Chemotherapy Report
In the Physicians Desk
Reference, available in any library of doctor's office, the top 10 chemotherapy
drugs used in the USA all have cancer as a listed side effect. In fact,
depending on how you interpret the statistics, more cancer patients die from the
chemotherapy than of the cancer. The medical statisticians count these
deaths as a success for chemotherapy because the patient did not die of cancer.
Few people know how many studies incorporate their success statistics.
A select few know that chemotherapy drugs are not FDA approved. They are
legally administered under the "Rule of Probable Cause" which states that
experimental drugs may be used if the side effect of the drug is no worse than
the end effect of the disease. In fact, every chemotherapy bottle is
stamped "For Experimental Use Only" and the patient must sign a release before
the doctor will prescribe or administer it.
Do We Need a New Approach to Cancer?
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In 1971 Richard Nixon announced the War on Cancer, and promised a cure
by the 1977 bicentennial.
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In each of the 25 years since, more Americans have died of cancer than
the year before.
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The failure of chemotherapy to control cancer has become apparent even
to the oncology establishment. Scientific American featured a recent cover
story entitled: "The War on Cancer -- It's Being Lost." In it, eminent
epidemiologist John C. Bailar III, MD, PhD, Chairman of the Department of
Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University cited the relentless
increase in cancer deaths in the face of growing use of toxic chemotherapy.
He concluded that scientists must look in new directions if they are ever to
make progress against this unremitting killer.
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Adding its voice, the prestigious British medical journal 'The Lancet',
decrying the failure of conventional therapy to stop the rise in breast
cancer deaths, noted the discrepancy between public perception and reality.
"If one were to believe all the media hype, the triumphal of the
[medical] profession in published research, and the almost weekly miracle
breakthroughs trumpeted by the cancer charities, one might be surprised that
women are dying at all from this cancer" it observed. Noting that
conventional therapies -- chemotherapy, radiation and surgery -- had been
pushed to their limits with dismal results, the editorial called on
researchers to "challenge dogma and redirect research efforts along more
fruitful lines."
John Cairns, professor of microbiology at Harvard University, published
a devastating 1985 critique in Scientific American. "Aside from certain rare
cancers, it is not possible to detect any sudden changes in the death rates
for any of the major cancers that could be credited to chemotherapy. Whether
any of the common cancers can be cured by chemotherapy has yet to be
established."
In fact, chemotherapy is curative in very few cancers -- testicular,
Hodgkin's, choriocarcinoma, childhood leukemia. In most common solid tumors
-- lung, colon, breast, etc. -- chemotherapy is NOT curative.
In an article entitled "Chemotherapy: Snake-Oil Remedy?" that appeared
in the Los Angeles Times of 1/9/87, Dr. Martin F. Shapiro explained that
while "some oncologists inform their patients of the lack of evidence that
treatments work...others may well be misled by scientific papers that
express unwarranted optimism about chemotherapy. Still others respond to an
economic incentive. Physicians can earn much more money running active
chemotherapy practices than they can providing solace and relief.. to dying
patients and their families."
Dr. Shapiro is hardly alone. Alan C. Nixon, PhD, Past President of the
American Chemical Society wrote that "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."
In 1986, McGill Cancer Center scientists sent a questionnaire to 118
doctors who treated non-small-cell lung cancer. More than 3/4 of them
recruited patients and carried out trials of toxic drugs for lung cancer.
They were asked to imagine that they themselves had cancer. Then were asked
which of six current trials they themselves would choose. Of the respondents
64 of the 79 would not consent to be in a trial containing cisplatin, a
common chemotherapy drug. Fifty eight found all the trials unacceptable.
Their reason? The ineffectiveness of chemotherapy and its unacceptable
degree of toxicity.
Famed German biostatistician Ulrich Abel PhD also found in a similar
1989 study that "the personal views of many oncologists seem to be in
striking contrast to communications intended for the public."
Breast cancer activist Rose Kushner wrote that by 1981 "indiscriminate,
automatic adjuvant chemotherapy was replacing the Halted radical mastectomy
as therapeutic overkill in the United States." Thomas Nealon MD, Professor
of Surgery at NYU School of Medicine, concluded in 1990 that "The treatment
of this tumor now has slipped from too much surgery to too much adjuvant
therapy."
Why so much use of chemotherapy if it does so little good? Well for one
thing, drug companies provide huge economic incentives.
In 1990, $3.53 billion was spent on chemotherapy. By 1994 that figure
had more than doubled to $7.51 billion. This relentless increase in chemo
use was accompanied by a relentless increase in cancer deaths.
Oncologist Albert Braverman MD wrote in 1991 that "no disseminated
neoplasm (cancer) incurable in 1975 is curable today...Many medical
oncologists recommend chemotherapy for virtually any tumor, with a
hopefulness undiscouraged by almost invariable failure."
Why the growth in chemotherapy in the face of such failure? A look at
the financial interrelationships between a large cancer center such as
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the companies that make billions
selling chemo drugs is revealing. James Robinson III, Chairman of the MSKCC
Board of Overseers and Managers, is a director of Bristol-Myers Squibb, the
world's largest producer of chemotherapy drugs. Richard Gelb, Vice-Chairman
of the MSKCC board is Bristol-Myers Chairman of the Board. Richard Furlaud,
another MSKCC board member, recently retired as Bristol Myers' president.
Paul Marks MD, MSKCC's President and CEO, is a director of Pfizer.
truittf@axiom.net"
There are more and more reports by establishment oncologists doubting
the value of chemotherapy, even to the point of rejecting it outright. One
of these, cancer biostatistician Dr. Ulrich Abel, of Heidelberg, Germany,
issued a monograph titled Chemotherapy of Advanced Epithelial Cancer in
1990. (See Healing Journal, No. 1-2, Vol.7 of the Gerson Institute.)
Epithelial cancers comprise the most common forms of Aden carcinoma: lung,
breast, prostate, colon, etc. After ten years as a statistician in clinical
oncology, Abel became increasingly uneasy. "A sober and unprejudiced
analysis of the literature," he wrote, "has rarely revealed any therapeutic
success by the regimens in question in treating advanced epithelial cancer."
While chemotherapy is being used more and more extensively, more than a
million people die worldwide of these cancers annually - and a majority have
received some form of chemotherapy before dying. Abel further concluded,
after polling hundreds of cancer doctors, "The personal view of many
oncologists seems to be in striking contrast to communications intended for
the public." Abel cited studies that have shown "that many oncologists would
not take chemotherapy themselves if they had cancer." (The Cancer
Chronicles, December, 1990.) "Even though toxic drugs often do effect a
response, a partial or complete shrinkage of the tumor, this reduction does
not prolong expected survival," Abel finds. "Sometimes, in fact, the cancer
returns more aggressively than before, since the chemo fosters the growth of
resistant cell lines." Besides, the chemo has severely damaged the body's
own defenses, the immune system and often the kidneys as well as the liver.
In an especially dramatic table, Dr. Abel displays the results of
chemotherapy in patients with various types of cancers, as the improvement
of survival rates, compared to untreated patients. This table shows:
- In colorectal cancer: no evidence survival is improved.
- Gastric cancer: no clear evidence.
- Pancreatic cancer: Study completely negative. Longer survival in
control (untreated) group. emphasis mine:rsc]
- Bladder: no clinical trial done.
- Breast cancer: No direct evidence that chemotherapy prolongs
survival; its use is "ethically questionable." (That is particularly
newsworthy, since all breast cancer patients, before or after surgery, are
given chemotherapy drugs.)
- Ovarian cancer: no direct evidence.
- Cervix and uterus: No improved survival.
- Head and neck: no survival benefit but occasional shrinkage of
tumors.
More recently, the Nov. 17, 1994 Wall Street Journal, in a front page
article on political pressure being exerted for insurance companies to pay
for bone marrow transplants in advanced breast cancer, experts give a
totally negative report on this approach. The procedure, called ABMT
(Antilogous Bone Marrow Transplant) involves temporarily removing some of
the patient's bone marrow, applying a potentially lethal dose of
chemotherapy, then returning the marrow to the patient's body. The cost of
this procedure is in excess of $100,000.00 .
The University of Colorado's Dr. Jones, continues the Journal, claims
that, with conventional chemotherapy, not more than 2% of patients with
spreading breast cancer get a positive response. A non-profit independent
technology assessment agency, the Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI),
says that for the average woman with the most advanced form of breast
cancer, the high dose ABMT procedure is not only worthless, but also likely
to shorten her life. This report by the ECRI is based on an analysis of 40
studies of ABMT and similar procedures involving a total of 1,017 patients,
and 61 studies covering 4,852 patients who had conventional chemotherapy Dr.
Nelson Erlick, the project's lead analyst, concluded that "many patients are
led to believe that this (ABMT) is a successful therapy. We found no
evidence whatsoever that it provides any benefit."
Since the Gerson Therapy is often described by orthodox oncologists as
'quackery', we'd like our readers to consider this: If quackery describes an
expensive treatment that the technician knows ahead of time to be
ineffective (or even harmful), what is ABMT (bone marrow transplant)? Yet
Health Plan providers are being ordered to pay for it by the Office of
Personnel Management, a federal agency.
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