It’s especially telling that in a number of surveys most chemotherapists have said they would not take chemotherapy themselves or recommend it for their families. Chemotherapy drugs are the most toxic substances ever put deliberately into the human body. They are known poisons, they are designed poisons. The whole thing began with experiments with “mustard gas,” the horrible chemical-warfare agents from World War I.

Dr. Moss’ position on chemotherapy is supported by many major students of the study of cancer treatment. Following are some examples: Dr. John Bailar is the chief of epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal and was formerly the editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In 1986 the New England Journal of Medicine published an article by Dr. Bailer and Dr. Elaine Smith, a colleague from the University of Iowa. Bailer and Smith wrote: “Some 35 years of intense and growing efforts to improve the treatment of cancer have not had much overall effect on the most fundamental measure of clinical outcome — death. The effort to control cancer has failed so far to obtain its objectives.”

Dr. John Cairns, a professor of microbiology at Harvard, published his view in Scientific American in 1985, “that basically the war on cancer was a failure and that chemotherapy was not getting very far with the vast majority of cancers.”

As far back as 1975, Nobel Laureate James Watson of DNA fame was quoted in the New York Times saying that the American public had been “sold a nasty bill of goods about cancer.”

In 1991, Dr. Albert Braverman, Professor of Hematology and Oncology at the State University of New York, Brooklyn, published an article in Lancet titled “Medical Oncology in the 1990s,” in which he wrote: “The time has come to cut back on the clinical investigation of new chemotherapeutic regimens for cancer and to cast a critical eye on the way chemotherapeutic treatment is now being administered.”

Dr. Braverman says that there is no solid tumor incurable in 1976 that is curable today. Dr. Moss confirms this and claims that the greatest breakthrough in the objective study of chemotherapy came from a biostatistician at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Ulrich Abel. His critique focused on whether chemotherapy effectively prolonged survival in advanced epithelial cancer. His answer was that it is not effective. He summarized and extended his findings and concluded that chemotherapy overall is ineffective. A recent search turned up exactly zero reviews of his work in American journals, even though it was published in 1990. The belief is that this is not because his work was unimportant — but because it’s irrefutable.

With the extensive documentation in Dr. Moss’ book, and all the statistics developed by the experts, why is chemotherapy still pushed by the large majority of oncologists? Dr. Moss feels that “there’s a tremendous conflict going on in the minds of honest, sensitive, caring oncologists.” They’re in a very difficult position because they’ve been trained to give these drugs. And they’ve devoted many years to reaching a very high level of expertise in the knowledge of poisonous, deadly compounds. They’re really in a bind, because they went into oncology to help the cancer patient, yet the tools they’ve been given don’t work. And they see what happens to physicians who “step out of line” and treat cancer with alternative means.

Armed raids, loss of licensure, professional smearing and ostracism are some of the consequences. These could all be related to the quotation in the book made by Dr. Lundberg, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. At a recent National Institute of Health meeting, he said of chemotherapy: “[It’s] a marvelous opportunity for rampant deceit. So much money is there to be made that ethical principles can be overrun sometimes in a stampede to get at physicians and prescribers.” You never heard that on the evening news.

The economics of cancer treatment are astounding. Cancer treatment is close to $100 billion annually ($100,000,000,000). The chemotherapy part of that by 2005 will be up to $12.5 billion. Looking from another angle: the Bristol Myers company owns patents on twelve of the nearly forty “FDA-approved” chemotherapeutic drugs. The president, past president, chairman of the board, and a couple of the directors of Bristol Myers all hold positions on the board at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Moss’ book details the failures (and very few successes) for chemotherapy with more than fifty types of cancer, includes a complete description of the major chemotherapy drugs, and has a section about questions to ask your doctor. All of Dr. Moss’ books and Cancer Chronicles newsletters are available from Equinox Press. Phone  718-636-1679 or fax 718-636-0186.

We are obviously losing ground with conventional cancer treatment, because the death rates keep going up. The reason for this is because conventional treatment is based on a faulty standard: That the body must be purged of cancer by aggressive and toxic methods such as surgery chemotherapy and radiation therapy. This, of course, seemed reasonable back in 1894 when William Halsted, M.D. did the first radical mastectomy, but it has proven to be so wrong over the last 50 years that continuing to adhere to it constitutes more fraud than honest mistake. However, this standard still dominates conventional cancer therapy, and until that changes, we will continue to lose ground with cancer.

Dr. Whitaker, a firm believer in Dr. Moss’ work and alternative cancer therapy goes on to give some of his personal views.

Statistics Don’t Tell the Real Story

What is lost in the unemotional statistic of 500,000 cancer deaths per year is how those people died. Dr. Whitaker goes on to say more about the treatment of cancer: In my opinion, conventional cancer therapy is so toxic and dehumanizing that I fear it far more than I fear death from cancer. We know that conventional therapy doesn’t work — if it did, you would not fear cancer any more than you fear pneumonia. It is the utter lack of certainty as to the outcome of conventional treatment that virtually screams for more freedom of choice in the area of cancer therapy. Yet most so-called alternative therapies regardless of potential or proven benefit, are outlawed, which forces patients to submit to the failures that we know don’t work, because there’s no other choice.

Personal Belief Systems Determine

The Choices You Make

Because cancer treatment is such a sensitive issue, I need to set some ground rules before I tell you what I would do if I had cancer. What follows is what I personally would do. It is not a recommendation for you, and should not be considered as such. It is not even what my wife would do (that would be her decision), nor is it what my young son would do (that would be the joint decision of my wife and myself). The choices to be made in treating cancer are not easy ones, because there is so little certainty of cure in any of them. The course that someone chooses to take is very personal, and reflects not only that person’s knowledge of the options, but also his/her beliefs.

Yet, because we are strongly influenced by our natural fear of death, we lineup for conventional cancer therapy, not so much believing that it will work, but hoping that it will not fail. If expensive, debilitating procedures to eliminate acne scars had the same failure rate as cancer treatment, they would be abandoned. It is only because cancer is so often fatal that conventional approaches were not abandoned long ago. We continue to use them not because they work, but because those who perform them have so vigorously eliminated any other choice.

My Imaginary Cancer Scenario

Though I would approach my own dilemma with hopes of total cure, I would be the first to admit that, regardless of the course I took, the chances of that are small. Consequently, my choices of cancer therapy are a mix of science and philosophy. They are as much a reflection of how I would struggle for survival as of how I would wish to die if the struggle failed. For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that I have just been diagnosed with cancer of the lung, and a particularly virulent one. Before going into what I would do and why, let me say what I wouldn’t do, and why.

I Wouldn’t Take A Passive Role

If I am going to fight for my life, I want to do just that. I am always perplexed by the news stories of some celebrity, doped to the gills with heinous poison, “courageously battling for his life.” What does this mean? The celebrity, who simply accepts conventional cancer therapy, is no more “courageous” than a laboratory mouse. This is not to say that what the celebrity is doing is wrong, only that it is the very opposite of a willful act of courage.

Taking a passive role with today’s conventional therapy is terribly dangerous. Jackie Kennedy, after a “courageous fight,” succumbed to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma — or did she? Her early demise, attributed to the cancer, was a shock to cancer specialists worldwide, and brought into question the real cause of her death. She had been given an unproved protocol of very high-dose chemotherapy. The drugs alone could easily have caused her death — and this would not be unusual. There are numerous cases of iatrogenic (doctor-induced) deaths from chemotherapy.

On the other hand, the cancer patient who says, “no, thanks” to chemotherapy recommended by large cancer treatment centers, and takes off to Grand Bahamas Island to receive Immuno-Augmentative Therapy (IAT); or to Houston, Texas, to receive antineoplastons from Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski; or who heads to the public library to make a battle plan, has begun fighting and is acting courageously.

Whether I win or lose, that is the course I would take. What have I got to lose? Conventional treatment is toxic and simply doesn’t work, so I would throw my lot with something safe that might work, and folks, a lot of approaches fit that description. I also believe patients who seek alternative therapies are more optimistic. They have only one worry — the cancer — not the cancer and the therapy!

And Now. Here’s What I Would Do

I’d turn my back on 50 years of institutionalized expertise, because it follows the wrong paradigm. Everything that is done in medicine or in any other discipline fits some paradigm. The paradigm I use for cancer is that it is a systemic problem in which the normal control mechanisms of your body are altered. Your immune system likely bears the largest burden for this control; thus, all techniques that enhance it are promising. Those that damage it are not.

Also, cancer cells are different from normal cells in many ways, including their metabolic profile. At least one non-toxic therapy, hydrazine sulfate, takes advantage of this difference. It has been shown in double-blind trials published in respectable journals to significantly reduce the severe weight loss (cachexia) of advanced cancer, and markedly improve the patient’s emotional state, almost to the point of euphoria. It is also inexpensive. Even though hydrazine sulfate has been shown to be effective and non-toxic, and it makes the patient feel better, it is ignored by every major cancer center. Yet I would take it immediately. (For more on hydrazine sulfate, see Ralph Moss’ book, The Cancer Industry.)

First, I would Change My Diet

I would switch to a mostly vegetarian diet. I’d also take the Nutritional Supplements “Green foods,” such as Sound Body or any of several similar products found at health food stores. These supplements include the phyto-chemicals, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals required for optimal health.

I would enhance that basic program with the following:

Vitamin C — 10,000 mg per day in divided doses. Ewan Cameron, a Scottish physician, did a study in which 100 cancer patients were given 10,000 mg of vitamin C for the rest of their lives, while control patients were not. The patients on vitamin C lived much longer than the age-matched controls. The Mayo Clinic did two studies on vitamin C, and in both studies found that vitamin C did not help. However, both studies were set up in a manner that almost guaranteed failure. Frankly, I think that this was done intentionally to generate negative publicity for this non-toxic approach.

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) — Used as an effective therapy in congestive heart failure, CoQ10 has only recently been studied as a cancer treatment. Cancer patients have been found to have deficiencies of CoQ10. Clinical trials in breast cancer have resulted in no further metastases, improved quality of life (no weight loss and less pain), and partial remission in six of 32 patients.

Essiac Tea — 2 ounces 3 times a day. This blend of four herbs -burdock root, sheep’s sorrel, slippery elm and Indian rhubarb root- has its genesis in Native American medicinal folklore. Since it was “discovered” by Canadian nurse Rene Caisse in the 1920s, thousands have claimed to have had their cancers cured by this tea. I’d keep on searching. We have the formula if you are interested in purchasing the individual herbs in bulk.

Finally, you should know that if I were battling cancer — or any serious disease, for that matter — I would be in a constant search for effective, non-toxic therapies. One place to begin that search is with Ralph Moss, Ph.D. He is probably the most knowledgeable writer in the world on alternative therapies for cancer, and has recently published a 530-page book, Cancer Therapy, The Independent Consumer’s Guide to Nontoxic Treatment and Prevention. (Equinox Press, New York, NY, 1995). In addition, Dr. Moss offers The Moss Reports service, which will provide objective, detailed information on the most promising alternative methods and practitioners for the particular type of cancer being faced. The cost of this service is a one time fee of $297.00, and it is well worth it. If I had cancer, I would start here for more information. Dr. Moss’s website is http://www.ralphmoss.com/html/reports.shtml. You can also get more information by contacting Cancer Decisions, PO Box 1076, Lemont, PA 16851, or call toll free 1-800-980-1234. The fax number is 814-328-5865. They have reports on over 200 different types of cancer.

Another source of information is People Against Cancer, which provides a comprehensive counseling service called the Alternative Therapy Program. It includes a review of your medical records by a network of doctors using alternative therapies. The cost varies. People Against Cancer can be reached at 515/972-4444. Their Internet address is: http://www.peopleagainstcancer.com/.

This is certainly not my final say on cancer treatment, because it changes as new research is done. I want to say again that what I would do is not a recommendation for you. However, it is not a reasonable belief to think that conventional cancer experts offer the best approaches for most cancers. There is just too much evidence to the contrary. One of these days there may not be a need for “alternative’ approaches to cancer. Until then, look for the answers to the cancer riddle in the growing field of alternatives, because they are obviously not present in our armamentarium of conventional therapies.

A study, done at The University of San Francisco Medical School, and ignored by the media, followed 120 terminal cancer patients for ten years. They were divided into two groups:

Group A: Went the conventional chemo/radiation route

Group B: Either did nothing or sought alternative treatments.

Not surprisingly, the survival rate was much better in group B.