Cancer: Radiation Therapy ?
What doctors say about it ?
What statistics say ?
All authorities agree that radiation therapy does not improve the survival of patients with breast cancer.
Radiation treatment for breast cancer raises slightly a woman's long-term risk for esophageal cancer, according to a study by epidemiologists at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
World Without Cancer
by Edward G. Griffin
Excerpts
Let us take a look at the results and benefits of the so-called cures obtained through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.
The rationale behind X-ray therapy is the same as with surgery. The objective is to remove the tumor, but to do so by burning it away rather than cutting it out. Here, also, it is primarily the non-cancer cell that is destroyed. The more malignant the tumor, the more resistant it is to radio therapy. If this were not so, then X-ray therapy would have a high degree of success—which, of course, it does not.
If the average tumor is composed of both cancer and non-cancer cells, and if radiation is more destructive to non-cancer cells than to cancer cells, then it would be logical to expect the results to be a reduction of tumor size, but also an increase in the percentage of malignancy. This is, in fact, exactly what happens.
Commenting on this mechanism, Dr. John Richardson explained it this way:
Radiation and/or radiomimetic poisons will reduce palpable, gross or measurable tumefaction. Often this reduction may amount to seventy-five percent or more of the mass of the growth. These agents have a selective effect—radiation and poisons. They selectively kill everything except the definitively neoplastic [cancer] cells.
For example, a benign uterine myoma will usually melt away under radiation like snow in the sun. If there be neoplastic cells in such tumor, these will remain. The size of the tumor may thus be decreased by ninety percent while the relative concentration of definitively neoplastic cells is thereby increased by ninety percent.
As all experienced clinicians know—or at least should know— after radiation or poisons have reduced the gross tumefaction of the lesion the patient’s general well-being does not substantially improve. To the contrary, there is often an explosive or fulminating increase in the biological malignancy of his lesion. This is marked by the appearance of diffuse metastasis and a rapid deterioration in general vitality followed shortly by death. Open letter to interested doctors, Noc 1972; Griffin, Private papers, op. cit.
And so we see that X-ray therapy is cursed with the same drawbacks of surgery. But it has one more: It actually increases the likelihood that cancer will develop in other parts of the body!
Radiation Increases Chances of Spreading Cancer
Excessive exposure to radioactivity is an effective way to induce cancer. This was first demonstrated by observing the increased cancer incidence among the survivors of Hiroshima, but it has been corroborated by many independent studies since then. For example, a recent headline in a national-circulation newspaper tells us: FIND ‘ALARMING’ NUMBER OF CANCER CASES IN PEOPLE WHO HAD X-RAY THERAPY 20 YEARS AGO.
The Textbook of Medical Surgical Nursing, a standard reference for Registered Nurses, is most emphatic on this point. It says:
This is an area of public health concern because it may involve large numbers of people who may be exposed to low levels of radiation over a long period of time. The classic example is of the women employed in the early 1920’s to paint watch and clock dials with luminizing (radium containing) paints. Years later, bone sarcomas resulted from the carcinogenic effect of the radium. Similarly, leukemia occurs more frequently in radiologists than other physicians. Another example is the Hiroshima survivors who have shown the effects of low levels of radiation....
Among the most serious of the late consequences of irradiation damage is the increased susceptibility to malignant metaplasia and the development of cancer at sites of earlier irradiation. Evidence cited in support of this relationship refers to the increased incidence of carcinoma of skin, bone, and lung after latent periods of 20 years and longer following irradiation of those sites. Further support has been adduced from the relatively high incidence of carcinoma of the thyroid 7 years and longer following low-dosage irradiation of the thymus in childhood, and from the increased incidence of leukemia following total body irradiation at any age. (Brunner, Emerson, Ferguson, and Doris Suddarth, Textbook of Medical-Surgical Nursing, (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1970) 2nd Edition, p. 198.)
In 1971, a research team at the University of Buffalo, under the direction of Dr. Robert W. Gibson, reported that less than a dozen routine medical X-rays to the same part of the body increases the risk of leukemia in males by at least sixty percent. Other scientists have become increasingly concerned about the growing American infatuation with X-rays and have urged a stop to the madness, even calling for an end to the mobile chest X-ray units for the detection of TB. And these "routine" X-rays are harmlessly mild compared to the intense radiation beamed into the bodies of cancer patients today.
X-rays induce cancer because of at least two factors. First, they do physical damage to the body which triggers the production of trophoblast cells as part of the healing process. Second, they weaken or destroy the production if white blood cells which, as we have seen, constitute the immunological defense mechanism, the body's front-line defense against cancer.
Now to the question of statistics. Again we find that, on the average, there is little or no solid evidence that radiation actually improves the patient’s chances for survival. The National Surgical Adjuvant Breast Project, previously mentioned in connection with surgery, also conducted studies on the effect of irradiation, and here is a summary of their findings:
From the data available it would seem that the use of post-operative irradiation has provided no discernible advantage to patients so treated in tenns of increasing the proportion who were free of disease for as long as five years. (Fisher, B., et. al., "Postoperative Radiotherapy in the Treatment of Breast Cancer; Results of the NSAPP Clinical Trial," Annals of Surgery, 172, No.4, Od. 1970.)
This is an embarrassingly difficult fact for a radiologist to face, for it means, quite literally, that there is little justification for his existence in the medical fraternity. If he were to admit publicly what he knows privately, a guy could talk himself right out of a job! Consequently, one does not expect to hear these facts being discussed by radiologists or those whose livelihood depends on the construction, sale, installation, use, or maintenance of the multi-million-dollar linear accelerators. It comes as a pleasant surprise, therefore, to hear these truths spoken frankly and openly by three well known radiologists sharing the same platform at the same medical convention. They were William Powers, M.D., Director of the Division of Radiation Therapy at the Washington University School of Medicine, Phillip Rubin, M.D., Chief of the Division of Radiotherapy at the University of Rochester Medical School, and Vera Peters, M.D., of the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Powers stated:
Although preoperative and postoperative radiation therapy have been used extensively and for decades, it is still not possible to prove unequivocal clinical benefit from this combined treatment.... Even if the rate of cure does improve with a combination of radiation and therapy, it is necessary to establish the cost in increased morbidity which may occur in patients without favorable response to the additional therapy. ("Preoperative and Postoperative Radiation Therapy for Cancer," speech delivered to the Sixth National Cancer Conference, sponsored by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, Denver, Colorado, Sept. 18—20, 1968.)
Radiation and Heart Attacks
What Dr. Powers means when he speaks of "increased morbidity" is that radiation treatments make people ill. In a study at Oxford University dealing with breast cancer, it was found that many women who received radiation died of heart attacks because their hearts had been weakened by the treatment. (Breast Cancer Update/Q & A, by Ridgely Ochs, Newsday, December 19, 1995, p. B23.) Radiation also weakens the immune system which can lead to death from secondary causes such as pneumonia or other internal infections. Many patients whose death certificates state heart failure or pulmonary pneumonia or respiratory failure really die from cancer—or, to be more exact—from their cancer treatment. This is another reason that cancer statistics—based as they are on data from death certificates—conceal the truth about the failure of orthodox cancer therapy.
Effect of Radiation On Survival
At the medical convention of radiologists previously mentioned, Dr. Phillip Rubin reviewed the cancer-survival statistics published in the Journal of the’ American Medical Association. Then he concluded:
The clinical evidence and statistical data in numerous reviews are cited to illustrate that no increase in survival has been achieved by the addition of irradiation.
To which Dr. Peters added:
In carcinoma of the breast, the mortality rate still parallels the incidence rate, thus proving that there has been no true improvement in the successful treatment of the disease over the past thirty years, even though there has been technical improvement in both surgery and radiotherapy during that time.
ACS Statistics
In spite of the almost universal experience of physicians to the contrary, the American Cancer Society still prattles to the public that their statistics show a higher recovery rate for treated patients as compared to untreated patients. After all, if this were not the case, why on earth would anyone spend the money or undergo the pain and disfigurement associated with these orthodox treatments? But how can they get away with such outright lies?
The answer is that they are not really lying—just bending the truth a little. In other words, they merely adjust the method of gathering and evaluating statistics so as to guarantee the desired results. In the words of Dr. Hardin Jones:
Evaluation of the clinical response of cancer to treatment by surgery and radiation, separately or in combination, leads to the following findings:
The evidence for greater survival of treated groups in comparison with untreated is biased by the method of defining the groups. All reported studies pick up cases at the time of origin of the disease and follow them to death or end of the study interval. If persons in the untreated or central group die at any time in the study interval, they are reported as deaths in the control group. In the treated group, however, deaths which occur before completion of the treatment are rejected from the data, since these patients do not then meet the criteria established by definition of the term "treated." The longer it takes for completion of the treatment, as in multiple step therapy, for example, the worse the error....
With this effect stripped out, the common malignancies show a remarkably similar rate of demise, whether treated or untreated. (Jones, "A Report on Cancer," op. cit.)
But there is far more to it than that. Such statistical error is significant, but it is doubtful if it could account for the American Cancer Society’s favorite claim that "there are on record a million and a half people cured of cancer through the efforts of the medical profession and the American Cancer Society with the help of the FDA." (Letter from Mrs. Glenn E. Baker, Executive Director, Southern District, ACS, addressed to Mr. T.G. Kent, reprinted in Cancer News Journal, Jan./Feb., 1972, p.22.)
The answer lies in the fact that there are some forms of cancer, such as skin cancer, that respond very well to treatment. In fact, often they are arrested or disappear even without treatment. Seldom are they fatal. But they affect large numbers of people— enough to change the statistical tabulations drastically. In the beginning, skin cancers were not included in the national tabulations. Also, in those days, very few people sought medical treatment for their skin disorders, preferring to treat them with home remedies, many of which, incidentally seem to have worked just as well as some of the more scientifically acceptable techniques today.
At any rate, as doctors became more plentiful, as people became more affluent and able to seek out professional medical help, and as the old-time remedies increasingly fell into disrepute, the number of reported skin cancers gradually increased until it is now listed by the ACS as a "major site." So, all they had to do to produce most of those million-and-a-half "cures," was to change their statistics to include skin cancers—presto-chan go!
As Dr. Hardin Jones revealed:
Beginning in 1940, through redefinition of terms, various questionable grades of malignancy were classed as cancer. After that date, the proportion of "cancer" cures having "normal" life expectancy increased rapidly, corresponding to the fraction of questionable diagnoses included. (Jones, "A Report on Cancer," op.cit.)
The American Cancer Society claims that cancer patients are now surviving longer, thanks to orthodox therapy. In truth, however, people are not living longer after they get cancer; they are living longer after they are diagnosed with cancer. The trick is that, with modern diagnostic techniques, it is possible to identify cancer at an earlier stage than before. So the time between diagnosis and death is longer, but the length of life itself has not been increased at all. (Robert N. Proctor, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know About Cancer (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 4.) This is merely another statistical deception.
When X-ray therapy is used, the body’s white blood cell count is reduced which leaves the patient susceptible to infections and other diseases as well. It is common for such patients to succumb to pneumonia, for instance, rather than cancer. And, as stated previously, that is what appears on the death certificate—as well as in the statistics. As Dr. Richardson has observed:
I have seen patients who have been paralyzed by cobalt spine radiation, and after vitamin treatment their HCG test is faintly positive. We got their cancer, but the radiogenic manipulation is such that they can’t walk.... It’s the cobalt that will kill, not the cancer. (Letter from John Richardson, M.D., to G. Edward Griffin, dated Dec. 2, 1972; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.)
If the patient is strong enough or lucky enough to survive the radiation, then he still faces a closed door. As with all forms of currently popular treatments, once the cancer has metastasized to a second location, there is practically no chance that the patient will live. So, in addition to an almost zero survival value, radio therapy has the extra distinction of also spreading the very cancer it is supposed to combat.
One of the most publicized claims by The American Cancer Society is that early diagnosis and treatment increases the chance of survival. This is one of those slogans that drives millions of people into their doctors’ offices for that mystical experience called the annual checkup. "A check and a checkup" may be an effective stimulus for revenue to the cancer industry but its medical value is not as proven as the hype would suggest. As Dr. Hardin Jones stated emphatically:
In the matter of duration of malignant tumors before treatment, no studies have established the much talked about relationship between early detection and favorable survival after treatment.... Serious attempts to relate prompt treatment with chance of cure have been unsuccessful. In some types of cancer, the opposite of the expect~d association of short duration of symptoms with a high chance of being "cured" has been observed. A long duration of symptoms before treatment in a few cancers of the breast and cervix is associated with longer than usual survival.... Neither the timing nor the extent of treatment of the true malignancies has appreciably altered the average course of the disease. The possibility exists that treatment makes the average situation worse. (Jones. "A Report on Cancer." op.cit)
In view of all this, it is exasperating to find spokesmen for orthodox medicine continually warning the public against using Laetrile on the grounds that it will prevent cancer patients from benefiting from "proven" cures. The pronouncement by Dr. Ralph Weilerstein of the California Department of Public Health cited at the opening of this chapter is typical. But Dr. Weilerstein is vulnerable on two points. First, it is very rare to find any patient seeking Laetrile therapy who hasn’t already been subjected to the so-called "modern curative methods" of surgery and radiation. In fact, most of them have been pronounced hopeless after these methods have failed, and it is only then that these people turn to vitamin therapy as a last resort. So Dr. Weilerstein has set up a straw-man objection on that score. But, more important than that is the fact that the Weilersteinian treatments simply do not work.
Battling as a lone warrior within the enemy stronghold, Dr. Dean Burk of the National Cancer Institute repeatedly has laid it on the line. In a letter to his boss, Dr. Frank Rauscher, he said:
In spite of the foregoing evidence,.., officials of the American Cancer Society and even of the National Cancer Institute, have continued to set forth to the public that alzoct one in every four cancer cases is now "cured" or "controlled," but seldom if ever backed up with the requisite statistical or epidemiological support for such a statement to be scientifically meaningful, however effective for fund gathering. Such a statement is highly misleading, since it hides the fact that, with systemic or metastatic cancers, the actual rate of control in terms of the conventional five-year survival is scarcely more than one in twenty….(Letter from Dean Burk to Frank Rauscher, Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit., p3.)
One may well ask Dr. Weilerstein where are all the modem curative methods to which he, the California Cancer Advisory Council, and indeed so many administrators so glibly refer?... No, disseminated cancer, in its various forms and kinds remains, by and large, as "incurable" as at the time of the Kefauver Amendment ten years ago—Dr. Weilerstein or no Dr. Weilerstein, FDA or no FDA, ACS or no ACS, AMA or no AMA, NCI or no NCI. (Letter from Dean Burk to Congressman Frey; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit., p5.)
The statistics of the ACS are fascinating to study. They constitute page after page of detailed tables and complex charts telling about percentages of cancer by location, sex, age, and geography But when it comes to hard numbers about their so-called "proven cures," there is nothing. The only "statistic" one can get is their unsupported statement: "One out of three patients is being saved today as against one out of five a generation ago." This may or may not be true, depending on one’s definition of the word saved. But even if we do not challenge it, we must keep in mind that there also is a correspondingly larger gain in the number of those who are getting cancer. Why is that?
Here is the official explanation:
Major factors are the increasing age and size of the population. Science has conquered many diseases, and the average life span of Americans has been extended. Longer life brings man to the age in which cancer most often strikes—from the fifth decade on.
All of which sounds plausible—until one examines the facts:
First, the increasing size of the population has nothing to do with it. The statistics of "one out of three" and "one out of five" are proportional rather than numerical. They represent ratios that apply regardless of the population size. They cannot explain the increasing cancer rate.
Second, the average life expectancy of the population has been extended less than three years between 1980 to 1996. That could not possibly account for the drastic increase of the cancer death rate within that time.
And third, increasing age need not be a factor, anyway — as the cancer-free Hunzakuts and Abkhazians prove quite conclusively.
For a brief moment in 1986, the clouds of propaganda parted and a sun-ray of truth broke through into the medical media. The New England Journal of Medicine published a report by John C. Bailar III and Elaine M. Smith. Dr. Bailar was with the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health; Dr. Smith was with the University of Iowa Medical Center. Their report was brutal in its honesty:
Some measures of efforts to control cancer appear to show substantial progress, some show substantial losses, and some show little change. By making deliberate choices among these measures, one can convey any impression from overwhelming success against cancer to disaster.
Our choice for the single best measure of progress against cancer is the mortality rate for all forms of cancer combined, age adjusted to the U.S. 1980 standard. This measure removes the effects of changes in the size and age composition of the population, prevents the selective reporting of data to support particular views, minimizes the effects of changes in diagnostic criteria related to recent advances in screening and detection, and directly measures the outcome of greatest concern—death....
Age-adjusted mortality rates have shown a slow and steady increase over several decades, and there is no evidence of a recent downward trend. In this clinical sense we are losing the war against cancer.... The main conclusion we draw is that some 35 years of intense effort focused on improving treatment must be judged a qualified failure. ("Progress Against Cancer?", New England Journal of Medicine, May 8, 1986, p. 1231.)
It is clear that the American Cancer Society—or at least someone very high within it—is trying to give the American people a good old-fashioned snow job. The truth of the matter is—ACS statistics notwithstanding—orthodox medicine simply does not have "proven cancer cures," and what it does have is pitifully inadequate considering the prestige it enjoys, the money it collects, and the snobbish scorn it heaps upon those who do not wish to subscribe to its treatments.
January 22, 1998 -- Radiation treatment for breast cancer raises slightly a
woman's long-term risk for esophageal cancer, according to a study by
epidemiologists at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in the Annals of
Internal Medicine. The study was conducted by examining the records of more
than 220,000 breast cancer patients diagnosed between 1973 and 1993. The
group included both patients who received radiation therapy and those who
did not. Ten or more years after diagnosis, irradiated patients were roughly
four to five times more likely to develop esophageal cancer than
non-irradiated patients or women in the general population, according to
Ahsan and his co-investigator, Alfred Neugut, MD, PhD, associate professor
of clinical medicine and public health at Columbia-Presbyterian. This is the
first study to link radiation therapy for breast cancer with an increased
risk for esophageal cancer. http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/51a42.htm
"All authorities agree that radiation therapy does not improve the
survival
of patients with breast cancer."--Dr Richard A. Evans, M.D.
http://www.texascancercenter.com/
Fibrocystic Breast Disease by Susan M. Lark, M.D.
http://www.healthy.net/library/books/lark/fcbdises.htm
The Prevention and Complementary Treatment of Breast Cancer1996 Michael
Schachter, M.D., P.A.
http://www.healthy.net/library/articles/schacter/breast.d.htm
Dr Schachter
Preventing Breast Cancer 1996 Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman, N.D., M.S.W. and
Robert Ullman, N.D.
http://www.healthy.net/library/articles/rbullman/brcancer.htm
Preventing Breast Cancer, The story of a Major, Proven, Preventable Cause of
This Disease by Dr Gofman, M.D., Ph.D.
http://www.ratical.com/radiation/CNR/PBC/
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PBC/mammography.html
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PBC/Overview.html
REVISITING ACCEPTED WISDOM IN THE MANAGEMENT OF BREAST CANCER Harriet
Beinfield, LAc, and Malcolm S Beinfield, MD, FACS
http://www.healthonline.com/scripts/pagesrv.exe?ALTT_0997_ARTICLE
Did you know that 30 years ago Dr Hardin B. Jones, Professor of Medical Physics & Physiology at Berkeley, found that the life expectancy of untreated cancer cases appears to be FOUR TIMES LONGER than that of treated individuals?
1969 Science Writers Conference of the ACS
Grouped together, the average cancer patient has a 50/50 chance of
living another 5 years; which are the same odds he or she had in 1971?
With some cancers, notably liver, lung, pancreas, bone and advanced breast, our 5 year
survival from traditional therapy alone is virtually the same as it was 30 years ago?
Did you know that one of the worlds leading nuclear medical scientist, John Gofman
M.D.,Ph.D. found that past exposure to ionizing radiation, primarily medical x-rays (eg
mammograms), is responsible for about 75 percent of the breast-cancer problem today?
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PBC/mammography.html
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PBC/Overview.html
Radiation therapy does not improve the survival of patients with
breast cancer.
Did you know that the mortality rate for breast cancer in women over 55 was about 20%
higher in 1995 than in 1970 (so much for mammograms)?
Irwin D. Bross, Ph.D.
Did you know that two large studies found an increase in mortality
of women (under 55) from breast cancer who were regularly screened with mammograms?