TREATMENT POLITICS

By Robert Ferre

Public and private institutions have spent more than 125 billion (that's with a "b") dollars in the last 15 years seeking to find a solution to cancer. Frankly, it's an enormous industry. Lots of people are making enormous profits in the treatment and research of cancer, but little progress has been made. The country and western song laments, "Searching for love in all the wrong places . . ." We could say the same for cancer cures.

TWO APPROACHES: Allopathic vs. Holistic

I see two different "camps" when it comes to treating cancer. One is the allopathic, or conventional approach, as practiced by the mainstream medical establishment. The other is the holistic approach. The chasm between the two protocols is enormous, with only a few shaky foot bridges connecting one with the other. [Editorial note: This was written in 2001 or 2002. Happily, more and more inroads are being made to include holistic treatments within traditional medical settings.]

For the most part, allopathic medicine treats the symptom. In the case of breast cancer, therefore, the goal is to get rid of that tumor and all traces of extraneous cancer cells. When the CAT scan or blood test shows no presence of cancer, the treatment is over. The treatment typically involves surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. (Ruth had a type of surgery called exisional biopsy, to remove the malignant tumor.)Then, when that is over, tamoxifen or other drugs are prescribed to keep cancer at bay. End of treatment. If a person lives for five years after treatment, that's considered a success (statistically), regardless of the quality of life during that five years. Total remission, in which the patient lives a long and cancer-free life, is far more rare than one would hope. In this paradigm, the body is the enemy and the treatment is harsh warfare.

Many brave people have followed the advice of their doctors and suffered through the conventional protocols. In most cases, they were never given an alternative. I have great respect for their journeys and their courage. Not everyone has the desire or ability to stand up to the medical establishment and say, "Sorry, I'm going to take a different approach." After all, we're talking life and death here. Most of us know people who have been through those treatments, and have regrown their hair and gone on with their lives. We salute them. Yet for many more, far too many more, the treatment didn't stop the cancer, and left the body in such weakened shape that it was unable to cope -- with the cancer or with the treatment.

The alternative is a holistic approach that respects the body and attempts to enhance its ability to fight cancer. Cancer is seen as the final stage in a process of imbalance in which the body's natural defense system breaks down and no longer destroys the cancer cells. In holistic protocols, one first starts with detoxification to remove dangerous elements from the body. A number of clinics recommend the removal of all mercury amalgam fillings (called "bio-dentistry") and one clinic even suggests removing the tonsils, which are subject to frequent infections. Next, holistic treatment strengthens the immune system. Finally, they address the cancer itself in a number of less toxic and less destructive ways. When one completes the treatment, rather than being left weakened and exhausted, as in conventional treatment, one generally feels healthy and positive and confident. But the protocol isn't over. It requires permanent lifestyle changes, with improved diet, natural supplements, less stress, and careful attention to all aspects of one's life, including spiritual and emotional.

If these two approaches were comparable in results, which one would most people choose? Is there any question that they would pick the holistic method? Well, there's the rub. Anecdotal evidence strongly implies that the holistic approach is MUCH more effective than the allopathic one. So why hasn't that become the mainstream methodology? Therein lies the sad tale of the three P's: power, politics, and profits.

THE BIG PUT DOWN

With little effort one can see who makes up the juggernaut which is the cancer industry. Huge nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies raise billions of dollars to spend on cancer research. Research institutes and cancer centers use these grants to promote possible "cures," which are quickly patented and sold for enormous profits. On the boards of directors of these cancer institutions are executives from pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries (even tobacco companies!). Diagnosis and treatment of cancer is enormously profitable. And with all of this money comes political clout and the ability to pass laws which forbid alternative therapies.

There are numerous cases of promising cancer cures or treatments which have been suppressed and distorted because they would threaten the status quo. To the totally uninitiated, this sounds too radical to be possible. Certainly here in America, no one would be allowed to thwart a cancer cure, and the hope that it would hold out to millions who now must go through the agony of radiation and chemotherapy. It takes very little research to find out numerous examples of just that.

Ralph Moss, Ph.D., author of The Cancer Industry, once worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, one of the country's most prestigious cancer treatment establishments and a center that gets tens of millions of dollars to test cancer-fighting substances. He calls it the "killing fields" for alternative methods. Treatments with promise, such as hyperthermia or MBV (mixed bacterial vaccines) have been almost totally repressed in this country, although there are clinics abroad that successfully use them.

One particularly interesting instance, I thought, was the case for hydrazine sulfate. This is a very common chemical substance, produced cheaply in great quantities. Dr. Joseph Gold, a respected M.D. from Syracuse, New York, demonstrated the use of hydrazine sulfate as an alternative form of chemotherapy. It is still a toxic chemical, but it has a completely different approach. He wondered why cancer patients experience cachexia, which is the withering away of the body to skin and bones, while the cancer tumors continued to thrive. Gold's theory is simplicity itself. Cancer cells live on glucose as their fuel. The byproducts include lactic acid. These byproducts go to the liver and kidneys, which work very hard to reconvert them to glucose again. But that glucose again feeds the cancer, and so the cycle continues, spiraling to the point where the body can't keep up, hence the cachexia.

Hydrazine sulfate, it turns out, stops the liver and kidneys from producing more glucose, thus keeping it from the cancer cells. It doesn't directly kill the cancer, it just starves it. However, hydrazine sulfate must be controlled, as it can be toxic. So Gold, over several years, developed the optimum procedure: 60 milligrams per day for a week, then 60 mg twice a day for another week, etc. Well, the time came for Sloan-Kettering to do a test of this procedure. First they began by giving a progressive dosage, one milligram the first day, two the second day, etc. As this wasn't Gold's program, he complained about their methodology. So the researchers gave another group of patients 60 mg per day, as prescribed. Gold himself went to the hospital, unannounced, and actually visited some of the patients. From their charts he could see some of them were improving, including gaining weight and experiencing less pain.

Then, rather than giving the patients 60 mg twice a day, the researchers gave them a single dose of 190 milligrams. Far too high of a dosage, the toxic effects wiped out any progress and showed negative results. Over Gold's protests, it was those results that were published. Hydrazine sulfate was hence "proven" to be ineffective.

Indeed, of the list of unapproved treatments kept by the cancer industry, 44 percent were never tested in an official, scientific way. Another 11 percent actually showed positive results. Yet they are outlawed. In the case of hydrazine sulfate, a private pharmaceutical company (Calbiotech) was also given a grant to study hydrazine sulfate. While their initial experiments showed promising results, they abandoned any further research because hydrazine sulfate is such a common drug that it couldn't be patented or sold profitably. So they went on to research other chemicals that would cost more and could be controlled and marketed. This kind of story is repeated over and over again. The executive of one drug company said that were a cancer cure ever discovered, it would be "too hot to handle." The clamor for it would be so intense that the government would be forced to make it public, or at least available at reasonable prices.

SO, THE FACT IS, FINDING A CURE TO CANCER WOULD BE A DISASTER FOR THE CANCER INDUSTRY. What an eye-opener. This would especially be true if the cure were some common drug or natural substance. Putting down alternative treatments, however promising they may be, is essential for holding on to their goose that lays golden eggs.

NO COMPROMISE

Perhaps the best idea would be to combine the two approaches, including within a protocol both conventional techniques and holistic elements. This is done in Germany, where for some patients, low-dose chemotherapy and radiation are combined with immune-strengthening procedures and hyperthermia which enhance the efficacy of the drugs. Even totally holistic approaches are possible, as they are fully covered by German health insurance. In this country, the medical establishment has made sure that insurance companies don't often cover alternative treatments. (What do the insurance companies have to gain from this alliance? Why do they continue to deny coverage for holistic treatments?)

The picture isn't all bleak. As the present situation can't be tolerated, people are seeking alternatives, if not here, then abroad. Some polls show that more than half of all people seeking treatments for all manner of health conditions look into alternative therapies. Some day, demand will overcome the power of the monopoly. Empty waiting rooms will get the attention of conventional doctors. A few "new" procedures have even withstood the legal challenges and come close to becoming conventional. Acupuncture, for example. It was challenged in court as "experimental" (after thousands of years in use!) by the AMA. The AMA lost.

Chiropractors have faced an uphill battle for respect in the medical establishment. For many people, they represent the best alternative care available. Ruth's chiropractor has some leading-edge diagnostic equipment, for example, and uses homeopathy, acupuncture, nutrition, lymphatic therapy, and other life-giving approaches.

Recently I was talking with a friend who lives in Seattle, home of the largest naturopathic college in the United States. By law, naturopaths are not allowed to treat cancer patients. My friend's husband died of cancer. One of his doctors, who gave advice regarding alternative treatments, later lost his license to practice medicine. Such activity was not permitted. Does this make sense?

BIG BUSINESS

Doctors often go to medical school with very altruistic motives, to help end suffering and disease in the world. Many go astray, however, and others become disillusioned. In Russia, doctors are like any other profession and are paid comparably (which is to say, madestly). In the United States, we have assumed a posture that makes medical services very expensive, and most doctors highly-compensated (managed health care notwithstanding). Medicine has become big business. St. Louis is full of large hospital complexes, most of which are building new additions and adding facilities. As the population gets older, this big business will get even bigger.

We are a commercial country. It is both a blessing (our high quality of living) and a curse (destruction of the environment). Medicine is a high-powered commercial enterprise, the engine for which is the pharmaceutical industry. Health through drugs is its approach. Well, not exactly health. More like suppressing illness. Billions of dollars go to plying doctors with gifts and free samples, and billions more are spent on advertising, encouraging the public to ask their doctor for specific prescription drugs.

A drug company in India is becoming the world's largest supplier for third world countries of drugs that are too expensive to buy from the United States. It has agreed to manufacture and sell the three-drug "cocktail" found effective in treating AIDS to the organization Doctors Without Borders for use in Africa at a cost of $350 per year per person. The same drugs in the United States cost $10,000 per year per person.

DOCTORS: CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

This is a problem not just for patients, but also for doctors. When they prescribe drugs for an AIDS patient, they have no control over the cost. In the case of insurance, such costs make insurance premiums sky high. In case of no insurance, some important treatments are not within reach. Poor people just die.

Doctors today don't really have a choice. When an oncologist goes to medical school, we presume she learns the standard treatments for patients. These are the answers that she has to give to get her license to be a doctor. She learns that conventional treatments are verifiable and scientific, whereas the alternatives are unproven and even unethical. Once working as a doctor, many of her patients will survive their chemotherapy and so she has some evidence that it works.

Oncology is the medical study of tumors. Most often, it is the oncologist who advises you and supervises your cancer treatment. If anyone is in a position to recommend more holistic and humane treatments, one would think it should be the oncologist. But that's not the case. If she were to deviate from standard procedure, she would possibly put herself and her medical practice in danger. Suppose she told someone to go to a clinic in Mexico for a holistic treatment. If that treatment failed, she could be legally liable. Nor does she have any control over what would happen in Mexico. But if she follows standard procedure, which she is convinced will often work, then no court would find her derelict of her responsibilities. Doctors who stray from the fold lose their licenses.

Just as it takes courage for patients to differ with the advice of their oncologists, it also takes a courageous and highly-informed doctor to learn of effective alternatives. Most are too busy. But some, looking at the inadequate results of their conventional treatments, widen their horizons in search of something better.

Ruth's oncologist was personable and seemed to really care about stopping Ruth's cancer (almost to the point of being overly dramatic). She tried to persuade us that chemotherapy has been refined so that people aren't as incapacitated. The nausea can be controlled. The hair still falls out, because the treatment kills fast-growing cells, and our hair is the fastest growing cell in our body. I felt that she underplayed the serious side-effects of radiation, chemotherapy and the drug Tamoxifen. Nor did she once, in the entire conversation, mention the cause of the cancer, the immune system, diet, or anything that resembled a whole mind-body approach. This is still the allopathic treat-the-symptom approach, regardless of how compassionate it may be.

As sensitive and caring as she was, in other instances, an aloof, brash, egotistical male doctor would likely have suggested the same regimen. Since she really had no alternative to suggest, the best she could do was to present the conventional protocol in as humane a way as possible.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

Of course, it wouldn't be fair to place all of the blame for lack of alternatives on the doctor. Holistic approaches require an enormous amount of time and responsibility for the patient, not to mention expense. One clinic in Mexico suggests a diet that includes a gallon a day of fresh-squeezed vegetable juices. They suggest buying an $1800 juicer and a second refrigerator to hold the 100 pounds of organic vegetables required per week! Even we aren't likely to go to that extreme, but we are already finding that we can hardly go out to eat any more, because few restaurants have anything that fits our healthy diet. That means more cooking at home, which again requires knowledge, time, and effort.

Some -- perhaps most -- people just want to get their cancer treatment over with. They prefer the conventional route because they know exactly how many weeks it will take and what will happen. They can suffer through it and then it will be finished. They can go back to their previous lives. If they haven't been told by their doctor and haven't done any research on their own, many people don't even know there are alternatives, and even if they did, they may not have the means to follow them.

I don't believe in victims. On a metaphysical level, I believe we all write the script for our lives, and that nothing, even death, happens to us without our permission, however far that choice may be from our consciousness. We are all eternal beings. A bout of cancer in one lifetime is a tiny blip in relation to eternity. Still, I think that here, in the world we have made, in the dream in which we are all living, peace is preferable to war, love to hate, and health to suffering. Commercialism, competition, materialism, consumerism may be the foundation of our culture, but they are dead ends, spiritually.

SIGNS OF HOPE

There are a few signs of hope on the horizon. Medical articles are now beginning to be written suggesting that maybe one's state of mind or (can you imagine this???) even prayer or meditation can make a difference to one's recovery rate or health maintenance. And even then, such "radical" concepts are only acceptable when written by Harvard medical doctors whose mainstream credentials are impeccable. In his book on the effectiveness of prayer, Dr. Larry Dossey says that the results of prayer are shown to be so verifiable (in double-blind scientific studies) that if, instead of prayer it were a drug, there would be a run on the market.

I must grant that the commercialism isn't only on the allopathic side. In fact, with the help of the Internet, there are any number of unscrupulous scams and con artists who peddle ineffective medicines with promises of miraculous cures. Desperate people throw their money at some of these alternatives, hoping for success where the medical field has failed. It is a situation primed for abuse. Certainly some regulation is in order.

LAST DITCH EFFORT

One of the tribulations for holistic practitioners is that people often come to them after radiation and chemotherapy have failed. The patient arrives with the body seriously weakened, the immune system in total disorder. Even then, some holistic programs turn around the situation. It is ironic that the critics of holistic medicine point out as proof of their criticism that a number of people have tried the treatments and subsequently died. Have they looked at their own statistics? Look how many people die after using the "approved" methods of chemo and radiation! One clinic in Mexico reports that of stage IV so-called "incurable" cancer, only about nine percent survive for five years under conventional treatment. In their clinic, despite the serious condition of many clients (studying 5,000 patients over a ten-year period) the remission rate is more than 20 percent, and climbing towards 25 percent. Although still a discouraging statistic, it is certainly an improvement. Lance Armstrong, who famously survived testicular cancer, was given a 20% cahnce of survival. Being in excellent physical condition, he made it. But 80% don't.

Americans pour over the border into Mexican clinics for treatments not allowed in the United States. In fact, it is probably the world's leading site for new therapies and research. Many of the "alternative" doctors left conventional practices when they were dismayed by the politics and the drugs and the ineffectiveness of the treatments here in the US. Chelation, colonics, coffee enemas, germanium, mistletoe, laetrile, blood radiance, live cell therapy, enzyme injections, ozone therapy, hyperthermia, and much more are offered. In Germany, many such treatments have been available for years and are far more accepted than in the United States. While there are a few doctors that do some of these treatments, wouldn't it be nice if they were more widely available in this country and constituted a real choice for the cancer patient?

The doctor at one German clinic was trained as an oncologist. He worked in conventional medicine for ten years until he became so discouraged with the results that he was ready to become a gardener rather than a doctor. Instead, he opened his own clinic and began incorporating holistic approaches. His results greatly improved. Another German doctor has kept statistical records, which he shares in his lectures at medical conferences all over the world. Ruth's oncologist said that there was no proof that alternative programs were effective. But the proof is out there. It just isn't coming from the United States.

CULTURAL CONTEXT

Until the 20^th century, medicine mostly had to deal with infectious diseases, such as the plague or tuberculosis or outright infections. Those things respond to medicines and drugs and penicillin. But in the last century, we have seen the rise of degenerative diseases, in which the body is not attacked by outside forces, but rather, consumes itself. The body breaks down and fails to work any more. This is due to stress, diet, lifestyle, environmental hazards, poisons in our food, mercury in our mouths, electromagnetic frequencies all around. When "civilization" comes to previously isolated indigenous peoples, one of the "blessings" it brings is disease. And we call it progress!

In my journal I recently made the analogy that our polluted air is like chemotherapy, and our EMF situation (just consider cell phones!) is like radiation. Both our cancer and our conventional cures reflect our culture as a whole. The United States consumes 40 percent of the world's resources, which is killing the earth just as surely as cancer depletes the body. (Are we the example of success for the world to emulate? I hope not.) Without restrictive regulation, rampant commercialism would take over completely. Some argue that it already has, that multinational corporations have more power and influence (and more money) than individual governments. [Editorial note: See postscript at the bottom of this article. In the political climate of the Bush presidency, our patrimony, environment, and even rights, have been for sale to the highest bidder in a shameful, damaging, anti-American takeover of our decision-making process by corporate greed.]

The solution to the economy is always "grow, grow, grow." But that's not the way of nature. Nature is cyclical. Sometimes it grows, other times it rests, or even pulls back. In short, it is sustainable. Grow, grow, grow is not only characteristic of unfettered economic activity, it is also the nature of cancer cells - growth out of control. Capitalism and cancer, it seems, have a lot in common. With regards to the earth, western civilization is a degenerative disease. We're destroying ourselves, with our cars and energy consumption, our waste and pollution. Cancer is only a microcosm of the larger picture.

Descartes did us no favor in splitting body from soul from mind. The advance of scientific thinking held the universe to be strictly mechanical and impersonal, like a clock. Quantum science has told us otherwise, that we can't be neutral, that just being there involves us in the process of investigation and discovery, that there is uncertainty which can't be resolved. It seems that the medical world hasn't gotten the word yet. It's still based on a myopic and out-dated dedication to a strictly scientific approach (and even that is abused and distorted to fix the outcome). There is no heart in it.

This is the most compassionate conclusion that I can make on behalf of mainstream medical practice. They are out of step. Perhaps they would do better if it weren't such a risk, if we helped them. On a person-to-person basis, I think that may be possible. With regards to the controlling political and economic powers of the cancer-industrial complex, however, I suspect that they really DO know the alternatives, but they deliberately prevent them and outlaw them and deride them solely to maintain their monopoly and make lots of money. However they try to dress it up, such behavior, to me, is unconscionable.

MY LESSON

To eliminate cancer we don't simply need better treatment, although that would certainly be preferable to present conventional treatments. We need to change ourselves. Although Ruth got the cancer, I got the message. Why wait until the first lump or the first heart attack? Now is the time to reorder our priorities, to take time for ourselves, to heal our bodies and minds, and in so doing, the earth.

I once had an idea for a novel, in which a charismatic person -- elected to be president of the United States -- promoted a lifestyle of restraint and responsibility. He doesn't eat meat, doesn't drink soft-drinks or watch violence on television, etc. etc. The result, of course, is sheer disaster. Whole industries go out of business (soft drinks, junk food, tobacco) as people adopt simple, sustainable lifestyles. The country is thrown into turmoil, high unemployment, and deep recession. This spreads around the world, multi-national corporations lose their influence, the World Bank goes out of business. The countries that do the best are the third world countries, where people still know how to do things manually and to live simply.

At first, things seem disastrous. In fact, I thought the story would end with some kind of revolution or assassination so that we could go back to the good old days of foods with no nutrition, poisonous air, planned obsolescence and consumerism. But instead, the story continues. Technology is a great boon, as people can still communicate, share ideas. Indigenous peoples, once thought to be primitive, become our saviors. Eventually a better world develops, but the United States is neither wealthy nor a super power. It does well, because people are really generous at heart, creative, kind, caring. In the face of disaster, we are able to join together, work shoulder to shoulder, and save the day. The hokey Hollywood values may be lost, but the human spirit comes shining through. As a large country rich not only in resources, but in human capital, we all live happily ever after.

So much for fantasy. The more immediate situation is far less dramatic and far more important. Ruth had a malignancy removed. Now, what do we do? We are sharing this journey so that others may realize that there are alternatives. We hope it, too, will have a happy ending. Most of all, we want to inspire those of you facing your own cancer journeys. Hang in there. Read, research, talk to others, inform yourself - your life is in your own hands as much as your doctor's.

POSTSCRIPT

Well, obviously, Ruth's story didn't have the ending we would have preferred. For five years she did alternative treatments, which held the cancer mostly at bay, although it metastasized to the bone. Finally we were persuaded to be more agressive and try allopathic treatment. Ruth underwent several rounds of chemo and radiation. Already sensitive in body things, her systems were completely out of whack. Nothing worked, whether digestion or elimination or comfort in the body or even positive outlook. Every day was a struggle to find just some small way of easing her discomfort. In the end, her immune systme was destroyed. When the cancer returned, after only one or two months of limited remission, she could take no more treatments and she was defenseless. The cancer spread to the brain, liver, and lungs. She died within months, after only one week in hospice.

Would she have died just as soon without the chemo and radiation? If we had just resigned ourselves to the fact that she was going to died soon, she could have received palliative treatments which would have given her a much easier final year. But I ask myself, why didn't we just move to Germany? Why didn't I just close my business and dedicate our full effort to Ruth's cancer? I suffer daily with these regrets. And also from the deterioration of the political climate.

The head of the FDA is Big Pharma's man. Previously at the Nationa lInstitute of Health (where he crazily estimated cancer would be cured within a few years), his actions were shown to favor the pharmaceutical lobby. Once at the FDA, the worst has been confirmed. Eli Lilly asked for approval of a drug for which all testing showed it was ineffective. Approval would mean charging unsuspecting cancer patient thousands of dolalrs a month, adding billions to their profits. The board of oncologists, whose recommendations previously were almost automatically respected, advised disapproval. However, a month alter, the head of the FDA approved it. When questioned why, he stated that there was "new evidence presented." Right, like how much they contributed to the Republican party.

Just a week ago I wrote a letter to the FDA, which is considering approving a drug by Genentech. It is already of doubious effectiveness on one kind of cancer (colon cancer). They are asking for it to be approved for breast cancer. Their own research shows that it slows the growth of tumors in small number of instances (drugs have been approved if they can show they are effective in 20% of the treatments -- that is statistically significant). But it says nothing about whether it extends the patients life. That should be the final criterion, but most drugs do not increase the patient's length of life. The tumor shrinks (successful treatment, like Ruth's), and then when it comes back more virolent, the patient dies, perhaps even earlier. Agaiin, the board of oncologists have recommended disapproval. Again, if approved, Genentech will make tens of billions of dollars. With that much at stake, they can afford waves of high-powered lobbiests. Again, it looks like the FDA may approve it, despite its poor record.

A recent TV program described a booming business, called medical tourism. People are going elsewhere in the world, especially Thailand, for state-of-the-art treatments at a fraction of the cost, and in more holistic environments. I am all for capitalism, being an entrepreneur myself. But rampant profiteering by buying off the governmental watch dogs is unconscionable. Look at the credit card industry, preying on people whom it showers with credit card applications, and then charges 30% interest when they default. Someone told me that their lobbiest managed to get a bill passed which excludes credit card debt from bankruptcy, meaning that people can no longer wipe out their credit card debt, no matter what. This is not free enterprises, it is criminal behavior. My favorite irony is the ads on TV of Montel Williams going around in a fancy bus giving "millions" of dollars in free drugs to thepoor people who can't afford them. How nice. It doesn't mention that the prices of those drugs are breaking the backs of our healthcare industry, all in the name of profit. Get real.