No, it’s not true: currently, the average cancer cure rate is close to 60%.
Some time ago I happened to read a discussion on Tony Isaacs’s Curezone, on the best treatment for breast cancer. The thread was started by a woman who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Tony Isaacs’ partner Luella May suggested the forum member paint her breasts with iodine to combat the cancer and advised strongly against surgery and all other forms of conventional cancer treatments:
What does this mean? I can only mean that 98% were not cured – which means they died; look at this website, where it says: Chemo has a 97% fatality rate!
Some time later I read the same kind of unsettling statement concerning chemotherapy, this time posted on a discussion board of Breastcancer.org:
Where do these numbers come from??
The “2% chemo efficacy” comes from an Australian study into the contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year cancer survival, and the researchers claimed to have found that the average benefit of chemotherapy was about 2%. So: the study is about the contribution of chemotherapy to survival and not about survival of patients having chemotherapy.
For obvious reasons, this study has become immensely popular with alternative therapists and is quoted by them ad nauseam.
A rather strange phenomenon took place after the publication of this study: over time, the 2-3% contribution to survival had somehow become 2-3% plain survival – period. Some of these altmeds now actually claim the outcome of the study was that of all cancer patients receiving chemo, only 2-3% survive for more than 5 years.
In other words: chemotherapy kills an average 97% of cancer patients within 5 years.
Now, as these numbers sound totally weird – to say the least – we decided to find out if there was any truth in them.
What the study was about
The researchers stated as the aim of their study:
a literature search for randomised clinical trials reporting a 5-year survival benefit attributable solely to cytotoxic chemotherapy in adult malignancies.
So they wanted to know what the contribution was of chemotherapy to 5-year survival. There are many therapies to treat cancer: surgery, radiotherapy, hormonal therapy, immune therapy – and chemotherapy. The researchers wanted to know to what extent chemotherapy contributed to five-year-survival of cancer patients.
Of all 154,971 patients whose files were examined, in 3306 of these, 5-year survival could be attributed solely to chemotherapy.
In 98% of the patients, 5-year survival was due to a combination of factors, of which chemotherapy sometimes also was a factor and sometimes was not.
The researchers then extrapolated the outcomes to all cancers. The average 5-year cancer survival in Australia at the time of the study was 60%. On the basis of the extrapolation of the outcome of their study, the researchers estimated that the average contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year survival would be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.
Nowhere in the study does it say that only 3306 patients survived their chemotherapy and that consequently 151,665 patients died because of chemotherapy.
Leave out a few words and you get a completely different message.
The study design
The study was carried out in 2004, using data from 1998. A number of things can be said about the design of the study.
- The researchers looked at a lot of cancers, but they didn’t look at all of them.
- They did not differentiate between cancers for which chemotherapy is the primary treatment and cancers for which chemotherapy is only given as an adjuvant. This is the case in most solid cancers, for which surgery is the primary – and by far the most effective – treatment.
- They did not include cancers for which chemotherapy is very effective, such as leukemia.
- They did not include children’s cancers, some of which are highly responsive to treatment, e.g. Wilms’ tumour, with about 90% of patients surviving at least five years.
- They did not differentiate between early stage cancers (tumour <1cm, no mets in lymph nodes), for which chemotherapy often is not even indicated, and late stage, incurable cancers which had already metastasized at the time of diagnosis, some even quite extensively.
- They did not look at the effect of chemotherapy on life extension (median survival), which in my opinion they should have, since they included already incurable cancers in their study.
Correction for these factors would result in an average contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year survival of about 8%, based on the data from 1998.
Statistics: average and specific
It is important to keep in mind that a statistical average is always about middling, about the ‘mean.’ Statistics are never about the many deviations from the mean, such as your or anyone else’s specific situation.
A few examples:
1. Suppose the effect of chemotherapy on 5-year survival in leukemia is 60% and the effect of chemotherapy on 5-year survival of very early stage breastcancer is 0% (because: not indicated, therefore not administered). The average effect of chemotherapy on both cancers combined is 30% (60+0 : 2 = 30). But what does this overall average tell the individual patient regarding their prognosis? Well… nothing actually.
2. In a number of situations, depending on stage, grade and type of cancer, women with breast cancer are advised to take adjuvant chemotherapy, in order to destroy any (clinically invisible) micrometastases in their blood.
This kind of chemo improves the 10-year survival prognosis with an average 5 – 7%. The percentage is based on all women receiving adjavant chemo. If you don’t have micrometastases, the chemo will do nothing for your prognosis. However, for the women who do have them, the chemo may enhance their personal prognosis much more, sometimes as high as 20%.
3. Cancer with unknown primary tumour (CUP) has a very bad prognosis: average 5-year overall survival rate is about 10%. Yet there are cases known of patients who have been surviving for 14 years or more without any evidence of disease.
The big differences in the overall effects of chemotherapy on 5-year survival become obvious if we look at the tables in which the specific numbers are given for each particular cancer that was included in the study. In the 4th and 3rd column on the right you can see to what extent chemotherapy contributed to cancer survival. When chemotherapy was no factor in survival, the column shows a dash.
So… now what?
The data from the study are from 1998. We are now in 2009 and progress has been made in those years. There is better medication to diminish side effects of chemotherapy. There is new, sophisticated technology to assess which breast cancers are prone to metastasize and which are not, resulting in less women having to undergo chemotherapy. Scientists are working hard on similar tests for other cancers.
There are over 80 different kinds of chemotherapy. Some are sheer hell, but many are quite doable, including the one I had. Nevertheless: chemotherapy still is the ultimate cancer scare factor and the sooner we can do without it, the better. But it is not true that only 2-3% survive chemotherapy. It is not true that the average benefit of chemotherapy to 5-year survival is as low as 2%. And it is also not true that all chemotherapy is by definition completely and totally unbearable.
If we really want to get anywhere at all, then honesty about the facts, not manipulation, self-aggrandizing and scare mongering, should be the basis for discussion and decision making.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
Cancer Research UK Science Update Blog
Anaximperator blog 
So, slight tangent here… did you know that recently Luella was treated for days at a **gasp** HOSPITAL by **horrors** DOCTORS and that evil ‘western medicine’ ?? She says she has been self-treating for years with those ‘natural’,’healing’, and ‘preventative’ supplements peddled by that site…
Bad batch of oleander soup? Generic colloidal silver instead of the name-brand? Not enough iodine body paint? Didn’t add enough herbs and spices to her enemas?
The hypocrisy burns ever so brightly.
I have a dream that one day……..
Of course it’s not true. Other sources talk about 10-15%.
The article of radiologist Graeme Morgan is often cited by Ryke Geerd Hamer and his entourage, with exactly the same outrageous false statement. Morgan would certainly never underwrite that, as he he says clearly: ” So in other words if there was no chemotherapy in Australia, the survival of all patients with cancer would drop from 62% to 60%”. Another person speaking often about this article is Ralph W. Moss (PhD in classic literature, see: http://www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Ralph_W._Moss ), even though being a New-Medicine critic and calling Hamer “antisemitic, paranoid and mentally deranged”. Morgan’s old (6 years are a lot in medicine) article was cited by scientific articles only two times (one citation by Morgan himself in 2005). And the article earned a critic resonance. See M. Boyer und Eva Segelov: http://www.australianprescriber.com/upload/pdf/articles/759.pdf. A very interesting talk at ABC radio (in Australia) was deleted meanwhile from the ABC-server unfortunately. A critic analysis was performed in 2005 by L. Mileshkin, D. Rischin, H.M. Prince and J. Zalcberg. The Contribution of Cytotoxic Chemotherapy to the Management of Cancer. Clinical Oncology. Volume 17, Issue 4, June 2005, page 294. doi:10.1016/j.clon.2005.02.012. The full text can be seen here, reading reference number 43 in this german article:
http://esowatch.com/ge/index.php?title=Germanische_Neue_Medizin#cite_note-42
Thanks very much for your comment, I’m sorry to say that somehow it got stuck in the spam filter. I have adjusted some blog settings, so there shouldn’t be any problems in the future! 🙂
People do your own research and do not be deceived by drug therapists (that is what MDs are) who essentially work for the pharmaceutical industry. By the way, most studies are not valid because the “placebo effect” can never be eliminated, unless the subjects are unaware of the experiment. In fact, Dr. Kirch reviewed studies of the most common anti-depressants and found that it was 70% placebo effect. The subjects believed it helped.
It is ridiculous to site ONE Austrailian study while there are hundreds of studies that demonstrate the poor success rate of chemotherapy, in addition to common, or better yet, good sense. I took medical histories for 25 years and witnessed the devastation these toxic drugs caused in my patients. I always found that the people who regained their health had made significant changes in their lives– their diets, marriage, work, boss, finances, and often sought “alternative” healing modalities. When did natural healing become unnatural (allopathic) and “alternative”? Chemo”therapy” is an oxymoron. A more accurate term would be chemocide. This type of “health care” is bankrupting our country. Should the debate really be focused on who will pay for it or on if we can afford it any longer, especially compared to the low cost of natural remedies? Why has medical insurance become so vital? And yet, one half of all bankrupties in the US are due to medical bills. Can we change the prevailing paradigm of “fighting disease” and treating symptoms– you don’t get sick because your body lacks a drug! There has to be a “natural” cause for the ailment or self-correction. Let us concentrate on HEALING, not attacking.
I am in the process of healing a breast tumor that was caused by an emotional shock conflict with my mother. I am not in the least bit concerned and it is healing nicely. No additional diagnosis shock, no outrageous expenses, “battling the disease” nor becoming a “survivor” of that Allopathic war. I am trusting that my body know exaxtly how to heal itself and I am “allowing” that healing to take place and supporting it in the most natural way possible (vitamin D and E supplements, and energy, for starters). Thank God for Dr. Hamer and the German New Medicine! I’m not optimistic for it’s acceptance as it is inexpensive and requires therapists to examine the emotional life of the patient, which may be too time consuming and personal for doctors to do. Far easier and more profitable to write a presciption, and then treat the eventual side effects of the drugs, many of which you can see listed on the commercials (almost a parody of itself). The huge rise in breast cancer correlates to the enormous increase in “nest” worry shock conflicts as modern women are separated from their homes and family (partners with the high divorce rates and sharing children), which could be historically and biologically considered unnatural. Can they really do it all? In addition, there is the diagnosis shock from a mammogram, which are more prevelant, and “early detection.”
I hope this author discovers the shock conflict underlying her cancer so she can fully resolve the emotional upset so the cancer does not reoccur (come out of “remission”).
By the way, “people are living longer” (the bench mark for the success of modern medicine) because life is easier. However, with the amount of drugs elderly people tend to consume, the quality of life may not equal the quantity of life. And they often suffer from isolation, warehousing, humiliating diseases and prolonged expirations. My humble advice: become your own therapists and be aware of what you are feeling and when you’ve had a shock. Don’t fight disease. Allow healing, avoid attacking, love, and trust in your body to heal itself. God bless.
Meanwhile, check this out:
http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/13/cancer-survival-rates-truth-vs-fiction/
@ Carla Muth,
Honestly, I am completely flabbergasted by your ignorance. Have you even read the article you are referring to in your comment?
We have taken great pains to show that the study is not about death by chemotherapy, as is often suggested by alternative “healers”, but about the contribution of chemotherapy to overall survival rates and here you go, referring us to a site that repeats the same old stupid lies all over again (my bold):
How in the world can you presume yourself at all qualified to give advice to cancer patients, when your understanding of scientific information is so obviously absent?
Beatis,
I noticed that you didn’t comment on any of the other information in my remarks. Are you in the medical field? Have you repeatedly witnessed the obscene expense and toxic effects of chemotherapy? The “treatment” is truly worse than the cure, oops, I mean “remission” since medicine can’t cure it. What does this have to do with healing, massively assualting the body? Do you not think that the body knows exactly how to heal itself? Do you really think people have cancer (or hypertension, diabetes, etc.) because they are lacking a drug? This notion is not only poor science, but faulty logic. There has to be a natural cause for a disease, notwithstanding the 80,000 chemicals in our food and environment, and therefore, a natural cure.
“Science” does not know the cause of cancer, but they are sure of the treatment, and that the German New Medicine is wrong. It’s originator (from his experience with testicular cancer in the tragic wake of his son’s death), Dr. Hamer, views every symptom in the body as in some way positive as the body is biologically programmed to gravitate towards healing. I have never talked to a person who did not have an emotional shock conflict underlying their disease. We are often unaware of how deeply affected we are by emotional upsets and usually “get on with it” without resolving the conflict.
Evidentaly, you are steeped in the Marcus Welby, MD era and not the modern world of corporate medicine, i.e, Big Pharma. Without insurance, I estimate that perhaps only 20% of the population could afford mainstream medical treatment– and the drugs. Meanwhile, people continue to get sicker.
Anyhow, I’m responding because I just read another article on the dismal success rate of chemotherapy although that was not its focus. You could read one practically every day on the internet. I don’t know how you miss them?
The comments are worth reading.
From USA Today: “$93,000 cancer drug”…..”new cancer-fighting drugs have been topping $5,000 a month. Only a few of these keep cancer in remission so long that they are, in effect, cures. For most people, the drugs may buy a few months or years. “…….”Revlimid pill for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, can run as much as $10,000 a month.”……”Gleevec, a $4,500-a-month drug by Novartis AG that keeps certain leukemias and stomach cancers in remission [but not cured?]. “….. “she tried cutting back on Gleevec and her cancer recurred.”…….”whether the extra 11 weeks that Genentech’s Herceptin buys for stomach cancer justified the $21,500 cost.”……”The $4,000-a-month drug won approval by boosting median survival by a mere 12 days. Here’s how to think about this cost: People who added Tarceva to standard chemotherapy lived nearly 6 1/2 months, versus 6 months for those on chemo alone. So the Tarceva folks spent more than $24,000 to get those extra 12 days.”…..”if people lose coverage, they often discover they can’t afford their medicines,”…… ENDING WITH: “It’s no longer a fringe science. This is working,” [at least for “four months”! Honestly!] he said [presumedly with a straight face]. “We need to get it in the door so we can evolve it.” [shouldn’t it be evolved before it goes out of the door?]. Really, is that scientific? Experimenting on the public?
http://www.ehealing.us/article_costly_medicine.html
And if you dare: “Scientific Medicine?”
http://www.ehealing.us/article_scientific_medicine.html
And if you you dare, Ms Muth, to provide us with reliable statistics on the successes of Hamer’s GNM, or any other alternative cancer therapy, then please do so!
Or is ranting against conventional medicine all you have to offer?
BTW, I fail to see what’s the point of bringing up the American health insurance system. This has nothing to do with treatments being effective or not.
Some of his claims are actually testable. Take for instance the claim that lung cancer is caused by some kind of shock that led to hyperventilation. According to Hamer this leads to a reaction where the body tries to compensate by forming more lung tissue, thus facilitating breathing. In other words a lung cancer is a lump that increases the amount of air that a lung can hold – not decrease it. Now here is your challenge: Go find photos of lung cancers, and check out for your self if lung cancer increases or decreases the amount of air that the lung + the cancer can hold. And be sure to convince yourself that lung cancers also looked like that before Hamer launched his idea.
Okay. All you have to do now is to find out if people who haven’t had cancer didn’t have emotional shock conflicts long time ago either.
Hi! Thank you for clearing this out. I was quite confused about this. I was able to read many articles that says only 2% can survive from chemotherapy. This really made me worried because I know someone who is going through chemotherapy colon. I’m very glad that I came across your site. This could enlighten many people, like me, who are very confused about this. Thank you very much! I would love to read more of your interesting articles. I’ll just help myself and browse around your blog. I believe I’ll find some other interesting articles from you too. I hope you won’t hesitate on updating your blog! Thank you very much!
Even though this post is a couple of years old, it is still very helpful!
My dad recently had prostate cancer and decided not to have surgery. So we studied all we could about Hamer’s medicine. I’m glad to say he is cured now, with recent blood tests showing he has no traces of the cancer at all.
However, I always found that number troubling, everyone talking about the 2 to 3% survival rate, never quoting sources or anything. So, thanks, Finally I understand where those numbers come from, and why they seem like a gross understatement or misunderstanding.
Now, before my father had anything to do with oncologists, I would have sworn that was the answer, but after reading, watching and living through cancer, I’m not that sure anymore. I believe it is something to be researched, developed. When you analyze it, Hamer’s NGM can coexist (albeit with a few changes) with the farmaceutical Industry. And sometimes you just don’t have the time to spend on healing your body, you just have to function.
Paradigm shifts are never without conflict.
RESULTS (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849):
“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.”
Indeed this does not mean that Chemo has a 97% fatality rate (although many patients do die of chemo induced ‘complications’ – due to the the toxicity of this poisonous ‘medicine’ – to blood, liver, lungs, kidneys, etc., but let’s not get into this now). It ‘only’ means that for an adult cancer patient, suffering from so called ‘solid tumor’ cancers (lung, liver, kidney, breast, prostate, pancreas cancer, etc.) the overall benefit of getting chemotherapy is just a little bit higher than 2 %…
If you think that ‘s worth the risk and suffering, go for it.
https://anaximperator.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/problem-with-alternative-cancer-treatments/
Our Problem with Alternative Cancer Treatments
quote:
Ronald,
We have asked you countless times to show us the evidence that Hamer’s GNM cures cancer, but it seems all you can do to prove your point is rant against standard cancer medicine, which only shows you have no meaningful statements to support your claims.
So once more: show us one verifiable, proven case of a cancer patient who has been clinically disease free for at least 5 years due to Germanic New Medicine only – or shut up. Note that I’m being very lenient here, I don’t ask you to show us that GNM performs better than standard medicine, I just ask for one cured patient – just one.
Okay Ronald. You found the post. Now try and read the post. And pay special attention when you get to the paragraph on “The study design”.
Well, if I ever saw a poor reply from you guys, it must be this one.
Beatis, you are trying to convince people that ‘alternative cancer treatments’ are dangerous because they lure people away from conventional (what you call proven) therapies, like, one of the major ‘weapons’ of ‘modern medicine’, chemotherapy.
Then, when somebody shows you that chemotherapy is hardly worth the suffering and the risk of getting poisoned you get all upset. Strange reaction, to say the least.
And ‘jli’, those papers I’ve sent to Beatis, which you call fake (the papers, I mean, otherwise I feel inclined to agree with you 🙂 came straight from the computer of our family doctor, a professor in Leuven (Belgium) and the doctor/radiologist who performed the last ultrasounds before we left the conventional realm altogether. All I did was first type ‘m out to post the text on this site, because Beatis asked for the original documents. So I scanned them in and sent them to her. Tell you one thing, on those papers there are alot of names of Belgian doctors/oncologists/radiologists. If you contact them and they state that those papers (scans) were in any way tricked by me (except for making our names/address unreadable) I will never post another comment regarding cancer here or anywhere else from that moment on. Really hope you accept the challenge, mister know it all, but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me that it’s up to me to prove that they are not false (well, actually, it’s usually Beatis who uses that tactic – what you all have in common is the line “did you actually read this study/text/article???”).
Ronald:
One’s doctor is never allowed to discus private matters from patients with strangers/outsiders.
So you require bullshit!
The obession of alternologists with chemotherapy mystifies me. Chemotherapy is only one element of cancer medicine and in most cases it isn’t the primary treatment, which is surgery.
And just to remind you: you still haven’t delivered any evidence for the effectiveness of Hamer’s GNM. Your suggestion that I should call the doctors mentioned in the papers you sent to find out they haven’t been tricked with, is beyond preposterous. So, for the last time: show us one verifiable, proven case of a cancer patient who has been clinically disease free for at least 5 years due to Germanic New Medicine only – or shut up.
As usual, this is leading nowhere….
Would love to stay (oops, another lie), but what’s the point… I really have better things to do than fighting a group of biased servents of a billion dollar industry.
Should have known that you had no intention of following the good suggestion. As a special service I’ll give you some highlights:
– No differentiation was made between cancers treated primarily with chemotherapy or with chemotherapy given as an adjuvant treatment.
– No differentiation between use in early stage cancer and late stage incurable cancer.
– Leukaemia (good responsiveness to chemotherapy) was not among the cancer types looked into.
I never said that the “pathology report” was a fake.I said it wasn’t a pathology report. If a professor told you it was a pathology report he doesn’t deserve the respect you have for him.
No offense but you’re an idiot, beatis.
Calling me an idiot is offensive. From now on your comments will be held in moderation.
hello in hungary only among my friends i can show you 6 people
who had cancer,ovaroan,breast,prostate leukemia,colon and lung cancer
they learned about GNM,refused chemo and the rest they were cursed out by screaming
doctors and called ugly names,now they are checked and negative.the not funny thing
is that after they were checked cancer free doctors almost kicked them out not asking
a single question how it happened…anyways its really easy to check whether GNM is a
hoax or not because a trained GNM consultant can tell what the patient has or had just by looking
at the brain scan….i know that this whole topic stirs a lot of emotion but we have to have an open mind to observe study new aspects and not brush them off the table…thanks
Good, show them!
ok how we do it?what would be a proof for you? names email adresses?
skype? these are just people i personally know,there are over 300 doctors
who have been trained by GNM some of them i know well,they know even more
cases in their practice so i suggest that if you genuinely open and interested
come and visit us in hungary i will personally introduce you to them.we have
medical reports,diagnosis all the papers proving that.
Beatis, please tell us why you will only consider statistics and not anecdotal evidence when assessing the validity and efficacy of cancer treatments, both allopathic and alternative? My mother is living proof that alternative methods DO work and obviously judging by YOUR comment section to this article, many others have been healed using non-conventional treatments, My mother was diagnosed three years ago with advanced stage breast cancer and refused ALL chemo, surgery and radiation treatments. She has mostly followed Gerson therapy with me and my sister’s help, using intuition and common sense to boot! She is thriving and a recent scan has indicated that all the tumors have either disappeared or are shrinking. Does it even matter if it’s the herbs, the Gerson therapy, exercise, diet changes, stress alleviation, or plain old HOPE that is at work? The bottom line is that people can avoid the risks of chemocide and other dangerous therapies with alternative approaches. Oh yeah, that’s right, we don’t have any statistics to support these so-called quack methods. The thugs running the AMA and Big Pharma hold a lot of control over the public mind. Give us a break Beatis, we just want to heal, not hear your “scientific” dogma. And let me just say that alternative methods are not necessarily easier, especially when someone has to still work a full-time job like my mom and none of my family is rich at all. I’m sure there are people who even thrive combining conventional AND alternative methods. People should be free to do what they want to do, but why do you seem to be on such a campaign to DISCOUNT any alternative methods? Who’s funding your efforts?
Because anecdotes cannot be checked and provide no reliable information as to what works and doesn’t work against cancer – of which your own anecdote is the umpteenth example.
Ofcourse it matters. Should cancer patients in your opinion just try anything at random and see what happens? Don’t you think they would benefit by knowing what works and what doesn’t?
Because they have never been shown to be in the least effective.
@beatis~
First of all…you are very rude to any guest commentators here on your blog! To constantly say “Shut up” is very childish and only serves to discredit you! I have been diagnosed with Breast cancer stage 2 and plan on starting Gerson Therapy along with lipospherical vitamin c among many other things that i will not bore you with. First of all, the phama companies and FDA CAN afford to fund…AND manipulate the studies to suit their needs….they will be hugely reimbursed by the huge profits from drugs/chemo to treat each of their patients, you being one. Alternative therapies DO NOT have the huge amount of money to fund studies and have them published! AND, if they did do all of this to prove to someone like yourself, they would be blackballed and probably be discredited and not published at all. Dr. Gonzalez here in NYC has a very huge track record of curing cancer alternatively and the FDA has been working overtime to discredit him…same with Dr. Buzynski in Texas! They have no reason to prove themselves….I will be another one for their proof of success as I will be declining chemo, surgery and radiation. I hope you live a long and happy life….but, best to check yourself and your attitude! Best wishes to all of us!
Both Dr. Burzynski and Dr. Gonzalez have a very dismal success rate when it comes to curing cancer. Dr. Burzynski has been doing trials for years now, over 30 years I believe, but has not published any results. None. Zero. Why would that be? If his treatment is so successful, then why doesn’t he publish his results?? You try to make us believe mainstream oncologists only want to make lots of money by prescribing as much chemotherapy as possible, and present Burzynski as an admirable example of the opposite, which again shows you have not done your homework properly.
As for Dr. Gonzalez, he hasn’t cured any cancer patient, his track record is even more dismal than Burzynski’s, for Burzynski often also uses standard cancer medication. The studies of Dr. Gonzalez show that his patients fare much worse than patients treated conventionally. His treatment doesn’t do anything for cancer, causes his patients to die sooner and makes them feel like hell to boot.
More on Burzynski’s cancer treatments here. Breast cancer surgeon David Gorski has written extensively on Burzynski and on Gonzalez as well.
If you really have stage II breast cancer, I would strongly advise you to start standard treatment as soon as possible. Prognosis for stage II breast cancer can still be quite good, but trying to cure breast cancer with alternative treatments only is the most dangerous thing anyone can do.
@Joellelee
I can’t help worrying about your decision to decline all standard treatments for your breast cancer. Please reconsider and pluck up your courage! Surely you want to live?
No they won’t. My oncologist receives a fixed salary from the research hospital where he works and no bonuses for describing chemotherapy. His wife had chemotherapy too, for her breast cancer. Am I to believe that doctors knowingly poison their loved ones, only to make some more money?? You can’t be serious!
Your cancer is stage II, which still gives you a good chance of survival, but only if you start treatment soon. The longer you wait, the more you ruin your chances of survival. Chemotherapy is not as bad as alternative therapists are telling you. I’ve done it myself and I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I had to.
In case you should be interested: here’s more information on cancer patients who chose to forgo standard treatments.
i know 3 woman just around me who had been diagnosed with breast cancer
and after learning about the discoveries of german new medicine decided not
to do surgery,radiaton,chemo.the had been told be the dostors to die a painful death
and they are irresponsible,crazy and yet they understood the cause of it,solved the real life situation and they still alive symptom free.the intereting thing for me is that when they went back
months later for the checkup,the doctors were confused,unsecure about the fact and hussed the away saying miracle happend.NO FURTHER INTEREST whatsoever.its pathetic but what else one hopes from folks that are financially interested in others folks being kept in dark,in fear,kept sick and desperate…i have seend all the discreditive junk on the web about German New Medicine,i have tried it tested it and have seen it work just exactly how its written.punto
To be honest, I don’t believe one word of what you’re saying.
that is your problem.as i said come and check it out yourself
we have medical reports,brain scans etc…if u have a pre meditated
opinion about certain things nobody will change your mind about it
not my problem,when its your turn ask ur chemo dose fine by me…
@gyula balogh
No you don’t, otherwise you would have published them.
question is if i publish them,will it mean anything to you?
you have a mind as closed as a bunker.not that i want to convince u
or anybody else.whoever come with a true interest,or needing help
i will share anything,but you are none of these.your logic is very primitive
and suggest a simple reptilian lifeform and way of thinking.stay in your bunker mind
and have fun honey….
Beatis, I am NOT saying all the encologists are trying to poison people! I just find them ignorant and very closed minded to any other form of treatment. I finally got my encologist to admit that chemo would not really help my cancer outcome anymore than that 3%… I have done thousands of hours of research on BOTH sides! Tons of studies of how chemo and surgery has little benefit! have you done any reserach at all or just believe big pharna/FDA dogma? I have met many women who have healed their cancers alternatively. Have you ever heard of jessica Ainscough AKA wellnesswarrior.com…both her and her mom being cured on Gerson…Also, well known Kris Carr cured her cancer with diet and supplements, she is the author of Crazy Sexy cancer. If you are only going on what the ACS and FDA is saying about Gonzalez then you are getting a very biased side! I have met numerous patients in my research who went to him and have been healed. You are so closed minded…wake up, please. What a waste of a blog.
Surgery is the primary and most effective part of treatment for solid cancers. In breast cancer, chemotherapy is used as an adjuvant, to enhance prognosis. You can choose not to undergo chemotherapy, but forgoing surgery is really very, very dangerous, it only gives the cancer free reign to grow and metastasize in abundance. And once it has metastasized beyond the lymph nodes, it is generally incurable.
Kris Carr was not cured of cancer, she still has cancer, she calls herself a cancer thriver, not a cancer survivor. Her kind of cancer is extremely slow growing and can remain dormant for years. Hence patients with this kind of cancer are no longer advised chemotherapy but a “wait-and-see” policy, which is exactly what her oncologist advised Ms Carr. If her cancer decides to become nasty – which may never happen – she and her doctors will decide on the best course of action. So she still has cancer, but chances are it will never become lethal. But cured she is not. I also wonder why you should think that your breast cancer is of the same type as Ms Carr’s cancer. For someone having read “tons of studies” you don’t seem very well informed and I find that rather worrying, to say the least.
And as far as I know Jessica Ainscough, who thinks we should eat clay to get rid of toxins and now poses as an authority on breast cancer, still has cancer too.
Nobody is EVER cured of cancer! Even you who has undergone chemo….cancer just runs and hides in hibernation waiting to strike in another form. I never said I had the same cancer as these two ladies Jessica and kris! Everyone is different! I was merely pointing out that a cancer can be put into remission without having to do any chemo! Well, it’s like talking to a wall…I am done here. Off to fill out my application to see the good Dr. Gonzalez! PEACE!
That’s true, but not without surgery.
In an earlier comment I explained to you that surgical removal of the tumour is the main part of the treatment for solid cancers and not chemotherapy. Chemotherapy before surgery is called neoadjuvant as is given to shrink the tumour so that surgery can be less invasive, whereas chemotherapy after surgery is given as an adjuvant to destroy any individual, occult cancer cells that may or may not be left in the body after surgery and thus help prevent recurrence. The fact that it is given for occult metastases accounts for the low overall average percentage by which it enhances women’s prognosis, for a lot of women do not have these micro metastases to begin with, only we have no way of knowing that. In individual cases however, the enhancement of prognosis may be much higher and for women with node positive stage II breast cancer, adjuvant chemotherapy enhances prognosis by a minimum average of 15 percent. A rule of thumb regarding curable cancers is that the more progressed the cancer, the greater the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy.
BTW, you sneeze at the average of 3%, but even “only” 3% means that out of every 100 women, 3 more will survive instead of die, of every 1000, 30 more will live and of every 10,000, 300 more women will live instead of die from their cancer.
Please note that the average survival rate for stage II breast cancers after standard treatment still is about 82% after five years and about 75% after 10 years.
Of untreated breast cancers, 85% of patients have died within 5 years and the ten-year survival rates of untreated breast cancer is no more than 3%.
Of course you have the right to forgo all treatment, including surgery and leave your breast cancer where it is now. But unless you have it removed, it will continue to grow and spread and once it has spread beyond the lymph nodes to the rest of your body, it has become incurable.
You can scream “close-minded” to us all you want, but the facts are that alternative treatments are completely useless when it comes to cancer. It will only cost you a lot of money and make you lose time you that you absolutely cannot afford to lose.
I know you didn’t say that, but you presented them here as proof that people can cure themselves from cancer with alternative treatments only. But the truth is 1) that these ladies both still have cancer and 2) that there is no reason to think that your cancer will be just as indolent as theirs has been until now and 3) that Kim Carr even is – God forbid – under constant surveillance of an oncologist.
You are right that every cancer is different and requires a different approach, that’s why there are more than 80 different kinds of chemotherapy and almost just as many targeted therapies for cancer.
And yes, cancer can be put into remission without chemotherapy, but NOT WITHOUT SURGERY! How on earth can I get that through to you?? Forgoing surgery is the most dangerous thing you can do!
@gyula balogh
We’ll know that as soon as you decide to publish the evidence you claim to have.
I knew you weren’t going to. You’ve been visiting this blog for some years now and all that time you have done nothing else but insult us. I can’t help thinking that’s because GNM is worthless so you have nothing to share and resort to name-calling instead.
Like I said, you only come here to insult us and call us names.
LOL this is totally false… mam, either you are a set up by the pharma industries or you just need to do re search again.
Chemotherapy using Logic- kills you more than it helps you! It kills all good and bad things in your body including your immune system,…! HELLO ! DONT WE NEED THAT TO HELP FIGHT OFF DISEASE AND VIRUS and INFECTIONS etc? especially the side effects we will be getting? WE NEED OUR IMMUNE SYSTEM don’t be dumb now lol…
Using Real Stats: (From Clinical Oncology studies) chemotherapy doesn’t work 97% of the time.
And you may not convince me otherwise… but chemotherapy is worse than cancer itself
That is what I call a clear demonstration of fact resistance. This post is about that very same article. It is explained clearly why the quack interpretation of “the real stats” is wrong. And the link to the article enables you to do fact checking for yourself.
To recapitulate:
The article is about contribution of chemotherapy to 5 year survival – not 5 year survival among patients who have chemotherapy:
1) In cancers where chemotherapy is the only treatment available – contribution is 100%
2) In cancers where chemotherapy is used in additional to other treatments with a curative intent, contribution is variable.
3) In disseminated cancers, where cure is not possible, chemotherapy is used to relieve symptoms caused by the cancer. In this case contribution is 0%
the original report is no more flawed than this one, chemotherapy does not and never has had a 60% success rate, chemotherapy is not the only treatment given and you have to examine the difference between people who have had the same treatment but with or without the chemo, which you have completely failed to do, chemo gives you cancer, it is not the only solution but the prefered solution due to the profit it makes for big pharma, conflicts of interest, also 85% of cancer research is known to be flawed, and survival rates is only for five years, you should see how many of the people that have been listed as survivors only to have a relapse and died, chemotherapy is not the only solution and not the best one either, anyone who decides to stick to chemo and not try other solutions is playing russian roulette
Beatis,
You say “Am I to believe that doctors knowingly poison their loved ones, only to make some more money?? You can’t be serious!”. Apparently you don’t pay much attention to the news if you don’t think doctors do unethical and illegal things to their patients to make money. What’s the difference for example of a doctor prescribing pain killers to people who really do not need them thus poisoning them for profit? Try looking up the doctor who was performing bypasses on perfectly healthy patients for profit in Redding, California for another example. I have worked in medicine for over 30 years and can tell you from what I have personally seen that patients get unnecessary drugs and treatments all the time in the name of profit. I even know 6 people personally who were told they had cancer when in fact they did not have cancer. One was even coerced in to surgery by telling him that if he refused the surgery that the State would stick him with the entire hospital bill for refusing the doctors order. This despite the fact that the spot on his lung was verified scar tissue from Valley fever he had 10 years earlier and the fact that the biopsy came back negative.
As for your comments about people like Burzynski not being published you are forgetting one important fact. It is extremely difficult to get published in “respected” journals when the articles have to be “peer reviewed”. Why? Because most of those “peers” are people like you who have such a narrow tunnel vision view of holistic medicine that they cannot believe that holistic therapies can work. There is plenty of solid research that can be found in some journals if one looks. They get there because there are a few peers that believe in the scientific method and don’t assume something cannot work based solely on their personal beliefs.
I also found it interesting that talk about believing in things that are provable but rely on statistics to prove your point. Everyone knows how easy it is to manipulate statistics to prove what one wishes to prove. For a great example research the Jupiter Study, which discusses how statistics were manipulated by the drug companies to make their drug, Crestor, appear more effective than it was.
It is nowhere near a secret in the research field that chemotherapy has a poor success rate. And I am not talking about statistics, I am talking about actual studies that show why the effects of chemotherapy are inhibited within malignant tumors. You probably don’t even know why this is. Here, I will give you a hint. It is the same reason radiation therapy has also been shown to have a poor outcome when treating malignant tumors.
Oh, and by the way I am not discussing the fact that both chemotherapy drugs and radiation therapy are both well known carcinogens and immune suppressants.
Cancer is a disease that is associated with the aging process. As you get older you are more likely to get it. Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation although they may not always be cures slow down the progression of the disease. There are many diseases you perhaps have as you read this and don’t even realize it. They are slowing down and managing the disease to the extent that I personally know women who were diagnosed with stage 4 BC over 15 years ago and are still leading happy lives today. If they can slow the disease down or put it in remission for such long periods of time, chances are you may go on to die of some other disease and not the cancer. We all hope for a cure, but cancer is not a single disease but many diseases so many cures must be found. Everyone will die sooner or later of something. It’s just a matter of time. I say enjoy everyday you have and don’t sweat the small stuff. No one lives forever. Not even you.
Cancer is not associated with the aging process. Cancers can even occur in fetuses. For example, infantile retinoblastoma. This is actually one of the few cancers that may actually have a hereditary factor. The vast majority of cancers though have been linked to viral infections. The viruses insert their genetic material in to cells altering their genetics increasing cellular division or turn off cancer suppressing genes such as BRAC-1.
I have been researching cancer for over 30 years. One of the things that really intrigued me when I first got in to cancer research was that every cancer therapy that has ever been shown to have any real promise was banned primarily by the FDA.
Cures for cancer have existed for a long time, but simply are not allowed. My favorite is ozone therapy that attacks various Achilles heels of cancer cells including destroying cancer pathogens and by directly and selectively destroying cancer cells through a peroxide overload. Same principle natural killer (NK) cells selectively destroy cancer cells when they can be detected by the immune system.
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/cancer/articles/2009/02/20/cancer-and-age-why-we-may-face-a-tradeoff-between-cancer-risk-and-aging
You could associate anything with age. Body gets older immune system gets weaker. It doesn’t mean you can’t get cancer when your young though. So why talk about it? If you want to slow aging. Eat raw vegetables. But you can’t stop it.raw vegetables also help your immune system more than anything else ever will. Curing cancer is common sense. The problem is that sense isn’t that common.
As the article points out children also get cancer, and as i have pointed out so do fetuses.. Therefore, to claim that that cancer is a disease associated with the aging process is very misleading.
So is this statement made in the article: “” Cancer is characterized by cells dividing wildly, with no brakes; if a cell can’t divide, it can’t become cancerous”. First of all not all wildly dividing cells are cancerous. A fetus has a higher than normal cellular division rate and shares many other characteristics with malignant tumors. This does not mean the fetus is a malignancy. And even benign tumors, such as warts, and certain other conditions such as psoriasis are characterized by cells “dividing wildly”, but this does not make them cancer. Cancer cells have a different morphology than healthy cells, they are not simply an overgrowth of cells.
Also important to keep in mind is the fact if cells cannot divide we would be in trouble. Cells divide in the body for several reasons, not simply growth. Cellular division for example is essential to tissue repair and maintaining healthy bone tissue.
Is there an increased risk of cancer as we age? Yes, there are things that happen that can increase this risk such as longer exposure to carcinogens, changes in the hormones and immune suppression from nutritional deficiencies as stomach acid decreases with age. All of these also play a role in the activation of oncoviruses that are most often what cause the changes in the cell genetics, such as turning off cancer suppressor genes and promoting the production of cellular division hormones that lead to cancer.
No it isn’t. Getting wet is associated with walking in the rain and the longer you walk in the rain, the wetter you get. But walking in the rain doesn’t exclude other ways of getting wet.
Why don’t you quote the complete statement? The article explains that both cell division and programmed cell death (apoptosis) are essential to life.
That is complete nonsense, ozone does no such thing.
@James
You consistently keep twisting words. I never said there are no unethical doctors. What I said was:
Meaning: am I to believe that my oncologist advised his wife to have chemotherapy, knowing it would do nothing for her, for no other reason than to make some money? You must be an idiot when you believe that.
1. Burzinsky’s treatments have nothing to do with “holistic” medicine, although he likes to pretend they have;
2. So-called “holistic” treatments get published all the time;
3. If his treatment is as successful as he claims, he could easily have published his data in one of the many journals that are sympathetic towards “holistic” medicine or even on his own website and strike a lucrative deal wit the pharmaceutical industry. The fact that he hasn’t done all this makes me feel very suspicious about his “results”.
The point I think is that we are all going to die of something. There is a lot of dumb luck to living a long life and there are no guarantees. If you want to opt out of conventional treatment that is your right. My own mother faced with an incurable and rare form of a virulent cancer chose to wait it out with no intervention and the help of Hospice and her family by her side. That was her choice and was to be respected. Everyone has choices but no one has any guarantees.
I personally know many women who are breast cancer survivors. They are living well and their quality of life is excellent. I know these women personally. They are not just statistics to me. I am glad they sought treatment and we treasure each year we have together. You can blame “big pharm” all you want but I know many women who have lived decades beyond what they would have if they had declined surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. I’m talking decades. That is quite a long time don’t you think? Will they live forever? Of course not. No one can do that. Not even any of you. But they have learned a very valuable lesson, namely that everyday is a gift!
beatis May 30, 2013 at 6:38 am
As the article points out children also get cancer, and as i have pointed out so do fetuses.. Therefore, to claim that that cancer is a disease associated with the aging process is very misleading.
No it isn’t. Getting wet is associated with walking in the rain and the longer you walk in the rain, the wetter you get. But walking in the rain doesn’t exclude other ways of getting wet.
So by your view then it could have just as easily been said that cancer is associated with infancy, it is associated with adolescence, it is associated with early adulthood…..
So is this statement made in the article: “” Cancer is characterized by cells dividing wildly, with no brakes; if a cell can’t divide, it can’t become cancerous”.
Why don’t you quote the complete statement? The article explains that both cell division and programmed cell death (apoptosis) are essential to life.
Because the parts about apoptosis were correct. The part I addressed was incorrect.
beatis May 30, 2013 at 6:55 am
My favorite is ozone therapy that attacks various Achilles heels of cancer cells including destroying cancer pathogens and by directly and selectively destroying cancer cells through a peroxide overload.
That is complete nonsense, ozone does no such thing.
Funny how people who never researched the subject want to pretend they are an authority on the subject and deny what real researchers have proven. Did you even look at the medical study I posted showing ozone selectively destroys cancer cells? And how does it SELECTIVELY destroy cancer cells? Simple, cancer cells lack the antioxidant enzymes required to break down peroxides and therefore swell and burst from peroxide overload. This the the same principle in which natural killer (NK) cells destroy cancer cells when they can be detected by the immune system. The NK cells attach to the cancer cells and inject peroxide in to the cancer cells causing them to swell and burst.
If you are going to argue against facts that have been proven and are well known in science you are just going to further discredit yourself further.
beatis May 30, 2013 at 7:11 am
@James
You consistently keep twisting words. I never said there are no unethical doctors. What I said was:
“Am I to believe that doctors knowingly poison their loved ones, only to make some more money?? You can’t be serious!”
Meaning: am I to believe that my oncologist advised his wife to have chemotherapy, knowing it would do nothing for her, for no other reason than to make some money? You must be an idiot when you believe that.
ROTFLMAO!!! You think I am the idiot?!!! You apparently know as little about the corruption that goes on in the medical system as you do cancer and cancer treatments such as ozone therapy. Maybe if you spent less time attacking people who know what they are talking about and spend more time doing some REAL research you may actually get something right one of these days!
I see my original comment never got approved, so here it is again. If you have nothing to hide then you should not be censoring people’s comments simply because you do not know how to address facts being presented with any type of real evidence. Denying the facts or erasing them does not change the facts Beatis.
Having spent most of my life working in medicine and spending a lot of time working in oncology and researching cancer I feel 100% confident in stating that you do not have a clue what you are talking about Beatis.
Reading though your article and responses it is clear you are blinded by bias, which accounts for most of your errors. You are so blinded that you did not realize a simple flaw in your claims. In your article you posted “In 98% of the patients, 5-year survival was due to a combination of factors, of which chemotherapy sometimes also was a factor and sometimes was not.” Now, we all know that chemotherapy does not come even close to a 98% success rate. Thus the study was only looking at success stories. If I selected 1,000 success stories and ignored 10,000 deaths I could make a good case for success with whatever. That is the magic and manipulation of statistics.
Therefore, since you are so demanding of evidence from others where is your evidence of the 60% success rate for cancers overall based on chemotherapy alone? Don’t forget to differentiate between the people who are still cancer free after 5 years and not those who merely survived 5 years. And don’t forge to separate those who are cancer free of their original cancers and those who are still dying from therapy induced secondary cancers since these are common manipulative tactics used to make allopathic therapies appear more effective than they are.
While you are at it I suggest going to the medical library and look up the article in JAMA where doctors reported that the drug companies were dropping patients who died or did not respond to their chemo drugs from final test results again to make their ineffective drugs appear effective. A tactic still commonly in use not only for chemo drugs but other drugs as well.
If you ever decide to do some real research and dig a little deeper you will also find that it is well known in medicine that most cancer patients never die from their cancer, they die from adverse events as a result from their chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
You need to stop demanding evidence from other people just because you don’t know how to do proper research. People are not here to spoon feed you with evidence that is easy for anyone knowing how to do basic research to find.
As a final note, I see you also keep bashing people for having evidence to cures that you claim does not exist because it is not published. I would think that someone that is really as intelligent as you want to believe you are would be aware that you cannot just publish whatever you feel like in medical journals. Clearly you are not familiar with a thing called “peer review”. So let me fill you in a little. To get published in peer review journals the articles have to be first reviewed then approved by a group of people who are often just as biased, if not more, than you against facts like the fact that chemotherapy drugs and radiation therapy are carcinogenic. if it were so easy to get published in peer review journals why are your reports claiming holistic medicine not published? Using your same arguments you must be lying with your claims since they are not peer review published. That’s why people publish their writings in their own person blogs. This allows them to publish whatever they want, true or not.
@ James
If something kills cancer cells in a petri dish, it doesn’t mean it is usable on human beings. If you read about some of the people who publish on this blog, you would know some of them are involved in cancer research.
And here is someone else, who is a cancer surgeon and scientist.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/05/27/how-to-kill-cancer-cells/
Renate,
You are telling me the same thing I tell people all the time. So you are not telling me anything new.
What you and Beatis seem to want to do is to keep bashing therapies that clearly neither one of you know the first thing about. Ozone therapy has been around a long time and is widely used in other countries where they do want cures. If you are really interested in learning you may want to start with The Use of Ozone in Medicine. It is a guide for ozone therapy written by German doctors for doctors. They give detailed descriptions of everything from how ozone has been proven to work for a variety of diseases, to dosages. They also reference some of the medical literature available and they have photographs for those who just like looking at the pictures.
There are various other resources of information from medical studies available if either you or Beatis ever decide to put at least a little effort in to researching the topics you wish to discuss.
@James
Nobody said that chemotherapy has a success rate of 98%. I’ll try and explain again: the researchers wanted to find out what the contribution was of chemotherapy to 5-year survival. In order to find this out, they selected a group of cancer patients who were still alive 5 years after their diagnosis. Of these patients, 98% had been treated with a combination of therapies and only 2% had been treated with chemotherapy alone. The study pertained to 22 different kinds of cancers.
There is no evidence of 60% success rate on chemotherapy alone for cancers overall, the 60% cancer survival rate is based on all available treatments and pertains to all kinds of cancers. We also know that nowadays DLBCL is cured by chemotherapy with a success rate of approx 50%, Hodgkin (approx 90%) and childhood cancers (very high, 80-90%). These cancers among others were not included in the study.
Why? The aim of the study was to find out what the contribution was of chemotherapy alone in 5-year SURVIVAL. As in: being alive. As in: not being dead.
Why? The aim of the study was to find out what the contribution was of chemotherapy alone in 5-year SURVIVAL. As in: being alive. As in: not being dead.
Thank you. Perhaps you could provide us with a link.
So they would still be alive and well had they not been treated?.
This is my blog and I can do just as I please here.
There’s a straw man if ever I saw one. We know full well that radiotherapy and chemotherapy are potentially carcinogenic, only a fool would suggest otherwise. But they have also shown to be effective, and their contribution to long term survival significantly outweighs the risk of potential problems later in life, which, being potential, may never even occur. All medical treatments, including cancer treatments, demand constant evaluation, the weighing of benefits against risks and success against failures and must be used judiciously and with caution.
@James
Re ozone therapy, since you won’t provide us with references, I will:
Ozone therapy: A clinical review
Oxygen Therapy
Ozone therapy: does it work?
Ozone therapy: is it safe?
Regarding the efficacy and safety of ozone treatments, this is interesting (my bold):
Renate Viehbahn’s book The Use of Ozone in Medicine makes no mention of ozone being effective as a cancer cure.
One again Beatis sees what Beatis wants to see. There is plenty of research readily available that shows the effectiveness of ozone for a variety of diseases. You remind me a lot of the quack Barrett who makes a living out of bashing holistic therapies. So he also looks for and posts everything he can find negative on holistic therapies even if the research was poorly conducted or misinterpreted and like you ignores any and all research proving otherwise.
For example, I have seen your first reference, which I note you do not give citations for so people cannot review how you came about with your conclusions. Typical games of the holistic bashers. Anyways, that was a safety study, not a study concluding the effectiveness against diseases. Therefore, you just showed how you are unable to even properly interpret studies. The conclusion of the study was that out of the millions of doses given there were only just over 30 adverse reactions showing the extremely high level of safety of the therapy. Most of the adverse reactions were mild such as pain at the injection site. And some of the adverse events were attributed to administration error.
As for your second so-called “reference” again you do not cite your source. I guess you do not feel confident in the way the test was completed or your interpretation of it and don’t want people to see that fact. Where is the evidence that the ozone and not the HIV medications caused the issues? For example, it is well known that ozone relaxes blood vessels increasing circulation yet they claim decreased circulation. And do you know what is the prime cause of lowered blood counts in HIV+ patients leading to the severe immune suppression? Their medications, especially AZT (zidovudine), which is well known for causing a complete collapse of the immune system. That is why the Concorde Study, which is the largest study ever conducted on AZT came to the conclusion that AZT shorted the lives of HIV+ individuals. So where is this study so we can find out if these individuals were on antiretroviral drugs that are well known for causing many of the side effects listed? And again, where is the proof the ozone caused this problem? What was the dose of ozone given? The only way ozone could cause some of those side effects is if it were administered in concentrations higher than recommended. So once again, why are you hiding the sources of your information? Afraid people are going to show how the studies you are cherry picking are flawed or you are simply misinterpreting because you do not know how to read and understand studies? Like the safety study you misinterpreted as an effectiveness study?!!!
Interestingly, there was a study conducted back a while ago at the San Francisco Veteran’s Hospital in which all 5 AIDS patients treated with ozone has a 100% complete remission of symptoms. Do you even have a clue what AIDS is? If you do then you would know why that is so important and what those findings mean. Interesting though that you could not find this study, or choose to ignore it since it does not fit your need.
Also, I have seen no evidence that ozone therapy was banned in Germany as you claimed. I have seen research studies and reports of successful treatments for cancer and AIDS from German doctors such as Horst and Kief that are later than the 1984 date you claim. Where is your proof that ozone therapy was banned in 1984 in Germany?
Note, references are only good if the sources are cited and they are properly conducted and interpreted. So far you have failed miserably on all levels.
If the research is so readily available why don’t you just show it to us, instead of sending me on a wild goose chase on the internet?
Do you even know what citation and reference mean? Citation numbers are in the article, referring to document sources at the bottom of the article.
Document sources can be found at the bottom of the article by means of citation numbers in the text.
Under the heading “Is it safe?” it says:
Meaning: because no full report of this observational study is available, no valid conclusions can be given as to the efficacy and safety of the ozone therapies used. *sigh*
I can hardly ignore something I can’t even find, can I? So no, you’re right, I could not find a study at the San Francisco Veterans hospital in which 5 AIDS patients treated with ozone came into complete remission.
Interestingly though, what I could find was a study at the San Francisco Veterans Hospital in which 5 AIDS patients with intractable diarrhea were treated with daily colonic insufflations of medical ozone (oxygen/ozone mixture) for 21-28 days. According to the abstract, three of the four patients experienced complete resolution from their diarrhea, one patient had marked improvement and the fifth patient experienced no change. No consistent change in the absolute number of helper (CD4) or suppressor (CD8) lymphocytes was detected, and no obvious changes were seen in the PO2 or the results of routine hematologic and blood chemistry studies.
None of them came into complete remission of AIDS, the study wasn’t even about that.
Banning refers to direct infusion of ozone intravenously, a technique that is still widely propagated by altmeds:
Another technique for using ozone is direct infusion, in which the ozone gas is injected directly into the vein. This has the advantage of being more precise in terms of dosage delivered, as well as allowing administration of higher concentrations.
Thanks so much for pointing this out. ROTFL!
I always love when people try to argue a point then provide the evidence against their own claims as Beatis just did. For example, the first response Beatis had to my posts was:
beatis May 30, 2013 at 6:55 am
My favorite is ozone therapy that attacks various Achilles heels of cancer cells including destroying cancer pathogens and by directly and selectively destroying cancer cells through a peroxide overload.
That is complete nonsense, ozone does no such thing.
So Beatis is claiming that ozone does not kill pathogens and does not form peroxides to kill cancer cells. Yet, in a reference Beatis gave earlier in response to ozone, Ozone therapy: A clinical review, the article presents the evidence to back my point and prove Beatis wrong once again. Let’s look at some quotes from the article:
“Ozone therapy has been utilized and heavily studied for more than a century. Its effects are proven, consistent, safe and with minimal and preventable side effects. Medical O3 is used to disinfect and treat disease. Mechanism of actions is by inactivation of bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast and protozoa, stimulation of oxygen metabolism, activation of the immune system.”
And more:
“Diseases treated are infected wounds, circulatory disorders, geriatric conditions, macular degeneration, viral diseases, rheumatism/arthritis, cancer, SARS and AIDS.”
Hmmm….. Proven to inactivate pathogens such as viruses, which include cancer viruses and bacteria. So goes Beatis’ first claim.
So what about the formation of peroxides? Well, let’s look at another quote from the same article:
“MECHANISM OF ACTION
Inactivation of bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast and protozoa: Ozone therapy disrupts the integrity of the bacterial cell envelope through oxidation of the phospholipids and lipoproteins. In fungi, O3 inhibits cell growth at certain stages. With viruses, the O3 damages the viral capsid and upsets the reproductive cycle by disrupting the virus-to-cell contact with peroxidation.”
Gee, how does that “peroxidation” occur? Simple, ozone reacts with water in the body to form hydrogen peroxide, but more importantly reacts with the lipids in cell membranes forming lipid peroxides, which like the peroxides secreted by the body’s natural killer cells destroy cancer cells. And how do they destroy the cancer cells? Simple, it has been well known in science and medicine for decades that cancer cells lack the antioxidant enzymes needed to break down peroxides. Therefore, the peroxides enter the cancer cells where they swell and burst the cancer cells selectively. Since healthy cells contain these antioxidant enzymes, such as catalase and superoxide dismutase they are not damaged or destroyed by the peroxides. This is why ozone selectively targets cancer cells:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7403859
Beatis also falsely claimed that ozone therapy was banned in Germany in 1984. Yet look at what her reference CLEARLY states:
” In the late 1980s, reports had emerged that German physicians were successfully treating HIV patients with 03-AHT (Autohemotherapy). ”
These would be Dr. Horst and Dr. Kief that I mentioned earlier to name a few. And wow, they were doing this in the late 80s and beyond, which is past 1984 that Beatis falsely claims is when ozone therapy was banned in Germany.
Then Beatis claimed that a side effect of ozone was poor circulation based on an AIDS patient who was likely taking antiretroviral drugs and other drugs well known for causing these kind of side effects. But of course Beatis ignored that fact and decided it had to be the ozone despite the evidence to the contrary. Ozone has been well known for a long time to increase circulation and oxygenation as once again evidenced by the reference Beatis was so kind to supply:
“Stimulation of oxygen metabolism: Ozone therapy causes an increase in the red blood cell glycolysis rate. This leads to the stimulation of 2,3-diphosphoglycerate which leads to an increase in the amount of oxygen released to the tissues.”
“Production of prostacyline, a vasodilator, is also induced by O3”
Since Beatis apparently does not know what a vasodilator is this is a substance that dilates blood vessels, which in turn INCREASES circulation.
Slam dunk, game over!!!!!!
As they say, give people enough rope and they will hang themselves. Beatis did the job for me providing the evidence proving that Beatis was wrong and making up claims.
I recommend everyone read the reference themselves and find out all the fantastic properties ozone has for a variety of disease. This includes HIV, which happens to be a cancer virus.
In the meantime I am going to make a copy of all the posts just in case they suddenly disappear to make sure people continue to see the real facts.
Chrisbeatcancer.com this is a great site! As much evidence as I’ll ever need to never do chemo.
@James,
First you claim ozone cures cancer by selectively killing cancer pathogens and cancer cells. When I say ozone does no such thing, you come up with a study in petri dishes for Pete’s sake. Well, all kinds of miraculous things happen in petri dishes all the time that never happen in the human body. Up to know, there is no reliable evidence of even one single patient cured of cancer by means of ozone.
What you should have said therefore is: ozone therapy has been observed to destroy cancer cells in a petri dish, but no such effect has been observed in the human body.
I did not claim this, as you would have known had you bothered to read my reference; it says that DIRECT INFUSION OF OZONE INTRAVENOUSLY (a practice still used by altmeds) was banned in 1984 in Germany. For God’s sake man, READ!
I claimed nothing of the kind. Since you are either too stupid or too lazy to do so yourself, I looked on the internet for information on the use of ozone in medicine. That’s all. If what I posted here is not to your liking, you are free to present us with better information. But stop putting words in my mouth.
Where is the evidence for your repeated claims of cancer cured with ozone therapy – or AIDS for that matter?
Ah yes, Chris, who consistently refuses to post any comments other than those loudly applauding his story. Chris had stage III colon cancer, for which he had surgery removing the tumour and affected lymph nodes.
According to the National Cancer Data Base, average 5-year survival rates of colon cancer are 64% with chemotherapy and 44% without chemotherapy. So, even without chemotherapy, Chris had a 44% chance to be completely cancer free after his surgery. Yet he claims he cured himself by means of nutrition and natural therapies.
First of all you seems to be still ok with chemo which has an overal 2-3% contribution. Millions spent on something with such a poor success rate? Or such a poor contribution. The study as you pointed out is not complete, but just so you know, I think you may have conveniently missed that 5 year survivors may not be survivors. Question is did you miss that or are you being biased?
Secondly: Chris’s website tells his story,but, his story has everything to do with why he started a website and plays a very small role in the rest of the site, or the intention to why he has his website. There is loads of information on there on various treatments some of which are very different to his treatment. But thanks for telling me your biased, unprovable, and not very thorough assumption of him.
Overall contribution is not as low as 2-3%, that’s the whole point of my post.
What are they then? Dead?
@James
I think you may have missed something, i.e. the study you touted here, the one with 5 AIDS patients who were all completely cured by means of ozone therapy:
Why not provide us with a reference to this very important study?
Going through that study, it does not give good results regardless how you look at it.
“what are they then, dead”
Is that a real question?. Obviously my point was possibly they are dead. Which would mean they didn’t survive and would also make the results worse.
I wonder What makes you think that people who were registered as being alive, were actually dead. Is that all you can come up with to discredit the Australian study?
The real question is (assuming you are trying to paint a clear picture for everyone) why did you not mention when pointing out what was left out of the study to make it inaccurate, that five year survival rate does not mean survivor or cured. Are you having trouble explaining this to me? Is this question to hard?
You do realize people can die in 6 years?
Are you serious? When a patients die 6 years after their diagnosis, they still are 5-year survivors. When a patients die after 4 years, they are not 5-year survivors and never will be. Where on earth did you go to school?
Beatis:
I know, but some people can’t understand or are not willing to do so.
@Adam
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of leukemia in young children.
The survival rates -improved from zero four decades ago- are now 85% on new chemotherapeutic agents. A poor contribution? I don’t think so!
What would you suggest to do for them without chemotherapy? Operation is not possible.
Lol yeh if they die in six years they are five year survivors. Did I say they weren’t?. I said they are not survivors. I cant believe I’m still explaining this.
@Adam
The real question on the moment is: Where on earth did you go to school?!
As beatis would say, can you provide some details as to where it proves 85%? Just anything other than your word. I don’t put poison in myself and I sure would put it in my children. I would look after the child’s immune system (that obviously wasn’t working) raw organic foods would be my choice. I understand you want a complicated answer. But the truth is never complicated
Saying where on earth did you go to school is a poor argument. If you read what I’ve written carefully, you will realize you are missing my point.
Adam:
They still are 5-year survivors, on that moment cancerfree, but without a certificate of guarantee.
I’m a 8-year survivor now, looking forward to 10-year without a certificate.
Adam:
OMG!!!! The child with leukemia would – for 100% sure- die in your hands.
Adam, the aim of the study was to find out what the contribution of chemotherapy was to 5-year survival. So, sad though it is, the deaths of patients six or more years after diagnosis are not relevant to this study.
It would. And it would be Adam who killed the child.
@Adam
Actually, when it comes to cancer, the truth is extremely complicated; developing cancer is not a simple process and neither is curing it.
Oh God, someone tell me how to unsubscribe from this endless banter…
@Adam
Survival rates for childhood leukemia
@Adam
No, 5-year survival rate does not mean cured, nobody said it did, but it does mean survior. When you have survived 5 years after your diagnosis, you are a 5-year cancer survivor, there’s no two ways about that, notwithstanding the possibility that your cancer may come back in 6 years and kill you. Surely you can understand this?
Erica, I have no idea how to unscubscribe from a thread. I’ve found it once by accident and have never been able to find it again, sorry.
Are you guys/ girls fucking retarded or something. I know what the study was. Clearly, what I’m saying is that it cannot be accurate if it is done over only five years. You can say what you want, but I understand how cancer works and if you think chemo is the only thing that can kill a cancer cell you need to wake up.
There was a time when I would have agreed with you. A friend of mine a few years ago had cancer, he was animate about not doing chemo, I was annoyed with him in a worried kind of a way. He said to me something along the lines of
“how many people do you know who have died from cancer” I said 4.
He said “did they all do chemo” I said yeh
He said ” I hope you didn’t make them do chemo like your trying to make me”
That friend is alive today. In fact he is the healthiest peron I know. Hence the reason I am not interested in your non-sense.
Adam:
Yeah Right! You think the foundations of your argument are rock-solid? Think again.
I didn’t and wouldn’t say anything is rock solid. I think your the one with that problem. I realize my methods are not 100% proven, I also realize they have not been disproven. I could argue all day with you. I could ask you to Prove that chemo doesn’t cause secondary cancers. We could also argue why western countries have higher rates of cancer. but I’m not going to bother because the importance of you being right seems to outweigh the importance of broadening the possibilities of curing cancer. You choose to fight your body, I choose to work with it. That’s the difference.
Btw. The link to the 85% survival rate is a five year survival rate. And it says nothing about how much chemo contributed. Did you know it’s quite common now for doctors to recommend juicing. I wonder why?.
That’s it for me, I won’t be back. Have fun.
Chemo is the only treatment for leukemia. No chemo, no cure. Period.
Adam:
Different types of cancer can behave very differently. They grow at different rates and respond to different treatments. That is why people with cancer need treatment that is aimed at their own kind of cancer. There are over 200 different types of cancer because there are over 200 different types of body cells. Some types of cancer are very sensitive to chemotherapy and so it can work very well for those cancers. But some cancers are not sensitive to chemotherapy, and so chemotherapy is not used to treat them.
There are more than 100 different drugs currently available and new ones are being developed all the time. The patient may have just one chemotherapy drug or a combination of different chemotherapy drugs.
Again:
Operation is not possible and chemotherapy the most important treatment. So it says imo everything about how much chemo contributed.
(bold by me)
Adam:
No we did’t choose to fight our body. We realized on time that there is no time to wait for alternative cancer therapy to work err… fail. This post shows why that is a very dangerous idea.
Lol. Imagine if some had a site that had all the unsuccessful stories involving chemo. You would need ten lifetimes to read it.
@Adam
You could, but that would only show how ignorant you are, so you’d better not. I’ll just post one of my earlier replies to James, which you seemed to have overlooked:
There’s a straw man if ever I saw one. We know full well that radiotherapy and chemotherapy are potentially carcinogenic, only a fool would suggest otherwise. But they have also shown to be effective, and their contribution to long term survival significantly outweighs the risk of potential problems later in life, which, being potential, may never even occur. All medical treatments, including cancer treatments, demand constant evaluation, the weighing of benefits against risks and success against failures and must be used judiciously and with caution.
What on earth is not accurate about it?? Five-year survival is an important endpoint to assess the efficacy of cancer treatments. You may snort at 5 years, but many people don’t, they are very happy to still be alive 5 years after their diagnosis.
No you don’t, you don’t have a clue.
No, I don’t think that and I never said I do, on the contrary, so I have no idea why you should suggest I do.
I’m not even going to bother beatis. There is no point, you would argue that the sky is not blue. I have no idea if you miss my point or choose not to see it. Either way, i really don’t care.
Perhaps this will enlighten you a bit – provided you can muster the energy to bother.
? What exactly are you trying to enlighten me about. I understand what it all means. We are just on completely different pages. For example this talks about what cure means in medical world. But people don’t live in that world, so when pharma or cancer research companies talk about “help find the cure” it becomes very complicated. We already have word that are less misleading. Cancer is a side affect of bad health. Why do you insist on treating side affects?. How can you cure side affects? Its your life beatis and you can do what you want with it. What you need to take into consideration is that science is doctrine. And people don’t have to abide by its rules. Not only do we Need to be carefull in everyday life with conflicts of interest but we need to be carefull when it comes to the worlds doctrines science, government religion. I ask myself all the time, why do billion dollar industries want us to pay for their research? That wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t charging people at times hundreds of thousands of dollars for the final product. You can trust them but I would rather understand how to look after my body so I don’t have these health issues. You like to tell me I don’t know anything about cancer, telling people who don’t see things the way you do that they are unintelligent, and by your definition of intelligent you might be right. But I define intelligence differently than you. I realise you and me are on a different page. And it seems it is going to stay that way. So reply if you want. But arguing with people is bad for our health. And I like my health. So I will be having no further conversation. All the best
That’s not even wrong.
Adam:
My health was never, and is still, not bad, quite the contrary! Therefore the diagnosis came -for my family doctor also- like a bolt from the blue and I’m not the only cancer patient whith that experience so not an exception.
The pages you are on, are demonstrably the wrong ones. Put away the blinkers you have on and you will see.
By the way: When cancer should always be a side effect of bad health, is this about your friend a contradiction in terms or what?!:
https://anaximperator.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/only-3-percent-survive-chemotherapy/#comment-11052
It’s side effect, you illiterate moron. And using the word “retarded ” is deeply offensive, you moron.
Whot wud da world b without hypocritical grammar nazis? Don’t call me an asshole you asshole? Makes sense.
@Marc Stephens Is Insane
Poor Adam seems inflicted with language and thinking disorders to the effect that his abilities to understand, read, and write are seriously affected.
I also make spelling mistakes, because I’m not a native speaker of English. The point is imo that it seems te be, that Adam hasn’t got a grain of common sense and a mouth big enough for two
people.
The contribution to 5-year survival from quack medicine, a diet etc. is most certainly zero so 0%.
I think Adams unfounded allegations are totally irresponsible and very dangerous.
Hi Beatis, Thank you for the article and the perspective you have given. However, what surprises me is that since the pharma industry and “mainstream medicine” is so organized, why don’t they put out official figures on survival rates after chemo. Clearly, every drug goes through a variety of tests, that cost millions of dollars, to get them approved by FDA. If chemo is so effective , why don’t they just put out the results of those tests of the chemo therapy drugs and remove all confusion. Or for that matter, take any cancer hospital and check out if they have put out any statistics on their success rates with different kind of cancers, in different stages and maybe even more detailed with age and race also being mentioned. After all in the computeriZed world it just takes putting in data into a program. My query is why is there no transparency? Or is there? In fact, it would really help if instead of rubbishing anti chemo claims, if you pointed us to some real and correct stats or data.
@Monika
I am not Beatis, but I think I may be able to clarify a few things for you.
Modern conventional cancer treatment does not only encompass chemotherapy. Data on survival after conventional cancer treatment including chemotherapy are available from cancer registries all over the world. Assuming that you are from America, you can find the information from your country here.
Figuring out how much chemotherapy contribute to these survival figures is a bit complicated, because there are many factors involved. For cancers that are treated with chemotherapy only, chemotherapy contributes 100 %. Where chemotherapy is used in the palliative setting as a relief of symptoms, contribution is 0%. Where chemotherapy is used in additio to surgery and/or radiotherapy, survival is highly variable. Here is one freely available tool that is useful in estimating additional chemotherapy in various situations of some cancers.
They do. The results of these trials are published in scientific medical journals. Here is an example which is freely available to anyone who is interested. This type of article is probably difficult to understand for laypeople, but data has to be presented in this way to make it possible to get an idea of how valid the conclusions are.
I think you do have a point that communication of scientific research to the public could be better. Journalists aren’t terribly good at it. There are however reliable resources out there that attempts at doing that. Here is a site I can recommend.
I disagree with you that this post rubbishes anti-chemo claims. It explains how a specific anti-chemo claim is demonstrably wrong, and it is my impression, that you understand this.
It might be an idea to look into the historical aspects of the emergence of all this anti-conventional-cancer-treatment-rubbish. In his newest book, Paul Offit describes how the American supplemental industry succeeded through political lobbying, bullying of opponents and recruitment of celebrities to avoid demands of documentation of safety and efficacy of alternative therapies. One of the strageies was/is to demonize conventional treatment and the regulators thereof.
We on this blog agree with you that the information of effects and safety of chemotherapy as well as other cancer treatments must be transparent. Hopefully I have given you some insight on where to look for the information. But we also feel that claims of alternative cures should be met with the same requirements. And we don’t buy into the claim that it is too expensive to do fair tests of alternative cures, because they generate fortunes to their salesmen.
If chemotherapy’s contribution to survival is barely over 2%, given the side-effects, I think I would pass.
That is exactly what the quacks want you to think. But if you read the post again, you can see that this is the wrong way of understanding the article. Cancer is not one disease. It is a collective term for approximately 200 different diseases. Some are treated primarily with chemotherapy. Others are not. Furthermore chemotherapy is not just one thing. There are about 100 different chemotherapies. Some of them are sheer hell while others are quite doable.
Think of chemotherapy being used in the following situations:
1) As the only treatment of the cancer in question => Contribution of chemotherapy to survival = 100%
2) In combination with surgery for the purpose of curing the patient => Contribution of chemotherapy to survival = Variable
3) To relieve symptoms/discomfort from a viedly metastasised cancer => Contribution of chemotherapy to survival = 0%
The larger proportion of cancers from group 3) you include in your survey, the lower the contribution to survival will be.
The larger proportion from group 1) you include, the larger the contribution will be.
Pingback: The ‘truth’ of another story? | Lee Turnpenny
This article states that 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.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849
Yes – And this post explains what is wrong with that estimate.
Why or why not is medical marijuana a feasible cancer treatment? Begin debate.
There is no convincing evidence that cannabis is a feasible cancer treatment. So what would a debate be about?
@The Other Guy
Beatis is right. At the moment there isn’t enough reliable evidence to prove that cannabinoids – whether natural or synthetic – can effectively treat cancer in patients. So what would a debate be about?
There really is nothing to debate.
The claim that cannabis can cure cancer is based on two types of arguments:
A) ANECDOTES
There are plenty of things that can be wrong with anecdotes. Sometimes it can be very hard to spot – especially if you don’t know what to look for. Here is a good article explaining what to look out for:
I’ll sum up a few main points:
1) Sometimes it isn’t even cancer.
2) Sometimes the cancer has been removed as part of the diagnostic procedure.
3) Marijuana may have been used in addition to conventional treatment (This is the case with the cured patients in the Simpson video).
4) The cancer might not have been cured after all
5) It may be pure fabrication
B) LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS
There have been conflicting results from studies on cancer cell lines cultured in dishes or implanted in experimental genetically modified mice. Cancer in a patient is not the same as a cancer cell line grown in a dish or implanted in a mouse. We know from experience that you can’t conclude directly from effects in such experimental studies to effects in humans. There is no way around studies in actual cancer patients.
Here is one such study.
9 patients with progression of a brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme was treated. It wasn’t a controlled study, so we can’t know if the benefits that were observed was an effect of cannabis or an effect of the natural history of their cancer. The bottom line is, that all nine patients died within a year. Not a single patient was cured.
Here is a balanced, honest and up to date review of the results of cannabis research, and the conclusions that can be drawn from it.
I don’t really want to get into the debate of Chemo versus alternative cures because I think belief in what you are doing is the key to healing. So each to his/her own belief. My query is that since cancer is such a big industry and allopathy is so well documented and recorded medicine, where can i access figures on success of various chemo therapies on different kinds of cancers in a variety of stages and possibly have details like – race, region, age and lifestyle specific data. That would then make it easier for patients to decide. I believe in informed decision making. Tis article might dispel the myth about the way the australian study is being peddled but it does not give any indication of where to find the relevant information.
In fact I believe that each hospital should make it mandatory to record the effect of their alopathic treatments on cancer patients. Imagine going to a doctor and to aid the decision making process the patient could go through the data base of patients (No mention of name or identities ) and figuring out how many did or did not benefit from the treatment. When I went to an oncologist with my sisters reports of adenocarcinoma of the lung, he was very encouraging about adjuvant chemotherapy. And so I asked him to help me connect to some of his patients he had treated. This doctor who had a practice of more than two decades in oncology, had no success story to share.
If you think belief is the key, then why would you want access to chemo statistics?
Cancer statistics are on public record for everyone to see. Without a patient’s permission, a doctor is not allowed to share patient information. What makes you think you have the right to hassle people about the medical treatments they received?
Lol maybe people would like the option to understand the treatments and choose the one they are comfortable with. Then as an outcome they will be able to believe.
What you think people should just do what they are told Beatis?
Someone has an opinion and you jump at them (rudely) as if your life depends on it.
Question, why should people be comfortable paying too much from a business, that only sells products that are patented? And why should these companies be trusted to have people’s health as a priority?.
It’s like saying subway has people’s health as a priority.
You’re missing my point. Monika says belief is the key, so she should be checking belief statistics, not chemo statistics.
Anyway, since all statistics are public, her question is rather pointless.
Yeh, good advice. Check belief statistics?
It doesn’t matter what graph or statics a person looks at. They are never complete. Because no one knows everything and humans like to manipulate things to Benifit themselves.
Best question to ask is, what’s in it for the person giving me the advice..
Most people need advice. But who’s advice can they trust?
Alternative practitioners never publish statistisc, all they can come up with are anecdotes. You can do as you please regarding your health, whether that’s wise is another matter. I don’t object to free choice, I object to patients being lied to and quacks have a nasty habit of lying.
That is what they do. And the patients are monitored for years. The statistics are made from such data.
Beatis is right. A doctor is not allowed to share such information (and shouldn’t be – in my opinion).
But there are lots of support groups, where such contacts can be made.
beatis: “Alternative practitioners never publish statistisc, all they can come up with are anecdotes. You can do as you please regarding your health, whether that’s wise is another matter. I don’t object to free choice, I object to patients being lied to and quacks have a nasty habit of lying.”
Sounds like you are talking about the quacks in allopathic medicine. For example, are you aware that when cancer drugs are being tested that the drug companies have been found in many cases to drop any test participants that die or do not respond from the final results. This makes drugs that failed in testing appear effective. This was first reported in JAMA by a few doctors. Don’t recall the exact year off hand. But I have seen examples of this since then. For example, when they did a documentary on the development of the drug Endostatin they mentioned that one of the three men they were following was dropped from the study because his “tumor grew beyond the parameters of the study”. In other words the drug failed to help so they dropped him from the study to skew the results in to a more favorable light. No mention if the other man who died during the study was dropped or not, but I am sure he was since this standard procedure with many drug tests.
Corruption is extremely rampant in allopathic medicine, which is why I finally got out of it. Unfortunately, some people are so biased with their blinders on that they don’t want to see the truth regardless of how much evidence is out there. They assume that if they don’t look it won’t exist.
Sadly it is a perfect characterisation of practitioners of alternative (to) medicine.
Yes – When we are being misled by the pharmaceutical industry, it is exposed by doctors.
This does in no way legitimate the business your ilk is running.There are plenty of examples of deceitful practitioners of alternative (to) medicine. But they are never (extremely rarely) exposed by other practitioners of altmed.
Beatis go to Chrisbeatcancer.com you may learn something.
Lillian, read this, you may learn something.
I already did. I look at all sides of an argument and inform myself wisely. Stop thinking everyones story about surviving cancer naturally is fabricated and open your mind. Ignorance is bliss! Learn Something New. Natural remedies cannot be patented which is why know one will fund clinical studies for them. It’s pretty simple to recognize that our bodies were made to heal themselves with the aide of what grows on earth not man made pharmaceuticals. Please think outside the box! Listen to real people and not just science articles that are supported by the same funding of clinical trials. Ask the universe to expand that brain of yours.
@Lillian
They can and they are.
This might interest you (my bold):
Now tell me, how have these pharmaceuticals managed to patent these natural remedies?
Beatis: “Now tell me, how have these pharmaceuticals managed to patent these natural remedies?”
You are being very misleading. In your own link they mention that many of these drugs were synthesized from natural herbs or based on the chemistry of the herb. In other words they are no longer natural.
Look up patent law. The poster you responded to was 100% correct. You cannot patent a naturally occurring substance. This is why these natural substances are either copied, tweaked or otherwise altered in a lab, which by law no longer makes them “natural” and thus allows them to be patented.
For example, show us where aspirin, as is used as a pharmaceutical, has even been patented as it is found in a plant.
You cannot patent let’s say a mint, ginger, burdock, or nettle or any other plant. unless these plants have been altered such as though genetic manipulation, which again would make them unnatural in the eyes of the law.
So let’s go back and look at some of the parts of your comment you bolded:
“another chemical in the tree called quinidine which was found to be useful for various heart conditions couldn’t be completely copied in the laboratory”
So they could not “completely” copy the compound. Therefore, it is a semi-synthetic, not a natural compound.
“Quinidine extracted from the bark is still used today to produce quinidine-based drugs.”
Again, they say the quiniidine is still used “TO PRODUCE QUINIDINE-BASED DRUGS”. This means the extracted quinidine is being used to manufacturer a semi-synthetic drug, which IS NOT the same an natural.
@James
Plant extracts usually occur as a combination of various type of bioactive compounds or phytochemicals with different effects, and for medicines we only want the ingredient that has the desired effect, e.g. its capacity to destroy cancer cells, in exactly the right dosage. Therefore, extraction, separation, isolation and purification of bioactive ingredients from medicinal plants is important to be able to make effective medication, but the fact that a natural substance was isolated, extracted or purified doesn’t make it any less natural.
That aside, I think the whole “natural” argument is ridiculous as well as moot. What we need is effective medication for cancer patients. This is impossible if we insist on only whole plants and unpatented natural remedies, because precise dosage is impossible, many plants contain additional ingredients that may seriously harm patients, and patients would often have to somehow manage to ingest huge quantities of completely undigestible compounds, such as the bark of the Yew tree.
Lillian:
When a plant product is discovered that has potential for a therapeutic drug, it might not be available in quantities sufficient to produce enough of the necessary chemicals to make a medicine. Or in some cases, a particular compound is in sufficient quantities, but has some toxic side effects. In this instance, drug development companies are using synthetic support to produce the chemicals they need from the plant. The natural product from the plant is used as a template and then modified to reduce toxicity and/or improve the potency of the compound. As a result of this process, new chemicals can be developed to use in the drug development process.
The process of getting a plant to the market as a safe and effective drug is long, tedious and costly.
@James
As we would only want the active ingredient, we wouldn’t have to. You wouldn’t want to either if you had some sense, for insisting on using only whole plants as they grow in nature would be utterly disastrous to the environment.
@ Lillian
If you open your mind too much your brain will fall out.
Perhaps it already has.
Perhaps.. Perhaps you’ll get chemothapy one day and your brain will fry too Beatle (you happen to look like one too)! Good luck in having a healthy life because if your fate is cancer, which can very likely be one day with todays statistics, than you’re very well doomed. I’m not going to spend anymore time discussing nonsense with you, it’s obvious that you are extremely ignorant.
@Lillian/Big Mouth
I’m a cancer patient and one of my treatments was chemotherapy. There’s nothing wrong with my brain.
@Lillian
It’s obvious that you are extremely horrible.
Beatis: “Plant extracts usually occur as a combination of various type of bioactive compounds or phytochemicals with different effects:
That is the one thing you actually got correct. One of the things you are still overlooking is that various compounds are often not only synergistic, but also balancing. This is one of the reasons isolated compounds tend to be LESS effective and have a higher potential for side effects. For example, alfalfa contains coumarins. If they isolate the coumarins from the vitamin K in the alfalfa then they now have a dangerous blood thinner that was not a problem with the whole plant.
As far as multiple active compounds again there is generally more than one active compound. Take for instance turmeric, which has been shown in numerous studies to have anticancer benefits. Turmeric does not contain one active anti-cancer compound, but rather multiple synergistic anti-cancer curcuminoids. Isolating only one of he active compounds therefore is completely ridiculous, yet this is the kind of thing the drug companies do all the time.
Beatis: “Therefore, extraction, separation, isolation and purification of bioactive ingredients from medicinal plants is important to be able to make effective medication, ”
Again, not even close to being true.
Beatis: “but the fact that a natural substance was isolated, extracted or purified doesn’t make it any less natural. ”
You really don’t understand how drugs are made do you. The compounds are not just isolated and purified. They are ALTERED chemically to make them a semi-synthetic so they can patent and control the drug. The reaction can be something as simple as reacting an alkaloid with hydrochloric acid to convert the alkaloid in to a salt. This is enough in the eyes of the law to consider the product a semi-synthetic and thus patentable. Just like how plastics can be made from natural petroleum, but this DOES NOT mean these plastics are natural.
Beatis: “That aside, I think the whole “natural” argument is ridiculous as well as moot. What we need is effective medication for cancer patients. This is impossible if we insist on only whole plants and unpatented natural remedies, because precise dosage is impossible, many plants contain additional ingredients that may seriously harm patients, and patients would often have to somehow manage to ingest huge quantities of completely undigestible compounds, such as the bark of the Yew tree.”
That may seriously harm patients? You mean like carcinogenic and otherwise damaging chemotherapy drugs and radiation therapy? Bot of which are very well known to have low success rates if you bother to read the medical journals.
We have had successful cancer therapies for a long time. They just are not allowed to protect the cancer industry. I know you don’t believe that, but then again from reading your responses it is clear that you have not done much research either. So you are assuming a lot, just like you assumed that pharmaceutical drugs from plants are natural. Or how you assumed that natural substances are patentable. Or how you assumed that chemotherapy has a higher success rate than it does in reality………..
A great example is the herbal extract podophyllumtoxin, which was reported in JAMA and JACS back in the 50s to be highly effective against 6 forms of cancer including breast cancer. But nothing was done with it for about 50 years since it was not a patentable substance. When a university lab finally SYNTHESIZED the compound they were able to finally patent it and the drug was sold to a California pharmaceutical company. That was the last I heard of anything being done with it.
In fact, I have been researching cancer for over 30 years and can name quite a few proven cancer cures that were never allowed on the market. Cancer is a major industry that is being protected. Again, stop assuming and do some real research and you will see what I am talking about.
Here is just a small sampler of the research available to people if they take their blinders off and actually do some real research:
Withaferin A-Induced Apoptosis in Human Breast Cancer Cells Is Mediated by Reactive O
PLoS One. 2011; 6(8): e23354.
Apigenin inhibits growth and induces G2/M arrest by modulating cyclin-CDK regulators and ERK MAP kinase activation in breast carcinoma cells.
Anticancer Res. 2001 Jan-Feb;21(1A):413-20.
Epigallocatechin-3-gallate delivers hydrogen peroxide to induce death of ovarian cancer cells and enhances their cisplatin susceptibility.
J Cell Physiol. 2006 May;207(2):389-96.
Withaferin A induces p53-dependent apoptosis by repression of HPV oncogenes and upregulation of tumor suppressor proteins in human cervical cancer cells
Carcinogenesis (2011) 32 (11): 1697-1705.
Withaferin A is a potent inhibitor of angiogenesis.
Angiogenesis. 2004;7(2):115-22.
Curcumin sensitizes non-small cell lung cancer cell anoikis through reactive oxygen species-mediated Bcl-2 downregulation. Apoptosis. 2010 May;15(5):574-85. doi: 10.1007/s10495-010-0461-4.
Inhibition of lung cancer cell growth by quercetin glucuronides via G2/M arrest and induction of apoptosis. DMD February 2006 vol. 34 no. 2 296-304
Bioactive compounds from Mexican lime induce apoptosis in human pancreatic cells.
J Agric Food Chem. 2009 Nov 25;57(22):10933-42.
Magnolol induces apoptosis via inhibiting the EGFR/PI3K/Akt signaling pathway in human prostate cancer cells. Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. 2009;106:1113-1122.
Effect of Picrorrhiza kurroa extract on transplanted tumours and chemical carcinogenesis in mice.
J Ethnopharmacol. 2000 Jul;71(1-2):261-6.
Effect of Ganoderma on drug-sensitive and multidrug-resistant small-cell lung carcinoma cells. Cancer Letters. 2009.
In vitro antitumor mechanisms of various Scutellaria extracts and constituent flavonoids. Planta Medica. 2009;75:41-48.
Pleurotus ostreatus inhibits proliferation of human breast and colon cancer cells through p53-dependent as well as p53-independent pathway. International Journal of Oncology. 2008;33:1307-1313.
Andrographolide, a potential cancer therapeutic agent isolated from Andrographis pani
J Exp Ther Oncol. 2003 May-Jun;3(3):147-58.
One of my favorites, betulinic acid from chaga mushrooms against cancer:
Betulinic acid is found in various herbs including birch and chagas. All of the herbs that I am aware of containing betulinic acid have been used historically for the treatment of cancers. Medical studies have confirmed the anti-cancer effects of betulinic acid:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
Selective cytotoxicity of betulinic acid on tumor cell lines, but not on normal cells.
“Betulinic acid is a triterpene with selective cytotoxicity against melanoma, neuroectodermal and malignant brain tumor cell lines. In this study the betulinic acid activity was evaluated, in comparison with doxorubicin, on different human neoplastic and non-neoplastic cell lines and on proliferating normal lymphocytes. Growth inhibition was evident in all the neoplastic cell lines independently on p53 status and histotype. Antiproliferative activity of betulinic acid was related to a cytotoxic effect on two p53 wild-type and on one p53 mutant cell lines and to a cytostatic effect on one p53 mutant melanoma clone. At the same concentrations, normal cells were unaffected indicating a selective effect of this agent. A cytotoxic activity of doxorubicin was evident on all the tested systems.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
“Conventional chemotherapeutic agents elicit mitochondrial permeabilization in an indirect fashion by induction of endogenous effectors that are involved in the physiologic control of apoptosis. However, an increasing number of experimental anticancer drugs, including lonidamine, arsenite, betulinic acid, CD437, and several amphipathic cationic alpha-helical peptides, act directly on mitochondrial membranes and/or on the PTPC. Such agents may induce apoptosis in circumstances in which conventional drugs fail to act because endogenous apoptosis induction pathways, such as those involving p53, death receptors, or apical caspase activation, are disrupted. ”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
“Betulinic acid is a naturally occurring pentacyclic triterpenoid. Betulinic acid has recently been selected by the National Cancer Institute for addition into the RAID (Rapid Access to Intervention in Development) programme. The agent exhibits potential anti-tumour activity and functions in this regard via apoptosis. ”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
“Recently, betulinic acid was identified as a highly selective inhibitor of human melanoma growth and was reported to induce apoptosis in these cells. We have investigated the growth-inhibitory properties of this compound alone and in combination with ionizing radiation in a panel of established human melanoma cell lines as well as in normal human melanocytes. Betulinic acid strongly and consistently suppressed the growth and colony-forming ability of all human melanoma cell lines investigated.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
“Neuroblastoma has long been recognized to show spontaneous regression during fetal development and in the majority of stage 4s infants < 1 year of age with disseminated disease. Stage 4s disease regresses with no chemotherapy in 50% of the patients. The mechanism by which this occurs is not understood but may be programmed cell death or apoptosis. Betulinic acid (BA) has been reported to induce apoptosis in human melanoma with in vitro and in vivo model systems. Melanoma, like neuroblastoma, is derived from the neural crest cell. We hypothesised that neuroblastoma cells have the machinery for programmed cell death and that apoptosis could be induced by betulinic acid. Nine human neuroblastoma cell lines were treated in vitro with BA at concentrations of 0-20 micrograms/ml for 0-6 days. Profound morphological changes were noted within 3 days. Cells withdrew their axonic-like extensions, became non-adherent and condensed into irregular dense spheroids typical of apoptotic cell death (ED50 = 14-17 micrograms/ml). DNA fragmentation analysis showed ladder formation in the 100-1200 bp region in 3/3 neuroblastoma cell lines treated with BA for 24-72 h. Thus, apparently BA does induce AP in neuroblastoma in vitro."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURE: We identified BetA as a new cytotoxic agent active against neuroectodermal tumor cells including neuroblastoma, medulloblastoma, glioblastoma and Ewing sarcoma cells, representing the most common solid tumors of childhood. RESULTS: BetA induced apoptosis by a direct effect on mitochondria independent of accumulation of wild-type p53 protein and independent of death-inducing ligand/receptor systems such as CD95. Mitochondrial perturbations on treatment with BetA resulted in the release of soluble apoptogenic factors such as cytochrome c or AIF from mitochondria into the cytosol, where they induced activation of caspases. Overexpression of the anti-apoptotic proteins Bcl-2 or Bcl-X(L) that blocked loss of the mitochondrial membrane potential and cytochrome c release from mitochondria also conferred resistance to BetA. Most importantly, BetA exhibited potent antitumor activity on neuroblastoma cells resistant to CD95- or doxorubicin-triggered apoptosis and on primary tumor cells from patients with neuroectodermal tumors. CONCLUSIONS: Thus, BetA may be a promising new agent in the treatment of neuroectodermal tumors including neuroblastoma in vivo. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"For this purpose we used betulinic acid, a cytotoxic agent selective for melanoma, straightly perturbing mitochondrial functions. In fact, betulinic acid induced mitochondrial cytochrome c release and DNA fragmentation in both CD95-resistant and CD95-sensitive melanoma cell populations, independent of the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Betulinic acid (BA) was identified by our group as a selective inhibitor of melanoma that functions by inducing apoptosis."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"The crude chloroform bark extract of Syncarpia glomulifera (Myrtaceae) shows antibacterial and cytotoxic activity. Bioactivity-directed separation led to the isolation of oleanolic acid-3-acetate, ursolic acid-3-acetate and betulinic acid. The relatively large abundance (10% of the crude extract) and high degree of activity of betulinic acid are responsible for the bioactivity of the crude bark extract."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"23-Hydroxybetulinic acid, a derivative of betulinic acid, was investigated for its apoptotic effect and the associated telomerase activity in human leukemia HL-60 cells. Apoptosis and bcl-2 were determined by flow cytometry analysis. A PCR-based telomeric repeat amplification protocol assay was used to detect telomerase activity. Results showed that 23-hydroxybetulinic acid induced growth arrest and apoptotic cell death in HL-60 cells. The apoptotic events were associated with concurrent down-regulation of bcl-2 and the telomerase activity. Our data suggest that 23-hydroxybetulinic acid may be a potential cytotoxic agent for treatment of cancer."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Three triterpenoids, betulinic acid, oleanolic acid, and ursolic acid, were isolated as their methyl esters (treatment with diazomethane) from diethyl ether extracts of almond hulls (Nonpareil variety) using flash chromatography and preparative high-performance liquid chromatography. The triterpenoids, which comprised approximately 1% of the hulls, were characterized using chromatographic and spectroscopic methods. These studies demonstrate that almond hulls are a rich source of these triterpenoids, which have reported anti-inflammatory, anti-HIV, and anti-cancer activities."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Betulinic acid (11), its methyl ester (12), lup-28-al-20(29)-ene-3beta-ol (9), and lup-28-al-20(29)-en-3-one (10) inhibited B16 2F2 cell proliferation by induction of apoptosis. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Malignant brain tumors are the most common solid tumors in children. The overall prognosis for this group of patients is still poor, emphasizing the importance of more effective therapies. Betulinic acid (Bet A) has been described as a novel cytotoxic compound active against melanoma and neuroblastoma cells."
"Since Bet A did not exhibit cytotoxicity against murine neuronal cells in vitro, these findings suggest that Bet A may be a promising new agent for the treatment of medulloblastoma and glioblastoma cells that clearly warrants further pre-clinical and clinical evaluation."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"The chloroform extract of Vauquelinia corymbosa Correa has shown activity against the P-388 lymphocytic leukemia test system. The constituents responsible for this activity were identified as uvaol, ursolic acid, and betulinic acid. Their identity was proven by melting point; mixed melting point; elemental analysis; IR, PMR, and mass spectra; and preparation of derivatives."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Microbial transformation studies of the antimelanoma agent betulinic acid (1) were conducted."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Microbial transformation of betulin (1), a lupane-type triterpene obtained from the bark extract of white birch (Betula platyphylla Sukatshev var. japonica), and its chemical oxidation product, betulonic acid (2), by the fungus Chaetomium longirostre yielded 4,28-dihydroxy-3,4-seco-lup-20(29)-en-3-oic acid (3) and 4-hydroxy-3,4-seco-lup-20(29)-ene-3,28-dioic acid (4) from 1, and 4,7beta,17-trihydroxy-3,4-seco-28-norlup-20(29)-en-3-oic acid (5) and 7 beta,15 alpha-dihydoxy-3-oxolup-20(29)-en-28-oic acid (6) from 2. The four metabolites, 3-6, along with 1 and 2, were evaluated for their inhibitory effects on Epstein-Barr virus early antigen (EBV-EA) activation induced by the tumor promoter 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) in Raji cells as a primary screening test for inhibitors of tumor promotion. All of the triterpenes tested showed potent inhibitory effects, with the four metabolites 3-6 exhibiting the more potent effects."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"BACKGROUND: Betulinic acid, a naturally abundant, plant derived, pentacyclic triterpenoid possesses anti-HIV, anti-malarial and anti-inflammatory properties and has recently emerged as a potent anti-tumor compound."
"Dihydro betulinic acid is the most potent (IC50=0.5 mM) pentacyclic triterpenoid to inhibit eukaryotic topoisomerase I till date and can be exploited as a strong candidate for anti-tumor drug designing."
(Notice how the drug companies are planning on stealing another idea that herbalists have known and have been using for a long time?)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Six ceanothane and 1-norceanothane derivatives (1, 2, 8-11) were prepared from ceanothic acid dibenzyl ester. These ring-A homologues of betulinic acid exhibited cytotoxic effects. Among these, 1-decarboxy-3-oxo-ceanothic acid (2) was found to be the most cytotoxic against OVCAR-3 and HeLa cancer cell lines, with an IC50 of 2.8 and 6.6 microg/mL, respectively, and an IC50 of 11.3 microg/mL against normal cell line FS-5."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"The finding supports the idea that betulinic acid acts as anti-melanoma agent via inhibition of aminopeptidase N activity."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"We investigated the sequence of these events in SHEP neuroblastoma cells transfected with Bcl-2 or Bcl-X(L) using two different drugs, namely, doxorubicin (Doxo), which activates the CD95/CD95 ligand (CD95-L) system, and betulinic acid (Bet A), which does not enhance the expression of CD95 or CD95-L and which, as shown here, directly targets mitochondria. Apoptosis induced by both drugs was inhibited by Bcl-2 or Bcl-X(L) overexpression or by bongkrekic acid, an agent that stabilizes mitochondrial membrane barrier function, suggesting a critical role for mitochondria. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Betulinic acid has been modified at C-3, C-20, and C-28 positions and the toxicity of the derivatives has been evaluated against cultured human melanoma (MEL-2) and human epidermoid carcinoma of the mouth (KB) cell lines. This preliminary investigation demonstrates that simple modifications of the parent structure of betulinic acid can produce potentially important derivatives, which may be developed as antitumor drugs."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"This investigation demonstrates that amino acid conjugates of betulinic acid can produce potentially important derivatives, which may be developed as antitumor agents."
( Why does betulinic acid have to be developed in to an antitumor agent since it is already an antitumor agent?)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Betulinic acid (BetA), a pentacyclic triterpene, is a selective apoptosis-inducing agent that works directly in mitochondria."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Betulinic acid is a known inducer of apoptosis in human melanoma that is most effective under conditions of low pH."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Indeed, unlike conventional anti tumour drugs which trigger pro-apoptotic signal transduction pathways upstream mitochondria, several compounds were shown to act directly on mitochondria to induce apoptosis. These drugs include betulinic acid, lonidamine, arsenic trioxide and two retinoids like CD437/AHPN and fenretinide/4-HPR. This review summarizes new data concerning these drugs targetted to mitochondria and highlights the new perspective they may offer in cancer therapy."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"CONCLUSIONS: Lupeol and betulin suppress superoxide generation by preventing tyrosyl phosphorylation of a 45.0-kDa protein in human neutrophils, and may have pharmaceutical applications."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Three triterpenes were isolated from Diospyros leucomelas and identified as betulin, betulinic acid, and ursolic acid. They showed anti-inflammatory activity in the carrageenan and serotonin paw edema tests and TPA and EPP ear edema tests. "
(Remember that inflammation has been shown to play a role in cancer formation.)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"A new pentacyclic lupane-type triterpene derivative, 3-O-[9(Z)-octadecenoyl]betulinic acid (1), and betulinic acid (2) were also isolated and identified. All isolates as well as pure linoleic, oleic and stearic acids were evaluated for their inhibitory effects against both cyclooxygenases-1 (COX-1) and -2 (COX-2)."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Cold-pressed, non-raffinated evening primrose oil was found to contain lipophilic radical scavengers. A highly enriched fraction of these compounds could be obtained from the oil by extraction with aqueous ethanol and subsequent liquid-liquid partitioning with petroleum. LC-DAD-MS analysis revealed that the fraction contained three aromatic compounds with identical UV and ESI-MS spectra. The compounds were isolated by RP-HPLC and their structures established by chemical and spectroscopic means as 3-O-trans-caffeoyl derivatives of betulinic, morolic, and oleanolic acid. The morolic acid derivative was a new compound. The three esters exhibited pronounced radical scavenging activity against the stable 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical and were potent inhibitors of neutrophil elastase and cyclooxygenase-1 and -2 in vitro. "
(Cold pressed evening primrose oil is readily available in health food stores. Make sure it is cold pressed and not hexane extracted.)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Conclusions: These results suggest that in human melanoma cells Mcl-1 is (i) of functional relevance for survival and (ii) subject to dual regulation by the MAP- kinase pathway and a pathway involving protein kinase B/Akt, the latter of which is modulated in response to betulinic acid."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"DNA topoisomerases (Topos) are enzymes that play a crucial role in DNA metabolism events such as replication, transcription, recombination, and chromosome segregation at mitosis. Thus, Topo inhibitors could be expected to have antitumor effects. Naturally occurring lupane- and oleanane-type triterpenoids isolated from the bark of Phyllanthus flexuosus were screened for human Topos I and II inhibitory activities. Olean-12-en-3 beta,15 alpha-diol (1), olean-12-en-3 beta,15 alpha,24-triol (3), lupeol (4), and betulin (6) were found to be selective catalytic inhibitors of human Topo II activity with IC(50) values in the range of 10-39 microM."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"The new phenolic compound, 3,5-dihydroxy-4-methoxy phenethyl alcohol, named alphitol, and betulinic acid were from the bark of Alphitonia zizyphoides. The chemical structure of alphitol was determined by mass spectrometry in combination with one and two dimensional NMR, including HMBC. Both compounds inhibited prostaglandin biosynthesis in vitro, alphitol with an IC50 value of 0.66mM, which is of the same magnitude as acetyl salicylic acid."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Our data suggest that betulinic acid exerts its inhibitory effect partly by increasing p53 without a comparable effect on p21WAF1."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Betulinic acid might be promising as an antitumor agent toward solid tumors because the interior pH of tumor tissues is generally lower than in normal tissues."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
Sterol and triterpene derivatives from plants inhibit the effects of a tumor promoter, and sitosterol and betulinic acid inhibit tumor formation in mouse skin two-stage carcinogenesis.
"A single topical application of 1 microgram of 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol- 13-acetate (TPA) to the ears of mice was shown to induce edema, and this TPA-induced inflammation was inhibited by 4-methylsterol and triterpene derivatives. The ED50 of these compounds against TPA-induced inflammation was 0.1-3 mumol. Phytosterols had only slight inhibitory effects. Furthermore, application of 5 micrograms TPA to mouse skin rapidly caused accumulation of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC). Similarly, sitosterol and lupane-type triterpene derivatives markedly inhibited this TPA-induced ODC accumulation. In addition, 5 mumol betulinic acid markedly inhibited the promoting effect of 2.5 micrograms TPA applied twice weekly on skin tumor formation in mice initiated with 50 micrograms of 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene, and 5 mumol of sitosterol caused slight suppression. Thus, the inhibitory effects of sterol and triterpene derivatives on TPA-induced inflammation roughly parallelled their inhibitory activities against tumor promotion."
Milk thistle for cancer:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"Consistent with its effect on G1 cell cycle regulators, silibinin treated cells exhibited a strong G1 arrest, almost complete growth inhibition, and morphological changes suggestive of differentiation. Together, these results suggest that silibinin caused hypophosphorylation of Rb-related proteins may in part be responsible for its cancer preventive and anti-carcinogenic efficacy in different cancer models including PCA."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"RESULTS: Silibinin strongly synergized the growth-inhibitory effect of doxorubicin in prostate carcinoma DU145 cells (combination index, 0.235-0.587), which was associated with a strong G(2)-M arrest in cell cycle progression, showing 88% cells in G2-M phase by this combination compared with 19 and 41% of cells in silibinin and doxorubicin treatment alone, respectively. The underlying mechanism of G2-M arrest showed a strong inhibitory effect of combination on cdc25C, cdc2/p34, and cyclin B1 protein expression and cdc2/p34 kinase activity. More importantly, this combination caused 41% apoptotic cell death compared with 15% by either agent alone. Silibinin and doxorubicin alone as well as in combination were also effective in inhibiting the growth of androgen-dependent prostate carcinoma LNCaP cells. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest a need for in vivo studies with this combination in preclinical prostate cancer models. Positive outcomes might be relevant for a clinical application in prostate cancer patients."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that silibinin as well as silymarin induce growth inhibition and apoptosis in rat PCA cells. These results form a strong rationale for PCA prevention and therapeutic intervention studies with silibinin and silymarin in animal models, such as the MNU-testosterone rat PCA model, to establish their efficacy and to further define their mechanisms of action under in vivo conditions."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
" In both animal and cell culture studies, we have shown that silymarin, a naturally occurring polyphenolic flavonoid antioxidant, exhibits preventive and anticancer effects against skin cancer. For example, silymarin strongly prevents both photocarcinogenesis and skin tumor promotion in mice, in part, by scavenging free radicals and reactive oxygen species and strengthening the antioxidant system. We also found that this effect of silymarin is by inhibiting endogenous tumor promoter tumor necrosis factor alpha in mouse skin, a central mediator in skin tumor promotion. In mechanistic studies, silymarin inhibits mitogenic and cell survival signaling and induces apoptosis. Furthermore, silymarin effectively modulates cell-cycle regulators and check points toward inhibition of proliferation, and growth arrest in G0-G1 and G2-M phases of the cell cycle. Thus, due to its mechanism-based chemopreventive and anticancer effects in experimental models, silymarin is an important candidate for the prevention and/or therapy of skin cancer, as well as other cancers of epithelial origin in humans."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"These results clearly indicate a chemopreventive ability of dietary silymarin against chemically induced colon tumorigenesis and will provide a scientific basis for progression to clinical trials of the chemoprevention of human colon cancer. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
"At these biologically achievable silibinin concentrations, increased IGFBP-3 level in DU145 cell culture medium and a strong DU145 cell growth inhibition were observed that were irreversible in the absence of silibinin in culture medium. These findings extend and translate our observations on in vitro anticancer effect of silibinin/silymarin to an in vivo preclinical PCA model, which may form the basis for a Phase I clinical trial in PCA patients."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
Silibinin inhibits constitutive and TNFalpha-induced activation of NF-kappaB and sensitizes human prostate carcinoma DU145 cells to TNFalpha-induced apoptosis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
Differential responses of skin cancer-chemopreventive agents silibinin, quercetin, and epigallocatechin 3-gallate on mitogenic signaling and cell cycle regulators in human epidermoid carcinoma A431 cells.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query…t=Abstract
Silymarin inhibits function of the androgen receptor by reducing nuclear localization of the receptor in the human prostate cancer cell line LNCaP.
Again, this is just a tiny portion of the thousands of abstracts proving the efficacy of herbs for cancer. People need to stop assuming that just because they are too damn lazy to do any real research that the research must not exist. I am sure Beatis has never seen the asteroid Vesta in person, but this does not mean it does not exist. The research on the proven effects of herbal compounds is readily available in the medical journals for anyone wanting to know the facts rather than relying on assumptions.
So with all the studies on the effectiveness of these herbal compounds, most of which are quite plentiful and proven safe, why are they not being used as standard treatments? Again, the cancer industry is big, powerful and protected.
James: “You cannot patent let’s say a mint, ginger, burdock, or nettle or any other plant”.
Beatis: “As we would only want the active ingredient, we wouldn’t have to. You wouldn’t want to either if you had some sense, for insisting on using only whole plants as they grow in nature would be utterly disastrous to the environment.”
First of all as I pointed out in my last post most plants have active compounds. Note plural, not singular.
And most of the plants effective against cancers can be cultivated. So using that principle to your bogus argument is like saying eating cultivated plants like cabbage or peppers would be utterly disastrous to the environment.
In addition, herbs are not the only proven anti-cancer holistic therapies out there. They are simply one example of proven cancer cures not allowed to be used since they are in conflict with the powerful cancer industry.
Beatis (in response to Lillian): “It’s obvious that you are extremely horrible.”
What is horrible are the people who refuse to do the research to find out all the cancer cures that exist and are being suppressed. Instead, they would rather see people die from their cancer, even if they are considered terminal by their doctors, by trying to steer people away from proven cancer cures in lieu of low effectiveness therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Now that really takes a sick person!!!
I’m curious Beatis, do you even know why most chemotherapy drugs and radiation therapy have been reported to have such low success rates in the medical journals? Let’s see if you can answer this without having to go look it up since if you ever really researched the subject then you should already know.
@James
Sometimes they will be altered, sometimes they won’t.
The claim was made that plants can’t be patented. This is not true: it is possible to obtain patents on plants as far as their medical use is concerned. These patent rights cover the chemical compound/compounds with the medical properties in the plant. And contrary to what is often claimed by many altmed proponents, this does not mean that people are no longer allowed to grow vincristine in their garden or that they would have to destroy their yew tree.
@James
There is nothing being suppressed.
http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/about-herbs-botanicals-other-products
Cabbage grows a lot faster than a yew tree or a happy tree and cancer patients generally don’t have that much time. Besides, as I said before, dosage has to be exactly right, therefore very precise. This is a problem when one has to eat tree bark, which is what Lillian would want us to do. Lots of yew trees are needed to make an effective dose of paclitaxel. Insisting on using the whole plant would mean that cancer patients would not be getting any effective medication, because tree bark is 1) undigestible for humans and 2) even if it were digestible, they would have to manage to eat impossibly huge amounts of it. End of therapy, end of patients. But hey, at least it was all totally “natural” and that’s the only thing that matters, isn’t it?
@James
I’m so sorry, but your big-headedness tickles my funnybone. 🙂
My poor funnybone! I discovered the cabbagehead/the possible meaning of this word. Again I burst into a roar of laughter. Big-headedness most of all near to the cabbagehead. Rotfl. !!!
Not a single proof of efficacy of herbs against cancer. You can’t conclude directly from experiments with cancer cell lines cultured in a dish or implanted into a genetically modified mouse.
Such studies are useful in selecting substances, but they do not prove that it will work in patients. This very important point is explained in further details here.
To know if it works in humans, you need to do controlled clinical studies. There simply is no way around it.
What these thousands of abstracts prove is, that scientists aren’t against looking into useful substances in plants – Just as beatis explained.
James:
Not only is James lying through his teeth, indeed not a single proof of efficacy of herbs against cancer, it’s also a specious argument. Even if there were millions of abstracts about in vitro and/or in vivo experiments, they don’t prove that it will work in patients. JLI is right:
Way up the top there, from back in 2010, are a couple of posts from Carla Muth, a dedicated AltMed practitioner (crank / quack / charlatan – take your pick) who decided to practice what she preached and shunned conventional treatment when diagnosed with breast cancer.
She died in September 2013. http://www.ehealing.us/about_carla.html
In all probability she really believed in Hamer’s nonsense. It is saddening, that it is so difficult to explain to people that GNM is bogus.
A word from the “Ground floor” of cancer.
I have had two sorts of cancer. There was no chemo for the first, aggressive cancer at the time; there is now. I had strong radiation. I intend to use that chemo if my cancer returns but after 12 years I may well be safe.
The other cancer was different but equally aggressive. I had chemo and radiation. I was warned about the possible effects of the chemo, and the oncologist apologised in advance. The chemo was administered by a nurse in a hazmat suit. I got a little tire, possible due to 90 mins train and subway travel each way, but I would do the chemo again in a heartbeat.
Remember the joke about the guy who believed his faith would save him from cancer? At the Gates of Heaven, he wondered aloud why he had not been saved. The saint pulled up his file and said: “Well, according to this, we sent a surgeon, an oncologist , a radiologist and even a social worker….”
🙂
i believe the prime cause of cancer is the eating of meat and animal products
It is a bit more complicated than that. Researchers have looked into dietary and other lifestyle factors that may affect the risk of developing cancer (and they are still looking into it).
Research tells us, that only about 40% of cancers are attributable to lifestyle or environmental factors. Here is some information in easily understandable terms on what we know about diet and cancer: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/diet-and-cancer/diet-facts-and-evidence#diet_facts6
The study our of Australia you’re debunking was done by Radiology Oncologists who believe it is possible that Chemo therapy is not working as well as doctors had hoped.
But here is what we really know about cancer. No one, not even an oncologist can tell you for sure whether chemo will work or not, whether an individual patient will respond positively or not. No doctor can guarantee if you have chemo you’ll be alive in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years. They also cannot tell you that if you have absolutely no adjuvent therapy you will not live 5, 10, or 20 years. I’ve seen survivors from both camps 8 or 10 years later and also those who did nothing including surgery saying they survived just as long. But what I’ve seen more often is people who did chemo saying they had cancer again. So we know for sure it does not guarantee you will not get cancer again. Nothing can.
I sat in my oncologist’s office as she was telling me if I responded to her chemo plan for me she could lower my chances of recurrence by 15 to 30%. When I asked her how likely it was I would respond, she said she did not know. When I asked her if it was possible the chemo could make my cancer worse, cause it to spread, or cause a new cancer, or worse, kill me before the cancer normally would without the chemo, she did not have any answer to those questions but said that 18 out of 48 of her patients have died and she had no guarantees for any of her patients. So there you have it. It is a toss of the coin either way. Choose your gambling casino.
I place my trust in God and let Him decide how long I will live because I know He is the one to ultimately decide. But I did my due diligence and found out everything the oncologist wanted to do to me. She gave me the names of everything she would have used. It turned out that every chemical she wanted to use would make the chronic illness I have suffered from for 20 years (that lowers my immunity) worse.
I would not tell someone else what they should do regarding chemo. But I do think it ought to be up to the individual patient because they know whether they could live with the fallout of their decision either way. I also think laying guilt on someone for not doing it, or trying to talk them into it when they do not want it is the wrong thing to do because they have probably already thought about the risks either way. For me, being 53, having already raised my children, lived all my dreams, etc, I did not feel the need to do the chemo. Perhaps if I were younger, had little children to raise, or did not have the chronic illness I had which may have led to the cancer to begin with, then maybe I would have done the chemo.
Like I said, we all have to choose our own casino because either way it is a gamble. I’m choosing surgery, and most likely radiation. But I won’t be doing the chemo. And by the way, I know an older man who had surgery, no chemo or radiation and 13 years later no recurrence. He made the decision he thought was best for him and trusted God with the rest.
I also forgot to mention my own mother had chemo therapy and radiation after her mastectomy and she still got cancer in her other breast and pancreas and liver within a matter of a few years.
What we debunked was the claim made by a number of cancer quacks that only about 2% of cancer patients survive chemotherapy.
The study well explained for everyone to understand! Good job!
I find this article misleading, I half suspect it’s on purpose too.
The claim isn’t that only 2-3% survive chemo, the claim is that chemo only adds 2-3% to the untreated survival rate.
Please get your strawman an off our lawn.
The claim that only 2-3% survive chemo is widespread on websites promoting cancer quackery.
The claim that chemo only adds 2-3% to survival is also misleading. This is because chemotherapy isn’t always used. And not always with the purpose of long term survival. Furthermore the article that the quacks base their claim on only looked into 22 of approximately 200 different types of cancer.
To make it impossible to not understand what the 2-3% addition to survival rates is about:
Cancers treated with chemotherapy only: Chemo contributes 100% to long term survival
Cancers not treated with chemotherapy: Chemo contributes 0& to long term survival
Cancers treated with chemo as an adjuvant: Chemo contributes variably to long term survival
Cancers treated with chemo for palliation: Chemo contributes 0% to long term survival, but is still helpful to patients.