Cancer : Chemo Therapy ?
What doctors say about Chemo Therapy ?
Chemotherapy is effective in only 2 to 4% of cancers----Hodgkin's disease, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL, childhood leukemia), Testicular cancer, and Choriocarcinoma? (Ralph Moss interview 1995)
There is no scientific evidence for chemotherapy being able to extend in any appreciable way the lives of patients suffering from the most common organic cancers, which accounts for 80% of all cancers? (Dr Ulrich Abel. 1990)
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.
Chemo Statistics
The following appeared in the Los Angeles Times on August 18, 1973, under the heading: CANCER "CURE" LAETRILE
Helene Brown, FDA spokesperson, ... said:
... there are now 10 kinds of cancer which can be cured or controlled by chemotherapy—the treatment of disease by drugs.
Less than a month later, while speaking at an ACS national conference on cancer nursing, Mrs. Brown said flatly: "Present medical knowledge makes it possible to cure seventy percent of. cancers, if they are detected early."
Spokesmen for the American Cancer Society never tire of perpetuating the myth of "proven cures." But they seldom look quite so foolish in the eyes of those who know anything about true survival statistics as they do when they speak of cures by chemotherapy.
We briefly have viewed the miserable results obtained by orthodox surgery and radiation. However, the record of so-called anti-cancer drugs is even worse. The primary reason for this is that most of them currently in use are highly poisonous, not just to cancer but to the rest of the body as well. Generally they are more deadly to healthy tissue than they are to the malignant cell.
All substances can be toxic if taken in sufficient quantity. This is true of aspirin, sugar, Laetrile, or even water. But, unlike those, the anti-cancer drugs are poisonous, not as a result of an overdose or as a side-effect, but as a primary effect. In other words, their poisonous nature is not tolerated merely as a necessary price to pay in order to achieve some desired effect, it is the desired effect.
These chemicals are selected because they are capable of differentiating between types of cells and, consequently, of poisoning some types more than others. But don’t jump to the conclusion that they differentiate between cancer and non-cancer cells, killing only the cancer cells, because they do not.
The cellular poisons used in orthodox cancer therapy today cannot distinguish between cancer and non-cancer cells. They act instead to differentiate between cells that are fast-growing and those that are slow-growing or not growing at all. Cells that are actively dividing are the targets. Consequently, they kill, not only the cancer cells that are dividing, but also a multitude of normal cells all over the body that also are caught in the act of dividing.
Theoretically, those cancers that are dividing more rapidly than normal cells will be killed before the patient is, but it is nip and tuck all the way. In the case of a cancer that is dividing at the same rate or even slower than normal cells, there isn’t even a theoretical chance of success.
In either event, poisoning the system is the objective of these drugs, and the resulting pain and illness often is a torment worse than the disease itself. The toxins catch the blood cells in the act of dividing and cause blood poisoning. The gastrointestinal system is thrown into convulsion causing nausea, diarrhea, loss of appetite, cramps, and progressive weakness. Hair cells are fast-growing, so the hair falls out during treatment. Reproductive organs are affected causing sterility. The brain becomes fatigued. Eyesight and hearing are impaired. Every conceivable function is disrupted with such agony for the patient that many of them elect to die of the cancer rather than to continue treatment.
It is ironic that the personnel who administer these drugs to cancer patients take great precautions to be sure they themselves are not exposed to them. The Handbook of Cancer Chemotherapy, a standard reference for medical personnel, offers this warning:
The potential risks involved in handling cytotoxic agents have become a concern for health care workers. The literature reports various symptoms such as eye, membrane, and skin irritation, as well as dizziness, nausea, and headache experienced by health care workers not using safe handling precautions. In addition, increased concerns regarding the mutagenesis and teratogenesis [deformed babies] continue to be investigated. Many chemotherapy agents, the alkylating agents in particular, are known to be carcinogenic [cancer -causing] in therapeutic doses. (Roland T. Skeel, M.D., and Neil A. Lachant, M.D., Handbook of Cancer Chemotherapy; Fourth Edition (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), p.677.)
Because these drugs are so dangerous, the Chemotherapy Handbook lists sixteen OSHA safety procedures for medical personnel who work around them. They include wearing disposable masks and gowns, eye goggles, and double latex gloves. The procedure for disposing needles and other equipment used with these drugs is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency under the category of "hazardous waste." Yet, these same substances are injected directly into the bloodstream of hapless cancer patients supposedly to cure their cancer!
Most of these drugs are described as radiomimetic, which means they mimic or produce the same effect as radiation. Consequently, they also suppress the immune system, and that is one of the reasons they help spread the cancer to other areas. But whereas X-rays usually are directed at only one or two locations, these chemicals do their deadly work on every cell in the body As Dr. John Richardson has pointed out:
Both radiation therapy and attempts to "poison out" result in a profound hostile in-imunosuppression that greatly increases the susceptibility to metastasis. How irrational it would be to attempt to treat cancer immunologically and/or physiologically, and at the same time administer immunosuppressants in the form of radiation of any kind, methotrexate, 5-FU, Cytoxin, or similarly useless and dangerous general cellular poisons. All of these modalities, as we know, have been used to depress the rejection phenomena associated with organ transplantation. The entire physiological objective in rational cancer therapy is to increase the rejection phenomena. (Open letter to interested doctors, Nov., 1972; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.)
The view that toxic "anti-cancer" drugs usually accomplish just the opposite of their intent is not restricted to the advocates of Laetrile. It is a fact of life (or shall we say death?) that has become widely acknowledged even by those who use these drugs. Dr. John Trelford, for instance, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Ohio State University Hospital has said:
At the present time, chemotherapy of gynecological tumors does not appear to have increased life expectancy except in sporadic cases.... The problem of blind chemotherapy means not only a loss of the effect of the drugs, but also a lowering of the patient’s resistance to the cancer cells owing to the toxicity of these agents. ("A Discussion of the Results of Chemotherapylogical Cancer and the Host’s Immune Response," Sixth National Cancer Conference proceedings, op. cit.)
Dr. Trelford is not alone in his observation. A report from the Southern Research Institute, dated April 13, 1972, based upon research conducted for the National Cancer Institute, indicated that most of the accepted drugs in the American Cancer Society’s "proven cure~~ category produced cancer in laboratory animals that previously had been healthy! (NCI research contract PH-43-68-.998. Information contained in letter from Dean Burk to Congressman Lou Frey, Jr., May 30,1972; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit., p. 5.)
In a courageous letter to Dr. Frank Rauscher, his boss at the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Dean Burk condemned the Institute’s policy of continuing to endorse these drugs when everyone knew that they caused cancer. He argued:
Ironically, virtually all of the chemotherapeutic anti-cancer agents now approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use or testing in human cancer patients are (1) highly or variously toxic at applied dosages; (2) markedly immunosuppressive, that is, destructive of the patient’s native resistance to a variety of diseases, including cancer; and (3) usually highly carcinogenic [cancer causing].... These now well established facts have been reported in numerous publications from the National Cancer Institute itself, as well as from throughout the United States and, indeed, the world. Furthermore, what has just been said of the FDA-approved anti-cancer chemotherapeutic drugs is true, though perhaps less conspicuously, of radiological and surgical treatments of human cancer....
In your answer to my discussion on March 19, you readily acknowledged that the FDA-approved anti-cancer drugs were indeed toxic, immunosuppressive, and carcinogenic, as indicated. But then, even in the face of the evidence, including your own White House statement of May 5, 1972, all pointing to the pitifully small effectiveness of such drugs, you went on to say quite paradoxically it seems to me, "I think the Cancer Chemotherapy program is one of the best program components that the NCI has ever had."... One may ask, parenthetically, surely this does not speak well of the "other program areas?"...
Frankly, I fail to follow you here. I submit that a program and series of the FDA-approved compounds that yield only 5—10% "effectiveness" can scarcely be described as "excellent, " the more so since it represents the total production of a thirty-year effort on the part of all of us in the cancer therapy field. (Letter to Frank Rauscher, dated April 20, 1973; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.)
There is little evidence for long-term survival with chemotherapy. Here is just a sampling of the negative verdict handed down by physicians, many of whom still continue to prescribe it:
Dr. B. Fisher, writing in the September 1968 issue of Annals of Surgery, stated:
As a result of its severe toxicity and its lack of therapeutic effect, further use of 5-FU as an adjuvant to breast surgery in the regimen employed is unwarranted. ("Surgical Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Cancer of the Breast: Results of A Decade of Cooperative Investigation," Annals of Surgery, 168, No.3, Sept., 1968.)
Dr. Saul A. Rosenberg, Associate Professor of Medicine and Radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine:
Worthwhile palliation is achieved in many patients. However, there will be the inevitable relapse of the malignant lymphoma, and, either because of drug resistance or drug intolerance, the disease will recur, requiring modifications of the chemotherapy program and eventually failure to control the disease process. ("The Indications for Chemotherapy in the Lymphomas," Sixth National Cancer Conference proceedings, op. cit.)
Dr. Charles Moertal of the Mayo Clinic:
Our most effective regimens are fraught with risks and side-effects and practical problems; and after this price is paid by all the patients we have treated, only a small fraction are rewarded with a transient period of usually incomplete tumor regressions....
Our accepted and traditional curative efforts, therefore, yield a failure rate of 85%.... Some patients with gastrointestinal cancer can have very long survival with no treatment whatsoever. (Speech made at the National Cancer Institute Clinical Center Auditorium, May 18, 1972.)
Dr. Robert D. Sullivan, Department of Cancer Research at the Lahey Clinic Foundation:
There has been an enormous undertaking of cancer research to develop anti-cancer drugs for use in the management of neoplastic diseases in man. However, progress has been slow, and no chemical agents capable of inducing a general curative effect on disseminated forms of cancer have yet been developed. ("Ambulatory Arterial Infusion in the Treatment of Primary and Secondary Skin Cancer," Sixth National Cancer Conference proceedings, op. cit.)
If it is true that Orthodox chemotherapy is (1) toxic, (2) immunosuppressant, (3) carcinogenic, and (4) futile, then why would doctors continue to use it? The answer is that they don’t know what else to do. Patients usually are not scheduled into chemotherapy unless their condition seems so hopeless that the loss of life appears to be inevitable anyway. Some doctors refer to this stage, not as therapy, but experimentation, which, frankly, is a more honest description.
Another reason for using drugs in the treatment of cancer is that the doctor does not like to tell the patient there is no hope. In his own mind he knows there is none, but he also knows that the patient does not want to hear that and will seek another physician who will continue some kind of treatment, no matter how useless. So he solves the problem by continuing the treatment himself.
In his book The Wayward Cell, Cancer, Dr. Victor Richards made it clear that chemotherapy is used primarily just to keep the patient returning for treatment and to build his morale while he dies. But there is more! He said:
Nevertheless, chemotherapy serves an extremely valuable role in keeping patients oriented toward proper medical therapy, and prevents the feeling of being abandoned by the physician in patients with late and hopeless cancers. Judicious employment and screening of potentially useful drugs may also prevent the spread of cancer quackery. (Victor Richards, The Wayward Cell, Cancer; Its Origins, Nature, and Treatment, (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1972), pp. 215—16.)
Heaven forbid that anyone should forsake the nauseating, pain-racking, cancerspreading, admittedly ineffective "proven cures" for such "quackery" as Laetrile!
Here, at last, is revealed the true goal of much of the so-called "educational" programs of orthodox medicine—psychologically to condition people not to try any other forms of therapy. That is why they perpetuate the myth of "proven cures."
The American Cancer Society, in its Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, stated:
When one realizes that 1,500,000 Americans are alive today because they went to their doctors in time, and that the proven treatments of radiation and surgery are responsible for these cures, he is less likely to take a chance with a questionable practitioner or an unproven treatment. (Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, op. cit., pp.17,18)
Before leaving the subject of cancer therapy and moving on to the field of cancer research, let us clarify and summarize our findings so far. Here is a brief outline of the four optional modes of cancer therapy:
SURGERY: Least harmful. Sometimes a life-saving, stop-gap meas-ure. No evidence that patients who receive radical or extensive surgical options live any longer than those who receive the most conservative options, or, for that matter, those who receive none at all. Believed to increase the likelihood of disseminating cancer to other locations.
When dealing with internal tumors affecting reproductive or vital organs, the statistical rate of long-term survival is, on the average, 10—15%. After metastasis, the statistical chances for long-term survival are close to zero.
RADIOLOGY: Very harmful in many ways. Spreads the cancer and weakens the patient’s resistance to other diseases. Serious and painful side-effects, including heart failure. No evidence that treated patients live any longer, on the average, than those not treated. Statistical rate of long-term survival after metastasis is close to zero.
CHEMOTHERAPY: Also spreads the cancer through weakening of immunological defense mechanism plus general toxicity. Leaves patient susceptible to other diseases and infections, often leading to death from these causes. Extremely serious side-effects. No evidence that treated patients live any longer, on the average, than untreated patients. Statistical rate of long-term survival after metastasis is close to zero.
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
Chemotherapy is effective in only 2 to 4% of cancers----Hodgkin's disease, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL, childhood leukemia), Testicular cancer, and Choriocarcinoma?
Ralph Moss interview 1995 here
There is no scientific evidence for chemotherapy being able to extend in any appreciable
way the lives of patients suffering from the most common organic cancers, which accounts
for 80% of all cancers?
Dr Ulrich Abel. 1990
Chemotherapy drugs are of benefit to at most 5% of cancer patients they are given to, but
are routinely given to 50% of patients?
John Cairns of Harvard in Scientific American
75 % of oncologists, in one survey, said if they had cancer they would not participate in
chemotherapy trials due to its "ineffectiveness and its unacceptable toxicity"?
Interview of Dr Manners
"(Tamoxifen) is a garbage drug that made it to the top of the scrap heap.
It is DES in the making."--Pierre Blais (Tamoxifen: A Major Medical Mistake?
by Sherrill Sellman). http://www.netspace.net.au/~newdome/hh_tamoxifen.html
The trouble with tamoxifen by Dr. Zoltan P. Rona MD MSc
http://www.selene.com/healthlink/tamoxifen.html
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?
After $50 Billion spent on cancer research, the list of cancers responsive to chemotherapy
is almost identical to what it was 25 years ago?
(Questioning Chemotherapy by Ralph Moss, p81)
the War on Cancer is a failure with a death rate not lower but 6% higher in 1997 than
1970?