Cancer: Hope For A Cure

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in our country leaving half a million families every year without a mother, father, spouse or children. Since 1971, over one trillion dollars has been spent on conventional cancer research and treatment. The current cost is at least $110 billion a year -- over ten percent of all U.S. medical expenditures and two percent of the entire Gross National Product. Can you imagine what would happen to our economy if a simple and inexpensive cure for cancer were to hit the market? Doctors, nurses and pharmaceutical companies would take a serious blow to their wallet. Wait a minute!! Have we lost our focus here? What about the cancer patient? Have we forgotten about him/her? What would happen to them if cancer became mostly curable? Here is a video clip of Glen Beck, a popular news reporter, talking about a possible breakthrough in the fight against cancer.



Possible Cure For Cancer But You Can't Have It! - video powered by Metacafe

Canadian researchers have developed a new cancer treatment that is an alternative to chemotherapy. "DCA" has undergone some trials on human cancer cells and shows a lot of promise, but not enough to be approved by the FDA. Don't miss the point! If this new drug had a patent, drug companies might be all over it with tons of money to put towards doing research. Profit is the bottom line for them. The difference between DCA and chemotherapy is that DCA kills the cancer cells and not the other healthy cells that are destroyed throughout the body. Chemo is known to weaken your immune system and lower your white blood cell count. This is condition called neutropenia (new-truh-pee-nee-ah) – which can put you at risk for severe infections or treatment interruptions. Click here for a list of possible side effects of chemotherapy and what can be done about them.

In 2002, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that in the previous year, the average oncologist had made $253,000 of which 75% was profit on chemotherapy drugs administered in his/her office. Yet, surveys of oncologists by the Los Angeles Times and the McGill Cancer Center in Montreal show that from 75% to 91% of oncologists would refuse chemotherapy as a treatment for themselves or their families. Why? Too toxic and not effective. Yet, 75% of cancer patients are urged to take chemo by their oncologists.

The National Cancer Institute published a list in 1971 of the cancers that chemo was most effective with. One of those was Embryonal Testicular Cancer, for which cyclist Lance Armstrong is the poster boy. On the other hand, some doctors want to prescribe chemo for every kind of cancer. The fact is that some types of cancer NEVER responded to chemo or radiation!

What if there was a way to cure cancer without the use of chemotherapy or radiation? No more throwing up and no more hair loss? What if that therapy could be proven to work as well or better than conventional treatments offered by your doctor? Would you want to know about it or would you rather your doctor kept it a secret from you?

A few years back, I ran across a doctor that has been successfully treating many forms of cancer for over 30 years. The curious part is that he does it without chemo or radiation. He uses a non-toxic therapy that does not have the side effects of chemo or radiation. His name is Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, M.D., Ph.D.

Burzynski's work was reported on positively on the probing network television investigative series 20/20 (ABC-TV, October 22, 1981) and Street Stories (CBS-TV, July 23, 1993), and more recently, ABC-TV's Nightline and CBS This Morning (April and March, 1995, respectively).


Look at the following clip from Fox News. It is Jody's story of how she was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. Her chances of survival were almost nil. She went to see Dr. Burzynski and now she has a different ending to her story.


For more information, check out some of his web sites:
Burzynski Research Institute, Inc.

Burzynski Clinic

Burzynski Patient Group



Dr. Burzynski - His Credentials and Biography


Dr Burzynski’s discovery threatens one of the largest and most lucrative industries in the history of mankind, the cancer treatment industry.

• All those radiation machines and doctors who run them
• All those chemotherapy drugs and the doctors who prescribe them
• All those so called studies that just juggle the doses of chemo & radiation
  
• All those surgeons who have been flailing at cancer for over a 100 years.
  

The cancer industry in general, has a mindset that their way is the only right way. If you challenge that, you are merely a dangerous quack. In short, these beliefs are that cancer can only be treated with therapies that mutilate, poison, or burn the patient, in the hope that they "kill" the cancer…..Therefore, each patient who is miraculously cured by Burzynski’s nontoxic therapy is not viewed as a breakthrough, or even as something good, but rather as a dangerous messenger of heresy, a terrible threat to their beliefs.

Much to the chagrin of the FDA and the cancer industry as a whole, his cancer treatments are now in phase 2 of clinical trials as found on the National Cancer Institute page. In the past, the cancer industry and the FDA have worked to destroy Dr. Burzynski. They went into his office and seized all his records and tried to have him shut down and put in jail. After all, his innovative ideas threatened conventional wisdom and the very cancer industry itself.

When Nicolaus Copernicus proved that the earth was not the center of the universe, he was opposed by conventional wisdom and the Church. Galileo was imprisoned for the rest of his life for agreeing with Copernicus and was accused of grave heresy. Galileo had gotten off lightly. Another Copernican, Giordano Bruno, had been prosecuted in Rome by the same Cardinal Bellarmine and on February 17, 1600, burned at the stake as a heretic.

Dr. Burzynski was vindicated of all charges after a 14 year battle. The courts have now forced the FDA to work with him as clinical trials on his protocol move forward. Here is the chronicle of his story. Click on the following link:

The Burzynski Saga

Dr. Burzynski And The Abuse Of The FDA

"The FDA 'protects' the big drug companies and are subsequently rewarded, and using the government's police powers they attack those who threaten the big drug companies.
People think that the FDA is protecting them. It isn't. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it is doing are as different as night and day."

Dr. Herbert Ley Former U.S. FDA Commissioner

Winning The War Against Depression

Everybody gets the blues now and then. President Abraham Lincoln suffered with and fought depression throughout his lifetime. However, his ability to cope with whatever depression afflicted him, especially late in life, was enormous. Using various means.... work, humor, fatalistic resignation, or even religious feelings... he generally did not allow the depression or melancholy to interfere with his work as President. He overcame this depressive aspect of his personality with a powerful inner strength and will. He once said:

"Remember in the depth and even the agony
of despondency, that very shortly you are to feel well again."

There are indications Lincoln took a medication for his hypochondriasis (depression) called blue mass. This was a commonly prescribed medication in the 19th century for ailments such as apoplexy, worms, tuberculosis, toothaches, constipation, and hypochondriasis (depression). Blue mass contained mercury and can lead to the neurobehavioral consequences of mercury poisoning. John Stuart said that Lincoln took blue mass "before he went to Washington and for five months while he was President."

Now, in the 21st century, we use Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). These would include drugs like Prozac (fluoxetine), Zoloft (sertraline), Paxil (paroxetine), Luvox (fluvoxamine) and Celaxa (citalopram). Doctors and Psychiatrists hand them out like candy. Over 23.1 million prescriptions for different forms of fluoxetine (Prozac) were filled in the United States in 2006. This makes it the third most prescribed antidepressant. The most prescribed is sertraline (Zoloft) and the second is Escitalopram (Lexapro) which is also an SSRI. Escitalopram is the S-stereoisomer (enantiomer) of the earlier Lundbeck drug citalopram (Celexa), hence the name escitalopram.

One of the things you should know about Prozac and other SSRI's is that it could take a whole month for the full benefits of the drug to take effect. Another thing you should know is that recent studies have led scientists to discover that taking SSRI's for depression might not be any better than if you took a placebo. In other words, you might be just as likely to get better by taking a sugar pill.

A paper published in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine last month looked at the trial results of fluoxetine (Prozac), paroxetine (Seroxat), venlafaxine (Effexor) and nefazodone (Serzone). "Using complete data sets (including unpublished data) and a substantially larger data set of this type than has been previously reported, we find the overall effect of new-generation antidepressant medication is below recommended criteria for clinical significance," they write.

After using the freedom of information rules, they obtained all of the data that was used in the clinical trials done by the drug companies. If you are a doctor, these are the ones your drug rep did not tell you about. They show the true and whole picture of the drugs effectiveness. The exception to the rule was that these drugs did seem to have a significant effect on those who were severely depressed. For every one else, it was no more effective than a placebo. Here is the article that references that study:

Prozac, used by 40m people, does not work say scientists

Now, let's look at some of the side effects of Prozac and the others. Make sure you ask your doctor or psychiatrist about these.

• The FDA requires all antidepressants, including fluoxetine, to carry a black box warning stating that antidepressants may increase the risk of suicide in persons younger than 25.
  


• nausea (22% vs 9% for placebo)
  


• insomnia (19% vs 10% for placebo)
  


• somnolence (12% vs 5% for placebo)
  


• anorexia (10% vs 3% for placebo)
  


• anxiety (12% vs 6% for placebo)
  


• nervousness (13% vs 8% for placebo)
  


• asthenia (11% vs 6% for placebo)
  


• tremor (9% vs 2% for placebo)
  


• rash or urticaria
  


• Akathisia or inner tension, restlessness
  


• Acute dystonia and tardive dyskinesia - movement disorders
  


• sexual dysfunction, anorgasmia, reduced libido and impotence.
  

Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceutical industry representative, told an FDA panel that she had influenced doctors by offering them free food, gifts and gimmicks to get access and then presented them with skillfully manipulated data. Olsen said she had a change of heart after her 20- year-old niece committed suicide following a withdrawal reaction from the antidepressant Paxil. She said her niece first tried to hang herself from a ceiling fan. When the fan broke, Olsen said, she doused herself in oil and set herself alight.

More than 1 million children and teens now receive SSRI prescriptions, estimates Julie Magno Zito, a psychiatric drug expert at the University of Maryland.

In May 1984, Germany’s regulatory agency (Bundesgesundheitsamt, BGA) rejected Prozac as “totally unsuitable for treating depression.” In July 1985, Eli Lilly’s own data analysis—from a pool of 1,427 patients—showed high incidence of adverse drug effects and evidence of drug-induced violence in some patients.

Remember the tragedy of the Columbine High School masacre? The shooter, Eric Harris, was taking Zoloft before he switched to Luvox. Three experts testified that Eric showed symptoms of being "Bipolar." According to the Physicians Desk Reference, antidepressants can induce mania & psychosis, especially in people who are 'bipolar'.

A few weeks ago, we also had a shooting in Illinois where a former student opened fire on and killed 6 people (including himself) at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Steve Kazmierczak was not a monster, according to friends. He was kind and gentle. He had stopped taking Prozac a few weeks before the shooting spree. According to a friend, it "made him feel like a zombie."

Click here to read hundreds of stories that document the connection between antidepressant drugs and violence.

So, what to do about depression? Why not try some other things before drugs enter into the picture. Why should they be the first thing that we try? Shouldn't they be the last thing after looking at how inneffective and dangerous they are?

According to Dr. Andrew Weil, a variety of lifestyle, dietary and psychotherapeutic interventions have a much better record of success against depression than these drugs have ever had. Serious depression is a medical problem that in many cases demands serious pharmaceutical treatment, but patients with mild or moderate depression would be much better served trying a prudent mix of exercise, diet and cognitive therapy.

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy, which teaches kids to change self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. It is about as effective as Prozac. Drugs should be reserved for the most severely depressed, who need therapy, too.



• Depressed people usually have low levels of vitamin D in their blood. Have it checked by asking your doctor to do a D25-hydroxy test. Click here to check out my post on vitamin D
  


• Gabriel Cousens, MD, in his very informative and helpful book, Depression-Free For Life: An All-Natural, 5-Step Plan to Reclaim Your Zest For Living, explained that chemicals called neurotransmitters relay nerve impulses throughout your body. These nerve impulses make up the communication system that your brain and nerves use to carry out many functions. (6)
  The neurotransmitters that seem to have the most impact on your moods are...
  serotonin
  dopamine
  noradrenaline (also called norepinephrine)
  glutamine
  gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA)
  endorphins

Your body produces these important chemicals from the nutrients you consume. Amino acids, vitamins, enzymes, minerals, fatty acids, proteins and carbohydrates are all needed.

• Catherine Carrigan, in Healing Depression: A Holistic Guide, listed ten common dietary substances that are most likely to contribute to depression. These depression diet substances include...
  1. Anything moldy, malted, or fermented. 2. Anything processed. 3. Anything dried or aged.4. Anything made with sugar or honey.5. Anything made with yeast.6. Any meat raised with antibiotics or steroids.7. Leftovers unless frozen.8. Alcoholic beverages, coffee, tea, chocolate, and colas.9. Food colorings, chemicals, preservatives, and additives.10. Tap water." (4, pp. 126-7)




• If you have been diagnosed with atypical depression, you might greatly benefit from learning about a mineral called chromium picolinate. Dr. Malcom McLeod, in his book "Lifting Depression, The Chromium Connection," discovers by "accident" that a nutrient deficiency (Chromium) is at the root of a glucose metabolism problem "insulin resistance" that can lead to a suite of health symptoms (above) that include atypical depression. The book outlines how a simple supplementation with Chromium Picolinate at the right dosage along with excerise and diet changes, lead to dramatic and complete relief for many people in as little as 2 days. Dr. McLeod chronicles the story of this discovery as he experiences the joy and surprise of many of his patients as they encounter relief from depression (and much more). Most of them report a dramatic elevation in mood, increased energy, reduced cravings for carbohydrates and vivid color in their dreams. One patient (Sarah) found that chromium picolinate relieved almost all her symptoms of PMS. She said, "Chromium eliminates my irritability, depression, hyper-sensitivity to light and noise, craving for sweets, cramps, and I'm able to work and be around people." Another patient found that chromium reduced their craving for alcohol.

Other blog entries that talk about dealing with depression in a natural way:

Alternative Medicine Help for Seasonal Depression

Ten Ways to better Cope with Depression