In the past 70 years, at least 35 cures for cancer have been discovered. You will find information on all of these in Chapters 2 and 3. Would it surprise you to know that every one of these 35 is currently on the “Unproven Remedies” list maintained by the American Cancer Society (ACS)?
Doesn’t it seem logical that at least one of these would have been thoroughly researched and investigated and found to have some use for at least some cancer sufferers? Isn’t it mind-boggling that every single one is still labeled “unproven, “ in spite of the lapse of decades since their discovery?
But it’s worse. Not only has our cancer “system” failed to prove and endorse these cures, the discoverers (most of them reputable M.D.s and researchers) have been hounded with lawsuits, license suspension and even jail sentences for treating cancer patients.
What do these cures have in common? Only one thing. None of them can be patented and sold through the “standard” distribution system monitored by our Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
And yet, the U.S. alone has spent thousands of man-years and over fifty billion dollars on cancer research just since the “War on Cancer” began in 1974. What’s going on here?
Drug Company $$$$You can only understand the cancer treatment “system” in this country if you understand how much power the drug companies wield in our culture. Drugs used in cancer treatment are all produced and sold as “chemotherapy.” What this means is that synthetic drugs must be compounded, and run through years (typically about 10 years) of testing. This process costs about $200 million.
Gene therapy and immune system vaccines are being researched now. They, too must be tested through this enormously expensive system. No natural remedies need apply. They cannot be patented; ergo they can’t get FDA approval.
Why not let “natural” remedies co-exist so people can make their own choices? That would seem logical, but there are Federal and State laws that prohibit this. Currently, under Federal law, no natural substance can be advertised as a cure for any condition – period. In California, for example, if you or I advertise for sale any remedy for cancer that does not involve surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, we can be put in jail.
Drug MarketingThe marketing of toxic drugs lies at the heart of the “war on cancer.” For example, in one study, the cost of drugs was 55 percent of total treatment cost for small-cell lung cancer.
One company, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, spends more than one billion dollars per year on research and employs 4,000 scientists and support personnel. It holds patents on more than a dozen drugs approved by the FDA for the treatment of cancer; this accounts for almost half of the chemotherapy sales in the world.
Bristol-Myers-Squibb also creatively influences cancer research. It gives out awards, lectures and grants of many kinds. It pays for updates to orthodox cancer textbooks, and supports research and “data management” of clinical studies on its patented agents. Other cancer drug companies do the same.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City is at the forefront of cancer research and has been for at least the last 30 years. Drug companies, again with Bristol-Myers-Squibb in the forefront, occupy a very strong position at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. At one time, in 1995, for example:
James D. Robinson III, the Chairman of the MSKCC Board of Overseers and Managers, was a director of Bristol-Myers Squibb.Richard L. Gelb, Vice-Chairman of the MSKCC board, was chairman of the board of Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Richard M. Furland, MSKCC board member, retired in 1994 as the president of Bristol-Myers Squibb. He has also been a director of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association.
Benno C. Schmidt, Honorary co-chairman of MSKCC, was the founder and board member of Genetics Institute, a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures drugs for the cancer marketplace. He was also a director of Gilead Sciences (which makes cancer-related drugs); Matrix and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. He received the BristolMyers Squibb Award for distinguished service to cancer research in 1979.
Paul A. Marks, M.D., the President and CEO of MSKCC, was a director of Pfizer, which manufactures cancer-related drugs. He was also on the board of National Health Labs and of Life Technologies.
Conspiracy?Is this evidence of a conspiracy among drug companies to suppress “alternative” therapies for cancer? There are those who would answer that question “Yes!” emphatically. In my years of research, I have not found even one “alternative” cancer cure that has been thoroughly researched by the cancer “establishment” in the United States. I would say that the circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy is overwhelming.
The complete rejection of therapies outside the main stream by the cancer “system” is unique to the United States. Western European countries, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Far Eastern countries (Japan, Korea, The Philippines, etc.) are much more tolerant of the therapies we will discuss in this book.
It seems to me that our political system is much more under the sway of the drug company money than other democracies around the world. Most, but not all, large drug companies have their headquarters in the United States. This is not a coincidence. If other countries had political systems and medical societies more sympathetic to drug company interests, they would move there. With the global economy what it is today, a company’s headquarters can be easily moved.
A Pitiful StoryHere's an excerpt from the September 25, 2000 Newsweek. The article was entitled "Why Drugs Cost So Much." It pointed out that drug sales in the U. S. had gone up from $65 billion in 1995 to $125 billion in 1999. One government study predicts prescription-drug spending in the U. S. will reach $243 billion by 2008.
The price of an average prescription went up from $23.68 in 1991 to $37.38 in 1998. Lobbying expenditures by drug companies in 1999 were $83.6 million. A pitiful example of why this was an election year issue in 2000, according to Newsweek, is the story of Robert and Sarah Bergeon:
"The South Milwaukee, Wis., couple spend about $6,500 annually, nearly a third of their $21,000 income, on the seven different drugs 71-year-old Sarah takes for heart disease and diabetes and the ones Robert takes for gout and bloodpressure problems. They are covered by Medicare, but the 35-year-old program has no prescription-drug benefit. 'We both worked hard all of our lives and never asked for help from anyone,' says Robert, 72, a retired printer who works part time bagging groceries to help pay for their medicines and sometimes skips his drugs to make sure Sarah gets hers. 'It's stressful now and it's scary. I don't want to see anybody else go through this.' "
In my experience, there are many "Medigap" health insurance policies that cover most common medications at very low co-payments ($5 for each generic drug prescription). A "Medigap" policy takes the portion of your Social Security check that is normally deducted for Medicare, Part B (about $48 a month, in my case) and basically covers whatever Medicare doesn't, with small co-payments. For example, I pay $6 for each visit to the doctor, or to any specialists to whom my Primary Care Physician refers me. I pay $5 for each prescription.
If you or a family member is receiving Social Security, please look into Medigap policies. If you know the Bergeons (story above), please ask if they have looked into this. It is pitiful, but many seniors are never counseled on all their options for care at a reasonable cost, including prescription drugs.
World Without CancerIn his interesting book World Without Cancer – The Story of Vitamin B17, G. Edward Griffin puts it this way:
“With billions of dollars spent each year in research, with additional billions taken in from the cancer-related sale of drugs, and with vote-hungry politicians promising ever-increasing government programs, we find that, today, there are more people making a living from cancer than dying from it. If the riddle were to be solved by a simple vitamin, this gigantic commercial and political industry could be wiped out overnight. The result is that the science of cancer therapy is not nearly as complicated as the politics of cancer therapy.”
Legislation claiming to protect the consumer of drugs is usually written by the drug industry. Politicians who are grateful for the financial support of the drug companies are eager to put their names on legislation and push for its enactment. Once it becomes law, it serves merely to protect the sponsoring drug companies against competition. Competition from natural cancer cures, for example. The consumer is the victim of this legislation, not the beneficiary.
In drug testing and marketing, unlike other industries that lobby Congress, there is the added necessity to pretend that everything is being done scientifically. Therefore, in addition to recruiting the aid of politicians, scientists must also be enlisted – a feat that is easily accomplished by the judicious allocation of funding for research.
This process is nothing new. Former FDA Commissioner James L. Goddard, in a 1966 speech before the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, expressed concern about dishonesty in testing new drugs. He said:
“I have been shocked at the materials that come in. In addition to the problem of quality, there is the problem of dishonesty in the investigational new drug usage. I will admit there are gray areas in the IND [Investigation of New Drug] situation, but the conscious withholding of unfavorable animal clinical data is not a gray area. The deliberate choice of clinical investigators known to be more concerned about industry friendships than in developing good data is not a gray area.”
Goddard’s successor at the FDA was Dr. Herbert Ley. In 1969, he testified before the Senate committee and described several cases of blatant dishonesty in drug testing. One case involved an assistant professor of medicine who had tested 24 drugs for 9 different companies. Dr. Ley said:
“Patients who died while on clinical trials were not reported to the sponsor… Dead people were listed as subjects of testing. People reported as subjects of testing were not in the hospital at the time of the tests. Patient consent forms bore dates indicating they were signed after the subjects died.”
Another case involved a commercial drug-testing firm that had worked on 82 drugs from 28 companies. Dr. Ley continued:“Patients who died, left the hospital, or dropped out of the study were replaced by other patients in the tests without notification in the records. Forty-one patients reported as participating in studies were dead or not in the hospital during the studies… Record-keeping, supervision and observation of the patients in general were grossly inadequate.”
Money corrupts. Really big money corrupts completely!!A Personal Anecdote
About 4 years ago, my urologist prescribed Hytrin, a drug manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, for my enlarged prostate. It was quite effective in reducing my nocturnal ups and downs. It relaxes the prostate and bladder muscles. Hytrin is also used to treat high blood pressure, which I don't have.
For the first three and a half years, my co-payment for Hytrin was $60. I have Medigap insurance that pays for prescription drugs. I needed a refill about once a month. When I asked the pharmacist if there was a generic, he said no, that Abbott Labs had a patent on it and only the named drug could be sold.
Well, guess what? In the middle of 2000, I happily found that Abbott Labs patent had expired. I found out only because my pharmacist filled my prescription with the generic (terazosin hydrochloride) and my co-payment was $5, instead of $60.
The plot thickens. In September 2000, I received a letter from my urologist's office. They were running a clinical trial on a "new" drug to treat enlarged prostates and they wanted volunteers for the test. I was curious, so I called them. It turned out that this office, the largest urology clinic in San Antonio, had a specialized staff for drug testing.
They asked me a few questions. Apparently, I qualified and they asked me to participate in the test -- what's called a Random Clinical Trial. It requires the participants to take no medication (stop the terazosin) for one month and then try the "new" medication for three months -- unless, of course, you got the placebo (sugar pill), which neither you nor the docs would know about. One half of the people would get the "new" drug and one half the placebo.
Guess what the "new" drug was? Not hard, was it. It was Hytrin II. A "new", and, of course, newly patented form of the drug. It was supposed to "improve the quality of the treatment" of BPH (Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy), which is what I, and most males my age, have, an enlarged prostate gland. I politely declined to participate in the clinical trial.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, several things:1) Do you think it is coincidental that Abbott Labs just finished developing Hytrin II a few months after their patent for Hytrin I ran out?
2) Do you think it is ethical for a large urology clinic to act as the agent for a drug manufacturer in a clinical trial? Isn't this something of a conflict of interest?
3) Do you think either Abbott Labs or my doctor thought about the financial impact of a "new", drug on me or other seniors? What about people like the Bergeons (Newsweek article above)?
4) Why do you think the presidential race in 2000 made a BIG DEAL out of a "prescription drug benefit" for seniors? Could it have something to do with the political contributions from the drug companies? Remember, that prescription drug benefit comes right out of taxpayers' pockets.
5) Why aren't we debating about how to keep the drug companies from gouging Americans while they sell the same drug at one-tenth the cost in Europe and Canada?
Relief From CanadaIn September 2000, William Raspberry, wrote a column in the Washington Post about “One Long-Term Cure for High Drug Prices.” Here are a few paragraphs from that article:
“There are at least two pieces of the problem of high cost of prescription drugs, Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has been saying for some time now.
But most of the political and journalistic focus has been on only one piece: The ‘outrageously high price’ of medications. He’d like to call attention to the other half of the problem: The fact that Americans ‘are paying by far the highest prices in the world for the same exact drug – not a generic, but the same exact drug.’
The solution, he says is simplicity itself. Allow registered pharmacies and drug distributors to purchase FDA-approved drugs anywhere in the world for resale here. Reimportation, he calls it in the bill he hopes will pass Congress before the campaign recess.”
[NOTE: The bill passed and was signed into law by President Clinton. The last I heard was that the Bureau of Health and Human Services was delaying writing regulations to implement it because they were concerned for the “safety” of consumers….Hmmmm]
“’This is important stuff,’ Sanders said in a telephone interview from his Burlington office. ‘I traveled to Canada with a group of women with breast cancer, and we looked at the price of tamoxifen, a drug that is widely prescribed for the treatment of breast cancer. You could get it in Canada for a 10th of the U.S. price.
If this bill were to go into effect tomorrow, U.S. pharmacies would be purchasing tamoxifen in Canada and retailing it here at 30 to 50 percent less than they now charge.’
Sanders says the same thing applies to any number of drugs – all approved by the FDA and originally manufactured in or exported from the United States.…The biggest obstacle to passage this term is the pharmaceutical industry, Sanders says. ‘They are the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill,’ he said. ‘They’ve spent tens of millions in opposition of this bill.’”
Another Recent Press ArticleHere is an excerpt from an article in the Boston Globe, October 2000 by Derrick Z. Jackson. He is talking about the shameless use of our youth as advertising billboards by big business:
"A reminder of this was in the Boston Globe sports section recently. Red Sox outfielder Darren Lewis was photographed with a group of children. Lewis was pointing to a new ball field at the Roxbury Boys and Girls Club.
Far more striking was that nearly every one of the children in the picture wore exactly the same T-shirt. The T-shirt was for Claritin allergy drugs, an official sponsor of Major League Baseball.
The caption under the photo said Lewis offered a 'helping hand' to the youths. As the children's chests blared 'Claritin (loratadine), Claritin (loratadine), Claritin (loratadine), Claritin (loratadine),' it was clear that it was the children who were far more helpful as unwitting billboards for the pharmaceutical industry.
...Claritin is a particularly ironic case, finding the time to play urban savior at the very time it is under attack for gouging the kids' parents and elders. Recently on the presidential campaign trail, Vice President Al Gore singled out Claritin, made by Schering-Plough, with Claritin as its flagship drug, which had a profit of $2.1 billion in 1999 on sales of $9.2 billion. The 23 percent return on revenues was four times higher than the average return, for example, for airlines. According to a Wall Street Journal feature in August, drug companies spend more money on salespeople than on scientists. Schering-Plough, instead of working with Congress to make drugs more affordable, now spends more on advertising Claritin than Coca-Cola spends on Coke or what Anheuser-Busch spends to push Budweiser and its Super Bowl lizards.
Instead of seeking to compromise with politicians on Capitol Hill who note that 20 pills of Claritin cost $44 in the United States while they cost $8.75 in a more universal-health care Europe, Schering-Plough has reportedly tripled its lobbying budget to $6.6 million. It has hired former U. S. Rep. Bob Livingston to lobby for patent extensions and the license to further gouge."
So What?Where does all this leave you, the cancer patient or caregiver? Well, hopefully, it leaves you somewhat skeptical about claims by the cancer “industry” that all therapies not sold by Bristol-Myers-Squibb or Merck or Abbott Labs or whoever are “unproven” and therefore pure “quackery.”
As a bare minimum, to avoid what happened to Marjorie, my former wife, and me, you must educate yourself. You must be prepared to get more than one opinion. Then, when you’ve found the doctor (or homeopath or naturopath) that you trust, you must be prepared to co-doctor with him or her throughout your treatment.
This book is designed to end your blind faith and trust in our system of cancer “therapy” and arm you with the power to search beyond it. Faith is fine, if it derives from the power of knowledge and trust in your physician.
You Have The Power -- Use ItI'm going to arm you with information -- from books, the Internet, newsletters, magazines and any other source. You will be able to take charge of your health. I am hoping you will not be satisfied with treating symptoms. You will want to treat causes.
But before you can treat causes, you need to understand them.Several years ago, one of my wife’s doctors told me, "80% of it is still mystery to us." At the time, I didn't know what he meant. Now, I think I do.
What he meant was that what happens in your body at the cellular level is indeed mystery to almost all doctors.
Interactions between your brain and your immune system. What stress does to your immune system.
Exactly what chemotherapy does to your immune system.
What other treatments are available to cure cancer.
How non-toxic substances can boost your immune system.
How exercise and nutrition affect diseases like diabetes.
What "free radicals" do to your health.
Which antioxidants are the most effective against free radicals.
What natural substances provide your body with antioxidants.
...and many, many more.