The World Health Organization has estimated there will be more than 10 million documented new cases of cancer next year. Since 1971, according to official figures, over $ 1 trillion has been spent on conventional cancer research and treatment in the US. The current cost is at least $110 billion a year---over 10% of all US medical expenditures, and 2% of the entire GNP. Despite, or perhaps because of, these unprecedented costs, the cancer establishment remains largely closed to most truly independent, innovative treatments. A 1986 report in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed progress against cancer in the US from 1950 to 1982. “The main conclusion   we draw is that some 35 years of intense effort focused largely on improving treatment must be judged a qualified failure”. The report further concluded,  “ we are losing the war against cancer.”

Clearly, there are appropriate conventional treatments that seem able to remove the immediate treat to life. Surgery, Chemotherapy, and radiation are used with some degree of success in killing cancerous tissue. However, that degree of success must be weighed against the possible side effects and after effects that are to be expected. For a period of time in the mid-1070s, Nobel laureate James Watson, one of the world’s most respected biologists, repeatedly called the war on cancer scientifically bankrupt, therapeutically ineffective and wasteful.

Patients with advanced disease are often told their treatment will do more good than it is likely to, and chemotherapy is presented as more effective (and less toxic) than it really is.

The side effects of chemotherapy are routinely understated. Proof of this is the discrepancy between what oncologists tell patients to do, and what oncologist themselves do (or would do) if they have cancer. Do they believe in their own treatments so much that they would take it themselves? When  celebrated chemotherapist Dr. Kettering found out he had advanced cancer, he told his colleagues, “Do anything you want-but no chemotherapy!” And when Dr. Kettering’s mother got cancer, she was sent to Germany for unconventional treatment. Further proof in conventional medicine’s own lack of belief in some forms of oncology was a shown in 1986 when McGill Cancer scientist sent a questionnaire to 118 doctors who treated cancer. All of them were affiliated with the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto or with the Ontario Cancer Research and treatment foundation, which operates seven cancer clinics. Seventy-four percent of specialist would not consent to chemotherapy. The reason they gave: the ineffectiveness of chemotherapy and its unacceptable degree of toxicity.

Generally, patients treated with chemotherapy have good initial results, but this results in a poorer long-term prognosis.  The medical establishment’s open criticism of integrative or alternative medicine is said to be its lack of research, specifically the holy grail of randomized, controlled trials (RTC). This criticism is largely untrue, although, it is true there are numerous unsubstantiated therapies in the alternative medicine arena. Nonetheless, there is a lot of research on many integrative therapies; however, there is a bias against them. For instance, much of the research published on these therapies occurs outside the US, where alternative therapies are more accepted. Furthermore, there is a financial disincentive against funding such studies, since most natural therapies cannot be patented and are there fore not attractive to the pharmaceutical companies which fund a significant portion of all US research.

Chemotherapy is a dose-limiting treatment. That means at a certain point doctors have to stop giving it, or it will kill the patient. Guyton’s Textbook on Medical Physiology (standard in many medical schools) states: “The goal of chemotherapy is to kill the cancer, before it (chemotherapy) kills the patient”. Furthermore, some chemotherapy agents actually cause cancer. The International Agency for Research on cancer (IARC) ha identified 20 single chemo agents or regiments which cause cancer in humans, and 50 more which are suspect. For example, one study showed that survivors of ovarian cancer treated with chemotherapy have 100 times higher incidence of leukemia. This phenomenon is called “secondary cancers” which are caused by chemotherapy employed to treat the “primary cancer”, Chemotherapy can also promote the resistance of tumors to treatment and the occurrence of metastasis. It can also suppress the immune system, damage the vascular system, and act directly in a thoroughly unpredictable way on tumor cells.

Nutrition and Colon Cancer

Long-term use of multi-vitamins may reduce the risk of colon cancer by 50%. Consumption of 200 IU of vitamin E per day may reduce the risk by 57%. A new study published in the October 1997 Journal of Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers and prevention shows there is a significant relationship between supplemental use of vitamins A, C and E, folic acid, and calcium and lower colon cancer rates. Another study, published in the Journal of Natural Medicine in 1997, found vitamin E enhanced the cancer-fighting effects of 5-FU, a chemotherapy drug regarded as the most effective treatment against colorectal cancer.

The Tenets of Natural Medicine

Biogenesis: Biogenesis is the natural law that states, “Only life can beget life”. No unloving thing can create a living thing.  All of “life” contains a vitalistic component, an intelligence which promotes and sustains the chain and cycle of life. If you remove this vitalistic component or try to replace it with synthetic substitutes, that cycle begins to break down.

First Do No Harm (Latin: Primum non nocere): Use only therapies and interventions that are safe and effective. The Healing Power of Nature (Latin: Vis medicatrix naturae): the human body possesses and inherent ability to spring back. A D.D. Palmer, the founder of chiropractic said, “the body needs no help in healing, just no interference”.

The Physician as Teacher (Latin: Docere): The physician’s major role is to educate, empower, and motivate patients to take responsibility for their own health. Creating a healthy cooperative relationship with the patient has strong therapeutic value.