Chemotherapy
Quotes As part of our new majors (see last issue), Lannie has decided to
focus for the time being on that strange word allopaths use so frequently: “cancer.”
We’ve talked about it several times in past issues, but since “The Big C”
is such a scary thing to most people, and seems to be on the increase, this is where she
has decided to focus her research for now. As part of her research, she has collected a
lot of quotes from doctors and other researchers who also do not appear to believe that
what is being done in allopathic medicine is the right thing to do. These come from all
over the place, but I figured you ought to be able to see these. “Two to 4% of
cancers respond to chemotherapy… The bottom line is, for a few kinds of
cancer, chemo is a life extending procedure – Hodgkin’s disease, Acute
Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL), Testicular cancer, and Choriocarcinoma.” – Ralph
Moss, Ph.D. 1995 Author of Questioning
Chemotherapy. Remember how I suggested, some time back, that everyone look at the
presentation of numbers from all angles before deciding some statement automatically means
a thing is good? I’m sure Dr. Moss intended the above quote with tongue in cheek, but
I also would like to point out that 2-4% favorable response means 96-98% unfavorable.
That is, those patients either saw no benefit from chemo or it just flat killed them! “NCI now actually anticipates further increases, and not decreases, in cancer mortality rates, from 171/100,000 in 1984 to 175/100,000 by the year 2000!” – Samuel Epstein. OK, 2000 was five years back, and 175 per 100,000 is about 0.2% of
the entire population dying from cancer. No, Epstein did not mean only 175 people will die
out of every 100,000 people with cancer (which you might assume when a quote is taken out
of context). He means 175 people will die of cancer out of every 100,000 people in the
general population. “A study of over 10,000 patients shows clearly that chemo’s supposedly strong track record with Hodgkin’s disease (lymphoma) is actually a lie. Patients who underwent chemo were 14 times more likely to develop leukemia and 6 times more likely to develop cancers of the bones, joints, and soft tissues than those patients who did not undergo chemotherapy (NCI Journal 87:10).”—John Diamond, M.D. “Children who are successfully treated for Hodgkin’s disease are 18 times more likely later to develop secondary malignant tumors. Girls face a 35 percent chance of developing breast cancer by the time they are 40 – which is 75 times greater than the average. The risk of leukemia increased markedly four years after the ending of successful treatment, and reached a plateau after 14 years, but the risk of developing solid tumors remained high and approached 30 percent at 30 years.” (New England Journal of Medicine, March 21, 1996) “Success of most chemotherapy is appalling…There is no scientific evidence for its ability to extend in any appreciable way the lives of patients suffering from the most common organic cancer…chemotherapy for malignancies too advanced for surgery which accounts for 80% of all cancers is a scientific wasteland.” – Dr. Ulrich Abel, 1990 The New England Journal of Medicine Reports — “War on Cancer Is a Failure: Despite $30 billion spent on research and treatments since 1970, cancer remains “undefeated,” with a death rate not lower, but 6% higher in 1997 than 1970,” stated John C. Bailar III, M.D., Ph.D., and Heather L. Gornik, M.H.S., both of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Chicago in Illinois. “The war against cancer is far from over,” stated Dr. Bailar. “The effect of new treatments for cancer on mortality has been largely disappointing.” “My studies have proved conclusively that untreated cancer victims live up to four times longer than treated individuals. If one has cancer and opts to do nothing at all, he will live longer and feel better than if he undergoes radiation, chemotherapy or surgery, other than when used in immediate life-threatening situations.” – Prof Jones. (1956 Transactions of the N.Y. Academy of Medical Sciences, vol 6. There is a fifty page article by Hardin Jones of National Cancer Institute of Bethesda, Maryland. He surveyed global cancer of all types and compared the untreated and the treated, to conclude that the untreated outlived the treated, both in terms of quality and in terms of quantity.) “With some cancers, notably liver, lung, pancreas, bone and advanced breast, our 5-year survival from traditional therapy alone is virtually the same as it was 30 years ago.” – P. Quillin, Ph.D. “…a 1.7% increase in terms of success rate a year, is nothing. By the time we get to the 24 century, we might have effective treatments. Star Trek will be long gone by that time.” – Ralph Moss. “…chemotherapy’s success record is dismal. It can achieve remissions in about 7% of all human cancers; for an additional 15% of cases, survival can be “prolonged” beyond the point at which death would be expected without treatment. This type of survival is not the same as a cure or even restored quality of life.”— John Diamond, M.D. Again, flip the numbers around. If chemo achieves 7% remission, which
means it fails to provide remission 93% of the time. Is that worth the pain, losing your
hair, and all the other side effects? And if an additional 15% survive longer than those
who had no treatment, that means 85% went through all that hell for nothing because they
died before they would have if they had no treatment at all. “Keep in mind that the 5-year mark is still used as the official guideline for “cure” by mainstream oncologists. Statistically, the 5-year cure makes chemotherapy look good for certain kinds of cancer, but when you follow cancer patients beyond 5 years, the reality often shifts in a dramatic way.”— John Diamond, M.D. Yeah. Here’s what they don’t tell you. If a patient dies
one day after the five year mark, they are still counted as having been cured. That, to
me, is called lying! Studies show that women taking tamoxifen after surviving breast cancer then have a high propensity to develop endometrial cancer. The NCI and Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drug, aggressively lobbied State of California regulators to keep them from adding tamoxifen to their list of carcinogens. Zeneca is one of the sponsors of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This one just says that they put their profits above your
health. So what else did you expect from a pharmaceutical company? “Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy…Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade. Yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors…Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemo than without it.” — Alan Levin, M.D. According to the Cancer Statistics for 1995, published by the ACS in their small journal (2), the 5-year survival rate has improved from 50%-56% for whites and 39%-40% for blacks from 1974/1976 - 1983/1990. However, the data is taken from [only] five of the states with the lowest death rates and the smallest populations! None of the 10 states with the highest death rates and comprising 34% of the Total U.S. Cancer Deaths, were included in the data! Also, in prior years, the Composite (Ave.) 5-year survival rate for all Cancers combined was computed and published. This average 5-year survival crept upward to 50%, in the early nineties. It now stands around 51-52%, due primarily to the improvement of 11% survival for Colon and 13% increased survival for Prostate. It gets worse. The ACS boasts of “statistically significant” results when Uterine Cancer survival drops from 89%/60%-85%/55% (W/B)?? Also, Pancreas Cancer is 3-3 (W) and Laryngeal Cancer survival drops from 59%-53% (B) while Cervical Cancer drops from 63%-56% (B). Liver Cancer improves from 4%-7%. I wonder how many Pancreatic and Hepatic Cancer patients cheered these dramatic results? Ovarian Cancer = 36%/40% - 42%/38% (W/B) and Breast Cancer = 75%/63% - 82%/66% (W/B). In 16 years the Breast Cancer rate improved 3-7%, while Uterine Cancer decreased 4-5%. Aren’t these marvelous results that the Cancer Establishment should boast about?? – R.D. Hodgell, M.D. “The five year cancer survival statistics of the American Cancer Society are very misleading. They now count things that are not cancer, and, because we are able to diagnose at an earlier stage of the disease, patients falsely appear to live longer. Our whole cancer research in the past 20 years has been a failure. More people over 30 are dying from cancer than ever before…More women with mild or benign diseases are being included in statistics and reported as being “cured.” When government officials point to survival figures and say they are winning the war against cancer, they are using those survival rates improperly.” – Dr. J. Bailer, New England Journal of Medicine (Dr. Bailer’s answer to questions put by Neal Barnard, M.D. of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, published in PCRM Update, Sept/Oct 1990). “I look upon cancer in the same way that I look upon heart disease, arthritis, high blood pressure, or even obesity, for that matter, in that by dramatically strengthening the body’s immune system through diet, nutritional supplements, and exercise, the body can rid itself of the cancer, just as it does in other degenerative diseases. Consequently, I wouldn’t have chemotherapy and radiation because I’m not interested in therapies that cripple the immune system, and, in my opinion, virtually ensure failure for the majority of cancer patients.” – Dr. Julian Whitaker, M.D. “Finding a cure for cancer is absolutely contraindicated by the profits of the cancer industry’s chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery cash trough.” – Dr. Diamond, M.D. “We have a multi-billion dollar industry that is killing people, right and left, just for financial gain. Their idea of research is to see whether two doses of this poison is better than three doses of that poison.” — Glen Warner, M.D., Oncologist. Oncology is the branch of medicine that deals with the study and
treatment of malignant tumors, and if this oncologist doesn’t believe in his own
specialty, why should you? John Robbins:
(from Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the Source of True Healing by John Robbins.) Do you see a great deal of “conflict of interest” there?
Follow the money trails… “If you can shrink the tumor 50% or more for 28 days, you have got the FDA’s definition of an active drug. That is called a response rate, so you have a response, (but) when you look to see if there is any life prolongation from taking this treatment, what you find is all kinds of hocus pocus and song and dance about the disease-free survival, and this and that. In the end, there is no proof that chemotherapy in the vast majority of cases actually extends life, and this is the GREAT LIE about chemotherapy, that somehow there is a correlation between shrinking a tumor and extending the life of the patient.” – Ralph Moss “The majority of publications equate the effect of chemotherapy with (tumor) response, irrespective of survival. Many oncologists take it for granted that response to therapy prolongs survival, an opinion which is based on a fallacy and which is not supported by clinical studies. To date, there is no clear evidence that the treated patients, as a whole, benefit from chemotherapy as to their quality of life.” – Abel.1990. “For the majority of the cancers we examined, the actual improvements (in survival) have been small or have been overestimated by the published rates... It is difficult to find that there has been much progress... (For breast cancer), there is a slight improvement (which) is considerably less than reported.” – U.S. General Accounting Office “As a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incomprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good.” – Alan Nixon, Ph.D., Past President, American Chemical Society. He said, “I’m giving cancer patients over here at this major cancer clinic drugs that are killing them, and I can’t stop it because they say the protocol’s what’s important.” And I say, “But the patient’s not doing well.” They say, “The protocol’s what’s important, not the patient.” And he said, “You can’t believe what goes on in the name of medicine and science in this country.” – Gary Null The Politics of Cancer –
Epstein That in spite of over $20 billion expenditures since the “War against Cancer” was launched by President Nixon in 1971, there has been little if any significant improvement in treatment and survival rates for most common cancers, in spite of contrary misleading hype by the cancer establishment – the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and American Cancer Society (ACS). That the cancer establishment remains myopically fixated on damage control – diagnosis and treatment – and basic genetic research, with, not always benign indifference to cancer prevention. Meanwhile, the incidence of cancer, including non-smoking cancers, has escalated to epidemic proportions with lifetime cancer risks now approaching 50%. That the NCI has a long track record of budgetary shell games in efforts to mislead Congress and the public with its claim that it allocates substantial resources to cancer prevention. Over the last year, the NCI has made a series of widely divergent claims, ranging from $480 million to $1 billion, for its prevention budget while realistic estimates are well under $100 million. That the NCI allocates less than 1% of its budget to research on occupational cancer – the most avoidable of all cancers – which accounts for well over 10% of all adult cancer deaths, besides being a major cause of childhood cancer. That cancer establishment policies, particularly those of the ACS, are strongly influenced by pervasive conflicts of interest with the cancer drug and other industries. As admitted by former NCI director Samuel Broder, the NCI has become “what amounts to a governmental pharmaceutical company.” That the MD Anderson Comprehensive Cancer Center was sued in August, 1998 for making unsubstantiated claims that it cures “well over 50% of people with cancer.” That the NCI, with enthusiastic support from the ACS – the tail that wags the NCI dog – has effectively blocked funding for research and clinical trials on promising non-toxic alternative cancer drugs for decades, in favor of highly toxic and largely ineffective patented drugs developed by the multi-billion-dollar global cancer drug industry. Additionally, the cancer establishment has systematically harassed the proponents of non-toxic alternative cancer drugs. That, as reported in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the ACS is “more interested in accumulating wealth than saving lives.” Furthermore, it is the only known “charity” that makes contributions to political parties. That the NCI and ACS have embarked on unethical trials with two hormonal drugs, tamoxifen and Evista, in ill-conceived attempts to prevent breast cancer in healthy women while suppressing evidence that these drugs are known to cause liver and ovarian cancer, respectively, and in spite of the short-term lethal complications of tamoxifen. The establishment also proposes further chemo-prevention trials this fall on tamoxifen, and also Evista, in spite of two published long-term European studies on the ineffectiveness of tamoxifen. This represents medical malpractice verging on the criminal. That the ACS and NCI have failed to provide Congress and regulatory agencies with available scientific information on a wide range of unwitting exposures to avoidable carcinogens in air, water, the workplace, and consumer products – food, cosmetics and toiletries, and household products. As a result, corrective legislative and regulatory action have not been taken. That the cancer establishment has also failed to provide the public, particularly African American and underprivileged ethnic groups with their disproportionately higher cancer incidence rates, with information on avoidable carcinogenic exposures, thus depriving them of their right-to-know and effectively preventing them from taking action to protect themselves – a flagrant denial of environmental justice. Well, folks, I suspect the jury here would say the same thing we’ve
been saying all along. The cancer industry is not making any attempt to save lives. Their
goal is, in fact, to promote cancer in favor of creating and/or saving their own
huge bank accounts. They really don’t care if you die as long as it makes them rich. Researchers
Find Animal Antibiotics in Vegetables
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=64069-antibiotics-organic-manure November 22, 2005 - Antibiotics given to livestock can end up in vegetables and pose a health threat to consumers, according to a study looking at the use of animal manure as a fertilizer. The University of Minnesota study will add to the level of public concern about the food they eat. It also serves as a warning to food processors that they need to be vigilant when sourcing their vegetables. The processing industry is under regulatory and consumer pressure to ensure the safety of their food products. Regular breakdowns in food safety and reports on contamination have raised consumer awareness about the problem. The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Quality, indicates that processors will have to be careful when sourcing their vegetables, whether non-organic or organic. The contamination threat is due to the U.S. laws allowing farmers to use animal manure as fertilizer in both conventional and organic agriculture. In the study, University of Minnesota researchers found that corn, cabbage, and green onions absorbed chlortetracycline from manure fertilizer obtained from pigs that were given the antibiotic. Chlortetracycline is a member of the tetracycline class of antibiotics that are used in human medicine to treat upper respiratory tract infections and other illnesses. Tetracycline and other antibiotics also are used as feed additives in poultry, hogs and beef cattle. Feed additives are not used to treat disease, but to promote slightly faster growth and to compensate for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on industrial-scale farms. When the antibiotics are ingested by a human they can spur the bacteria naturally present in the intestinal tract, including types of bacteria that can cause serious disease, to become drug-resistant, the researchers stated. “Vegetarians may think the huge overuse of antibiotics in livestock and poultry will not affect them, but that’s not true for two reasons,” stated Margaret Mellon, the director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food and Environment Program. “Consumers eating vegetables grown on soil fertilized with manure may be unknowingly ingesting antibiotics. Even more importantly, resistant bacteria that are created on the farm can contaminate air, water and soil that can travel significant distances.” While raw and composted manure may be used with little restriction in conventional agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rules requires that manure used in organic farming be composted or be applied at least 90 days before harvest. In the study, the crops were harvested within only 42 days, so the findings may not apply to organic vegetables, the researchers stated. Demand for organic foods has increased by almost 17 percent over the past year, according to a report this week by Whole Foods Market. The latest survey commissioned by leading organic supermarket reveals that about two-thirds of the U.S. consumers bought organic goods in 2005, compared to just over half in both 2003 and 2004. According to the Organic Trade Association’s 2004 manufacturers’ survey, the organic foods industry had $10.8 billion in revenues in 2003 and has grown at an average rate of 19.5% per year since 1997. Market researcher Euromonitor predicts that sales of packaged organic foods alone will be worth $8.6 billion at retail by 2009, up from 5.1 billion in 2003. Most of the participants said they opt for organic goods in order to avoid pesticides, for their freshness, for their nutritional benefits and in an effort to avoid genetically modified foods.
A few thoughts for your use in the home garden. Now, how about
writing your congress critters to tell them to demand the USDA disallow farmers and
ranchers use of antibiotics as a fattening agent? Reader Q&A Q: In one of the first few issues, you said that the tonsils disappear after puberty, yet I have heard of people in their fifties having their tonsil removed. Who’s right – you or the doctor? A: That was in issue 4, when talking about vestigial organs. I said,
“Some of those are involved only during the childhood years and go away by themselves
after puberty (e.g. tonsils).” The reality for these particular small oval masses of
lymphatic tissue, one on each side of the back of the mouth, is that they are only
important for the body’s immune system during the pre-pubescent years. After puberty
(when, supposedly, your immune system is fully functional), they atrophy and become
inactive to the point where, in most people, they would be considered non-existent. According to new research by scientists in the Netherlands,
tonsillectomies in children with throat infections have little benefit. This research,
published by the British Medical Journal, says that removal of the adenoids is also an
operation with little benefit. Tonsils removal is a common procedure though little has
been done to look at what good it does. And for those who really want them gone, there is
a new method, called Coblation Assisted Tonsillectomy (CAT) that is less painful and
dangerous than the traditional tonsillectomy operation (outpatient, you’ll be eating
again the same day). I’ve also heard that no one (children in particular) should get
a tonsillectomy unless it is determined to be a life-threatening situation. Tonsillectomies in adults? Far be it from me to suggest the medical
profession is doing unnecessary surgeries, J but I doubt the cause of the adult throat pain is actually the
remnant of atrophied tonsils. It is more likely that they had an infection of some sort
(Viral? Bacterial? Fungal?) and cutting “something” out is the only thing the
doctor could think of. I’m almost 57 and I have never had mine removed. They swelled
once as a child, have not been a problem since, and I defy anyone to find anything in my
throat that even vaguely looks like a tonsil. |