and their deaths are not recorded. Such people could be dying from the chemotherapy drug or from the cancer itself. Meanwhile, anyone in the control group who dies within the 90-day period is listed as a cancer death. This deceptive practice helps to get dangerous cancer drugs approved.
Published cancer statistics are fictitious.

How to Get Well Again

The author proposed a The Beyond Health Model. It model acknowledges only One Disease – malfunctioning cells. There are many different ways in which they can malfunction, producing thousands of different symptoms. Doctors call these different diseases. They key to understanding this is to understand why cells malfunction.

There are only Two Causes of cellular malfunction:

Deficiency: the lack of something cells need to function properly
Toxicity: the presence of something that interferes with normal cell function

Think of deficiency and toxicity as too little or too much.

The Beyond Health Model offers Six Pathways, six roads, which lead to either health or disease. Where you are and what direction you move on each pathway will determine the state of your health. The Six Pathways are:

Nutrition: chronic deficiency of even a single nutrient can cause disease
Toxins: toxins in our environment interfere with cell chemistry
Mental: the activity of our mind affects every cell in our body
Physical: exercise resets your body’s metabolism
Genetic: genes are not a guarantee that something will happen – just the potential for something to happen
Medical: health-enhancing therapies – not to be confused with conventional medicine – repair and strengthen the cells in your body.

Click here to download: The Roadmap to Ultimate Health

http://www.beyondhealthnews.com/bh_custompages/freereport/FreeReport_UltimateRoadmap.pdf

Switch Off Your Cancer Process

Cancer is a biological process and in order for cancer to happen you have to turn that process on. If you can turn the process on, you can turn it off.
Most Americans, especially those over age fifty, now have numerous microclusters of cancerous cells in their bodies. Our only option is to keep the microtumours from growing. Even if you have microtumours that are already growing, they take years to develop to the stage where they can be diagnosed. This means that you have time to change your lifestyle and make them go away before they become a problem.
Start now by avoiding processed oils, sugar, salt, wheat, milk products and excess animal protein.
As much as possible, avoid toxins in the food you eat and in your environment.
Avoid processed foods.

To get sick, all you have to do is eat the Standard American Diet (SAD). The SAD has been depleted of essential nutrients and is loaded with toxic chemicals. A cancer-causing diet creates an internal environment that supports cancer.

You are what you eat. Every cell in your body is made from what you eat and drink. You must be willing to shift to an anti-cancer diet. Simply eating a diet of predominantly fruits and vegetables can cut your cancer risk by 50 percent and in some cases by 75 percent!

What nature provides is food; what man provides is garbage. If it comes out of a factory, it is low in nutrition and high in toxins and will make you sick.

Is The Present Day Cancer Treatment Based on Faulty and Inadequate Science?

Albert Einstein is said to have defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. This great scientist went on to say that “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”

You may interpret the above quotations anyway you like and for whatever reason or circumstances you like. Let me put them in the perspective of my own work – herbal therapy for cancer. If I have patients coming to me every day and I prescribe A, B or C to them and they don’t get well. I must be a real idiot to keep on giving out the same A, B or C to them again and again hoping that one day someone get cured!

To avoid being an idiot, I tell patients to stop taking our herbs if they feel that they are NOT getting any better after two or three weeks. We do not want to mislead you nor waste your precious time. I take this stance because I really believe in what Einstein said.

There is another lesson I learnt from Einstein. To him complex problems may not need complex answers. There can just be a simple answer to it! But the problem is, many people in this world want to believe that a complex problem must have a “scientific, complicated and complex” answer. That is why we end up with having “experts.”

These so-called experts are highly educated people who talk a language that you and I may not understand. They make things to appear complicated and complex (so that their expertise are always required!) Let me repeat, any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It needs a real touch of humility, courage and a lot of common sense to see things differently. In short, complex problem can just be solved simply! Unfortunately again, to many people simple answers are not impressive – too good to be true!

For the past week, I spent some time surfing the net in addition to reading a book. I have shared with you what I read about the insights of Professor Paul Davies in the previous posting, Looking At Cancer Through the Eyes of a Physical Scientist, Stop thinking cancer as a disease! I don’t think we need to cure cancer.

I must admit I don’t know if I am happy or I am angry after reading all these. Perhaps a mixture of both.

I am happy, because I thought the experts have decided to wake up and they don’t want to be insane (as defined above) anymore. For the past many decades the cancer problem was handled by “experts” who make things more complex and violent. And the result was dismal. Then not too long ago, someone important decided that perhaps non-cancer experts could provide a better solution to the present day cancer problem. They have decided that it is time to see things from outside the box. For that, I am real glad.

Why was I angry at the same time? If you hear stories day in and day out that people don’t get better because of someone else’s “insanity” you cannot help but become angry – why does the world allow or even encourage such a thing to happen? I don’t have to answer that question! Some patients know why.

And to make things even worse, alternative healers who propose something “effective” but outside the norm or prevailing paradigm are labeled as quacks or snake oil peddlers.

In this second posting, I ask this question: is the present day cancer treatment based on faulty and inadequate science? I don’t have to answer that question either. Here are some research papers that I came across. Bear with me if you find it difficult to understand the jargons used and the ideas beside the reports.

In a paper, Cancer treatment as a game published in Physical Biology, 2012, Paul Orlando et al wrote:

Chemotherapy for metastatic cancer commonly fails due to evolution of drug resistance in tumor cells.
We view cancer treatment as a game in which the oncologists choose a therapy and tumors ‘choose’ an adaptive strategy.

In a paper by Ariosto Silva et al (Cancer Res; 72(24); 6362–70. 2012.)

Many cancers adapt to chemotherapeutic agents by upregulating membrane efflux pumps that export drugs from the cytoplasm, but this response comes at an energetic cost. Chemoresistant cells must consume excess resources to maintain resistance mechanisms.
In breast cancer patients, expression of these pumps is low in tumors before therapy but increases after treatment.
- The authors proposed a new method of treatment which they called “adaptive therapy.” They wrote: “Our findings challenge the existing flawed paradigm of maximum dose treatment, a strategy that inevitably produces drug resistance.”

Source: http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/72/24/6362.abstract)

What is adaptive therapy?

At the moment, the future of cancer research seems to be centered in the field of targeted chemotherapy. However, it is evident that currently neither conventional nor targeted chemotherapies will suffice against resilient tumors.

Conventional therapies generally aim for maximum cell death in the shortest amount of time using fixed regimens of drugs designed to eliminate as much of the tumor mass as possible under tolerable levels of toxicity to the patient.

However, our perception of cancer has begun to change. It is becoming increasingly evident that an individual’s cancer can be viewed as a Darwinian ecosystem containing a heterogeneous mixture of genetically distinct cancer cell types that compete amongst each other for space and resources.

This competition, combined with conditions within the tumor micro-environment and cancer phenotypes conducive to increased DNA damage, stimulate the rapid evolution of tumor lineages. Unfortunately, this often renders current therapies ineffective against highly adaptable cancers that quickly develop resistant cell types.

Adaptive Therapy, a relatively new field of cancer treatment, has the potential to counteract cancer’s ability to adapt.

When intensive drug regimens are applied, the competition pressure of the chemosensitive cells is removed. This allows the resistant cells to proliferate freely, essentially dooming the patient.

An adaptive approach would take advantage of this discrepancy in fitness to hold the overall population of cancer cells at a low constant, avoiding the possibility of tumors consisting entirely of resistant cells. Essentially, the ultimate goal of adaptive therapy would be to manage a tumor mass efficiently by administering drugs in a dynamic regimen tailored to each individual cancer, thereby allowing the patient to effectively outlive the cancer by managing its growth over time.

Source: http://islaslab.blogspot.com/2011/05/cancer-management-through-adaptive.html

In another paper, Adaptive therapy (Cancer Research, 69:4894-903,2009) Gatenby et al. wrote:

A number of successful systemic therapies are available for treatment of disseminated cancers. However, tumor response is often transient, and therapy frequently fails due to emergence of resistant populations. The latter reflects the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment as well as the evolutionary capacity of cancer phenotypes to adapt to therapeutic perturbations.
Although cancers are highly dynamic systems, cancer therapy is typically administered according to a fixed, linear protocol.
If resistant populations are present before administration of therapy, treatments designed to kill maximum numbers of cancer cells remove this inhibitory effect and actually promote more rapid growth of the resistant populations.
We present an alternative approach in which treatment is continuously modulated to achieve a fixed tumor population. The goal of adaptive therapy is to enforce a stable tumor burden by permitting a significant population of chemosensitive cells to survive so that they, in turn, suppress proliferation of the less fit but chemoresistant subpopulations.

In a paper, Physics of cancer – the impact of heterogeneity, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, Vol. 3: 363-382, 2012, Qiucen Zhang and Robert Austin wrote:

It is a common mistake to view cancer as a single disease with a single possible cure which we have just not found yet.
In reality cancer takes on many forms that share a common symptom: uncontrolled cell growth and successful invasion of cancer colonies to remote regions of the body.
The key reason why we may never be able to defeat cancer may lie in the extreme heterogeneity of the population of the cells in a tumor: there is no one magic bullet.
All malignant cancers… are fundamentally governed by Darwinian dynamics.
The process of carcinogenesis requires genetic instability and highly selective local microenvironments, the combination of which promotes somatic evolution.
These microenvironmental forces, specifically hypoxia (low oxygen conditions), acidosis and reactive oxygen species, are not only highly selective, but are also able to induce genetic instability.
As a result, malignant cancers are dynamically evolving clades of cells living in distinct microhabitats that almost certainly ensure the emergence of therapy-resistant populations.
Cytotoxic cancer therapies also impose intense evolutionary selection pressures on the surviving cells and thus increase the evolutionary rate.

Gillies et al ( Nat Rev Cancer. 12: 487-93, 2012) in their paper Evolutionary dynamics of carcinogenesis and why targeted therapy does not work.

Eric Schuur in his blog post Time to Rethink Cancer Therapy? on 28 November 2012 wrote:

The feeling of frustration in chasing cancer up the path only to have it resurrect out of seemingly nowhere still further upstream is a signal to me. I have sensed in this frustration a signal to think about cancer pathogenesis and treatment in new ways, like I’m sure others have.
Recently I have been gratified to hear a number of researchers propose new views of what cancer is and new strategies for treating it.
I have been a member of a tumor microenvironment interest group for a while, mostly to keep an ear to the ground in that area. Having spent many years trying to grow cancer cells in various ways, it is clear to me that they depend heavily on their microenvironment to survive.
I noticed a few publications suggesting that resistance to chemical therapy may be mediated by more than just the response of the tumor cells. These studies suggest that the tumor microenvironment may provide protection from anti-cancer agents by secreting of growth factors from stromal cells intermingled with the tumor cells.
In one study, WNT16B growth factor secretion was induced in stromal fibroblasts, which in turn protected the cancer cells from programmed cell death.
Rethinking cancer therapy has been proposed by Robert Gatenby and colleagues for some time.

Source: http://mendelspod.com/blog/time-to-rethink-cancer-therapy#sthash.EvaA1gqw.dpbs

Comments

Let me briefly summarise what these researchers said.

1. Chemotherapy for metastatic cancer commonly fails due to evolution of tumour cells to become drug resistant.

2. So going to the oncologist is like playing a game .. the oncologists choose a therapy and the tumors ‘choose’ an adaptive strategy. A famous Singapore oncologist put it in a different way – It is just like buying a lottery hoping to strike a jackpot!

3. When chemo drugs are pumped into you, the cancer cells work overtime to pump out the drugs from their cells. If no chemo drugs were applied, the pump activity was low. This activity increased after chemo treatment. Increased activity means the cells need more energy – will this not make your MORE sick?

4. The researchers said that the commonly practised maximum-dose-shoot-to-kill treatment is flawed. Oncologists have been doing this for years. And the patients are made to believe that the stronger the dosage of poison used the higher the chances of “cure.” And that practice has now been challenged!

5. Now there is a new buzz word — the future of cancer research seems to be centered in the field of targeted chemotherapy. Take note of the terminology used nowadays, Targeted Therapy! However, it is evident that currently neither conventional nor targeted chemotherapies will suffice against resilient tumors. Target therapy make a lot of money but for patients I don’t see much meaningful results. Very often, we see disappointment. Why?

6. The researchers provide the answer: tumor response is often transient, and therapy frequently fails due to emergence of resistant populations. Why are they resistant to the chemo-drugs? The latter reflects the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment as well as the evolutionary capacity of cancer phenotypes to adapt to therapeutic perturbations.

7. Is the kill-all-cancer-cells strategy that is done today the correct approach? Not so. You don’t have to kill all the cancer cells in your body. The goal of adaptive therapy is to enforce a stable tumor burden by permitting a significant population of chemosensitive cells to survive so that they, in turn, suppress proliferation of the less fit but chemoresistant subpopulations.

8. It is a common mistake to view cancer as a single disease with a single possible cure which we have just not found yet. The key reason why we may never be able to defeat cancer may lie in the extreme heterogeneity of the population of the cells in a tumor: there is no one magic bullet.

9. The process of cancer that occurs in your body requires genetic instability and highly selective local microenvironments, the combination of which promotes somatic evolution. Hypoxia (low oxygen conditions), acidosis and reactive oxygen species … are also able to induce genetic instability. Don’t blame it all on only the genes. You don’t have to remove your two beautiful breasts trying to prevent cancer! O, poor actress? There are MORE to it than just the genes.

10. Malignant cancers are dynamically evolving … living in distinct microhabitats that almost certainly ensure the emergence of therapy-resistant populations. Cytotoxic cancer therapies also impose intense evolutionary selection pressures on the surviving cells and thus increase the evolutionary rate. Take note, cytotoxic cancer therapies also contribute to this problem! You don’t cure cancer – you make cancer – with chemotherapy!

11. At long last, someone – Eric Schuur in his blog post said: Time to Rethink Cancer Therapy? Having spent many years trying to grow cancer cells in various ways, it is clear to me that they depend heavily on their microenvironment to survive. Cancer treatment is not just about KILLING cancer cells. There is more to this!

12. If there is one message you need to know, here it is: Chemotherapy Spreads Cancer and Makes It More Aggressive. (Click link to read more.)

If you have appetite for more, read my next post: Quotations from: NEVER FEAR CANCER AGAIN.

Colon Cancer Stage 2: Operation but no chemotherapy or medication.

Eight years on and still doing fine

HM (T-337) was 72 years old when she was diagnosed with colon cancer. A colonoscopy done on 21 December 2005 indicated that the lumen of the distal sigmoid colon (30 cm from the anal verge) was obstructed by circumferential tumour.

HM underwent an operation the next day. The pathology report indicated a well differentiated adenocarcinoma, Duke’s B, T4NoMx.

Perhaps due to her age, no further medical treatments were indicated. HM’s son came to seek our help on 8 January 2006. She was prescribed Capsule A, C-Tea, GI 1 and GI 2 teas.

Initially HM went back to her doctor for routine check up. Nothing was amiss. Her CA 19.9 was at 55.1 on 22 August 2006 and on 24 January 2007 it was down to 45.3. After this no more blood test was done. Also HM did not go back to see her doctor anymore.

The son was very consistent in taking care of his mother. It was not until 28 October 2011 – almost six years later, that I got to talk with his son (video below).

Son: She is my mother. She does not know that she had cancer. I did not tell her about it. That’s the reason why I did not bring her to see you.

She had cancer in December 2005, and she did not undergo chemotherapy?

Son: No, the doctor said no need to go for chemo.

Was she alright after the surgery? Can move her bowels?

Son: No problem at all.

Then you came to see us on 8 January 2006 – that means more than five years ago – almost six years now. During these five years plus, did she ever encounter any problem at all?

Son: No, her health was very good. Now she is asking me if she can stop taking the herbs.

Ha, ha, most people are like that. Hang on, let me ask you some more questions. She did not encounter any problem at all since after the operation?

Son: No, never had any problem.

Did you return to your doctor for checkup?

Son: Yes, initially during the first three years. After that we never go and see the doctor anymore.

What did the doctor say?

Son: Nothing much, but he started to give her “vitamin” injections. No, we don’t want to go and see him anymore – spending a few hundred of ringgit each time. My mother also did not want to go and see the doctor anymore.

Okay, most patients behave like your mother. After taking the herbs for some years, they want to stop taking the herbs. And how old is your mother now? Son: 79 years old.

And she is strong and healthy?

Son: Yes. In fact I am planning to bring her to Indonesia for a holiday.

Let me tell you this. We don’t know when the cancer is going to strike back again. There is this lady. She is as old as your mother. And she also had colon cancer and had been taking the herbs for more than three years already. One day she came in and asked to stop taking her herbs. Her cancer came back a few months later and she had to be hospitalized again. Now she is recovering and taking back the herbs. The situation was made worse because she started to take all the “bad foods” as well, besides stopping the herbs. I did warn her and her family about this but at the same time said that it is up to her to decide if she wanted to stop or continue with the herbs. So, know that the risk of recurrence is there.

Son: My mother actually likes to take the herbal teas. It is the capsule A that she does not want to take.

Capsule A is our “master” herb. What is so difficult about swallowing the capsule?

Son: That is the problem. She did not want to swallow it. But she likes the herbal teas.

Most patients came to us complaining about the herbal tea – they want us to give them only capsules. They don’t like the teas – too much trouble. Your mother is the other way round.

Okay, over these five years, did she ever complain about the herbal tea – bad taste, bad smell?

Son: No, the herbal tea makes her move her bowels better. Actually she has not stopped the herbs yet. I shall ask her to go on.

Conversation with her son again on 19 July 2013

Looking At Cancer Through the Eyes of a Physical Scientist

Stop thinking cancer as a disease! I don’t think we need to cure cancer

Cancer research has traditionally been carried out by biologists and medical researchers. They did not seem to get anywhere, in spite of being able to generate tons and tons of data.

In 2008, the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) created 12 “Physical Science-Oncology Centers institutions” and sponsored mathematicians and physical scientists to initiate new, non-traditional approaches to cancer research.

NCI Director John E. Niederhuber said: “By bringing a fresh set of eyes to the study of cancer, these new centers have great potential to advance, and sometimes challenge, accepted theories about cancer and its supportive microenvironment. Physical scientists think in terms of time, space, pressure, heat and evolution in ways that we hope will lead to new understandings of the multitude of forces that govern cancer.”

One of the scientists involved in the “rethinking” of cancer is Professor Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist. He is Regents’ Professor and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, and Principal Investigator in the Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology, all at Arizona State University.

I have the benefit of reading some of Dr. Davies’ papers found in the internet.

Physics not biology may be key to beating cancer. Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21728970.200-physics-not-biology-may-be-key-to-beating-cancer.html

Cancer: The beat of an ancient drum. Source: The Guardian, 25 April 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/25/cancer-evolution-ancient-toolkit-genes

New research program to approach cancer studies differently. Source: http://www.statepress.com/archive/node/8973

Rethinking cancer. Physics World, 2010. Source: http://cancer-insights.asu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Physics-World-June-20101.pdf

For your information, let me quote what this learned, non-medical professor said about cancer. Indeed we need non-medical researchers to call a spade a spade. Let’s hope that those in the medical profession take heed.

Present Day Cancer Research

Cancer touches almost everyone in some way. Forty years ago President Richard Nixon declared a “war on cancer”. Yet in spite of $100 billion of taxpayer-funded research in the US alone, the mortality and morbidity rates for most cancers have remained almost unchanged.

Dozens of much-hyped “cures” developed by drug companies are either useless or have marginal effect.

Billions of dollars have been spent on cancer research and a million research papers have been published, yet most cancer sufferers have not benefited greatly from that effort.

With the exception of a handful of cancer types, such as childhood leukaemia, progress on treatments has been limited to baby steps … leading to marginal extensions of life expectancy.

Cancer biology is a subject about which a vast amount is known but very little is understood. So could it be that researchers cannot see the wood for the trees?

Right now, the huge cancer research programme is long on technical data, but short on understanding.

Cancer research is dominated by genetics and biochemistry. That’s why we have the therapies, genetic and chemotherapy, as the main approaches. I think that we can open up a whole new frontier just by thinking about the problem in a totally different way.

Changing Concept of Cell

In the 19th century, living organisms were widely regarded as machines infused by vital forces.
Biologists eventually came to realise that cells are … complex networks of chemical reaction pathways.
Then came the genetics revolution, which describes life in the informational language of instructions, codes and signalling.

Mainstream research today focuses almost exclusively on chemical pathways or genetic sequencing. For example, drugs are designed to block reaction pathways implicated in cancer. But while of great scientific interest, such projects have not led to the much-anticipated breakthrough. Why?

There are fundamental obstacles: living cells, including cancer cells, are a bottomless pit of complexity, and cancer cells are notoriously heterogeneous. A reductionist approach that seeks to unravel the details of every pathway of every cancer cell type might employ researchers for decades and consume billions of dollars, with little impact clinically.

Here is … another way of looking at cells. In addition to being bags of chemicals and information processing systems, they are also physical objects, with properties such as size, mass, shape, elasticity, free energy, surface stickiness and electrical potential. Cancer cells contain pumps, levers, pulleys and other paraphernalia familiar to physicists and engineers. Furthermore, many of these properties are known to change systematically as cancer progresses in malignancy.

The challenge is now to unify all three pictures – chemical, genetic and mechanistic.

Need to Change the Perception About Disease and Cure

To make a start … it is helpful to stop thinking of cancer as a disease to be cured.

Many accounts misleadingly describe cancer as rogue cells running amok.

Cancer cells are not themselves “germs”; rather, they are part of one’s own body, misbehaving in a manner that may produce undesirable consequences for the organism.

I don’t think we need to cure cancer. We do not need a “cure”; rather, we need to better control and manage how cancer cells behave and, ideally, prevent cells turning malignant in the first place.

In fact, I don’t really think of cancer as a disease as much as an alternative form of living matter. We don’t need to cure it, we just need to manage it for long enough that people die of something else.

It is a misconception to think that people either “have cancer” or not. Cancers usually go through a progression from mostly innocuous progenitor cells to full blown malignancy, and at any given time most people (at least those of middle age and beyond) harbour cancer cells and even small tumours in their bodies that produce no ill effects.

Cancer cells are not the invincible enemy of folklore, but recalcitrant variants of healthy cells that face their own struggle for survival against the body’s immune system.

We need to get away from the notion of a cure, and think of controlling or managing cancer. And just as the effects of ageing can be mitigated without a full understanding of the process, the same could be true of cancer.

Darwinism and Cancer: the Evolutionary Roots

With no prior knowledge of cancer, I started asking some very basic questions. What struck me from the outset is that something as pervasive and stubborn as cancer must be a deep part of the story of life itself.

Sure enough, cancer is found in almost all multicellular organisms, suggesting its origins stretch back hundreds of millions of years.

Oncologists tend to think of cancer as a motley collection of cells gone berserk, but to me the way that tumours grow and spread to other organs indicates an organised and systematic strategy, designed to evade all that the body and the medical profession can throw at it. Such well-honed behaviour suggests they are the product of a long period of biological evolution.

Cancer is pervasive among all organisms (not just mammals) in which adult cells proliferate. There is a simple – some may say simplistic – Darwinian explanation of cancer’s insidiousness, which is based on the fact that all life on Earth was originally single-celled. Each cell had a basic imperative: replicate, replicate, replicate. However, the emergence of multicellular organisms about 550million years ago required individual cells to co-operate by subordinating their own selfish genetic agenda to that of the organism as a whole.

The genes needed to fashion the primitive cellular aggregates of the Proterozoic era did not all become defunct. Some were incorporated into the genomes of later, more sophisticated, organisms, and lurk inside human beings to this day. That’s because they still serve a crucial function.

It has long been recognised that there are many similarities between cancer and embryo development, and evidence is mounting that some genes expressed during embryogenesis get re-awakened in cancer. When an embryo develops, its genes lay down a body plan, starting with the most basic and most ancient features.

So when an embryo develops, identical stem cells progressively differentiate into specialized cells that differ from organ to organ – be it kidney, brain or lung. All these cells contain the same genes, but not all of the genes are constantly active. The body has a number of chemical mechanisms to switch genes on and off, which allow cells in different organs to have different properties that can vary with time. The colon, for example, needs to rapidly replenish cells sloughed off by the passage of food, whereas the cells in other organs, such as in the brain, have a slow turnover and reproduce only rarely.

With advancing age, however, that command and control system develops flaws. If a cell does stop responding properly to the regulatory signals, it may go on reproducing in an uncontrolled way, forming a tumour specific to the organ in which it arises.

The implications of our theory, if correct, are profound. Rather than cancers being rogue cells degenerating randomly into genetic chaos, they are better regarded as organised footsoldiers marching to the beat of an ancient drum, recapitulating a billion-year-old lifestyle. As cancer progresses in the body, so more and more of the ancestral core within the genetic toolkit is activated, replaying evolution’s story in reverse sequence. And each step confers a more malignant trait, making the oncologist’s job harder.

It is well known that cells regulate the action of genes not just as a result of chemical signals, but because of the physical properties of their micro-environment. They can sense forces such as shear stresses and the elasticity of nearby tissue. They are also responsive to temperature, electric fields, pH, pressure and oxygen concentration. Most normal cells seem to come pre-loaded with a “cancer subroutine” that can be triggered by a variety of insults.

Metastasis – the Spread of Cancer

Only 10 percent of people die from primary tumors. The mere presence of cancer cells in the body is not in itself necessarily a danger.

It is their ability to target, invade and cling to other tissues that leads to problems.

Most existing cancer treatments involve trying to remove a tumour surgically or destroying it with radiation … oncologists are often in the dark about why certain drugs actually work, or why normal dose–response relationships do not seem to apply. Cancer cells are notorious for mutating rapidly, often developing resistance to specific drugs or undergoing a resurgence years later with an acquired immunity somehow remembered.

Chemotherapy can be effective at shrinking tumours and prolonging life somewhat, but … can even be counter-productive by leaving a handful of resistant cells alive with no competition to arrest their explosive spread. As a result, drugs are rarely the perfect solution.

When cancer cells spread around the body, this is a physics problem. These cells are microscopic bodies being swept along in this raging torrent. They wriggle around, they latch on to surfaces, they drill their way through. This is the sort of language that physicists and engineers can understand.

Although metastasis seems fiendishly efficient, most disseminated cancer cells never go on to cause trouble. The vast majority die, and the survivors may lie dormant for years or even decades, either as individual, quiescent, cells in the bone marrow, or as micro-metastases in tissues, before erupting into proliferating secondary tumours.

When tumours start shedding cells into the bloodstream and lymphatic system, allowing the cancer to spread around the body, a secondary tumour may then develop in organs far removed from the original.

The spread of cancer presents many possibilities for clinical intervention once the dream of a cure has been abandoned. For example, if the period of dormancy can be extended by, say, a factor of five, many breast, colon and prostate cancers would cease to be a health issue. How could this be achieved?

A key hallmark of cancer is that it can also grow in an organ where it does not belong; for example, a prostate-cancer cell may grow in a lymph node, or an ovarian-cancer cell in the liver.

Metastatic cells may lie dormant, like spores, for many years in foreign organs, evading the body’s immune system while retaining their potency. Healthy cells, in contrast, soon die if they are transported beyond their rightful organ.

Although tumour cells struggle to obtain oxygen from the normal blood supply, in response they can switch their metabolism to a low-oxygen cycle, thereby creating acidic conditions as a by-product that can harm other cells. In some respects, the self-centred nature of cancer cells is a reversion to an ancient, pre-multicellular lifestyle.

Cancer cells are therefore neither rogue “selfish cells”, nor do they display the collective discipline of organisms with fully differentiated organs. They fall somewhere in between, perhaps resembling an early form of loosely organized cell colonies.

Nowadays, most cancer researchers adopt a “followthe-genes” approach, based on the notion that an accumulation of defective (mutated) or misbehaving genes are the primary cause of cancer. Humans have between 20 000 and 30 000 genes in total, but many are switched off depending on the type of cell or its stage of growth.

Comments

The world ought to be glad to learn that at last someone has decided that perhaps non-medical scientists ought to have a look at cancer from a different perspective. So the US National Cancer Institute decided to invite non-medical experts to research on cancer.

Is this not what Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20th century said years back?

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
When all think alike, no one thinks very much.

I am happy that Professor Paul Davies had come out with his new insights about cancer. He made these suggestions:

STOP thinking of cancer as a disease to be cured that must be totally destroyed or bombed out of existence.

STOP frightening or put FEAR in us that cancer consist of rogue cells running amok. These are not an enemy. It is a part of the complexity of life that we inherited since life on earth begun.

TEACH us how to manage the cancer like we manage our ageing process.

For years, practitioners of alternative healing are saying the same things. At CA Care I have been telling patients to learn how to live with their cancer. There is no need to fight. Fighting to me implies “war” – and we don’t want to start a war in our body. We need peace and harmony. When the times comes, let us die with our cancer.

Watch this video.

Many cancer patients come to us with a very naive notion. They are bought up by the idea that chemo is going to destroy all the cancer cells and they will be cured. The enemy in the body is done with. Soon afterwards many patients learn the folly of their ignorance.

Then, they are told, If the medical treatments cannot destroy all, at least the cancer is brought under control. Here again patients are just being misled — read the next posting to know that medical treatments could actually cause cancer to spread more and make it even more aggressive!`

HOW WE DO HARM PART 2: CASE OF BREAST CANCER

Review by YEONG SEK YEE & KHADIJAH BINTI SHAARI

In this segment of HOW WE DO HARM (or How Doctors Do Harm), we summarise 2 cases of ladies with breast cancer and how harm was inflicted onto them by their respective doctors.

In Chapters 3 and 4 of the book, Dr Otis Webb Brawley, an oncologist, described 2 typical breast cancer treatment cases that were referred to him.

In the first case Helen, 50, had mastectomy in 1990 to remove a 4 cm lump together with 21 lymph nodes, all negative and classified stage II. She was “offered” post surgical chemotherapy. Her oncologist explained that a stronger dose is better than a weaker dose. “More is better” has been the hallmark of the oncology profession since the 1950s, the more chemotherapy you administered to the patient, the more effective in terms of killing the disease.”

To save Helen from succumbing to the toxic effects of chemotherapy, she was “offered” autologus bone marrow transplantation since her insurance company will pay for more of the costs of the transplant and chemotherapy (page 32). The side effects (page 33) Helen experienced from the transplant and chemotherapy was far more severe than she expected or was explained to her.

She experienced the following:

Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, dehydration,
Her marrow was slow to re-implant and start producing,
She had bleeding caused by a low platelet count and severe anaemia,
She had gastrointestinal bleeding and bleeding from the incisions made to harvest her bone marrow,
She had mouth and gum problems and cardiac rhythm problems,
She had a change in mental status due to electrolyte imbalance,
She had respiratory arrest and is put on a ventilator,
She developed pneumonia and had a tracheotomy

Altogether, she spent 5 months in a hospital only to be discharged to a rehabilitation hospital.

Helen survived it all. However three years after her discharge, she read a news story about randomized clinical trials that showed that bone marrow transplantation for breast cancer doesn’t prolong survival!! (page 33).
Naturally she was devastated. Why had she been subjected to a devastating procedure when no one, including her doctor, could say with certainty whether it worked? Why wasn’t she told about this uncertainty? Was it possible she was duped? Was it possible she had nearly died to help her doctor and various medical institutions accumulate wealth? (page 30)
When confronted, her oncologist admitted and responded that…”this was what everybody was doing at the time” (page 34)…so much for “FIRST, DO NO HARM!!”
Four years later, a routine chest X-ray showed a lesion in Helen’s lungs… had Helen’s breast cancer returned despite the transplant? As further lesions developed in her lungs after the initial chest X-rays, Helen was told by her insurance company that she was pronounced uninsurable (page 36).
From a middle-class woman who has done everything her doctors told her to do and had been put through tremendous amount of what is now considered unnecessary treatments that she suddenly found herself uninsured and dying of cancer. What are her options now? (page 36).
A few months later, Dr Brawley was handed Helen’s PET-CT scan which she described as” it lit up like a Christmas tree.” Indeed the scan lights up bright, showing lesions in the spine, ribs, pelvis, lung, liver and the opposite breast…. What happened to her? (page 40).
This is indeed a real tragedy of “modern, scientifically tested, evidence-based medicine.” Helen received a bone marrow transplant without being told all that was known about it, and, more important, all that was unknown. She got the transplant because she was insured and doctors could convert her suffering into cash (page 45).

In the second case, Lilla Romeo was first diagnosed with breast cancer (Stage 1) in 1995. She had surgery followed by radiation. Five years after the initial diagnosis, a routine scan (how many scans did she have in the 5 years?) showed the disease had returned. The doctors told her that “the prognosis turned grim…the cancer was incurable, and the goal of treatment was to delay the inevitable.” So Lilla was persuaded, and started non-stop chemotherapy (page 71).

In 2003, Lilla remembered an oncology nurse at the New York University Medical asked if she was feeling tired and with a hemoglobin reading just under ten, she was “suggested and offered” cancer-fatigue drugs (at that time, the popular one was Procrit by J&J)

In 2004, she was told that the hospital had switched from Procrit to another drug, Aranesp (manufactured by AMGEN), which caused a burning sensation under her stain at the injection site (page 79).

In 2010, when she requested copies of her medical records from the doctors who had treated her, Lilla learned that she had received a lot more Procrit and Aranesp than she knew. Her first dose was administered on 1/11/2001 and then almost weekly thereafter. Altogether, she was given 221 1/2 doses.

When Lilla was started on the hemoglobin-building drugs (also known as ESAs), little did she know that the drug companies manufactured a medical condition: cancer fatigue. She also had no idea that “her infusion was the front-row seat for observing a spectacular, indeed, cataclysmic, failure in medicine.” Pharmaceutical companies were promoting an untested therapy that was supposed to make patients feel better and stronger when, in fact, it caused strokes and heart attacks and in some cases made tumors grow.

By the time she discovered the harm inflicted on her (after 221 1/2 doses), it was too late. She had spent about US 600,000 for the hemoglobin-building drugs alone. Dr Brawley strongly believed that these drugs have shortened Lilla’s life. She died on June 9, 2010 at the age of 63 (Just before her death, Lilla was suggested and given “Avastin”!!)

A POINT TO PONDER

Have you noticed a new trend in breast cancer treatment? More and more ladies are told that they have to undergo chemotherapy first to shrink the lump (whether the lump size is 3.0 or 3.5 cm) before surgery can be done, then further chemotherapy and radiotherapy and perhaps hormonal treatment.

Why do you need to shrink the lump first in an external organ (like the breast) if mastectomy can be carried out? Recently we have seen a lady with an almost 5 cm lump removed by lumpectomy. So why is it necessary to shrink a lump of 5 cm or even 3.5 cm first by chemotherapy? The patient will incur additional costs (for the chemotherapy drugs) and the additional toxicities and harm to the body.

We welcome your views on this matter.

FURTHER REFERENCES

There are lots of books/references on breast cancer screening/treatments, etc. The following is a short list:-

1) BREAST CANCER: THE HERBAL OPTION by Dr Chris Teo, PhD (If you follow the advice in this book, you will not have to suffer the collateral damage done to Helen and Lilla Romeo in the article above). ISBN No: 978-9832-590231.

2) THE TOPIC OF CANCER by Jessica Richards (Read why and how Jessica decided against chemotherapy – her advice to all readers…”Don’t assume that what you are told by your doctor/oncologist is the only way or the best way for you”…For your information, Jessica did not have surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy and is still alive more than five years later after her diagnosis). ISBN NO: 978-0957-064409

3) YOU DID WHAT? By Hollie and Patrick Quinn (Hollie Quinn was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer while 38 weeks pregnant and just three weeks before her 28^th birthday. She had a mastectomy but refused all other forms of conventional cancer treatments). ISBN No. 978-0-692-009048

4) MY HEALING FROM BREAST CANCER by Dr Barbara Joseph, MD (A physician’s personal story of recovery and transformation). ISBN No. 978-0879-837-112

5) www.drday.com – Website of Dr Lorraine Day, an orthopedic surgeon who healed herself by surgery alone – no chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Watch her DVD…”You can’t improve on GOD”…..how she healed herself.

6) AFTER CANCER TREATMENT by Dr Julie K. Silver, MD, an assistant professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School (she advises patients to explore Eastern and other medical systems-read chapter 6). ISBN NO: 978-081-884382

7) YOUR LIFE IN YOUR HANDS by Professor Jane Plant (Despite five recurrences from 1987 to 1993, she finally defeated her breast cancer using natural methods). ISBN No. 978-0753-505502

8) WHAT YOUR DOCTOR MAY NOT TELL YOU ABOUT BREAST CANCER by Dr John Lee, MD, a hormone specialist and Dr David Java, PhD, a biochemist. Find out why the authors believe that:-

The women who agree to try new chemotherapies are guinea pigs for a type of treatment with a notoriously poor track record (page 13).
Chemotherapy is an attempt to poison the body just short of death in the hope of killing the cancer before the entire body is killed. Most of the time it doesn’t work (page 13).
Some chemotherapy does prolong life for a few months, but generally at the price of devastating side effects, and if a woman does happen to get lucky and survive that bout of cancer, her body is damaged; recurrence rates are high…the use of chemotherapy is purely a gamble…(page 13). ISBN No. 978-0446-679800

9) A WOMAN’S GUIDE TO HEALING FROM BREAST CANCER by Dr Nan Lu, OMD (Discover how the miracles of ancient healing techniques can complement modern medicine to battle breast cancer). ISBN NO: 978-0380-809028.

10) A WORLD WITHOUT CANCER by Dr Margaret Cuomo, MD and radiologist. (Throughout the book, Dr Cuomo made various references to breast cancer and its treatments. One notable point is that—breast cancer radiation seems to carry a particularly higher risk, and may be associated with subsequent lung cancer, as well as cancers of the blood vessel, bone, and connective tissues (page 79). Interestingly, Chapter 4 is called “Cut, Poison and Burn: A Look at Today’s Treatment Options). ISBN No. 978-1109-618858.

NB: THESE NOTES, COMPILED BY YEONG SEK YEE AND KHADIJAH BINTI SHAARI, ARE MEANT STRICTLY FOR YOUR INFORMATION AND NOT INTENDED TO DISSUADE YOU FROM SEEKING CONVENTIONAL CANCER TREATMENTS. THIS HAS TO BE SOLELY YOUR RESPONSIBILITY/DISCRETION.

When Oncologist Gave “Honest” Advice, Patient Survived!

BT (E137) was 44 years old when she was diagnosed with cancer. CT scan of her abdomen in March 2004 showed an apple core lesion in the rectum area near the rectosigmoid junction. Perirectal fat and lymph nodes were also affected by the cancer. She underwent surgery to remove 13 cm of her colon. She received 28 times of radiation and also underwent chemotherapy – scheduled for 8 cycles but stopped half way.

Why did she give up chemotherapy? No, she did not give it up. It was her oncologist who gave it up! Listen to what she has got to say (this video was recorded on 7 June 2013 – almost 9 years later!).

BT said, I can still quote exactly what the oncologist told me that day: I have to stop the chemo because instead of saving you it will kill you.

Upon facing this dilemma, BT switched to alternative healing methods up to this day. It has been 9 years and BT is still alive! She came to see us in Penang hoping that we could help her further in her healing.

Comment

BT was scheduled to undergo 8 cycles of chemo but along the way she suffered severe side effects and was losing weight which alarmed her oncologist. So instead of being “killed” by chemo, why not let her “go” without chemo! BT changed her diet, etc. and she survived up to this day. Stop and think. Who needs chemo then, because even without chemo patients can survive (minus the side effects of course)?

Is this an isolated case where patients survived better without chemo? Absolutely not!

These Honest Oncologists Saved Them Too!

Tony, 67 years old, was diagnosed with colon cancer in December 1995. The cancer had spread to his liver. His doctor told Tony to go home and live happily and count your days. Let me reproduce what Dr. Rose wrote:

Tony came to seek our help on 24 May 1996 and was put on herbs. He benefited tremendously His CEA dropped from 45.2 to 5.0! And he probably lost count of the many good, healthy and happier days he had before he suffered a relapse due to changes in his diet.

On 16 October 2010, I received an e-mail below:

Dear Dr. Chris K. H. Teo,

My mom’s oncologist told us her cancer had recurred and if she does chemo it will extend her life by another six months, and if lucky another twelve months. But the oncologist does not recommend chemo and thought the treatment would make her worse. He suggested waiting until her condition becomes painful or other symptoms appear. He told us chemotherapy does not cure her cancer and it does not make much difference.

Surgery was carried out to remove 10cm of iluem and 7.5 cm of caecum. This was in March 2010. She refused to undergo chemotherapy after her surgery. I found out about you from the internet. I would like to bring my mom to see you to help treat her.

Comment

Please take note of what her son wrote about the oncologist’s advice: The oncologist does not recommend chemo and thought the treatment would make her worse. He suggested waiting until her condition becomes painful or other symptoms appear. He told us chemotherapy does not cure her cancer and it does not make much difference.

Think hard and long – do you really need chemotherapy to heal your colon cancer? If you want more such success stories click this link: https://cancercaremalaysia.com/category/colon-rectum-cancer/

BOOK REVIEW: MY CANCER IS ME

JOURNEY FROM ILLNESS TO WHOLENESS by Vijay Bhat and Nilima Bhat

Review by Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

We chanced upon this book at the Mumbai airport on 24th May 2013 on our way to GOA. Vijay Bhat’s first career was in the high pressure world of advertising for over 20 years. Later, after his recovery from surgery, he started afresh as an independent leadership consultant to corporate clients, as well as a cancer coach to support other people battling cancer.

The title of the book, “MY CANCER IS ME” is central to Vijay’s belief that “since my life was about me, my cancer was also about me” When he focused on himself, Vijay realised that his cancer originated within and only then manifested as a “tumour” in his body i.e. “my cancer was about myself.”

Vijay’s cancer journey began in Dec 2001 when he was diagnosed with cancer in the transverse and descending sections of his colon. He underwent a surgical process called subtotal colectomy (i.e the removal of the entire large intestine) with ileorectal anastamosis (where the small intestine is connected to the rectum). His case was classified as Stage 3 with no metastasis.

The authors’ views on conventional cancer treatment

After surgery in London, Vijay was “offered” chemotherapy which he decided not to do after much thought and research. Some of his reasons are: –

a) He was told by the oncologist that, with chemotherapy, his cancer had a 28% chance of recurrence and without chemotherapy, a 30% chance of recurrence. Considering this tiny 2% gap between the 2 options, and keeping in mind all that he knew about the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy, he decided against it.

b) Vijay’s extensive research after his surgery made him truly believe that “the cancer establishment may be barking up only one tree and perhaps the wrong one at that”. Typically, Western medicine focuses on the physical aspects of cancer and the organ/ part of the body where the cancer has originated, for example, the breast, colon, or lung. This “organ-centric” approach assumes that if the cancer (and the affected body part/organ) is dealt with, the problem has been adequately addressed. Vijay believes that healing cancer requires going beyond an “organ-centric” approach and adopting a “person-centric” approach that takes the whole person into account, not just the body or part of the body.

c) In addition, Vijay strongly believe that cancer treatment is often a hit and miss game; and that chemotherapy treatment carries a large margin of error because, beyond a point; the therapeutic drugs cannot distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells. As a result, chemotherapy has an adverse impact on the bone marrow, hair skin, digestive tract and the immune system, leading to side effects such as fatigue, bruising, bleeding, anemia, nausea, a poor appetite, a metallic taste in the mouth, etc.

To give him the best chance of remaining free of cancer, Vijay tried various alternative healing therapies and treatments. With the help of his wife Nilima, he created a personal healing regimen based on principles drawn from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), yoga, meditation and the latest in Western medical research.

Vijay has crossed the five-year milestone in Dec 2006 and the ten-year milestone in December in 2011. This (Vijay’s case) clearly debunked the normal conventional cancer treatment myth that “you have no choice; you must do chemotherapy straight away”. As a result of his personal research, Vijay and Nilima came to the conclusion that “there are many approaches to dealing with cancer (or any illness for that matter), for instance, medical, nutritional, psychological and spiritual”

According to Vijay and Nilima Bhat, cancer is the result of your physical lifestyle along with your mental, emotional and spiritual processes and the “stressors” associated with these processes. For instance, negative thoughts and attitudes are mental stressors while negative emotions such as anger and guilt are emotional. Healing these aspects of you is essential for physical healing. The authors guide you through your process of self discovery, showing you how to find your stressors and teaching you how to recover from them.

The book also gives useful information on the biological aspects of cancer and its causes; dietary and nutritional needs of cancer patients; how to maintain optimum immunity; how to confront love and death; and the role of the caregiver.

The authors’ views on nutrition and cancer

After his cancer surgery (to remove the whole colon), Vijay Bhat was put on a liquid diet and then later a solid one. As he began to get his appetite back, the hospital nurse asked him cheerfully “Are you ready for a steak-and-fries lunch today?” Vijay thought she was joking. Anyway, he requested for some vegetable broth and mashed potatoes. When the surgeon came by on his rounds, Vijay asked him if there was a recommended diet and nutrition plan for cancer patients. The surgeon replied “Not really…though there is some evidence linking dietary habits with cancer, it is not conclusive.” Since Vijay had a major colon surgery, he asked…”even though my digestive system has been dramatically affected by the surgical removal of the entire colon (large intestine)? The surgeon still maintained that… “as long as you are sensible , you can eat whatever you feel like. (This dietary advice is very similar to the advice given to Dr David Servan Schreibar in his best seller, ANTICANCER: A NEW WAY OF LIFE. In Dr Schreiber’s case, his oncologist told him “Eat what you like. It won’t make much difference. But whatever you do, keep up your weight.” (For more elaboration, read Chapter 8: The Anticancer Foods of Dr Schreiber’s book).

As the authors lament, there are very specific dietary recommendation for ailments of the heart, kidney and liver, for diabetes, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel conditions and so on. What about cancer? Surely a situation where the body’s nutrients are hijacked by tumour cells and its immunity compromised, and where there may be further stress due to toxic treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation, deserves special care as it seeks to heal itself?

Paradoxically, there is a growing recognition of diet as a major causative factor in cancer. It has been established that diet contributes significantly to 6 of the 10 major causes of death in modern society…also there have been over 10,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies pointing to the connection between dietary habits and cancer.

From our (Vijay and Nilima Bhat’s) perspective, diet is the foundation upon which all the other holistic and integrated therapies can be built; ignoring it runs the risk of undermining the efficacy of the whole program. The following is a summary of the author’s research on the subject of nutrition and cancer: –

A meat-based diet increases the risk of cancer; a plant-based diet protects against some cancers. A plant-based diet is best.
A low fibre intake increases the risk of cancer. A high-fibre diet, with whole grains cereals and pulses is beneficial
A high-fat intake (particularly animal fat) increases the risk of cancer.
Excess animal protein increases the risk of cancer.
Alcohol & obesity increases the risk of cancer.

Based on the 5 key dietary principles with reference to cancer, Vijay recommends some of the foods that boost immunity such as fresh fruit and vegetables, garlic, green/black tea and red wine, yoghurt, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, fish, apples, broccoli and red onions, oats and barley etc.

Vijay followed a strict plant-based diet and he is still alive 10 years later after surgery (without any other forms of conventional therapy). In the case of Dr Schreiber, he had brain surgery and chemotherapy. It was when he had a recurrence 3 years later that he decided to follow a plant-based diet and survived a total of 19 years (he had glioblastoma multiforme, a very aggressive form of brain tumour)

Point To Ponder

Would Vijay survive more than 10 years (surgery in Dec 2011) and Dr Schreiber survived 19 years if they had not changed their diets and follows an integrative program? We welcome your thoughts.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

To gain more insight on the benefits of a plant-based diet, read the following: –

1. THE CHINA STUDY by Dr Colin T. Campbell, PhD.

2. ANTI-CANCER: A NEW WAY OF LIFE by Dr. David Servan Schreiber.

BOOK REVIEW: CHASING MEDICAL MIRACLES

The Promise and Perils of Clinical Trials by Alex O’Meara, a freelance journalist.

Review by: Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

http://www.alexomeara.com/books-writing-other-work/chasing-medical-miracles/

Alex O’Meara researched and wrote this book after he participated in a risky and ground breaking type-1 diabetes clinical trial. In this book, Alex reveals what every health-conscious person needs to know about how drugs, devices and procedures are tested and approved.

In this segment, we detail how Alex was involved in a clinical trial and his subsequent discovery that clinical trials is not to cure anyone but merely to obtain data. Alex O’Meara, in his own words, “has served as a clinical trial guinea pig.”

In 2004, Alex signed up to take part in a clinical trial (The Pancreas Islet Cell Transplant Study) involving an experimental transplant to cure diabetes. He had been suffering from type 1 diabetes for almost 30 years and had “hypoglycemic unawareness”, a condition where his blood sugar, instead of staying chronically high, would plunge dangerously low which can cause seizures, coma, and in some cases even death.

The experimental procedure which Alex took part, replaces the insulin-producing cells that have died in a diabetic’s pancreas with living, healthy, insulin-producing cells. Because the cells are located in a part of the pancreas called the Isle of Langerhans, the cells are called islet cells. Those islet cells are taken, or harvested, from a recently deceased organ donor and infused through a tube into a person’s portal vein, which leads to the liver. The idea was that once in the liver, the islet cells would nestle in and produce insulin as if they were in a pancreas.

After stringent interviews and tests, Alex was accepted into the experimental procedure at the University of Virginia. Later he found out that he was the only one “selected” at the UVA. This made him realise that he was merely “a test subject, the monkey in the space capsule”. The transplant was really experimental and he had donated his body to science and he wasn’t even dead as yet (page 17).

What shocked Alex more was that, on admission into the UVA hospital (in May 2006), he discovered that his doctor Susan Kirk, MD, an endocrinologist who specialised in diabetes also had type 1 diabetes for also almost 30 years. When Alex asked whether she would consider getting an islet cell transplant, Dr Susan said she wouldn’t…perhaps she might consider it in the future, “once the procedure is perfected.”

This encounter with Dr Susan Kirk prompted Alex to spend some time to chronicle his own personal experience and to research further the promise and perils of the entire industry of clinical trials. The following are the main points of the perils of the risky world of clinical trials: –

a) Clinical trials are conducted to collect data only…however some clinical trials candidates suffering from cancer, diabetes, asthma, and other life-threatening conditions sincerely believe (or led to believe) that clinical trials are a valid medical treatment option (page 49).

b) Subjects often come into clinical research studies believing that their own interests will be met in the same way as if they were receiving ordinary medical treatment (page 49).

c) Terrible things happen in clinical trials because they are the most dangerous part of medical discovery. Very little in medical research, of which clinical trials are only the final phase, goes according to plan (page 21).

d) Clinical trials are the one part of medical discovery where human lives are put directly at risk… in the absence of guidelines and agreed-upon definitions of what is ethical and not ethical, subjects in clinical trials get trampled in the blind pursuit of trying to apply medical breakthrough (page 23).

e) There have also been concerns about whether the FDA allows pharmaceutical companies too much freedom in how they design trials and how they report the results of these trials. Pharmaceutical studies can be designed to falsely increase the likelihood of getting the results the drug companies wants (page 46).

f) ….drug companies may skew the design of clinical trials so their drugs will come out looking more effective or less dangerous than they are. Among the tricks that can be used are testing the drug in a healthier population that will be taking the drug and comparing the new medication to a lower dose of an existing medication so the results look better for the drug being tested (page 75).

g) ….consent forms that the trial subjects signed always overstate the benefits and the risks of the trial are understated (page 88).

h) Because clinical trials are not therapy, because they are by definition research, terminally ill patients who do consent to participate in trials are usually persuaded to do so because of therapeutic misconception or the implication they will receive treatment in the trial (page 90).

Regardless, clinical trials are not designed to provide patients with quality care. Somehow, patient care became part of a process designed to only gather information. The doctor administering the trial might be wearing a stethoscope and a lab coat, but he/she is not there to cure anyone. He/she is there purely to collect information from a subject and learn more about medicine (page 30).

The history of clinical trials shows great swings between significantly helping and dramatically harming people (page 52). They are, after all “medical experiments” dismissed in the public consciousness as “a fringe medical endeavour along the lines of “Frankenstein cooking up a monster in a lab” (page 3).

So, for cancer patients opting/signing up for clinical trials, remember it is an information gathering exercise only and not a medical treatment at all. And in some trials, a placebo (sugar pill) may be used. If you are a cancer patient, you do not have the luxury of time for some drug companies to experiment with your body. Only the drug companies will benefit…..after you are long gone.

Postscript

Alex’s experiment was not successful. In May 2007, one year after the transplant took place he had to increase his insulin intake and in 2008, he was an insulin-dependent diabetic again. His wife, who could not bear it anymore, filed for divorce. Subsequently, the drug company sponsoring the trials also terminated the protocol….and Alex O’ Meara was back to square one.

FURTHER RELATED REFERENCES

There are a lot of books/references if you have the interest/inclination to read further on the subject of ethics (or lack of it) in clinical research. Below is just a short list.

1) HE BODY HUNTERS by journalist Sonia Shah. In the book, she shares that: The main business of clinical research is not enhancing or saving lives but acquiring stuff: data. It is an industry, not a social service.The people who sponsor and direct clinical trials do it for the data, not to please patients or help bolster ailing health facilities, although they may point to these side effects to justify their activities.

2. WHITE COAT, BLACK HAT: ADVENTURES ON THE DARK SIDE OF MEDICINE (2010) by Dr Carl Elliott, MD, PhD, Professor in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, who says medical trials that were once carried out by medical schools and teaching hospitals have moved to the private sector and drug companies manipulate the research and review boards to get the results they want. After drugs are released they again manipulate the system to get drugs recognized on the market even if the risk to patients outweighs the benefits.

3. EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: THE ETHICS OF CLINICAL RESEARCH by Jennifer S. Hawkins (Editor), and Ezekiel J. Emanuel (Editor). The book is an attempt by philosophers and bioethicists to reflect on the meaning of exploitation, to ask whether and when clinical research in developing countries counts as exploitative, and to consider what can be done to minimize the possibility of exploitation in such circumstances. A case in point is clinical research sponsored by developed countries and carried out in developing countries, with participants who are poor and sick, and lack education. Such individuals seem vulnerable to abuse. But does this, by itself, make such research exploitative?

4. RETHINKING THE ETHICS OF CLINICAL RESEARCH: WIDENING THE LENS by Alan Wertheimer, Senior Research Scholar, Department of Bioethics, The National Institutes of Health, and Professor Emeritus, University of Vermont.

Clinical research requires that some people be used and possibly harmed for the benefit of others. What justifies such use of people? This book provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of several crucial issues raised by that question. Much writing on the ethics of research with human subjects assumes that participation in research is a distinctive activity that requires distinctive moral principles. Specifically, read chapter 5, “Exploitation in Clinical Research.”

5. WATCH THE MOVIE….The Constant Gardener, a 2005 drama thriller film directed by Fernando Meirelles. The screenplay by Jeffrey Caine is based on the John le Carré’s novel of the same name. The film follows Justin Quayle, a British diplomat in Kenya, as he tries to solve the murder of his wife Tessa, an Amnesty activist. The story is told using many flashbacks and it is gradually revealed that Tessa was trying to uncover dubious drug tests by a Swiss-Canadian drug company on the local population.

It was filmed on location in Loiyangalani and the slums of Kibera, a section of Nairobi, Kenya. Circumstances in the area affected the cast and crew to the extent that they set up the Constant Gardener Trust in order to provide basic education for these villages. The plot was based on a real-life case in Kano, Nigeria in which a meningitis drug, approved for use on adults were used on children (in Europe, the same drug was never approved for adults or children).

6. VISIT THE WEBSITE OF GUINEA PIG ZERO, a Journal for Human Research Subjects…..http://www.guineapigzero.com……lots to read. Then you will understand why you should not be a guinea pig