Alternative Cancer Treatments

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Contents 1 Alternative Cancer Treatments 2 A doctor's experience with Laetrile 3 Zeolite as "alternative" cancer remedy 4 What are some of the problems with alternative treatments?

[edit] Alternative Cancer Treatments

Introduction:

If I said "unproven cancer therapy", then everybody would look the other way. But when it comes to unproven alternative cancer treatments, everybody hopes that this particular technique will bring the great break through. Unfortunately this is exactly what many unconventional treatment centers in Mexico, in Germany or on the Internet promise.

You may want to look at the following Internet site: National Cancer Institute alternative medicine Q&A

This contains a section with questions about alternative cancer therapies. Here are the instructions how to click your way there: First open the National Cancer Institute site(nci) above; then click on "Cancer Information"; click on "Treatment Options"; click on "Complementary and Alternative Medicine". Then choose a topic under "Introduction".

Alternative cancer treatments

Introduction

Laetrile therapy (Vitamin B17)

Zeolite as "cancer remedy"

Problems with alternative treatments

Ref. 13 has a detailed historical run down of the various cancer therapies, that have proven to be ineffective. Some of them might surprise you to be on the list. The following alternative therapies are discussed there: Laetrile, macrobiotic diet, immuno-augmentative therapy(IAT), Iscador, Issel's treatment, and Krebiozen. Other unproven therapies are: chaparral tea, Hoxsey tonic, Gerson, grape fruit diet, Kelly malignancy index, Koch antitoxins, metabolic therapy, psychic surgery, Orgone make energy devices, iridology and ultraviolet blood irradiation, just to mention a few of the more popular ones.

The problem is not that these therapies would not have been tested. They have been tested by reputable Cancer Clinics in an objective manner. But the media seems to get manipulated by the proponents of these methods so that the truth does not get communicated. The truth is that all these methods do not work when measured with the evidence based medicine tools.

[edit] A doctor's experience with Laetrile I had personal experience with 35 end stage cancer patients who all went to Mexico to get Laetrile treatments in the early 1980's. It was also known as "vitamin B17" although a deficiency state for this "vitamin" was never found. They all signed a consent form that they wanted intravenous Laetrile for their terminal condition when they came back. All of them died a few weeks or months later from their cancers except for one patient who had been treated in Mexico with a combination of chemotherapy and Laetrile. The chemotherapy, I was told on the phone by the physician in Mexico, would have been three times as strong as is customarily used, because Laetrile would have a "cell protecting effect" on the bone marrow cells. The patient had a non Hodgkins lymphoma, which had been extensively treated by the Cancer Clinic at home and as there had been no more response, he had been given up as "incurable". To my surprise the follow-up blood tests were normal and after about 1 year of intermittent Laetrile this was stopped with the patient living a normal life. Eventually I lost track of the patient, but for at least 10 years after completion of the therapy he was still healthy. In terms of mathematics: this was a 2.9% response rate. In other words, we had to treat 35 patients to get one good response. And the response rate was due to the combination of high dose chemotherapy and Laetrile. From an evidence based medical point of view this is not a good response rate. On the other hand from this patient's point of view this was a marvelous success.

[edit] Zeolite as "alternative" cancer remedy

The web is full of harmless, but powerful home remedies for cancer. Here is link as an example regarding the use of Zeolite. http://www.cancerfightingstrategies.com/zeolite.html To summarize, this web site suggests that volcanic dust from which Zeolite is obtained would be harmless, but would contain very powerful natural chemicals that would stimulate the p21 gene in the body to combat cancer the natural way.

When investigating this I asked myself some questions as you can see here:

1. What is the p21 gene? Has it been proven to suppress cancer? The answer is that the p21 gene has actually been proven to suppress lung cancer cells as this article shows.

2. Does this gene get activated by Zeolite? According to quite a few web sites on the Internet it does. Here is an example of one of these "Pro-Zeolite" sites.

3. Here is another more scientific review of the same Zeolite: You need to scroll half-way down to read the criticism about Zeolite.

4. I did a search on MD Consult, which reviews all of the medical journals and all of the major medical text books including oncology books (books regarding cancer treatment). Not a single entry about Zeolite as a cancer treatment could be found with multiple searches. Worse still: I found that it can cause a form of pneumoconiosis and lung cancer when the dust is inhaled.

Discussion: This investigation showed me that there is a group of business men/women who like to take advantage of end stage cancer patients. They cleverly take a scientific fact regarding the p21 suppressor gene and claim that substance "XYZ" (in this case Zeolite) has been “scientifically” proven to be effective in stimulating this. The reality is that all of the cancer research groups failed so far to find a way to strengthen the p21 suppressor gene to suppress cancer naturally. By the way the p53 suppressor gene in humans seems to be the more well known and more important of the suppressor genes rather than the p21 gene. The fact that the "establishments of the drug industry and organized medicine" have not come up with a more effective alternative therapy for cancer is not because it would not be profitable. It is because many sreening tests have failed to show a beneficial effect. This argument has already been around 40 years ago. One should keep an eye on this type of argument with any new medications, as often older well established medications are as good or better. Examples of "new" medicines that went by the wayside are the anti-inflammatory VIOXX and hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women with preparations that contained high estrogen hormones. But I do not think that there is a conspiracy of the drug industry or of the medical profession to keep effective, less harmful anticancer medicines away from patients.

Conclusion: Zeolite sounds "too good to be true" as an alternative treatment for cancer. Unfortunately as explained above the "research" that is claimed to have been done regarding the p21 gene stimulation has not been done (or rather was not successful). If there is an effect when someone takes Zeolite, it would be a placebo effect.

[edit] What are some of the problems with alternative treatments?

• The biggest problems are the exploitation of the cancer patient and their families by so called "cancer specialists" who often have no or inadequate credentials. Cancer tends to grow in growth spurts. There are intervals where it seems that the patient is winning. If the patient had just tried some alternative therapy program in such a quieter interval, then there might be a period of time where the patient seems to be "responding". But with the next growth spurt of the cancer it becomes painfully clear that the cancer is still present and gaining momentum. In the meantime the patient had to pay for the expensive alternative therapy.
• There is a danger that a patient with a stage 1disease wastes time on an ineffective alternative therapy program only to find out when it didn't work that he/she is now in a stage 2 or 3 disease, which is much more difficult to treat. Time is of essence and effective cancer therapy.
• The incurable patient may have been better served with a palliative care program and grief counseling than waste a lot of money on alternative medicine, which does not work. When the patient dies, the second mortgage on the house or the debt at the bank have to still be paid for the alternative therapy that did not work. If the family still wants this, at least everybody needs to agree that they will foot the bill when all is said and done. The other thing that should be agreed on is that the alternative therapy that is being used is non toxic and that no curative approach is overlooked by following the alternative approach.

Summary:

Cancer is a disease, which stirs up emotions in all of us as we remember often a loved one who died from this disease. It is also a disease, which can mostly be cured, if it is diagnosed early(stage 1 of the disease).

However, it is still often only diagnosed in a later stage for various reasons when cure rates are less favorable or even poor. Gene therapy guided immune therapies (Ref 7 and 8 mentioned above) have already shown remarkable results in end stage cancer and will play an important role in the mop-up stage, if not in future at an earlier stage of cancer treatment.

Any cancer patient reading this, do not delay your treatment. Seek the advice of your family physician. Get a prompt referral to a specialist in the field of expertise, where the cancer is located. Ask the specialist whether you need to go to the nearest Cancer Clinic where the latest technology is available or whether the specialist thinks that your cancer can be treated locally.

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References:

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