Mainstream Cancer Treatments – by Anthony Sammeroff
The Doc Calling the Rebel Quack(my own original play on words btw)
For acute conditions alternative treatments tend to be safe and free from the kind of side effects you are likely experience with drugs. That means you can always try something out and if it doesn’t work revert to the pharmacological approach. When it comes to conditions like cancer where the wrong choice might cost you precious time or even result in unnecessary death, the choice is not always so easy to make. No one wants to play Russian Roulette. A healthy skepticism is warranted. But I can tell you pointblank (sorry to extend the metaphor) that if chemotherapy was a treatment in the alternative sphere carrying the same cost, the same side-effects, and the same success rates, it wouldn’t just be illegal… it would be held as ultimate proof alternative therapists are barbaric, dangerous and unscientific.
I am not completely against mainstream treatments. Surgery for cancer is absolutely necessary sometimes. If you have a tumor impinging on a major organ – let’s say it’s pushing on your colon and making it impossible to pass waste – then you must have surgery. After that you can go on a nutrition and detox-based protocol to try stop it from coming back, if you choose. We should rightly be thankful we live in an age where we have access to skilled surgeons. But let’s not pretend mainstream cancer treatments always extend life. If we applied the same skepticism as we do to anything that isn’t “officially approved” we might be in for a quite a shock. They are not nearly as safe or effective as people are think they are. They continue more because they are paid for by the government and receive the endorsement of public health bodies that are supposed to be impartial but are in the pay of industry than because they are backed by good science. And because a cancer diagnosis is terrifying. Let’s take an honest look at where we’ve come to with cancer treatment, and then perhaps you can come back and tell me who the real quacks cashing in on the vulnerable are.
In 2004, an independently funded literature review of randomized clinical trials evaluated the effectiveness of chemotherapy in the five-year survival rate for twenty-two major malignancies among Australian and American patients. It concluded: “The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA… Cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival.”[1] And remember, kids, almost all studies in cancer are funded either by the manufacturers of these treatments or by organizations like The ACS, NCI and universities who accept money from the manufacturers and blackball scientists who pursue research in alternatives, so the truth could be worse than reported in the literature.
A 2017 paper published in JAMA Oncology revealed that of sixty-two new oncology drugs approved between 2003 and 2013, only 43% offered a survival benefit of three months or longer, 11% offered a survival benefit of less than three months, 15% had an unknown survival benefit and 30% offered no survival benefit at all, and 45% were associated with reduced patient safety.[2]
Now wait a minute – EX-CUSE-me??!! Did I just read that right? Almost half of new cancer treatments REDUCED patient safety? And this is admitted by the same people running around calling everyone else quacks and cranks while advocating the government actively ban people from pursuing the treatment of choice because they might be “unsafe” – when they can hardly fare any worse on them than half of the treatments that are “approved”!
How much were they charging for these treatments which were harming people? Why were the insurance companies willing to pay for them? Are they still doing it? Where was the FDA to prevent them? Why was no one sued and made to compensate the families of patients subjected to harm?
A 2017 study published in the BMJ looked at the survival and quality-of-life benefits of forty-eight cancer drugs approved in Europe by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) between 2009 and 2013 and reached the conclusion, not only that chemo did not extend life, but that it didn’t improve quality of life either: “This systematic evaluation of oncology approvals by the EMA in 2009-13 shows that most drugs entered the market without evidence of benefit on survival or quality of life. At a minimum of 3.3 years after market entry there was still no conclusive evidence that these drugs either extended or improved life for most cancer indications. When there were survival gains over existing treatment options or a placebo, they were often marginal.”[3]
So, cancer drugs do not work very well (when they work at all) and they don’t improve lives either. Let’s face it – they are excruciatingly painful poisons; exhausting and miserable. Not everyone may be willing to undergo a strict regime like Gerson or The Gonzales Protocol (advocated by Dr. Issacs) but, given the choice and access to the facts, many people would rather just have half the cost of treatment back to spend as they please. They could have their home fixed and get help so they could spend their last days with family. Or find a hospice somewhere exotic to relax in the sun sipping mojitos till the day they die. That would save money, hospital beds, and the indignity of dying a slow and painful death in a clinical environment, hooked up to hospital machines.
White Elephant in the Room
Between 1971 when the war on cancer began and 2009, $105 billion had been spent by The National Cancer Institute alone, reported health writer Gina Kolata in The New York Times. That’s not to mention cash thrown out hand-over-fist by other government-sponsored agencies, drug companies, universities and warm-hearted individuals throwing bake-sales and running marathons for charity.
The return on that investment was a drop in the death rate of only 5% between 1950 and 2005. To put that in context, heart disease fell 64% during the same period, and the death rate for flu and pneumonia fell by 58%. Kolata reported that only 20% of patients with metastatic breast cancer, 10% with metastatic colorectal cancer, 40% with metastatic prostate cancer, and less than 10% of those with lung cancer live more than five years, adding that none of these numbers had changed much in the past forty years.[4] Still, nothing changed, and we just kept on spending more on mainstream dead ends, throwing good money after bad.
In total, $500 billion or more has been spent in the War Against Cancer, and despite that we have a one in three chance of contracting cancer today as compared to with a one in ten chance back in the 1970s. Leukemia, cancers of the tongue, tonsil, small intestine, liver, pancreas, kidney, thyroid, vulvar, pancreas, as well as endometrial cancers, male breast cancers, testicular cancers, and throat cancers are all on the rise. According to The National Center for Health Statistics, the age-adjusted deathrate for cancer in the United States has actually increased by 74 percent from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century.
Where cancer rates have fallen, it’s usually down to factors outside of medical treatment, but they will be presented as part of the overall statistics and people will attribute them to improvements in medical treatment nonetheless: “A decline in consumption of cigarettes is credited with being the most important factor in the drop in cancer death rates,” commented Dr. Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society, as reported by Sylvie Beljanski of Newsweek, who added, “A decrease in new colon cancer cases was probably down to more people getting colonoscopies which can prevent cancer through the removal of precancerous polyps.” As for the apparent decline in the number of reported prostate cancer cases, it is likely due to the correction of past overreporting because PSA screenings are no longer routinely applied to correct them because they rendered high rates of over-diagnosis.[5]
Statistics are also bent in a number of ways to make it look like more people are living longer from cancer treatment. For example, more testing has been implemented, which means cancers are detected earlier. That makes it look like people are living longer. More testing also means more false positives, and since people who don’t actually have cancer are healthier and more likely to withstand treatment, this also boosts “survival” rates. Slow-growing cancers are also factored into five-year survival rates, even though people would usually be able to live with them for five years even if they hadn’t been treated at all. So much sleight of hand!
Thomas N. Seyfried a distinguished biologist concluded in his book “Cancer as a Metabolic Disease” (2012), much the same as Kolata, that no real progress has been made in the management of advanced or metastatic cancer for more than 40 years, and that the real number of people dying had changed little in the previous ten years.
Red Herrings
For example, in the BMJ review I mentioned, the authors noted that only 26% of the studies were using survival as their primary end point. The rest used “surrogate markers” like tumor shrinkage. In 69% of the cases, approval of new drugs was based on studies done on surrogate markers. They provided no real information on whether the drugs improved patient outcomes.[6] A new “targeted” cancer treatment is not necessarily proven to help. And this isn’t just the case with cancer drugs either, as you may remember, you can get a statin approved on the basis it lowers cholesterol without proving it increases lifespan. Blood pressure, weight, heart rate, and hormone levels are also used as surrogate markers.
Measuring the size of tumor can be an extremely manipulative way to try and make it look like a cancer treatment is more effective than it is and can even make it look like a treatment is a helpful when if it actually kills the patient outright! Of course, the patient will be recorded as having died of cancer rather than chemo or the drug. And this is what passes for objective science in oncology, and these are the same people who have the cheek to call Gerson a quack and love to laugh about how Hollywood actor Steve McQueen pursued laetrile treatment in Mexico (ha-ha-ho!) and died because of it, when – according to those close to him – he actually died from cosmetic surgery to have a non-cancerous tumor removed from his belly after the treatment had already cured him. Raymond E. Francis suggested in Never Fear Cancer Again (2011) that what tumor shrinkage really meant was that the weaker cancer cells had been killed off, while the more enduring ones would incubate and live to fight another day. Tumors would bounce back all the more aggressively a little later, calling for another bout of chemo until the patient, who has suffered through months of being poisoned for no tangible benefit, dies.
So, if you want to know what I really think is happening with cancer treatments in the mainstream it’s this: people whose constitution is already too impaired are killed by the treatment, but their official death certificates say it was the cancer that killed them. Those whose bodies have the strength and resilience to fight on through chemo are left alive, and the treatment is credited with sparing their lives when a simple deduction would tell you that many of them would have survived for five years without treatment anyway – and likely would have lived better for it. These cases are mixed in with the small percentage of people who actually really did live longer due to treatment. Those people will be weakened from the treatment and more likely to die sooner from other diseases or re-contract cancer after five years. Many of them would have been better off pursuing diet-orientated protocols such as those offered by The Advanced Gerson Therapy Clinic in Tijuana or Dr. Linda Isaacs, but they were never informed that these were even an option.
If we face up to the truth, we have the opportunity of reallocating the tremendous amount of resources which are currently being squandered on expensive treatments with poor efficacy rates and research on completely dead ends. We can use that money to open a thousand clinics where people can live and run research to find out which dietary and supplement protocols are most likely to work for which body. We know a lot already. Juicing and pancreatic enzymes help, junk food and toxins (including glyphosate) don’t. Obesity, lack of exercise, over exposure to radiation (including from excessive medical scans), consumption of alcohol, and stress all promote negative outcomes. A predominantly plant-based diet helps for most people, while others perform better with red meat in the diet.
Many non-drug related cancer therapies have various levels of support for them in the academic literature: g-strophanthin from Strophanthus seeds (or Ouabain extract – being the active ingredient), Quinton plasma, Deuterium depleted water, Melatonin, Chaga tea, Mistletoe, burdock, Coley’s toxins, Curcumin in turmeric mixed with ghee and black pepper to maximize absorption and. More research could be done on these to find out the therapeutic benefit and how those that yield the best results could be combined to give patients the best chance of a positive outcome.
It would be fine if we could have it our way, and they could have theirs. But the truth is, leaving even one alternative option open that works even in some cases – will blow the cover off the whole operation. Therefore, scientifically Investing alternative cancer treatments is often legally forbidden outright.
A court case took place in 1979 (Rutherford v. United States) where it was concluded that a citizen has the right to forego conventional cancer treatment and enlist other “nontoxic” treatments that he “finds of be of comfort.” But the FDA appealed this in the US Supreme Court and insisted that even terminal cancer patients are only allowed treatments they approve of. And that – get this – they “must be guaranteed a therapeutic gain,” – this coming from the people who approve cancer treatments on the basis that they shrink a tumor without even bothering to check whether they extend a patient’s life or improving their quality of life. In addition to that – and you might need to take a breath for this one if you have been reading carefully – the only way to guarantee a therapeutic gain is that the FDA have approved of it!
Given their record?
Aren’t they the ones who approved thalidomide, Vioxx, Oxycontin (when hydrocodone was doing a good enough job and was less addictive), hormone replacement therapy for menopause, among so many other discredited treatments?
The FDA’s case for insisting that the Supreme Court make sure they remain in charge of who is allowed access to what cancer treatment, in what circumstances and why was… Well, otherwise The FDA “could ultimately lose its authority over all drugs.”
What an astonishing shame it would be if that happened!
[1] G. Morgan, R. Ward, and M. Barton (2004) “The Contribution of Cytotoxic Chemotherapy to 5-Year Survival in Adult Malignancies,” Clinical Oncology 16, no. 8
[2] Salas-Vega, S., Iliopoulos, O., Mossialos, E., (2017) “Assessment of Overall Survival, Quality of Life, and Safety Benefits Associated with New Cancer Medicines,” JAMA Oncology 3, no. 3, 382-390
[3] Davis, C. et all (2017) “Availability of Evidence of Benefits on Overall Survival and Quality of Life of Cancer Drugs Approved by European Medicines Agency: Retrospective Cohort Study of Drug Approvals 2009-2013,” British Medical Journal, no. 4530: 359
[4] Kolata, G. (2009) “Advances Elusive in the Drive to Cure Cancer” New York Times
[5] Beljanski, S. (2018) “Are We Winning the War on Cancer? The Good News”, Newsweek
[6] Davis, C. et all (2017) “Availability of Evidence of Benefits on Overall Survival and Quality of Life of Cancer Drugs Approved by European Medicines Agency: Retrospective Cohort Study of Drug Approvals 2009-2013,” British Medical Journal, no. 4530: 359
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