Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

Continuing our journey, we summarize some points mentioned in THE HOPE OF LIVING CANCER FREE, published in 1999 andwritten by Dr Francisco Contreras, MD, the General Director of the Oasis of Hope Hospital in Baja California, Mexico.

In this book, we will learn why Dr Contreras described….radiation therapy…has proven to be another medical blunder. Why is this so?

Dr Contreras’s thoughts on the dangers of radiation therapy are summarized as follows:

• Radiation therapy is the second line of attack. For a short time, total body radiation was used; however, that was stopped when many patients died from extreme toxicity.
• Now radiation therapy has evolved into a localized therapy in which dosages as well as the size of the fields (areas where the radiation is beamed) have diminished significantly.
• X-ray type beams are used to actually burn malignant cells. There are adverse reactions to the therapy because, even though the fields are limited, the beam will go (within the field) through benign as well as malignant cells.
• Radiation therapy, in which we place so much faith a few decades ago, has proven to be another medical blunder. Motivated by the desperation of failure, radiation therapists have dreamed up new ways of applying increasingly aggressive doses to their patients. They have literally “burned” patients, leaving many permanently disabled. Plus, these patients have had to experience the temporary side effects of severe nausea, malaise, loss of appetite and the loss of other functions.
• Radiation doses have to be specifically measured, and there is an air dose, skin dose and a tumour dose. The calculation has to be done by an expert, many times by the physicist. The radiation therapist does the planning to prevent the burning of the skin. The lighter the skin, the more it will be affected.
• According to Dr Mario Soto, when the field of entry is large, there will be side effects. For example:
• If the esophagus is touched during radiation to the chest, esophagitis, or the burning of the lining esophagus, can result.
• In the case of cancer of the cervix or the uterus, proctittis, or burning of the lining of the rectum, can be caused.
• In radiation to the head and neck, if radiation is given to the tongue, the salivary glands can be impacted, and the patient will be without saliva.

NB: Dr Mario Soto is the clinical oncologist at the Oasis of Hope Hospital where Dr Francisco Contreras is the Director General.

In a later book “50 CRITICAL CANCER ANSWERS” published in 2013 which Dr Contreras co-authored with Daniel E. Kennedy, M.C., both authors discussed Radiation: A New Era of Precision.

Although researchers have worked hard to hone in the radiation onto the tumours while shielding the normal cells, there are still limitations to date. These are their comments:

• Despite the improvements in 3D and 4D image-guided radiotherapy, brachytherapy, and proton therapy to target tumours more precisely, exposure and injury to surrounding tissues and organs with serious and permanent side effects still limits the amount of radiation therapy that can be administered to a patient undergoing cancer treatment.
• Furthermore, the state-of-the-art technology, developed to increase efficacy and reduce injury, is so complex that human and mechanical error is inevitable due to software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures, or inadequate staffing and training. The problem is compounded by how difficult radiation injuries are to identify.
• Even with intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), a serious complication exists. Most tumours “move with us” when we breath, or with peristalsis (the natural movement of our bowels); though this shifting is subtle, high-dose radiation still burns the normal tissue that moves into the beam.
• Complications due to organ damage and radiation-induced cancers are not apparent for many years, even decades; meanwhile insufficient dosing is impossible to detect or interpreted as failure to respond to treatment.
• According to the New York Times, accidents are chronically under-reported. In June 2010, a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer, and in 2005 a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50% more radiation than prescribed because one of the most powerful and supposedly precise-linear accelerators had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year. The article’s author concluded, “ Regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur”

According to the authors, ionizing radiation damages cellular molecules in both direct and indirect ways. It splits directly hit molecules into highly reactive fragments known as free radicals. These, in turn, can attack other molecules they encounter in a continuing and damaging chain reaction.

• One key damage target in irradiated cells is DNA, which acts as a crucial blueprint for cellular function. Severe damage to DNA can induce cell death, and this effect is an important mediator of lethal radiation toxicity.
• Radiation can attack DNA directly, but more often DNA is damaged by hydroxyl radicals formed when radiation interacts with water molecules in the body. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS:

It is extremely tragic and incomprehensible that the medical (or cancer) establishment still uses ionizing radiation that is clearly proven and known to be carcinogenic (as established by the International Agency for Research on Cancer).

It is also inconceivable that such conventional cancer treatments should cause so much pain, agony and money and then the patient has to suffer another form of cancer, heart disease or disorders to the bones, etc. Hence the cycle of treatment has to be repeated. 

Is this why conventional cancer treatment is referred to as “the Cancer Industry?”  Is this healing or is it “xxxx”? 

We welcome your opinion.

Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

Our search for answers to what radiation does to your body takes us to review LIFE OVER CANCER written by an Integrative Oncologist, Dr Keith Block, MD who is the Director of Integrative Medical Education at the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine and Medical Director of the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment in Evanston, Illinois.

This is what we found in the book on the dangers of radiation therapy:

• Radiation therapy delivers a powerful dose of X-rays to kill cancer cells. It is used most in the care of patients with early breast and prostate cancer. But because the intensity of this radiation is many times stronger than that of diagnostic X-rays, it can harm normal cells, too, especially in patients with advanced cancers who are receiving palliative radiotherapy to shrink recurrent tumours. In this case, immune cells (lymphocytes) in particular may become impaired, making the body more vulnerable to other diseases.
• Other common side effects of radiation include fatigue, eating problems, emotional distress, nausea, vomiting, bloating, discomfort in the neck or throat, and skin changes such as itching, blistering, toughening, and darkening.

The effects of radiation depend on where it is targeted…some main points:

• Radiation to the abdomen and pelvis can cause radiation enteritis, which is characterized by inflammation of the intestines with severe diarrhea.
• Radiation to the chest or breast can inflame the esophagus, causing difficulty swallowing.
• Radiation to the breast can result in a painful skin reaction.
• Radiation to the head, neck, and mouth can cause fungal infections in the mouth in addition to the usual irritation of the muscous membranes.
• Radiation to the whole-brain can leave patients with cognitive and physical deficits.
• Radiation to the lungs zaps so much normal tissue (its breathing and its attendant up-and-down movement of the chest causes healthy tissue to move into the X-rays’ path) that it leads to sometimes irreversible lung damage.

Elsewhere in the book, we gained an insight as to why radiotherapy and chemotherapy may not work for cancer patients:

• Radiation and many chemotherapy drugs kill malignant cells by generating lethal oxidative stress. That is, they generate an avalanche of free radicals that the cells are destroyed. The problem is that there are always some survivors. Cancer cells that are exposed long-term to free radical levels that are high, but not high enough to kill them, adapt. In a perverse case of Darwinian “survival of the fittest,” some cancer cells may mutate in a way that makes them more and more resistant to treatment. If even a few develop resistance to treatment, all of their descendents have it too.
• Indeed, cancer’s ability to continually adapt is one reason why chemotherapy and radiation are not more effective against cancer: the treatments also produce free radicals that support the disease process, allowing any cells that survive the barrage of radiation or chemotherapy to thrive.

CONCLUDING REMARKS:

It is extremely tragic and incomprehensible that the medical (or cancer) establishment still uses ionizing radiation that is clearly proven and known to be carcinogenic (as established by the International Agency for Research on Cancer).It is also inconceivable that such conventional cancer treatments should cause so much pain, agony and money and then the patient has to suffer another form of cancer, heart disease or disorders to the bones, etc. Hence the cycle of treatment has to be repeated.

Is this why conventional cancer treatments is referred to as “the Cancer Industry?” Is this healing?

We welcome your opinion.

by Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

Continuing our search to find answers to what radiation therapy does to the body, we re-read Chapter 4 RADIATION THERAPY: BURNING CANCER found in the best-seller “NATURAL STRATEGIES FOR CANCER PATIENTS” by Dr Russell Blaylock, MD. He was a board certified neurosurgeon and neuroscientist and was the Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at the Medical University of Mississippi. ( http://www.russellblaylockmd.com/)

Dr Blaylock’s comments gave us further insights into the hazards of radiation therapy. Some salient points in the chapter are:

• Most cancer patients, upon first learning they will face radiation treatments, have an image of lying down under a death ray. Most know that radiation is dangerous and can cause burns, nausea and vomiting, loss of hair, and even additional cancer. Their fears are not unfounded.
• Authorities in the field of radiation biology do not even agree on the safety of diagnostic X-rays, which involve infinitely lower doses of radiation than radiation therapy.
• Today, many doctors recommend that their cancer patients undergo radiation treatments following surgery just as a precaution. In my (Dr Blaylock’s) estimation, this is not good science. Despite the fact that we have many sophisticated ways to determine who should have post operative radiation and who shouldn’t, we are not using many of these tools with the majority of cancer patients.
• X-ray particles could not only kill cancer cells, but also cause cancer. In fact, Marie Curie and her daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, both died of leukemia caused by their prolonged exposure to radium.
• Radiation’s harmful effects are accumulative…even when the treatments are fractionated, the damage can accumulate and produce injury to the tissues in the path of the beam. In addition, the beam continues to reflect off hard surfaces, such as bone and surgical implants, with the result being delayed damage.
• Because no way existed to really concentrate the X-ray beam on the cancer, the result was often a wide zone of damage, including to the overlying skin. The effects of this damage were not always immediate.
• Often, patients who undergo radiation treatments experience degeneration of tissues months or even years after their treatments end. For example, delayed radionecrosis can occur following penetration of the brain or spinal cord by X-rays. 

The nervous system is not the only tissue that can be damaged by scatter radiation. Most vulnerable are the cells lining the gastrointestinal tract, as well as the cells of the bone marrow, lymph system, spleen, and hair follicles. This is because these are all rapidly dividing cells, easily damaged by radiation.

• Over half of all our immune cells are found in the gastrointestinal tract. Abdominal radiation treatments, especially when combined with chemotherapy, also can kill off the bacteria in the colon, such as the acidophilus and bifidus organisms. This, in turn, can result in an overgrowth of harmful microorganisms such as Candida albicans and pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria. When such bacterial disruptions are severe, which is not uncommon, yeast and bacteria can enter the bloodstream, with significant consequences to the immune system.
• The damage to the cells lining the intestine, colon, and rectum can range from defective absorption (malabsorption) to severe inflammation of the bowel wall with resulting bloody, mucus-filled stools.
• The cells lining the intestine are very complex and delicate. Damage to these cells can significantly alter the body’s ability to absorb foods, vitamins, and minerals, leading to significant malnutrition, despite a healthy diet. The simple fact is that if food cannot be properly digested and absorbed, a healthy diet does little good. This is especially a problem when chemotherapy is combined with radiation.

One hazard rarely considered, even by radiation oncologists, is the danger of blood vessels injury caused by the radiation passing through blood vessels, from small arterioles to larger arteries. Major arteries course very close to a cancerous tumour, and sometimes they are encased by the tumour. This means that the blood vessels receive a large degree of the radiation dose. The artery most often damaged by the radiation was the carotid artery (the main artery supplying blood to the brain)…another most often injured is the vertebral artery, which supplies blood to the brain stem. 

CONCLUDING REMARKS

It is extremely tragic and incomprehensible that the medical (or cancer) establishment still uses ionizing radiation that is clearly proven and known to be carcinogenic (as established by the International Agency for Research on Cancer). 

It is also inconceivable that such conventional cancer treatments should cause so much pain, agony and money and then the patient has to suffer another form of cancer, heart disease or disorders to the bones, etc. Hence the cycle of treatment has to be repeated. 

Is this why conventional cancer treatments have been referred to as “the Cancer Industry?” Is this healing or is it “legalized” ???? We welcome your opinion.

To conclude this article, we recommend that you read Dr Blaylock’s article which described…HOW MODERN MEDICINE KILLED MY BROTHER…at the following link: http://www.wnho.net/medicine_killed_brother.htm

by Yeong Sek Yee & Khadijah Shaari

One of the tragedies of radiation therapy, after it had burned your body, is that it may “reward” the cancer patient with  a second cancer and this comes quite commonly in the form of leukemias (including acute myelogenous, chronic myelogenous, and acute lymphoblastic leukemias) or pre-leukemias (myelodysplastic syndrome or MDS).

In this article, we shall concentrate on MDS. A myelodysplastic syndrome is a type of cancer in which the bone marrow does not make enough healthy blood cells and there are abnormal (blast) cells in the blood and/or bone marrow. In a patient with a myelodysplastic syndrome, the blood stem cells (immature cells) do not become healthy red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets. These immature blood cells, called blasts, do not work the way they should and either die in the bone marrow or soon after they go into the blood. This leaves less room for healthy white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets to form in the bone marrow. When there are fewer healthy blood cells, infection, anemia, or easy bleeding may occur.

For more general information on MDS, visit the website of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), USA: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/myelodysplastic/Patient/page1

Incidentally, the NCI also specified that one of the causes of MDS is… “past treatment with chemotherapy or radiation therapy for cancer.”

What other evidence is there? Let us quote from 3 other sources:

1. In the MDS website (http://www.mds-foundation.org/what-is-mds/), the main cause for MDS  is listed as:

“Radiation and chemotherapy for cancer are among the known triggers for the development of MDS. Patients who take chemotherapy drugs or who receive radiation therapy for potentially curable cancers, such as breast or testicular cancers, Hodgkin’s disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, are at risk of developing MDS for up to 10 years following treatment. MDS that develops after use of cancer chemotherapy or radiation is called “secondary MDS” and is usually associated with multiple chromosome abnormalities in cells in the bone marrow. This type of MDS often develops rapidly into AML”. 

2. The world famous Mayo Clinic, USA (http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/myelodysplastic-syndromes/basics/causes/con-20027168), clearly states that:

“Myelodysplastic syndromes that occur in response to cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation, or in response to chemical exposure are called secondary myelodysplastic syndromes. Secondary myelodysplastic syndromes are often more difficult to treat.”

3. The American Cancer Society, USA (http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/medicaltreatments/secondcancerscausedbycancertreatment/second-cancers-caused-by-cancer-treatment-treatments-linked-to-second-cancers)clearly acknowledged that:

“Radiation therapy was recognized as a potential cause of cancer many years ago. Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have been linked to past radiation exposure. Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a bone marrow disorder that can turn into acute leukemia, has also been linked to past radiation exposure.”

In June 2012, Good Morning America co-anchor announced that she had developed myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) barely five years after she had “beaten breast cancer.” Obviously, she had chemotherapy and radiation therapies.

(NB: We have seen cancer patients developing leukemias shortly after completing conventional cancer treatment).

In addition to causing a second cancer, radiation therapy also cause heart diseases…you may wish to read the following:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/07/economist-explains-22

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022202710.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131028162046.htm

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/would-you-ever-use-chemo-or-radiation-for-cancer/

http://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/practice-management/surviving-cancer-cost-radiation-chemo-induced-cardiovascular-diseases

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

It is extremely tragic and incomprehensible that the medical (or cancer) establishment still uses ionizing radiation that is clearly proven and known to be carcinogenic (as established by the International Agency for Research on Cancer). 

It is also inconceivable that such conventional cancer treatments should cause so much pain, agony and money and then the patient has to suffer another form of cancer, heart disease or disorders to the bones, etc. Hence the cycle of treatment has to be repeated. 

Is this why conventional cancer treatment is referred to as “the Cancer Industry?” Is this healing or what is it that you want to call it? 

We welcome your opinion.