Let’s hope so. Time and again I have used the image of a WWI battlefield as a totem for what it means to be “at war” with cancer. Lots of dead soldiers, of course. But it’s always the battlefield that comes off worst.
The soldiers are our cells; the battlefield is our body. Remember that image when you hear of Nixon’s “war on cancer” being touted around.
What is needed is smarter cancer treatments, not more deadly “killer” treatments. We need ingenuity, not violence. The old idea of blast-it-to-hell is not just wrong, it’s damnably wrong; in fact quite wicked and lazy.
That’s what has got oncologists a bad name. Belt away with chemo or radiation, pocket the money and then (patient died), “Next!”
But as I keep saying—and this puts me out of step with propaganda-based holistic thinkers (most of which have NEVER treated cancer patients!)—there are good doctors and researchers out there, worrying at the problem and working away from the orthodox side of the fence. Decent people.
And they are getting results.
Even allowing for the usual massaging of figures, there is no doubt that orthodoxy has, in the main, understood that working WITH Nature and WITH the immune system is the only way that makes sense.
A new report, the AACR Cancer Progress Report 2011, released this month by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), gives some cause for optimism.
From 1990 to 2007, death rates for all cancers combined dropped 22% for men and 14% for women, resulting in nearly 900,000 fewer deaths during that time, according to the report.
Today, more than 68% of adults live five years or more after being diagnosed, up from 50% in 1975. The five-year survival rate for all childhood cancers combined is 80%, compared to 52% in 1975.
There are about 12 million cancer survivors living in the United States; 15% of them were diagnosed 20 or more years ago.
So don’t forget that, when you are reading the latest cancer “testimonial” about an unproven treatment. There are MILLIONS of testimonials for orthodox therapy you never get to hear about.
Where the report falls down—and what we can never know—is how much of this improvement comes from people adopting alternative treatments and methods. It’s pure speculation to say a few, some or very many. We just don’t know, honestly.
But remember these are official figures, so it covers people in the system. Something is working. There are real improvements, not just fake statistics.
One of the biggest successes is very real: breast cancer deaths fell about 28% from 1990 to 2006. It wasn’t caused by the introduction of a new treatment, that’s for sure. So what was it? We think that is due to women stopping HRT such as Premarin in droves.
Colorectal deaths have fallen 28% in women and 33% in men; deaths from leukemia have fallen nearly 15% in women and 10% in men; and deaths from stomach cancer have fallen 34% in women and 43% in men.
Many more men are also surviving prostate cancer, with death rates falling 39%.
Now I have written elsewhere that a 5-year survival rate is not all that exciting. I wouldn’t consider it a “success” if the patient died 5½ years after my treatment.
But the important thing is the trend. As I said, it does represent significant changes in the way orthodoxy looks at overcoming cancer. There is a better understanding of how to harness the immune system to fight the cancer; more targeted drugs that interfere with the cancer while leaving healthy cells alone; and treatments that are based on specific genetic characteristics of the cancer.
According to co-chair of the report Dr. Judy Garber, president of the AACR and director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston: many of the advances in treating cancer stem from molecular biology, which is unlocking the genetics of tumors that has led to an “explosion of knowledge” about how cancer grows.
Molecular biology is revealing a great deal about what makes cancer tick and, as a result, we learned that cancer is fundamentally a set of genetic diseases. Not that it’s inherited, but the problems that make cancer cells become cancer cells instead of normal cells is that their genes change.
Genes direct cells to divide or when not to, and when to die (so-called apoptosis). Cancer is an out-of-control process in which errors in the genes causes cells to continue to divide rather than to die, or to leave the place where they’re growing and to grow new colonies elsewhere: metastasic spread.
Understanding which genes are driving the errors inside the cell has led to the development of more targeted treatments. This working WITH Nature can only be an improvement.
The really dismal killers, like pancreatic cancer, ovarian and lung cancer are most deadly because they are so late in revealing themselves, often riddling the entire body with metastases before the patient is diagnosed. Figures for recovery remain desperately low.
If you have pancreatic cancer one of the very few proven successes is Beard’s enzyme therapy. It was later re-released by William Donald Kelley DDS and is currently available from Nicholas Gonzalez, who did some pioneer research work with this therapy that has stood the test of time.
I’ve described for you, in great detail, many alternative therapies, such as the Kelley/Beard Method. A sweeping review of alternative therapies that work (and some of those that don’t) is to be found in my new “Cancer Research Secrets”.
You can learn more and get yourself a copy here:
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