by Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

 THE AUTHOR is Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, MD, the chief medical and executive Vice president of the American Cancer Society, and currently serving as Professor of Hematology, Oncology, Medicine, and Epidemiology at Emory University and a fellow in Medical Oncology at the National Cancer Institute, USA. 

WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT:  Yes, the book carries a very unique title. You must really read the whole book to find out how oncologists/doctors do harm…..contrary to the first precepts of medical ethics taught in medical school….”FIRST, DO NO HARM”

Dr Brawley exposes the dark side of healthcare today in America—the overtreatment of the rich, the under treatment of the poor, the financial conflicts of interest that determine the care that physicians provide, and that pharmaceutical companies are only concerned with selling drugs, regardless of whether they improve health or do harm. In the book, Dr Brawley tells of doctors who select treatment based on the payment they will receive, rather than on demonstrated scientific results; hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that seek out patients to treat even if they are not actually ill (but as long as their insurance company will pay).

Through case examples, mostly involving cancer, Dr Brawley documents the sometimes excessive and unnecessary treatments patients receive because doctors prescribe medications and push protocols that have no clinical basis while having clear financial gain for the many doctors and pharmaceutical companies involved. From the woman who received a hemoglobin-building drug during breast cancer treatment that likely stimulated more tumor growth and shortened her life, to the elderly gentleman who underwent a free prostate screening that led to numerous treatments ultimately leading to his death (when some forms of prostate cancer don’t need to be treated at all), Dr. Brawley is trying to make patients and doctors alike question the policies and self-interest that drive our health care system.

Listen to these videos.

Medical Book Review: How We Do Harm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKsSBchsCpo

Comments by Dr Kathy Miller, MD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ndImCj1A2M

Otis Brawley at TEDMED 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctsqa7J4Ank

How American Medicine Does Harm To Patients

a) In the back room of American medicine, the analysis of the patient’s durability has a special name: A Wallet Biopsy.  If the biopsy returns positive, you get to stay in the hospital, you get more treatment, and you can make a follow-up appointment. If it returns negative, you have little hope of getting consistent care (page 23).

b) Although the “wallet biopsy” syndrome favours the rich or insured, wealth in America is no protection from getting lousy care. Ironically wealth can increase your risk of getting lousy care. When wealthy patients demand irrational care, it’s not hard to find a doctor willing to provide it. If you have more money, doctors tell you more of what they sell, and they just might kill you (page 23).

c) Our (American) medical system fails to provide care when care is needed and fails to stop expensive, often unnecessary and frequently harmful ‘interventions’ even in situations when science has proven these interventions are wrongheaded (page 22).

d) The financial incentives that drive the medical community have a devastating impact on patients and health care costs….doctors who own labs or medical facility, have been shown to order more tests than doctors who don’t. A doctor at a for-profit practice is more likely to prescribe the treatments that benefit him (the doctor) the most (page 25).

e) Would a doctor who sells radiation therapy tell you to go across the street to get chemotherapy even in cases where studies show that it’s more appropriate? Would either of these medical entrepreneurs advise you to wait for six months to see whether your disease is of the sort that would actually harm you? All too often, the answers to these questions are NO!!! (page 25).

The following are some of Dr Brawley’s strong views on some aspects of modern medicine as we browse through the book again:

•  Professional societies of doctors who perform expensive medical procedures issue “evidence-based guidelines” that is anything but evidence based guidelines. Instead, the purpose of many of these documents (“guidelines”) is to protect the specialties’ financial stake in the system (page 26).
• Patients need to understand that more care is not better care, that doctors are not necessarily right, and that some doctors are not even truthful (page 27).
• In most cancers, the quality of the surgery is the most important factor in the ultimate outcome. You only get one chance to do the surgery right, so choose your surgeon well and pray you have an exceptional surgeon having an exceptionally good day (page 32).
• Comparing the prognosis with and without chemotherapy is key to the decision to forgo treatment (page 56)… (and consider the costs as well).
• Adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer was relatively easy, like following a recipe from a cook book. Providing adjuvant therapy for breast cancer is a great place to be mediocre: no clinical judgements need to be made, and the money is good (page 63).
• Doctors who don’t know the limits of their knowledge are another matter. Doctors who don’t know what they don’t know–and don’t care–are dangerous (page 64).
• God expects us to work for social justice, and the best way to serve Him is through caring for others. Some people praise GOD by going to church on Sunday. I, (Dr Brawley) seek to do the same daily by helping those in distress, and by telling the truth (page 76).
• ….Overtreatment equals harm (page 78).
• Physicians in private practice are expected to generate certain revenues, and their take-home pay is usually determined by the amount of medical services and drugs they provide (page 85).
• With powerful incentives set in motion, many hospitals and oncology practices in the US instructed nurses to ask leading questions about “fatigue” with the intent of expanding sales to a growing number of patients and upping the dosage to each patient. This is referred to as “an ESA treatment opportunity” (ESA means erythropoiesis-stimulating agents, drugs used to overcome fatigue, low blood counts). (page 85).
• To increase their earnings, drug companies and doctors set out on a search for treatment opportunities, often forgetting about the sacred trust between doctors and patients (page 85).
• The exact magnitude of harm is harder to gauge…most of the money was spent on drugs (e.g. ESAs) that were prescribed for the wrong reasons and under false, manufactured pretences. These drugs were not used to cure disease or make patients feel better. They were used to make money for doctors and pharmaceutical companies at the expense of patients, insurance companies…the technical term for this is overtreatment and overtreatment equals harm (page 97).
• Doctors do some horrible, irrational things under the guise of seeking to benefit patients….For example offering a bone marrow transplant for a breast cancer patient, prophylactic doses of ESA drugs…these are only a few examples. The system rewards us for selling our goods and services, and we play the game (page 122).
• You don’t deviate from the science. You don’t make it up as you are going along. You have to have a reason to give the drugs you are giving. You have to tell the patients the truth (page 145).
• Commenting further on ESA drugs, some doctors didn’t bother to check what the patient’s haemoglobin was and erred on the side of giving the ESA every time they give chemotherapy. Doctors routinely prescribed the drugs for uses, in which it had not been studied-such as anaemia caused by cancer itself, as opposed to anaemia caused by chemotherapy (page 78).
• ….Doctors try out things just to see whether they will work (page 160) Earlier in the book (page 29), Dr Brawley mentioned that “A hospital was the place where they withheld treatment or where they tried things on you without telling you what they were doing and why (page 29/30).
• When a drug succeeds in controlling cancer, we learn about it at conferences and in scientific journals. Stories of our fiascos, though no less instructive, are almost invisible, especially if there are cautionary tales that lay bare the fundamental flaws in the system (page 157).
• Cancer is hard to understand, and yet doctors rush patients (page 182).
• Survival measures time that elapses after diagnosis. By diagnosing a cancer earlier, survival rates are increased. The more you diagnose, the more you push up survival (page 193).
• Somewhere along the way, we have been conditioned to believe that a new treatment is always better (page 197) A new drug must be better than the old. A new medical device must also be better (page 202).
• Inappropriate use of certain drugs can be attributed to the profit motive. A recent study of prescribing pattern demonstrated that as soon as the profit motive weakened, inappropriate prescribing of these drugs dropped (page 197).
• The overuse of radiologic imaging is a major problem…..”up to one-third of radiologic imaging tests are unnecessary. This is a serious problem, not just because these tests are expensive, but because they expose the patient to radiation that can cause cancer. Some have estimated that 1% of cancers in the United States are caused by radiation from medical imaging” (page 202).
• Even when administered properly, cancer drugs can bring the patient to the brink of death. An overdose can easily push him off the cliff (page 279).
• Much of the money currently spent on healthcare (in the US) is money wasted on unnecessary and harmful, sick care. Even for the sick, a lot of necessary care is not given at the appropriate time. The result is more expensive care given later (page 281).
• The medical profession frequently allows bad doctors to continue to practice. The profession doesn’t police itself. Chalk it all up to apathy. Or ignorance (page 282).
• Many physicians are ignorant of some aspects of the field of medicine in which they practice. They tend to think the newer pill or newer treatment must be better because it is new. Ignorance is a failure to think deeply. It is a failure to be inquisitive. It is a failure to keep an open mind (page 282).

Dr Brawley’s most direct and blunt statement in the book is….”America does not have a health-care system. We have a sick-care system”. Is Malaysia there yet?? We welcome your views.

FURTHER REFERENCES:

FOR BOOKS OF A SIMILAR NATURE, WE RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING:

1)    MORE HARM THAN GOOD by Dr Alan Zelicoff, MD (Read what your doctor may not tell you about common treatments and procedures). ISBN NO: 978-0-8144-0027-2 (2008).

2)   OVERDIAGNOSED by Dr H. Gilbert Welch, MD and Dr Lisa M. Schwartz, MD and Dr Steven Woloshin, MD. (An expose of…making people sick in the pursuit of health). ISBN NO: 978-08070-2199-6 (2011).

3)   MONEY DRIVEN MEDICINE by Dr David K. Cundiff, MD (Read about tests and treatments that don’t work). ISBN NO: 0-9761571-0-1 (2006).

4)   DOCTORS ARE MORE HARMFUL THAN GERMS by Dr Harvey Bigelsen, MD (Find out how surgery can be hazardous to your health and what to do about it). ISBN NO: 978-1-55643-958-2 (2011).

5)   WHAT YOUR DOCTOR WON’T (OR CAN’T) TELL YOU by Dr Evan S. Levine, MD (Read about the failures of American Medicine and how to avoid becoming a statistic). ISBN NO: 978-04252000-87 (2004).

6)   DEATH BY PRESCRIPTION by Dr Ray D Strand, MD (Find out the shocking truth behind an overmedicated nation) ISBN NO: 0-7852-6484-1 (2003).

7)   OVERDOSE by Dr Jay S. Cohen, MD (Discover how prescription drugs and its side effects affect your health) ISBN NO: 978-1585-4237-05 (2004).

8)    HOPE OR HYPE by Dr Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH and Dr Donald L. Patrick, PH.D (Read how the obsession with medical advances and the high costs of false promises and a lot more). ISBN No: 978-0814408-452 (2005).

9)   A WORLD WITHOUT CANCER by Dr Margaret Cuomo, MD (A radiologist herself, she describes very candidly that conventional cancer treatments are fatally flawed….find out why Chapter 4 is entitled CUT, POISON AND BURN).

ISBN NO: 978-1-60961(2012).

10)   NATURAL STRATEGIES FOR CANCER PATIENTS by Dr Russell Blaylock, MD and a neurosurgeon. (Find out why Chapter 3 is called CHEMOTHERAPY: POISONING CANCER AND YOU and Chapter 4 is RADIATION THERAPY: BURNING CANCER). ISBN NO: 0-7582-0221-0 (2003).

11)   HOW MODERN MEDICINE KILLED MY BROTHER by Dr Russell Blaylock, MD and a neurosurgeon. (Read Dr Blaylock’s expose at the following link: http://www.wnho.net/medicine_killed_brother.htm

12)   BAD PHARMA by Dr Ben Goldacre, MD (An expose how the drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients). ISBN NO: 978-0-00-735074-2 (2012)

13)  HOW AMERICAN HEALTHCARE KILLED MY FATHER by David Goldhill (In 2007, David Goldhill’s father died from infections acquired in a hospital, one of more than two hundred thousand avoidable deaths per year caused by medical error…and the bill was enormous). Read David’s summary at the following link: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/   or you may wish to read his just released book called CATASTROPHIC CARE: HOW AMERICAN HEALTH CARE KILLED MY FATHER (ISBN NO: 978-0307961549….Jan 2013).

14)  HOW MODERN MEDICINE IS KILLING YOU……just Google the title and you will find lots of articles to read and videos to view.

15)  WHEN DOCTORS DON’T LISTEN: HOW TO AVOID MISDIAGNOSES AND UNNECESSARY TESTS by Dr Leana Wen MD and Dr Joshua Kosowsky (The authors argue that diagnosis, once the cornerstone of medicine, is fast becoming a lost art, with grave consequences). ISBN NO: 978-0312-5949-916.

NB: THERE IS A LOT MORE BOOKS OF SUCH NATURE TO FILL UP THE NEXT FEW PAGES.

By Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

Recently, we came across an article by Jessica Richards, a specialist in personal transformation and leadership. The title of the article was most intriguing. “I refused drugs and chemo to battle my breast cancer with fresh vegetable.”  You can read the article at the following links: –

a) http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/health/4467643/Jessica-Richards-on-why-she-refused-drugs-for-breast-cancer-to-have-vegetables-and-vitamin-C.html#ixzz23hCAAjZD

b) http://www.naturalnews.com/z036830_breast_cancer_dietary_changes_recovery.html

Alternatively, you can just Google the title of the article.

Subsequently, we bought her book “The Topic of Cancer” which is an inspired and practical guide that will help you take control when faced with cancer. Summarised below are Jessica’s main points of her cancer journey this far: –

Why she refused conventional treatment:

• In May 2007, Jessica was diagnosed with breast cancer with a relatively large tumour up to 3.5cm and was advised that it would require 5 months of aggressive chemotherapy, a partial or total mastectomy, removal of lymph nodes and radiotherapy followed by five years of drugs.
• Jessica visited 3 hospitals…..”I was recommended surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and drugs by three consultants at two different hospitals, but I chose an alternative route”.
• At each hospital, “I found I was automatically booked in for chemotherapy. This is mainly the case with cancer treatment and I understand that it works this way because most people don’t question anything; they just assume that it’s the right way and for the best. Personally I felt like I was just being “processed” like everyone else and was no longer an individual. Most people accept treatment in the belief that it’s the only way. It was assumed that I would just allow it all to happen as if I was part of a computerised process, where my details had been entered and the treatment programme spat out and I was duly expected to sleepwalk through the whole thing.

In the following paragraphs, Jessica described how she decided against chemotherapy:

• I was recommended AC accelerated Taxol chemotherapy
• I asked the Oncologist how my treatment would benefit me, how would it increase my chances of survival. He said it would only increase it by up to 7% compared with the survival chances of not having chemotherapy at all.
• The oncologist also told me that they don’t really have the figures to give accurate answers which surprised me, considering that chemotherapy has, to my knowledge, been used for about fifty years! I then asked how they had decided on my treatment programme, and he told me it was a computer programme. Then I asked him what details were fed into the programme and he told me it was my age, whether I was pre or post-menopausal, and the size and grade of my tumour.

(Please read the addendum at the end of this review for comments by another M.D. on how chemo drugs are selected for patients).

• I asked him why chemotherapy was recommended for me, given the only slightly better chance of survival and the appalling risks associated with the ‘therapy’. He answered that at that particular time where they were trailing the effectiveness of using chemotherapy before surgery rather than after it, in order to shrink the tumour and necessitate less extensive surgery. Apparently, they were hoping to find out whether this increased overall survival levels. In fact, I have since found out that shrinking a tumour with chemotherapy prior to surgery has no impact on survival levels. I need to mention here that in medical terms, ‘survival’ is taken to mean still being alive five years after diagnosis. It doesn’t mean, as one would like to think, that survival means you’re cured and will live happily ever after.
• It seemed I was supposed to accept what I considered to be unreasonable risks to my health simply to keep more of my breast, a purely cosmetic issue, as I saw it. These risks included a depleted immune system, possible tissue damage from chemotherapy leaking out of veins, memory and serious blood disorders such as leukaemia and many other shorter term horrors such as tiredness, muscle aches, eye irritation and hair loss. I told the oncologist that although I didn’t relish losing most of or my entire breast, I was 50 years old and not a 19 year old page three girl, or even death in the hope of ending up with a better pair of jugs was hardly my priority.
• He (the oncologist) agreed that I should think about it very carefully. I then asked the ‘six million dollar question’. “If you were in my situation” I said, “would you accept chemotherapy?  “No” was his reply.

(To read more Why Doctors Refuse Chemotherapy, visit the following link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/14150181/Why-Doctors-Do-Not-Take-Chemo or just google the title).

• I walked out of the hospital hugely relieved having made the decision that I was in no way going to submit to chemotherapy, and no-one had given me what I would consider a reasonable or rational explanation as to why I should. The numbers simply didn’t add up and I had no interest in being part of that “trial”.

On researching further, Jessica discovered further information on chemotherapy : –

• What are longer term side effects of chemotherapy? This is a very important question, as you can be left with long term health issues. In my case, I was leaving myself open to a small but nonetheless possible risk of leukaemia associated with Taxol chemotherapy.
• Toxic agents like chemotherapy have to be metabolised by the body in order to eliminate them and this means that they have to be processed by either your liver or kidneys or both, depending on the type of chemotherapy used. This can cause permanent damage to those organs.
• Chemotherapy, in most cases, is designed to bring you to the point of death in order to destroy as much of the cancer as possible.
• Chemotherapy is never recorded as a cause of death. Death of cancer patients is always attributed to cancer.
• After refusing chemotherapy before surgery, Jessica started on the metabolic therapy, which meant an alkaline diet. Within 3 weeks, the tumour changed from an impenetrable, hard, calcified lump to a soft, jelly like mass. Later when they (the doctors at one hospital) completely changed their recommendation from a lumpectomy to a mastectomy with lymph nodes dissection (even though there is now new research to which suggests that lymph node removal does not extend life.) Jessica was particularly pissed when the senior surgeon just told her “Oh, why don’t you just have a mastectomy and get it over with.”

As her father had been a radiographer in a nuclear power station, Jessica learned from an early age of the dangers of radiation, the main one being that “radiation causes cancer” besides : –

• radiation can kill cancer cells but will also cause damage to healthy tissue,
• radiotherapy could cause heart damage, lymphedema (a build-up of lymphatic fluid which is painful, compromises the immune system, and makes one susceptible to infections should that area be scratched in some way) in that arm.

On the subject of Diet and Nutrition, the writer is equally vocal as well. In her opinion and experience, diet and nutrition play the biggest part in recovery from most illnesses.

• When she visited the 3 hospitals…she was told that they didn’t know anything about nutritional advice. One hospital told her that “it made no difference what you ate or drank”
• How can diet be recognised as having an impact on some disease and not others? If you have diabetes, you must address your diet, if you have a heart condition, you will be given dietary advice….but if you have cancer, no such thing happens.” WHY??
• The idea of a specialist cancer diet is to support the immune system and at the same time create a hostile environment to the cancer within the body.
• If you make your decision to use diet as part of your treatment, then take full responsibility and stick to it wholeheartedly. Don’t mess around with it, there are no half measures.

 Jessica recommends Ten Things Not to Eat & Why

• Sugar-cancer cells are anaerobic and glucose-receptive which basically means that cancer cells are dependent on sugar rather than oxygen for growth.
• Alcohol--it is actually toxic to the body and is a highly refined form of sugar and may cause DNA damage, which in turn can cause cancer.
• Tea-black tea has an acidic effect on the body
• Yeast cause fermentation in the gut, which in turn creates an acidic environment in the body. Cancer cells as well as yeasts love an acidic environment.
• Fizzy
• •  drinks and squashes–these are basically sugar and chemicals. These drinks are often recommended to cancer patients who, because of chemotherapy and other treatments have a much compromised immune system, because there is nothing live contained in them. The thinking behind it is that with such a compromised immune system, a microbe from fresh food or drink could prove life threatening so patients are advised to eat and drink only dead substances.
• • Dairy products create acidity. Not only do milk and cheese create acidity but cheese is also full of microbes which add to the gut problems and acidity. It’s especially not a good idea to ingest dairy products if you have hormonally driven cancer, such as breast or prostate, as dairy products are full of hormones including growth hormones which all milk has in order for the baby animal to grow.

• Jessica recommends Ten Things to Begin Eating and Drinking 
• • Water dehydration can have long term devastating effects on health. During some forms of chemotherapy, it’s very important to drink plenty of fluid as the chemotherapy agent is metabolised through the kidneys and therefore the kidneys need to be flushed out with fluid throughout the treatment.

• • Vegetable juice is alkalising, releases and eliminates toxins and provides antioxidants and nutrients directly into the body system.
  • Green leafy vegetables–they are alkalising and full of chlorophyll as well as other nutrients and enzymes. Chlorophyll acts as an oxygen carrier of your blood and therefore your red blood cells.
  • Whole fruits – which still contain all the fibre. Some are acidic or very high in sugar. Stick to fresh pears, pineapples, papaya and banana.
  • Short grain brown rice
  • Nuts & seeds, apricot kernels – choose fresh, raw nuts. Avoid roasted, salted or any other kind of processed nuts such as dry roasted. Steer clear of peanuts as they contain microbes which are something to be avoided on a cancer recovery program.
  • Lentils & pulses such as beans and chickpeas.
  • Green, white & herbal teas.
  • Onion and garlic, herbs & spices are packed with powerful antioxidants.
  • Fish & meat – choose any fish except farmed fish.

ADDENDUM…. How chemo drugs are decided for cancer patients:

a)      In another book, DEFEAT CANCER edited by Connie Strasheim, a medical doctor, Dr Juergen Winkler, MD who practises integrative oncology, has this to say:

“There’s a strong fraternal order among doctors and it’s especially strong among oncologists.  Most oncologists are very ‘cookbook like’ in their treatments of patients. They have a  regimented way of doing things, with no in-betweens. They have a book that they use to  look up chemotherapy treatments for their patients, called the “ Guide to Chemotherapeutic  Regimens.” When prescribing a regimen, they just calculate their patients’ weight and body surface area, and from those, determine what their treatments should be. That’s how  conventional medicine treats patients” (page 153)

b)      In the same book, Dr Martin Dayton, MD, DO  licensed and Board Certified osteopathic physician and surgeon in Florida, has this to comment: “Chemotherapy drugs selected empirically and based on the results of clinical trials, using  limited patient specific data (tumour size, site, and metastasis) induce positive responses  (in patients) only 30 percent of the time” (page 206)”

NB: Dr Dayton quoted the above from the book PHARMACOGENICS by Dr Kalow Werner  published in 2001.

In summary, Jessica Richards (diagnosed in 2007) did not submit herself to surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or hormonal therapy at all. Is she still alive? Yes, very much so. Would you have done the same thing? We would like to hear from you.

 ISBN NO: 978-0-9570644-0-9

Website: www.jessicarichards.co.uk

Email: jessica@jessicarichards.co.uk

FURTHER REFERENCES:

Jessica Richards obviously did a lot of reading and research before she decided against chemotherapy, radiotherapy or hormonal therapy.  For further reading on breast cancer and its treatment, we recommend the following books:-

1)      Breast Cancer: The Herbal Option by Dr Chris Teo  (ISBN NO. 978-983259-0231)

2)      Breast Cancer: What You Should Know (But May Not Be Told) About Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment by Steve Austin, N.D.  and Cathy Hitchcock (ISBN NO: 1-55858-362-2)

3)      What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer by Dr John Lee, M.D.

(ISBN NO: 0-446-67980)

4)      The Truth About Breast Health, Breast Cancer by Dr Charles B. Simone, M.D.

(ISBN No. 0-9714574-0-9)

5)      The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Breast Cancer by Dr Dharam Kaur, N.D.

 (ISBN No. 0-7788-0083-0)

6)      Waking The Warrior Goddess by Dr Christine Horner, M.D. (ISBN No. 1-59120-155-1)

7)      My Healing From Breast Cancer by Dr Barbara Joseph, MD

(ISBN 0-87983-711-x)

8)      Your Life in Your Hands by Professor Jane Plant (ISBN 1-85227-809-9)

9)      Choosing to Heal by Janet Edwards (ISBN 978-1-905857-00-5)

10)   A Cancer Battle Plan by Anne Frahm and David Frahm (ISBN: 0-87477-893-x)

11)   Knockout – Interviews with Doctors who are Curing Cancer by Suzanne Somers

 (ISBN NO: -978-0-307-58746-6)

12)   The Breast Cancer Wars by Dr Barron H. Lerner, MD (ISBN No: 0-19-516106-8)

13)   Enough Already – The Overtreatment of Early Breast Cancer by George Goldberg

(ISBN No: 0-9651453-3-8)

14)   You Did What? Saying No to Conventional Cancer Treatment by Hollie and Patrick Quinn

(ISBN No: 978-0-692-00904-8)

15)   A Lighter Side to Cancer by Sandra Miniere (ISBN NO : 978-0615642710)

WHEN YOU ARE ONLINE, YOU MAY WISH TO READ THE FOLLOWING: 

1)      www.drday.com (This is the website of Dr Lorraine Day, MD….read why she refuse chemotherapy and radiotherapy after the removal of her cancerous breast tumour). 

2)      Does Chemo for Breast Cancer cause more harm than good?

Link: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/01/01/does-chemo-for-breast-cancer-cause-more-harm-than-good.aspx 

3)      Chemotherapy can make cancers more resistant to treatment and even encourage them to grow.  Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2184277/Chemotherapy-

 encourage-cancer-growth.html

 4)      Taxol can cause Tumour Cell Release  Link : http://forums.imaginis.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=459

 5)      Taxol Doesn’t Treat Common Breast Cancer  http://her2support.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=30492

 NB: THERE ARE A LOT MORE OF SUCH INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET….BE MORE CREATIVE IN YOUR GOOGLING LIKE:

a)      Chemotherapy Spreads the Cancer.

b)      Anti-Cancer Drugs make Tumours More Deadly.

c)       Why Chemo Kills.

d)      How effective is Chemotherapy/Radiotherapy.

e)      How toxic is Chemotherapy/Radiotherapy.

 OF COURSE, YOUR ONCOLOGIST/DOCTOR WILL ADVISE YOU NOT TO TRUST THE   INTERNET…. (ONLY THEIR ADVICE/INFO CAN BE TRUSTED). HOWEVER THERE ARE A LOT OF   OTHER BOOKS WRITTEN BY DOCTORS/ONCOLOGISTS….SOME OF THESE ARE:

        1) THE COMPASSIONATE ONCOLOGIST by Dr James W. Forsythe, MD, HMD…..read what cancer specialists don’t want you to know.

       2) MONEY DRIVEN MEDICINE by Dr David K Cundiff, MD…..read about the effectiveness of  chemotherapy for Non-responsive cancers

      3) NATURAL STRATEGIES FOR CANCER PATIENTS by Dr Russell Blaylock, MD…..Chapter 3 is  entitled Chemotherapy: Poisoning Cancer (and You).

      4) WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CANCER by Dr. Robert Buckman in collaboration with specialists at The MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Texas. (read                            Chapter 9–With So Many Breakthroughs, Why is There No Progress?) .

       5) THE END OF ILLNESS by Dr David B Agus, MD…..read about the effectiveness of         chemotherapy by this prominent oncologist.

6) THE ENZYME FACTOR by Dr Hiromi Shinya, MD….read why anti- cancer drugs do not  cure cancer

       7) FIGHTING CANCER WITH KNOWLEDGE AND HOPE by Dr Richard Frank, MD….read an oncologist’s explanation on why chemotherapy and targeted therapies may not  work.

       8) A WORLD WITHOUT CANCER by Dr Margaret L Cuomo,MD…..read her expose on Poisons: The Limits of Anti-Cancer Drugs.

Reviewed by: Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

THE AUTHOR:Dr. Richard C. Frank, MD,an oncologist, is the Director of Cancer Research, Whittingham Cancer Center, Norwalk Hospital, Norwalk, CT, and Medical Director, Mid-Fairfield Hospice, Wilton, CT.USA

WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT:  As expected, the whole book is devoted mainly to describing the virtues of conventional treatment of the various types of cancers via surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, targeted therapies and hormone therapies. However in the chapter on “How Cancer Grows and Cancer Treatments at Work”,Dr. Frank gives an explanation as to why chemotherapy may not work for you. We summarize the main points below:-

CANCER CAN GROW UNPREDICTABLY (pages 124-126)

a)      Although cancer appears to develop in an organized fashion when viewed from the outside, if we were to go inside a tumour with a little magnifying glass and monitor the movement of cells and the integrity of DNA; we would see a much more chaotic situation.

b)      As a cancer develops and grows, the DNA that guides it along is prone to change…. as a cancer grows, its genetic makeup becomes diversified, which leads to a diversity of cell types within it…. cancer is not a collection of identical cells.

c)       The tendency of a cancer to generate cells with different capabilities explains many of the dreadful aspects of cancer that patients find so hard to grapple with:

• Why it can spread from one location to another,
• Why it stops responding to a treatment that was working,
• Why it can return when it was in remission

The reason is that every cancer, whether it arises in the lung, breast, prostate, bone marrow, or elsewhere, contains different populations of cells that have distinct properties.

d)      A cancerous tumour does not contain billions of identical clones. Cancer could never develop in this way because it must avoid the immune system’s attack on it, live in areas of low oxygen tension, and compete with the rest of the body for vital nutrients.

e)      Inside any tumour are cells that are living and cells that have died. There are cancer cells capable of reproducing many others, called cancer stem cells, and cells completely devoid of this capacity. Cancer’s diversity is generated early. By the time it is diagnosed, some cells may already be capable of metastasizing and others may be able to withstand a particular cancer treatment. This is the basis of cancer’s resistance to treatment i.e. chemotherapy (see section “Why Do Cancer Treatments Sometimes Fail?”).

f)       When new cancer cells are generated inside a tumour, some will be hearty enough to survive and others will not be. If some cells survive the treatment, then it is mainly because their DNA contains the necessary alterations that help them resist the chemotherapy drug; this population of cells will then expand, and the compositions of the cancer will again change. (page 126)

g)      …. when a cancer returns after being declared in complete remission, it is because a few cells were different enough to stay alive after a treatment killed nearly all the other cells; this difference could have been present from the start of treatment or it could have developed as a response to it. Whichever occurred, it is cancer’s ability to diversify and adapt its DNA that enables it to survive. (page 126)

WHY DO CANCER TREATMENTS SOMETIMES FAIL? (PAGES 188-190)

(a) Drug resistance or the growth of cancer in the face of ongoing or recently completed treatments represents the main barrier to cure for many cancers…. (page 188). In many instances, oncologists cannot specify why a person’s cancer develops treatment resistance…. treatment resistance is probably the most complicated area of oncology. (page 189).

(b) The root cause of a cancer relapse lies in the fact that cancer is not an accumulation of exactly the same cells but rather a mixture of cells with differing properties. Some may have sensitivity to certain drugs and be killed by them, whereas others are resistant to those drugs. The resistant population will survive treatment and in time be detected as a cancer relapse. (page 189)

(c) Drug resistance may be present in an untreated cancer or emerge in response to therapy…. the innate adaptability of cancer cells and how they can sometimes outwit an effective therapy by altering their DNA or other molecules. This property explains the acquisition of resistance during a cancer’s growth. (pages 189-190)

(d)   Chemotherapy may lose its effectiveness when cancer cells activate a protein that pumps the drugs out as soon as they enter the cells; targeted therapies may lose their ability to control their targets when those receptors and signalling proteins mutate and morph into different shapes; hormone therapies may stop controlling cancer growth when estrogen or androgen receptors undergo a shape change or get massively overproduced, overwhelming the drugs meant to neutralize them. (page 190)

(e)   Several types of cancer have been found to contain a very small population of cancer stem cells, which are believed to be responsible for continually replenishing the pool of cells in a tumour. It turns out that an additional property of these cancer stem cells is their natural resistance to chemotherapy and other cancer treatment.

(f)     Some chemotherapy drugs (as well as radiation therapy) may contribute to (or directly cause) the development of new cancers many years after treatment (page 174). And it has been known for decades that chemotherapy alone cannot eradicate the advanced stages of the most common cancers (page 175).

TARGETED THERAPIES: (PAGES 175-180)

The current hot trend is to offer targeted drugs like Erbitux (for colorectal, head and neck cancers), Rituxan (for lymphoma), Herceptin (for breast cancer), Tarceva(for lung cancer), Sutent (for kidney cancer) and etc. Once in the bloodstream, they act like heat-seeking missiles, locating cancer cells wherever they lurk and gripping onto them via one specific receptor target (among thousands of receptors) that projects from the outer surface of the cells. The result is that the receptors stop transmitting growth signals inside the cells (page 177).

(a) Are targeted therapies “magic bullets”?

According to Dr Frank …..” although targeted therapies were developed with the hope that they would be magic bullets that would neatly eradicate cancer through selective targeting of one critical molecule, in general they have fallen short of this lofty goal. No cancer is considered curable by treatment through a targeted therapy alone… (page 180) The reason for the muted success of targeted therapies is that most cancers are caused not by one genetic derangement but by several; no one target functions as an Achilles heel. “(page 180)

(b) Do targeted therapies cause side effects?

“Like any other drug taken for any purpose, unintended effects may occur with these medications. Generally speaking, targeted therapies are easier to tolerate – less hair-loss, smaller declines in blood counts, less nausea… still, substantial side effects may occur with some targeted therapies, and they tend to increase the toxicities of chemotherapy when used in combination.” (page 182)

Finally, angiogenesis inhibitors (like Avastin, Sutent, Nexavar, Thalomid) constrict blood vessels not only inside tumours but also in other parts of the body. As a result, they often cause some degree of high blood pressure and are associated with an increased risk for kidney damage, bleeding, stroke and coronary artery blockage. (page 183)

In conclusion, we quote two very relevant statements by Dr. Frank:-

i.      Efforts to blast away metastatic cancers with mega doses of chemotherapy have fallen short because they do not root it out but rather cause more harm than good: the cancer is still present and the patient is sicker than ever. (page 143)

ii.      Even though billions of dollars are invested in cancer research every year, most new drugs in the research pipeline will extend life rather than the silver bullets that pierce the heart of cancer. (page 145)

THE FOLLOWING ARE SOME WORDS OF ADVICE BY DR FRANK ON NUTRITIONLpages 102-110.

Although the whole book is about conventional cancer medicine, Dr Frank did make some notable comments/advice on diet and cancer (not the”eat anything you like” type). We summarise the main points as follows:-

a)      …the contribution of diet…to the development of cancer is so large that if behaviours could be changed, many cancers could be avoided altogether… (and many oncologists will be without jobs).  Almost 30 years and a great deal of research later, the link between poor nutritional habits…and the development of cancer have been solidified…

b)      A large and ever-growing number of studies indicate…..cancers are highly influenced by one’s pattern for living: a diet high in red meat and animal fats and low in fruits and vegetables…contributes an unhealthy pattern for living that often leads to major illness.

c)       Diet can promote or inhibit the formation of cancer…through:-

(i)      The presence of carcinogens in food (which can be natural constituents or man-made additives);

(ii)     The generation of carcinogens by cooking…when foods are smoked, fried, or grilled, polycyclic hydrocarbons are produced;

(iii)    The increased exposure of the body to carcinogens by a diet low in fiber, which slows down bowel movement;

(iv)    ”over-nutrition” or excess body weight.

d)      Excess body fat promotes the development of cancer because it leads to two important changes in the body’s chemistryLpage 109)

(i)      The development of the insulin resistance syndrome or metabolic syndrome; and

(ii)     The increased production of estrogen.

e)      More fat, more estrogen, more breast cancer.  The ovaries are the main source of estrogen production in menstruating women.  When ovarian function ceases upon menopause, estrogen is still produced in the female body, although in lesser amounts.  In post-menopausal women, fat becomes the main estrogen factory, with higher body weights correlating with higher estrogen levels…and estrogen stimulates the growth of the breast and uterus. Just as the normal cells in these tissues multiply in response to estrogen, so do (most) cancers derived from them.(page 109)

f)       The connection between fat and breast cancer is in part caused by the fact that fat contains an enzyme called aromatase that increases estrogen production.  So even after menopause, when the ovaries have ceased producing estrogen, the hormone still gets made in the body.  That’s why a class of medicines called aromatase inhibitors (AIs)…. blocks aromatase from working and thereby drastically reduces the levels of estrogen in the bloodstream.  Examples of AIs are femara (Letrozole), anastrazole (Arimidex)(page 110)

Note: This book was published in april 2009. Isbn no: 978-0-300-1510-2

Reviewed by Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari, 10, Jalan SS 19/1K, 47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor. Tel: 03-56342775 / 019-3278092

The Author:  Dr David B. Agus, MD, is a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering and heads USC’s Westside Cancer Centre and the Centre for Applied Molecular Medicine. He is the co-founder of two pioneering personalized medicine companies, Navigencies and Applied Proteomics. Dr. Agus is an international leader in cancer care and new technologies and approaches for personalized health care and chairs the Global Agenda Council on Genetics for the World Economic Forum.

Introduction:  When Dr Agus decided to pursue a career in oncology, many of his mentors questioned his choice. Why, they asked, would a promising young doctor want to enter a field known for its inescapably grim outcomes? Although, it was precisely the lack of progress that inspired Dr Agus to join the war on cancer, he moved away from the modern methods of the medical establishment, which aim to reduce our afflictions to a single point. Why did he do so?

The following excerpts from the book give us an indication of his views on the effectiveness of modern medicine or specifically on the effectiveness of the conventional treatment of cancer:

a)      Cancer treatment is the place where we take the most risks in medicine because, frankly, there’s little hope for survival in many cases, and the cure is as evasive today as it ever was (page 1 ).

b)      I (Dr Agus) am infuriated by the statistics, disappointed in the progress that the medical profession  has made, and exasperated by the backward thinking that science continues to espouse, which no doubt cripples our hunt for that magic bullet (page 2 ).

c)      I (Dr Agus) am a realist, and the facts of cancer and many other life-threatening diseases are unnerving. In an age when we can communicate in seconds with people around the world using slick devices we tote in our pockets, it’s a shame that the technology and innovation in medical research and treatment are so archaic, out-dated, and, dare I say, in some cases barbaric (page 3 ).

d)      Rather than honouring the body as the exceedingly complex systems that it is, we keep looking for the individual gene that has gone awry or for the one “secret” that can improve our health. This kind of short-sightedness had led us far astray (page 4).

e)      The truth is that some doctors inflict a lot of harm today. The entire notion of “do no harm” has been corrupted; we’ve moved to an extreme place in medicine that’s rarely data-driven and is horrendously overrun by false or unproven claims. And that’s scary (pages 4-5).

f)       When we reduce science down to the goal of finding the tiniest improvements in treatment rather than genuine break-throughs, we lose sight of the bigger picture and find ourselves lost (page 6).

g)      Is this why we’ve barely budged in our “war” against cancer in the last five decades? (page 6)

h)      I am an oncologist who cannot treat advanced cancer well. Medical science has made extraordinary progress over the past century, but in my field, the progress stalled out decades ago (page 6).

i)        The death rate from cancer from 1950 to 2007 didn’t change much. (page 25 )

j)        We are making enormous progress against other chronic diseases, but little against cancer (page 25).

k)      With the more common deadly cancers, including those that ravage the lung, colon, breast, prostate and brain we’ve had an embarrassingly small impact on death rates (page 25).

l)        The lack of change in the death rate from cancer is truly alarming (page 26 ).

m)  When cancer is exposed to chemotherapy, drug-resistant mutants can escape. In other words, just as resistant strains of bacteria can result from antibiotic use, anticancer drugs can produce resistant cancer cells (page 37).

n)    The number of mutations shoots up exponentially as a cancer patient is treated with drugs such as chemotherapy, which inherently causes more mutations (page 39).

o)      When chemotherapy drugs bind to DNA, they can cause cancer just as radiation can cause cancer by mutating the genome. This helps explain why survivors of breast cancer, for instance, can suffer  from leukaemia later in life due to the chemotherapy they received to cure their breast cancer (page 39 ).

p)      It’s human nature to want to find magic bullets in medicine, but they happen once in a blue moon, and we may already have had all of our blue-moon moments. We haven’t found many new pills lately that really cure diseases. This is why the pharmaceutical industry is somewhat broken right now; it has run out of low-hanging fruit, a magical chemical that cures a disease. I don’t think we’re likely to find a lot more of those; it seems like a waste of time, money, and resources to keep looking for these magic bullets. We need a different approach -a new model (page 41-42).

q)      Right now, when doctors test a drug, they are looking at one variable over a discrete period of time. They only discover potentially bad side effects in retrospective studies – looking back after people have been taking the drug for a long time, or by pooling several studies together (page 47).

r)        There’s a lot of trial and error in my business. We don’t have the technology yet to precisely predict what medicine you’ll respond to or which one will work best (page 64).

s)       Despite chemotherapy’s being a widely used treatment for cancer, nobody has even shown that most chemotherapy actually touches a cancer cell. It’s never been proven (page 86).

t)       When people ask me (Dr Agus) why most cancer drug development in lab animals doesn’t work or cannot easily be applied to solve human problems, there are three reasons:

• First, tumors grow slowly in humans as compared to in lab animals, where we can grow tumors in two weeks that represent 20 to 30 percent of the animal’s whole body size.  (page 93)
• Second, it’s hard to compare human tumors with those in other animals. Human tumors tend to be unique, and when we try to replicate a human tumor in another animal we cannot achieve the exact same characteristics to study and manipulate (page 94).
• Finally, controlling for the way various drugs work in different living bodies also presents an insurmountable challenge.(page 94)

Below are Dr Agus’s comments on some chemotherapy drugs: 

a) Avastin (bevacizumab) could cause bleeding in the brain….. (page 88),

b) Iressa (gefitinib)….patients who were on the drug showed improvement in its

symptoms but their tumours didn’t shrink (page 92),

c) Tarceva (erlotinib)…..helped lung cancer patients live longer but their tumours didn’t shrink (page 92),

d) Taxol (placitaxel)….when given to ladies with mestastatic cancer….”a great response”

which means that those women will show a 50% shrinkage in their tumour,,,,but the cancer will then  come back….i.e. the cancer “recurs” and the patient “relapses” (page

92).

Below are some more shocking comments from Dr Agus:

a) Doctors such as me (Dr Agus) arrive at solutions through plain old trial and error, and

therefore we can’t always explain how things work (page 89),

b) Doctors, (Dr Agus) included, don’t actually know how these drugs kill cancer cells at all (page 89)

c) Unfortunately, our only metric for success is shrinking a tumour. Slowing down its

growth isn’t usually accepted as success (page 92),

d) We already have all the drugs we need to treat the vast majority of diseases….we just

don’t know how to use this library of drugs (method), how much to use (dosage),and

when (schedule).

In conclusion, Dr Agus admits that drug resistance may be the reason why chemotherapy drugs may not work:

“My field in particular is a breath-taking spectrum of gray shades. Most people don’t understand that if your cancer is four centimeters in diameter and you come back four months down the road and the cancer is now six centimeters, we call that resistant…..your cancer is resistant to the drug” 

The Above Book Reviewed Is Yet Another Book Which Your Doctor/Oncologist Will Never Advise You To Read. Other Such “Banned” Books/Resources You May Want To Read (Which Your Oncologist Will Never Advise You) Are Listed Below:

 1) THE COMPASSIONATE ONCOLOGIST by Dr James W. Forsythe, MD, HMD…..read  what cancer specialists don’t want you to know.

2) MONEY DRIVEN MEDICINE by Dr David K Cundiff, MD…..read about                   chemotherapy for Non-responsive cancers

3) NATURAL STRATEGIES FOR CANCER PATIENTS  by Dr Russell Blaylock, MD…..Chapter 3 is entitled  Chemotherapy: Poisoning Cancer (and You).

 4) KNOCKOUT ….INTERVIEWS WITH DOCTORS WHO ARE CURING CANCER by Suzanne Somers ( read Dr Forsythe’s interview in Chapter 9 )

5) CANCER: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (about Surgery, Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy, Pharmaceutical Drugs and the Politics of Cancer by Dr Chris Teo)

 6) GETTING IT RIGHT(a book of quotations from established medical journals and    renowned medical experts by Dr Chris Teo).

7) WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CANCER by Dr. Robert Buckman in collaboration with specialists at The MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Texas. (read Chapter 9 – With So Many Breakthroughs, Why is There No Progress?)

8) AUSTRALIAN ONCOLOGISTS CRITICIZE CHEMOTHERAPY by Associate Professor Graeme Morgan, a Radiation Oncologist and Professor Robyn Ward, a Medical Oncologist in Australia and Dr Michael Barton, MD, a radiation oncologist. (all three oncologists did a research study on “ THE CONTRIBUTION OF CYTOTOXIC CHEMOTHERAPY TO 5-YEAR SURVIVAL IN ADULT MALIGNANCIES” which was published in the journal CLINICAL ONCOLOGY in 2004) …(COPIES AVAILABLE FOR READING)

9) ARTICLE: WHY 75% OF DOCTORS WOULD REFUSE CHEMOTHERAPY (just go to the Internet –Google or Yahoo and type in the above title and you will find a lot to read which your oncologist will never tell you).

10) ARTICLE: HOW MODERN MEDICINE KILLED MY BROTHER by Dr Russell Blaylock, MD, author of Natural Strategies for Cancer Patients. Just Google the title or Dr Russell Blaylock to read the article.

11) WHAT DOCTORS DON’T TELL YOU by Dr Lynne McTaggart (read about the truth of the dangers of modern medicine. Chemotherapy is cited in pages 223 to 229).

12) DVD: CANCER TALK by Dr Alfonso Wong, an oncologist from Hong Kong…..in the DVD, Dr Wong clearly explained that if after the first 4-6 cycles of chemotherapy there is no progress, then further chemotherapy will be futile…

13) DVD: DRUGS NEVER CURE DISEASE by Dr Lorraine Day, MD, a trauma surgeon and a breast cancer survivor. She had surgery to remove the big lump in her chest but refused any radiotherapy or chemotherapy…………….read more about Dr Day in her website……….www.drday.com

OTHER RELATED REFERENCES

1) THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DRUG COMPANIES by Dr Marcia Angell, MD, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (read how they deceive us and what to do about it)

2) DEATH BY PRESCRIPTION by Dr Ray Strand, MD, (the shocking truth behind an overmedicated nation).

3) THE POLITICS OF CANCER REVISITED by Dr Samuel S. Epstein, MD (in this book, Dr Epstein indicts the NCI, US and the American Cancer Society for responsibility in losing the cancer war).

4) THE CANCER INDUSTRY by Dr Ralph Moss, PhD (The classic expose of the Cancer Establishment –read chapter 5 CHEMOTHERAPY).

5) CANCER AND NATURAL MEDICINE by Dr John Boik, PhD (read Chapter 9 – The Treatment of Cancer by Conventional Medicine).

6) THE HEALING OF CANCER – The cures and the cover-ups by Barry Lynes.

7) QUESTIONING CHEMOTHERAPY—by Dr Ralph Moss, PhD….Dr Moss was formerly a director in the prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, USA. He was sacked after he published a scientific study (conducted by researchers in the Cancer centre itself) that an alternative treatment method is effective……..

8) WWW.NATURALNEWS.COM …..operated by Mike Adams….just type in the name of the drug or type in chemotherapy effectiveness/side effects…..lots to read…

9) WWW.MERCOLA.COM …..operated by Dr. Joseph Mercola, MD…..just type in the name of the drugs or chemotherapy effectiveness, etc….also lots to read…