Something you need to be aware of concerning cancer . . .

How do you get good information about health care?

If you've been following me at all for the last year or two, you've probably noticed my growing disillusionment with a lot of medical practitioners. My experience tells me they are too focused on treatment of symptoms and nowhere near enough focused on causes. And so, while eliminating one symptom (and ignoring its cause), they create additional problems somewhere else in the body.

Well, this story, from an interview by Dr. Joseph Mercola with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez (both MDs, by the way!), takes the cake: The Cancer Treatment So Successful - Traditional Doctors SHUT it Down.

I urge you to download the transcript of the interview.

It wouldn't surprise me if the FDA were to come swooping in on Mercola for this kind of commentary.

Mercola introduces his article and interview with these comments:

[Dr. Gonzalez] didn't set out to treat cancer at first . . . let alone treat patients. His original plan was to be a basic science researcher at Sloan-Kettering; a teaching hospital for Cornell Medical College. He had a chance meeting with William Kelley, a controversial dentist who was one of the founders of nutritional typing. Dr. Kelley had been practicing alternative- and nutritional approaches for over two decades at the time, led him to begin a student project investigation of Kelley's work, in the summer of 1981.

"I started going through his records and even though I was just a second year medical student, I could see right away there were cases that were extraordinary," he says. "Patients with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer, metastatic breast cancer in the bone, metastatic colorectal cancer… who were alive 5, 10, 15 years later under Kelley's care with a nutritional approach."

This preliminary review led to a formal research study, which Dr. Gonzalez completed while doing his fellowship in cancer, immunology and bone marrow transplantation.

The "Impossible" Recoveries of Dr. Kelley's Cancer Patients

After going through thousands of Kelley's records, Dr. Gonzalez put together a monograph, divided into three sections:

1. Kelley’s theory
2. 50 cases of appropriately-diagnosed lethal cancer patients still alive five to 15 years after diagnosis, whose long-term survival was attributed to Kelley’s program
3. Patients Kelley had treated with pancreatic cancer between the years 1974 and 1982

According to Dr. Good, the president of Sloan-Kettering who had become Gonzalez' mentor, if Kelley could produce even one patient with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer who was alive 5-10 years later, it would be remarkable. They ultimately tracked down 22 of Kelley's cases. Ten of them met him once and didn't do the program after being dissuaded by family members or doctors who thought Kelley was a quack.

The average survival for that group was about 60 days.

A second group of seven patients who did the therapy partially and incompletely (again, dissuaded by well-intentioned but misguided family members or doctors), had an average survival of 300 days.

The third group consisting of five patients, who were appropriately diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and who completed the full program, had an average survival of eight and a half years! In Dr. Gonzalez' words, this was "just unheard of in medicine."

One of those patients included a woman diagnosed by the Mayo Clinic with stage four pancreatic cancer who had been given six months to live. She'd learned about Kelley's program through a local health food store. She completed his treatment and is still alive today, 29 years later.

The Truth about Medical Journals: Why Gonzalez's Book Was Never Published

However, despite—or rather because of—the remarkable success of the treatment, Gonzalez couldn't get his findings published.

"We tried to publish case reports in the medical journals; the whole book, parts of the book, individual case reports—with no success," he says.

This is an important point that many fail to realize.

Those of us who practice natural medicine are frequently criticized for not publishing our findings. My justification for that is that it's not going to be published anyway, and Dr. Gonzalez' anecdotal story confirms this view.

His mentor and supporter, Dr. Good, was one of the most published authors in the scientific literature at that point, with over 2,000 scientific articles to his name. He'd been nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, and yet he was refused because the findings were "too controversial," and flew in the face of conventional medical doctrine.

If the cream of the crop is refused, how does a general primary care physician get an article published?

He doesn't…

"Robert Good was at the top of his profession: President of Sloan-Kettering, father of modern immunology, and did the first bone marrow transplant in history. Yet, he couldn't get it published," Gonzalez says. "He couldn't even get a single case report published.

In fact, I have a letter from one of the editors, dated 1987, who wrote a blistering letter to Good saying "You've been boondoggled by a crazy quack guy. Don't you see this is all a fraud?"

It was just the most extraordinary, irrational letter... [Because] the patients' names were there, the copies of their pertinent medical records were there… Any of them could have called these patients, like Arlene Van Straten who, 29 years later, will talk to anyone… But no one cared. They wouldn't do it; they didn't believe it.

They couldn't believe it.

It was very disturbing to me because I say, "It is what it is." I come out of a very conventional research orientation, and it was astonishing to me—I had assistance; I had the president of Sloane-Kettering who couldn't get this thing published because it disagreed with the philosophy that was being promoted in medicine; that only chemotherapy, radiation, or immunotherapy can successfully treat cancer, even though the success rate was abysmal.

The idea that medical journals are these objective and unbiased repositories of the truths about science is total nonsense. Most of them are owned by the drug companies. They won't publish anything that disagrees with their philosophy."

The story only gets better from here. Names. Dates. Specific numbers. Even phone numbers and book titles. Who's telling the truth? Who's lying? I'll let you read the details for yourself.

Yipes!

Expensive urine

I thought this cartoon was another good response to the question I raised in my post a few days ago: Why do Americans eat junk food?

Mike Adams of www.NaturalNews.com comments that critics of proponents of organic foods, vitamin supplements, herbs and so forth often say that investments in such things only give people "expensive urine."

When it comes to really expensive urine, however, doctors fail to look at the cost of all those pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy drugs they're shoving down the throats of patients. Those drugs are excreted through the urine, too, and when you add up the cost of those (just the financial cost, not even counting the cost in devastating side effects), they far outweigh the cost of eating healthy foods and taking supporting supplements.

If you really want expensive urine, go see a doctor. Ten visits later, you might find yourself on ten prescription drugs. Your body will be a wreck, your mind will be half-lost, and you'll be peeing away twenty bucks in medications every time you visit the restroom.

And guess what? All those medications end up in the environment. Trace amounts of antidepressant drugs are already showing up in the public water supplies in cities around the world. Pharmaceuticals, it seems, not only lead to expensive urine, they also lead to devastating environmental consequences such as fish producing dual sex organs.

Adams' comment about finding yourself on ten prescription drugs reminds me of the doctor's letter to Dr. Jonathan Wright that I quoted about a month ago. If you don't remember, he began his letter by saying, "Last week, I saw a 55-year-old woman who is very, very sick due to insurance-covered treatment with patent medicines." --And he then lists the ailments that are close to killing her, one ailment after the other brought about by the symptom-only "fixes" prescribed by the woman's primary care physician.

Health insurance? Or disease and accident insurance?

A couple of months ago, Dr. Jonathan V. Wright featured a couple of articles in his newsletter that spoke to some of the issues that I've been slowly discovering through experience and sorting through in my mind.

In his lead article, Wright suggests we need to take a different approach to health insurance.

[W]hat's generally called "health insurance" really isn't about being healthy at all. It's about being able to pay for doctors, hospitals, and patent medicines--all of which are very expensive--just in case we get sick, or are in an accident. A more accurate term for this kind of insurance is "disease and accident insurance."

Real health insurance helps insure that we stay healthy! Real health insurance isn't cheap, but it's a lot less expensive than "disease and accident insurance." Real health insurance includes an excellent diet, appropriate exercise, a positive mental attitude, getting enough sleep, and avoidance of toxins, including tobacco and other addictive substances, and no more than a little alcohol.

But the most commonly consumed toxins--herbicides, pesticides, other agricultural and food chemicals, as well as artificial flavorings and preservatives--are somehow regarded as too costly to avoid.

Wright continues with a powerful argument for (doing what Sarita and I have begun to do in the last several months) avoiding conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables and eating organic instead. (See The Organic Center's report about the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods (19.5MB PDF) or, at least, the Executive Summary (1.8MB PDF).)

Are organics expensive? Oh, yes! But are they as expensive as the kinds of issues that the SAD (Standard American Diet) is creating in so many of us, the problems associated with obesity and inflammation and heart disease and diabetes? I don't think so.

On the other hand, as numerous people have pointed out, the federal government of these United States subsidizes the lousy foods (with our tax money) and then makes us pay full boat for the good stuff. (More about that subject in a later post.)

Wright concludes his article with the words,

While it's very important for optimal health to avoid as many herbicides, pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals, it's also now well established that organically grown foods have not only higher levels of many important nutrients, but a wider, more diverse set of nutrients than conventionally grown foods.

Now that's really "health insurance"! Why not buy it for your family?

A couple of pages later, Wright then quotes a letter he received from a doctor (MD) who has been moving more and more toward a "natural" or "naturopathic" approach to medicine.

He wrote to Wright with the following story about "what I see in practice much too often."

I thought, "Good grief! This is my experience!"

"Dear Dr. Wright," he began,

Sometimes it is a curse to have generous health insurance.

Last week, I saw a 55-year-old woman who is very, very sick due to insurance-covered treatment with patent medicines.

Ten years ago she had her gallbladder removed. She never was told about needing to take bile salts with oily meals from then on so she'd absorb lipid-soluble vitamins and other nutrients. [I have to ask my daughter, who just had her gallbladder removed, whether she has been told any such thing. --JAH]

Eight years ago she was said to have "gastro-esophageal reflux disease" (GERD) and has taken a proton pump inhibitor ever since to suppress her stomach acid. Nobody ever told her that stomach acid helps break minerals from their matrix (for absorption), helps break down proteins into amino acids, and keeps the stomach free of intestinal bacteria. [Yeah. No one mentioned that when my doctor casually prescribed Famotidine for my gastric reflux. Oh, yes! It gave me almost immediate relief from a number of problems for which I had not realized I could enjoy relief. Wonderful! . . . Until I started reading about the downsides of this approach to acid reflux. --JAH]

Seven years ago she was diagnosed with adult onset diabetes mellitus (AODM), hypertension, and hyperlipidemia and was put onto an insulin pump (her condition was too brittle for anything else), a statin to lower cholesterol, and strong anti-hypertensive drugs. She started to get muscle aches, cramps, and very poor endurance. Nobody told her that statins interfere with the body's ability to make Co-Enzyme Q₁₀, nor did they put her on a healthy daily dose of Co-Enzyme Q₁₀. [Gee! Is this surprising? I had the same experience. "You've got elevated cholesterol. Let's put you on a statin." --Now that particular doctor also put me on CoQ₁₀, but he never explained that the two were related, nor that it might be possible to lower overall cholesterol and rebalance it through non-pharmaceutical means. --JAH]

Five years ago she started to get peripheral neuropathy (pain with numbness) and skin lesions, which she was told were of unknown cause. ("You have dry skin. Here, rub on this emollient cream.") More drugs for neuropathic pain.

Three years ago she was diagnosed with monoclonal gammopathy of unknown significance ("MGUS"; overproduction of gamma-globulin from a single line of blood cells). Old Human tactic: if you don't know what it is, put a name on it to make it less scary.

Two years ago she was diagnosed with severe anxiety, so she was given Xanax and other psychotropics. . . .

Naturally, with all of this, her liver enzymes are up, and so is her creatinine (indicating early kidney failure)!

She is postmenopausal, but never has been tested, never been put on bio-identical hormone replacement. She can't sleep, of course, so there goes another patent medicine into the mix. . . .

Incredibly, the list of ailments and failed (and failing) pharmaceutical "fixes" continues!

Wright says this is a good description of "what 'great insurance coverage' can do to good health. It's a tragic description of how 'health insurance' can do exactly the opposite, actually insuring a more rapid progression of illness, as well as allowing disease to proceed because patent medicines never, ever address causes, but just cover up symptoms for a variable period of time."

How do you get off the conveyor belt of declining health? Wright suggests eating healthy foods and pursuing naturopathically oriented doctors like those you'll find through the American College for Advancement in Medicine, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, or the International College of Integrative Medicine. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to read a well-researched and heavily referenced newsletter like the one Wright publishes.