Cancer and chemotherapy- an inconvenient truth

July 2, 9:50 AMSF Natural Health ExaminerMadalyn Suozzo

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Cancer and chemotherapy- an inconvenient truth.

We live in interesting albeit confusing times. We are taught to believe in things that clearly don't make sense and shy away from common sense facts that don't match up with the current accepted norms.  Take chemotherapy for instance. Some enlightened doctors have likened chemotherapy to blowing up your house because you have rodents.

If you look up the history of where chemotherapy came from, it was developed in the 1940's by the US Dept. of Defense. They hired 2 pharmacologists to develop applications of chemical warfare agents. The pharmacists found mustard gas to be an excellent lethal agent to kill enemies. They also noticed that injected directly into the body it kills white blood cells (part of the immune system) and would also kill cancer cells. Since then many comparably highly poisonous drugs have been created along these lines of thought as cancer treatments.

The theory is that by intently poisoning the cancer cells, you can kill it. The familiar side effects of poisoning however; the loss of appetite, sex drive and vitality, hair loss, constipation, diarrhea, weakness, severe fatigue, nausea, depression, memory changes, pain swelling, etc. would beg common sense to factor into the equation that not only the cancer cells are attacked but that these highly toxic substances disturb the normal cellular biochemistry of the entire body.

Although chemotherapy has helped people, after countless billions of dollars in research and new drugs, the chance of someone getting cancer in their lifetime has tripled in the last 50 years. Research dollars go towards new and better drugs but do not go towards research much outside of the realm of pharmacology even though increasing studies exist to show that lower doses of chemotherapy and even some natural therapies are just as helpful. 

According to a meticulous 5 year study by 3 oncologists, long term benefits of cytotoxic drugs have proven to be less than 5 percent effective: http://www.australianprescriber.com/magazine/29/1/2/3/. Another study done in England, says chemotherapy contributes to late stage cancer deaths: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/13/2418640.htm

In 1993 Brendan O'Regan and Caryle Hirshberg conducted the "Remission Project" to begin to study 'spontaneous remission.' Spontaneous remission - the disappearance of a disease without medical treatment considered adequate to result in a disease's disappearance - is quoted as occurring in somewhere between 60,000 to 100,000 cases and occurs in almost every type of cancer. Regan and Hirschberg found the number to be at least 20% higher in their investigation of over 3,500 references from more than 800 journals. Since there is no organized field of study it is difficult to know exactly how often or why spontaneous remission occurs. 

Clearly there are no concrete answers that will work 100% of the time from either alternative or conventional medicine. Add to that political and financial issues that are involved in the equation and you have a system that inadequately addresses chronic illnesses. Hopefully in the future, true scientific inquiry into studies on issues like remission, prevention and what actually causes dreadful disease will be at the forefront of a new paradigm in health and what it means to be human.