"War on Cancer" 30 Yr Failure
Ralph Moss | 15.02.2002 18:36
There have been at least a dozen very encouraging cancer treatments in the last seventy years. The Rife frequency machine, Laetrile, Hoxsey, Antineoplastons, Coley’s Toxins, Glyoxylide, Hydrazine Sulfate, Krebiozen, Immuno-Augmentative Therapy, Dr. Max Gerson’s Diet, to name a few. They all have two things in common. The people advocating the therapy are branded charlatans or quacks and the treatment is denounced as worthless by scientists who have been selling us out for generations.
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The author of the article below, Ralph Moss, has been documenting this for over 20 years. His life was changed in the late 1970's when he exposed the cover-up by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. They suppressed the benefits of Laetrile/amygdalin in fighting cancer. Why would they do this you may ask? If an effective cancer treatment was found in nature, it would spell economic disaster for the cancer indu$try.
Also see my Why would doctors suppress an effective cancer treatment section
Thank you. Gavin Phillips
Exposing the Cancer Racket
30th Anniversary of the War on Cancer
By Ralph Moss (Ph.D)
December 31, 2001 marked the 30th anniversary of the "War on Cancer." In 1971, President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, launching a multi-billion dollar assault on the dread disease. Congress designated this Act "a national crusade to be accomplished by 1976 in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of our country." Well, the Bicentennial came and went and cancer is still with us. In 1962, there were 278,000 deaths from cancer in the US. By 1982, that was 433,000. This year it reached 553,400. There is no victory in sight.
Why so little progress? Health authorities neglect everything but the toxic drug approach. Prevention is discredited, and alternative medicine has largely been placated. The media, so aggressive in other matters, is a pussycat when it comes to investigating cancer. Nearly everyone dances to the tune of "Big Pharma."
Magazine Covers (above) Each year, there is an orgy of false expectations about cures. In May, the FDA approved a drug called Gleevec (STI-571) as a treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). The media went wild. Barron's headlined: "Investing in Health, Curing Cancer!" It claimed "we are finally winning the war." The New York Times announced "the long- awaited payoff from decades of research into the molecular biology of cancer." Time went over the top. Its May 28, 2001 cover demanded,"Is this the breakthrough we've been waiting for?" The word "CANCER" was two inches high! It referred to "a magic pill, a miracle breakthrough." Not surprisingly, Gleevec flew off the shelves, at a cost per person of $30,000 per year. Although CML affects only 0.3 percent of all cancer patients, every kind of patient wanted this "miracle." You can hardly blame them. (View photo above, right)
But where's Gleevec now? At a recent symposium in New York researchers quietly voiced their growing skepticism. "There are provocative datain CML patients showing these are highly resistant to Gleevec," said Connie J. Eaves, PhD of British Columbia. "Stem cells in CML may not be responsive to this agent at all. We are completely swept away by responses that may not have very much to do with cure at all."
Rudiger Hehlmann, MD of Heidelberg, Germany, agreed. He told researchers to remember that there are no survival data for the use of this drug yet, except for patients in blast crisis. "Euphoria is a bad advisor in treatment," he added, sardonically.
John Goldman, MD, chief of hematology at Hammersmith Hospital, London, said Gleevec as a single agent will not even cure the majority of CML patients. "We do not know what the basis for resistance is. It may be acquired, or the disease may already be resistant before the drug is used."
"When Gleevec first came on the scene," added Richard T. Silver, MD of Presbyterian Hospital, NYC, it seemed that the question of treating CML was almost all solved. "But in the last year we have all begun to appreciate how much we have to learn about how to use this agent."
At the same time, critics were warned that they'd better get on the Gleevec bandwagon. "Those who don't get on it are going to be run over by it," said one speaker. (All these quotes come from a trade magazine, Oncology Times, and were not intended for public consumption.)
By next year, Gleevec may have gone the way of interferon, interleukin, Endostatin, and a host of other seven day wonders. The leaders of the cancer war may be on to some other miracle drug. At some point, the public will have to stand up and say, "Enough!" Now might be a good time, since the NCI has a new director. It is time for the "war on cancer" to focus on prevention and the best complementary and alternative treatments. Such approaches may not make a pile of money for the big drug companies, but they hold a great deal more promise for cancer patients.
Ralph Moss