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Cancer - The Missing Point by: Dr Randy Wysong If one were to judge by television advertising and news reports, it would seem that the 'war on cancer'¯ is all but won. What are the weapons being heralded? Drugs, research, tests and exams. They miss the point. 'Prevention'¯ is promoted as meaning catching the disease early. Really. That also misses the point. Is it 'prevention'¯ if you call 911 when you come home and see smoke billowing from all your windows? Do we just live with a carpe diem philosophy and wait for the doctor to tell us we have a lump in our breast or a swollen nodular prostate? Is the cause of cancer a lack of one of the new cancer drugs? Is the cause of cancer really unknown, requiring endless research? First, let me put to rest the propaganda that the war is being won. Since President Nixon declared the war (1971) and after over 200 billion dollars have been spent on research (remember, one billion is a thousand million), more Americans will die of cancer in the next 14 months than have died in all U.S. wars ever fought combined! (Where are the protest marches?) Soon, cancer will overtake heart disease as the number one killer. Decades ago, early in the war, there were some dramatic successes such as with Hodgkin's disease and some forms of childhood leukemia. There can be little doubt that debunking (surgical removal) of large cancers brings benefits. But the big killers such as colorectal, lung, prostate and breast cancer remain as threatening as ever. Survival gains are measured primarily in additional months (not years) added to life, not in cures. The placebo effect is by and large ignored. (People getting a sugar pill placebo in cancer studies have been known to lose their hair and some actually cure themselves by simply thinking they will be cured.) A percentage of people can experience remissions spontaneously and from simple lifestyle adjustments, but the cancer therapy is always credited with the cure. (Investigations, 'Placebo Learning: The Placebo Effect as a Conditioned Response,' 1985; 2(1):23. O'Regan B, et al. 1993. Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography. Sausalito, CA. Talbot M. 1991. The Holographic Universe. New York. Harper Collins Publishers. Townsend Letter, 2004; 251:32-3.) Statistics can always be massaged to create the result desired. This practice is rampant in cancer research. Animal models (euphemism for real living and feeling caged creatures being tortured by the millions) do not prove effectiveness across species boundaries to humans. Neither do laboratory cell lines. That's why all the 'breakthroughs' based on tumor shrinkage never pan out. For-profit drug companies and National Cancer Institute grant-based research ignore metastases (the spreading cells of cancer through the body) in their positive reports. Instead they highlight and focus on more easily obtained lab results, such as 'tumor shrinkage,'¯ and on easily manipulated clinical data such as 'five-year survival.' Twelve new 'improved' drugs introduced in Europe between 1995 and 2000 were no better than the drugs they replaced. But the prices were all higher, in one instance by a factor of 350 times. One new 'revolutionary' drug, Erbitux found to 'shrink' tumors but not extend the lives of patients at all costs $'2
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