By Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

 Conventional cancer treatments, especially the chemotherapeutic agents are toxic and can cause a great deal of collateral damage to the body besides the nausea, vomiting and hair loss that your doctor tells you about. Collateral damage is damage to things that are incidental to the intended target and this is best illustrated by Dr. David Levy, former president of the British Columbia Cancer Agency, Canada:

• “In fighting the war on cancer, there is, like in any war, unwanted collateral damage. There is no silver bullet, but in many ways, a refined shotgun, blasting the tumour while pellets hit other vital organs.
• ·         “The bone marrow, liver, and nervous system get their share of hits, but the heart and vascular system are certainly at risk depending on the weapon used, particularly because the vascular system and blood supply are intimately involved in any treatment delivery.

Link:http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2010/09/25/the-heart-collateral-damage-from-cancer-treatment/

Dr Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, described other more serious collateral damage such as depressed production of blood-forming cells, cardiac toxicity, pulmonary complications, gastrointestinal complications, liver injury, kidney and neurological complications in Chapter 3….Chemotherapy: Poisoning Cancer (and You) in the New York bestseller, NATURAL STRATEGIES FOR CANCER PATIENTS. 

In 2012, Dr Margaret I. Cuomo, MD, a board- certified radiologist, published A WORLD WITHOUT CANCER. In Chapter 7, “Cancer’s Collateral Damage,” Dr Cuomo described the cancer journey of Toni, a 50 year old artist and her husband Doug, a golf professional and how the couple saw “the darkest side of our current cancer care paradigm” The couple endured Toni’s frequent hospitalizations, the debilitating side effects of one cancer drug after another, false hope, and a mounting pile of bills. Their ordeal ended with Toni’s death less than 4 years later after her diagnosis of lymphoma.

Below is Toni’s sad story as told by Dr Cuomo in her book:

In late November 2007, Toni, was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a common form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Scans revealed Toni had an especially aggressive cancer with tumors scattered across her abdominal area and elsewhere. Still, her oncologist spoke optimistically about the package of treatment options available, and she was co-operative and prepared for the fight.

After surgery to remove the tumors, Toni began a six-cycle regimen of chemotherapy, receiving an eight-hour infusion every few weeks. By the third round, she could barely move from her bed between infusions, but she persevered, and at the end of June 2008, Toni and her husband Doug, received good news. “We got it” her doctors proclaimed. Everyone believed the cancer was gone.

Toni was told she would have to return for scans every three months for the first year, and then less frequently. Doug remembers the doctor saying, “After five years, you won’t have to come back at all.”

Weakened by the chemotherapy, Toni spent much of the summer and fall regaining her strength. Life for the couple was good again. Until March 2009, that is, when a post-treatment scan showed that the cancer had recurred and had spread. Toni’s oncologist suggested that she would be a good candidate for a bone marrow transplant, which had to be done at a cancer center about 100 miles from their home.

After learning more about the rigorous and difficult procedure – including claims (by their oncologist) that it had a 95% success rate – Toni agreed to begin treatment.

Additional potent chemotherapy had to come first. This time, Toni was admitted to the local hospital, where she received chemotherapy around the clock for three days every three weeks. A post-chemo scan again showed no evidence of cancer, and the couple headed to the cancer center, ready for the bone marrow transplant. Their insurance company had already said yes to the US$400,000 treatment. It was July 2009.

The first step was to harvest Toni’s bone marrow stem cells, which took eight hours a day over five consecutive days. Another week of chemotherapy came next, and then the stem cells were infused back into her body during a four-hour procedure.

She remained hospitalized for the next three weeks, as the stem cells started to grow again. Once, her blood pressure plunged and her platelet levels dropped to dangerously low levels, bringing her perilously close to death.

Although she recovered, Toni’s health had been compromised, and remained so after her release from the hospital. Shortly afterward, her temperature spiked to 105 F, a fungal infection was found in her lungs, and she was readmitted for further treatment. The fungus might have been there for a long time, held in check until her immune system was weakened by chemotherapy and could no longer fight the latent infection. Her antifungal medicine cost US$5,600 a month.

Toni was finally able to return home in late October 2009, although the demands of continuing treatment and follow up meant the couple had to make weekly four-hour round-trip drives to the hospital.

In February 2010, Toni returned for a scan, expecting it to show that the bone marrow transplant had worked. The couple thought this would be their moment of triumph, a second chance for a longer life. Instead, they learned that Toni still had evidence of cancer. A year of suffering had been in vain.

Her doctors suggested another transplant. Nothing else will work, they said. Toni balked. “No,” she said. “You didn’t have to go through what I went through. You didn’t almost die. You’re not the ones who didn’t have any quality of life for almost a year.” Then, she added quietly, “I don’t know whether or not we can afford it”

The doctor’s response: “You don’t have to worry. Your insurance company paid for everything the first time. It will pay for everything again.”

That wasn’t quite true, of course. “Insurance didn’t pay for us to live away from home for eight months,” Doug recalls. “It didn’t pay for a lot of the drugs Toni needed, It didn’t pay for the fact that both of us were out of work for quite some time. The insurance company covers the medical cost, but it doesn’t cover the costs of the disease.”

Even so, they decided to try another transplant. Over the next few months, more health problems intervened. Toni’s spleen swelled to five times its normal size, her white blood cell count plunged and she developed pneumonia. Meanwhile, scans showed that her cancer kept surging.

Still, the doctors insisted she remained a candidate for the transplant. The procedure was scheduled, canceled, rescheduled, and canceled once more.

As many patients do when they have exhausted all other options, Toni entered a clinical trial, this one assessing a new combination drug treatment. Beginning in April 2011, the couple began making regular trips to the hospital for the protocol. With the tumors shrinking, the punishing treatment schedule seemed worth it. The second bone marrow transplant again seemed possible.

Then, new obstacles arose. When Toni complained of headaches, invasive tests revealed that lymphoma cells had invaded her cerebral spinal fluid. The cancer was in her brain.

Yet another drug treatment option was put on the table, but this time her oncologist was finally ready to advise against it. “You can do this if you want, but I don’t recommend it”, he said bluntly. “You will be in the hospital for six months. It’ll be hell, and then you will die.”

Toni’s fight was over. The doctor said that she would probably survive until Thanksgiving but doubted that she would make it to Christmas. On September 29, 2011, Toni’s courageous four-year battle came to an end. She was 54.

When illness first occurred, Toni and Doug had steady jobs, good insurance, and friends willing to help. The couple incurred US$50,000 in out-of-pocket medical costs and another US$150,000 in living expenses, including bills for hotels, food, and gas. After long periods without a regular income, the couple couldn’t meet their monthly obligations. Decades of careful savings vanished.

Doug wondered now if they were given false hope. “Had we known the full extent of what was ahead, I don’t think we would have gone through what we did,” he says. Was what we went through done to teach somebody else? Or was it done for the revenue?

It is hard for him not to feel cynical about the agenda of those in the cancer industry and the influence of money on decision making. “In my heart, I believe if we wanted to find a cure for cancer, we would have done so a long time ago,” Doug said. “I don’t believe the medical profession wants to find a cure. They would like to find effective treatments for cancer, but a cure? No. There would be too many people out of work.”

“I truly believe,” he adds, “that if our insurance hadn’t paid the doctors as well as it did, they wouldn’t have encouraged us to keep on with treatment.”

Dr Cuomo’s concluding remarks:

Understandably, Doug may be a bit harsh in his judgment of Toni’s physicians. Treating people with cancer is a delicate and tricky process, with oncologists trying to keep their patients alive by staying one step ahead of the disease. It is hard to know just how much extra gain can be achieved, at what price, and exactly when the struggle becomes futile. Right now, most therapy buys patients with advanced cancer only a little more time.

Postscript

Another sad story is that of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who was diagnosed with NHL in Jan 1994. She received chemotherapy and radiation treatments at the prestigious New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Centre. The New York Times reported that she “initially responded to therapy, but it (the cancer) came back in her brain and spread through her body.”

For the unrelenting pain in her neck, Mrs. Onassis received more drugs. For the acute pneumonia she developed in her weakened state, she received more drugs. Steroids were part of the mixture in her chemotherapy, which caused a perforated ulcer in her stomach. In the middle of her ordeal, she had to be operated on to sew up the hole in her stomach.

She went from bad to worse, and as a final assault on her body, she was subjected to even more radiation and chemotherapy, only this time it was shot directly into her brain. The cancer spread to her spinal cord, her liver, and throughout the body. She became weak and disoriented, lost weight, developed shaking chills, her speech slowed, and she had difficulty walking.

Mrs. Onassis passed away in May 1994…..just 5 months after diagnosis.

Similarly, King Hussein of Jordan was diagnosed with NHL July 1998 and began 6 months of chemotherapy and 2 bone marrow transplants. King Hussein passed away in Feb 1999 at age 63……..just 8 months after diagnosis.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In the stories of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and King Hussein of Jordan, was it a case of excessive collateral damage or did the chemotherapy drugs spread the cancer? How come scientifically tested, evidence-based medicine could not save them then or was the lymphoma too aggressive?

We welcome your thoughts.

Reviewed by: Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

Dr Ben Michael Goldacre, the author,  graduated in 1995 with a first-class honors degree in medicine from Magdalen College, Oxford. He obtained an MA in philosophy from Kings College London, and undertook clinical training at UCL Medical School, qualifying as a medical doctor in 2000 and as a psychiatrist in 2005. As of 2012 he is Wellcome research fellow in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

We have heard about “Big Pharma.” Little did we know that it is also known as “Bad Pharma” and this book certainly enlightened us. According to Dr Goldacre, the whole edifice of medicine is broken, because the evidence that we (the doctors) use to make decisions is hopelessly and systematically distorted. We (doctors) like to imagine that:

ü  Medicine is based on evidence, and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed.

ü  Doctors are familiar with the research literature, when in reality much of it is hidden from them by drug companies.

ü  Doctors are well-educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry.

ü  Regulators only let effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. 

The essence of the whole book is distilled and summarized in the introductory pages of the book. The following paragraphs meticulously defends every assertion made by Dr Goldacre:

Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don’t like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug’s true effects.

Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in its life, and even then they don’t give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion.

In their forty years of practice after leaving medical school, doctors hear about what works through ad hoc oral traditions, from sales reps, colleagues or journals. But those colleagues can be in the pay of drug companies – often undisclosed – and the journals are too. And so are the patient groups.

And finally, academic papers, which everyone thinks of as objective, are often covertly planned and written by people who work directly for the companies, without disclosure. Sometimes whole academic journals are even owned outright by one drug company.

Aside from all this, for several of the most important and enduring problems in medicine, we have no idea what the best treatment is, because it’s not in anyone’s financial interest to conduct any trials at all. These are ongoing problems, and although people have claimed to fix many of them, for the most part, they have failed; so all these problems persist, but worse than ever, because now people can pretend that everything is fine after all.

Watch Dr Ben Goldacre’s speech on TEDTALK…What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe…LINK:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe.html

From the above, it is very clear that from Dr Goldacre’s perspective, medicine’s evidence base has been undermined by an unscrupulous alliance of the pharmaceutical industry and regulators, which leads to the routine suppression of negative studies revealing many drugs to be either ineffective or less effective than those they seek to replace.

This suppression has been willful and many academics (the industry’s “key opinion leaders”) have acted as willing partners in the enterprise, putting their names to ghostwritten articles reporting positive trials, while failing to publish negative trials.

Since there’s so much missing data, we (doctors) can’t really say whether the therapies we use work or not. Doctors generally want to do the best for their patients, but they can’t know what that is if half of the data on clinical trials of drugs is missing and some of the rest is distorted.  Thus, according to Goldacre, medicine’s evidence base is irredeemably corrupted and needs reconstruction.

This book (448 pages) is divided into six chapters, which cover different aspects of the pharmaceutical industry:

Chapter 1 is entitled ‘Missing data’, and Dr Goldacre described at considerable length the important problem of publication bias. The take home message from this chapter is that we cannot assess the evidence for a particular drug if all the trials on it are not published, and worse still, those that are not published tend to be different from the ones that are.

Chapter 2 ‘Where Do New Drugs come from?’ is a brief description of the drug development process. Risky ‘first-in-man drug tests are conducted on homeless people, full clinical trials are globalised which raises serious ethical problems…also trial participants  in developing countries are often unlikely  to benefit from expensive new drugs…thus it also raises new problems for trusting the data.

Chapter 3 ‘Bad Regulators’, does what it says on the tin, and explains the many ways in which Goldacre believes that drug regulation isn’t working.  The bar is very low: that drugs must only prove that they are better than nothing, even when there are highly effective treatments on the market already….this means that real patients are given dummy placebo pills for no good reason.

Chapter 4 ‘Bad Trials’ talks about the design of individual clinical studies and how they can be flawed. Several tricks have been introduced…one allows researchers to overstate and exaggerate the benefits of the treatments they are testing.

Chapter 5 ‘Bigger, Simpler Trials’ describes how pragmatic randomised trials could be (but very rarely are) incorporated into routine clinical practice.

Chapter 6 ’Marketing’  In this chapter, Dr. Goldacre addresses the abuses and excesses of the pharmaceutical industry marketing machine, which exists entirely to increase the revenue generated by the industry’s products and yet which masquerades as a system for disseminating useful information to doctors, patients, and politicians.

When you have read all the 6 chapters (as we did during the Ramadan), you will realize why Dr Goldacre decided to title the book as Bad Pharma. For the still unconvinced, we recommend that you peruse the following articles with the links as attached:

1)    List of largest pharmaceutical settlements

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements

2)    List of off-label promotion pharmaceutical settlements

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_off-label_promotion_pharmaceutical_settlements

3)    Pharmaceutical frauds

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_fraud

4)    GlaxoSmithKline controversies

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlaxoSmithKline#Controversies

 5)    Ethics in pharmaceutical sales

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_in_pharmaceutical_sales

 6)    Pharmaceutical marketing

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_marketing

7) Why doctors don’t know what they’re prescribing

Link: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4323556.html

NB: In the list of pharmaceutical settlements, most of the fines runs into hundreds of millions (USD) and mainly for offences like off-label promotions, false marketing, kickbacks, medicare fraud, etc. Recently a drug company was fined US 3 billion for various offences (see link below). To Dr Goldacre, these fines/settlements are just small change to Big Pharma.

Link: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/July/12-civ-842.html

In addition to the above, you may want to read the following books (there are many, many more such type of books):

1)    Big Pharma: How the World’s Biggest Drug Companies Control Illness is a 2006 book by British journalist Jacky Law. The book examines how major pharmaceutical companies determine which health care problems are publicised and researched.

2)    Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial is a nonfiction book by investigative journalist Alison Bass, which tells the true story of a court case and the personal drama that surrounded the making of a bestselling drug. It chronicles the lives of two women – a prosecutor and a whistleblower – who exposed deception in the research and marketing of Paxil, an antidepressant prescribed to millions of children and adults. The book shows the connections between pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (the maker of Paxil), a top Ivy League research institution, and the government agency designed to protect the public – conflicted relationships that arguably compromised the health and safety of vulnerable children.

3)    The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch demonstrated that in trials, SSRIs (a common class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) performed no better than placebos, a fact that would have been known had some clinical trial data not been suppressed by pharmaceutical companies. Regulators happily licensed these new drugs in full possession of this knowledge.

4)    The Truth About the Drug Companies…How they Deceive us and What to do about it by Dr Marcia Angell, MD…..read how the drug companies promote diseases to match their drugs and have  enormous influence over what doctors are taught about drugs and what they prescribe. Drug companies have substantial control over clinical trials of their drugs…as a result the research results are biased.

5)    What the Drug Companies Won’t Tell you and Your Doctor Doesn’t Know by Michael Murray, N.D.…the alternative treatments that may change your life –and the prescriptions that could harm you.

6)    Rethinking The Ethics of Clinical Research….Widening The Lens by Dr Alan Wertheimer, MD……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.

7)    Money Driven Medicine by Dr David K. Cundiff, MD….Read the details of dozens of prescription drugs which extensive research has proven to be ineffective or dangerous for continued use.

After reading the whole book and the various links, we are really amazed how Big Pharma has the courage to market their drugs as “scientifically tested, evidence-based,” etc, etc (and everything else is not scientifically tested and not evidence-based). How can Big Pharma’s drugs be “scientifically tested and evidence-based” when clinical trials designs are flawed, negative data are missing/not revealed, and regulators, doctors and politicians are bribed or silenced, etc, etc. As Dr Goldacre mentioned, medicine’s evidence is irredeemably corrupted and needs serious re-construction. But, will it ever happen when there is so much at stake?

Perhaps, Dr Goldacre should have named the book as BIG, BAD PHARMA. What do you think?

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.

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.

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.

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