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Showing posts with label Radiotherapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Radiotherapy. Show all posts

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Hi-tech radiotherapy 'not only answer'





Radiotherapy has wrongly been "in the shadows" of cancer drugs and chemotherapy, say those who use it to treat patients.

In this week's Scrubbing Up, Richard Evans, CEO of the Society and College of Radiographers, says this is beginning to change - but that there has been too much focus on one hi-tech version, which won't be right for all.

Amongst the radiotherapy community, there has long been the view that the pharmaceutical companies are enviably effective in publicising and marketing their cancer drugs, even those with marginal benefit.

There is also concern that this has had a restraining effect on the ability of radiotherapy to achieve the prominence it deserves, both within the public perception and in terms of political focus.

However, all of this seems to have changed with the emergence of new technology known as Sterotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SABR) and of one specific device to deliver it: the Cyberknife.

'Righteous indignation'

The goal of all radiotherapy is to deliver a lethal dose of radiation to the cancer cells, whilst minimising damage to normal, healthy body tissues.

What SABR can do is to achieve this in some parts of the body that previously would have presented too much risk to those healthy organs. Hard to treat cancers can, in some cases, now be effectively treated.

There are several excellent machines capable of giving SABR treatments.

The particular success of the Cyberknife is that its promoters have overcome the constraints of poor perception of radiotherapy and have succeeded in making the product known to politicians, the media and public alike.

This has been so successfully done that the Cyberknife phenomenon is beginning to take on characteristics similar to a pharmaceutical campaign.

There have been on-line petitions demanding access to Cyberknife for all cancer patients; politicians apparently believing that they have a duty to see Cyberknife installed in their local cancer centre; the media carrying pages of righteous indignation over the lack of "life-saving Cyberknife treatment" and consequently people fighting cancer and their families caught up in the frenzy.

Just as radiotherapy receives something approaching appropriate publicity, there are real worries that it is the "wrong type" of publicity.

The fact is that, despite its brilliance, Cyberknife is simply not the best machine to treat the vast majority of people that need radiotherapy.

No one believes that you need to have a heart surgeon to operate on your bunions.

In the same way, SABR (including Cyberknife) is best employed in specialist centres where there is appropriate expertise and support.

'Genuine danger'

Of course, every patient that may benefit from SABR should be able to receive it. However, this does not mean that there has to be a grossly under-used expensive Cyberknife in every radiotherapy centre.

With many radiotherapy machines reaching the end of their useful lives, it has to be folly to believe that replacement should be with anything other than the best equipment to treat the largest numbers of people.

It has been estimated that, in the UK, up to two people in every six who need radiotherapy still do not receive it.

There is a genuine danger that the focus on Cyberknife is causing a distraction that may slow the progress that is being made to close the gap.

Nevertheless, it is not too late to see the enthusiasm in Cyberknife as an opportunity rather than a threat.

After all, it should not be too far-fetched to believe that everyone really wants the same things.

Clinicians, patients, policy makers, carers, equipment manufacturers, pressure groups, charities, councillors. All want to see people with cancer receive the best possible care.

We must be able to agree what is best practice, separate from commercial interest.

This means ensuring wide access to radiotherapy for all those currently missing out and SABR for those who would benefit. It does not mean SABR in every radiotherapy department.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19517216

Sunday, 6 May 2012

Cancer Treatments

Hope for cancer
ART OF HEALING
By DR AMIR FARID ISAHAK

Sunday May 3, 2009


A look at some cancer treatment methods that have yet to be proveBy clinical studies.


CANCER will always be a hot topic in health circles because the problem is increasing in magnitude, and we don’t seem to have satisfactory answers.

In the last two weeks, there were two articles in the star ( Supplements and cancer, Fit4Life, Sunday, April 19 and What’s up, doc?, Fit4Life, Sunday, April 26, 2009.) that reminded readers that there is insufficient evidence to rely on supplements to prevent cancer. The only proven effective ways are to stop smoking if you are a smoker, and to have vaccinations for hepatitis B (men and women) and cervical cancer (girls before becoming sexually active).

In the past, I have reported on new methods of treating cancer (eg the cytotron magnetic field therapy), which elicited some unfriendly comments from several oncologists who accused me of promoting unproven methods.

To avoid controversy, let me emphasise that what I would like to share with you today include some methods which are yet to be proven by clinical studies, but which offer hope for the future, and hope for the present for those who have advanced or terminal cancers after current proven methods failed to help or cure them. Some of these methods are already being utilised in cancer centres around the world and if proven effective, will hopefully be made available here soon; while others, even if proven, may not be offered here because of ethical reasons (eg the use of embryonic stem cells or their extracts).

The fruits of medical research carried out in non-English speaking countries often do not reach us promptly. Sometimes new methods tried in clinics or medical centres not affiliated to any university or research centre only become known to us through word of mouth. I hope this information, which I gathered from China and Ukraine, may be useful, especially to those with advanced cancer who have nothing else to hope from conventional methods.

Many Malaysians with advanced cancer have already gone to some cancer centres in China to avail themselves of these treatments. I have reviewed some of their reports and am impressed with the results. Some are in remission even though conventional treatment failed to destroy their cancers. One patient is a Malaysian lady with breast cancer that had spread to her pelvic bones and spine. A post-treatment PET scan showed that all the cancer primary and secondaries are gone.

It is too early to pronounce them as “cured” because we have to wait for five years of non-recurrence.

The individual methods may not be new, but the novel way these centres combine the various methods to defeat the cancer is probably the reason they succeeded where others failed.

As the treatments are extremely expensive, only those with advanced cancers and deep wallets have made the journey. I hope that as the treatments become more acceptable, the costs will come down and be accessible to more patients. It will be best, if the methods are proven effective as these early results indicate, that the treatments are made available here.

Chemoembolisation

This method is already in use in many countries, especially in treating liver cancer, but a cancer centre in GuangZhou, China, is using this to treat many types of cancer. Chemoembolisation involves the injection of one or more cancer drugs directly into the blood vessels directly nourishing the cancer tumour. This allows high concentration of drugs to be sent to the tumour without poisoning the rest of the body.

This centre uses combination chemotherapy to attack single or multiple tumours, and this technique also kills the cancer cells that may have spread nearby beyond the border of the tumour. These cells, if they survive, would result in “local recurrence” of the tumour after the primary growth is removed. However, this method is not very effective if the tumour is large, and will have to be repeated at intervals. This is the first step before targeting the destruction of the main tumour mass.

RAPI

This stands for Radio-Active Particle Implant, which is a form of brachytherapy. Using computer-guided imaging, small titanium (or other inert metals) capsules containing radioactive isotopes appropriate for the cancer-type are implanted into the tumour mass to completely eliminate the tumour.

Again, if the tumour is large, repeated implantations will be necessary. Brachytherapy is already widely used throughout the world. In this centre, it is done as part of a multi-step treatment protocol.

HIFU

If RAPI is not suitable for the patients, then High-Intensity Focussed Ultrasound is used to kill tumour cancer cells using heat generated by ultrasound. This method is increasingly being utilised in cancer therapy because it is non-invasive.

Whole body cancer cell clearance

This is the most difficult part of cancer therapy. Too often we know of cancer patients who have had their primary tumours successfully removed, including a wide margin of surrounding tissues (and often the whole breast in the case of breast cancer) only to have the cancer resurface some time later. The standard treatment for the prevention of local recurrence is by radiotherapy, and that of distant metastases is by chemotherapy. For certain cancers, anti-hormone therapy and immune modulators may be employed.

Below are several novel methods employed in some hospitals in China, and possibly elsewhere too.

Lymphocyte/NK cell transfusion

In this method, compatible blood from the closest relatives (parents, siblings) are collected and the lymphocytes are isolated. The NK (Natural Killer) cells, which are the body’s main cancer-fighting cells, are isolated, and the NK-rich fraction is transfused into the patient. This can be repeated at intervals.

Nano transfusion

Using nano-technology, it is possible to deliver minute radioactive atoms as well as chemotherapy molecules to cancer cells throughout the body, with minimal harm to normal cells. The radioactive isotope (eg strontium 89) and chemo-drug molecule are attached to iron atoms that are rapidly taken up by metastatic cancer cells. In this way cancer cells marauding in the body far away from their origin, including those that are undetectable by current tests, can be killed. The three-in-one (iron, isotope, chemo-drug) bullet is transfused as per normal fluid transfusion.

Maturation Factors (MF)

Cancer cells grow and multiply without proper differentiation or maturation. Differentiation refers to the process of becoming specific cell-types with specific functions. Maturation refers to undergoing a process of fully acquiring the ability to perform the specified function of that particular cell-type.
For example, the cells lining the uterus have a specific function of preparing for and supporting a pregnancy. In the menstruating young woman, they undergo a maturation cycle that makes them fully prepared to support the early embryo which has implanted. If there is no pregnancy, they die, and new cells repeat the cycle.

Proper differentiation and maturation are determined by genes, maturation and growth factors, hormones and nutrients. Infections, drugs and chemicals may interfere at any stage.

The current understanding about cancer is that cancerous stem cells are probably the real culprit we should go after. Other stem cells can replicate ad infinitum because they always produce one copy of themselves at each division, while the other cell begins the process of differentiation and maturation. The trouble with cancer stem cells is that they divide into two cells that do not differentiate, and do not mature. Thus they have abnormal behaviour, including having unstoppable growth, and being locally and distantly invasive.

Maturation factors are substances that hasten the differentiation and maturation process of young, new cells. When applied to cancer cells, they have been found to cause some differentiation and maturation of the cancer cells. They become less aggressive, with less local invasion and metastasis. With continued treatment, progressive maturation of succeeding generations means the cells lose their ability to multiply indefinitely, and will die through the normal process called apoptosis (programmed cell-death).

This therapy is also called “taming” of cancer because the cancer cells are not killed by the treatment, but are “tamed” into becoming less harmful, or even harmless, until they die naturally. If you remember, cytotron cancer therapy also does not kill the cancer cells directly, but stop their ability to divide until they die naturally. While cytotron therapy is best for localised tumours, MF can be injected to tame tumours in the entire body.

At present, the source for MF used is Ukraine, because the best source is embryonic stem cells (ESC), and most countries still ban ESC research due to ethical reasons. MF is actually a combination of many known growth factors, and possibly many yet to be identified factors present in the embryonic stem cells.

Please be reminded that some of the above is not yet proven therapy, but it offers hope for those who are desperate, and who can afford it.

I am sure there are many more exciting therapies for cancer and other diseases out there that we have yet to discover. If you know of any, please let me know and I will do my research on them, and if justified, will share the information in this column.

http://thestar.com.my/health/story.asp?file=/2009/5/3/health/3810234&sec=health

Monday, 12 December 2011

Latest Technology to treat Brain Tumour

The Ferrari of cancer treatments: New radiotherapy machine which can destroy brain tumours... and even restore sight

By Sophie Goodchild

Last updated at 1:17 AM on 11th December 2011



Oh boy: Cancer paitent Helen Lau with Mylo, the son she thought she may never see
Oh boy: Cancer paitent Helen Lau with Mylo, the son she thought she may never see


The room is dark and silent. Out of the blackness, two vivid green laser lines converge across the masked face of a figure lying motionless on a bed. Above her, a steel arm whirrs into life, rotating in choreographed movements around her head.

It could be a scene from a sci-fi film – but, in fact, we are in a radiotherapy suite at University College London Hospitals.

The green cross marks the spot where surgeons will target beams of radiation they hope will destroy the brain tumour that is causing the patient, Helen Lau, to go blind. The blue mask, with only a small mouth hole, is attached at the back to the bed – its function is to stop Helen moving. Any slip and the high-energy X-rays would plough into healthy brain tissue.

Within a couple of minutes, the machine stops moving and the treatment is over. Helen, 40, is helped off the bed and sips a cup of tea before going home with her partner Mick, 39, a telecoms engineer, and 18-month-old son Mylo.

The marketing manager from Luton is one of the first Britons to benefit from a state-of-the-art form of radiotherapy being hailed as the Ferrari of cancer treatments. The pioneering procedure targets tumours in just two minutes – five times faster than existing radiotherapy and with pinpoint accuracy. The number of treatment visits is reduced dramatically because it delivers a large dose of radiation quickly, without damaging healthy tissue around the tumour.

Until now, radiotherapy patients had to endure a daily 25-minute session or longer. Helen’s treatment involved just two minutes, five days a week for six weeks. Today was her final treatment.

‘All you hear is the whirring of the machine,’ says Helen later. ‘Otherwise it’s completely silent and you don’t feel anything. I did feel really tired after I’d finished the treatment sessions and a bit run down. But now I feel fine.’

The machine, called TrueBeam, is billed as the fastest and most accurate of its kind in the world for destroying cancer. It brings new hope to thousands of patients, especially those with deep- seated tumours.

UCLH has successfully treated 20 patients since TrueBeam was installed this September.

As well as destroying brain tumours, it can be used to stop other head, neck and lung cancers spreading. Cancer expert Dr Naomi Fersht describes TrueBeam as ‘cutting-edge radiotherapy’.

The consultant clinical oncologist at UCLH says: ‘This machine delivers radiation more effectively. The more precise and accurate you are, the more you can increase the dose.’

Radiotherapy has to be aimed precisely. Even the slightest movement – such as the patient breathing – increases the risk of errors.

Helen was six weeks pregnant when doctors discovered a tumour in her brain in October 2009. Although benign, the tumour was growing near her pituitary gland at the base of the brain and pressing on her optic nerve. This was gradually making her blind.

For patients treated with TrueBeam’s forerunners there is a three to five per cent risk of long-term side effects, such as memory loss or strokes, due to damage to health tissues. But research reveals that TrueBeam minimises this exposure – or ‘wobble factor’ – considerably.

‘Our aim is not only to halt the growth of tumours but also to ensure patients go on to enjoy a good quality of life,’ says Dr Fersht.

More than 120,000 patients every year benefit from radiotherapy, which cures more people than cancer drugs. Tumour cells are destroyed quickly by X-rays, unlike normal cells.

But the problem of hitting healthy tissue means treatment has to be delivered over a period of weeks to ensure healthy cells have time to recover. The £3 million TrueBeam unit is available to both NHS and private patients.

Professor Jeffrey Tobias, consultant oncologist and medical director of cancer charity Fight For Life, says it offers a remarkable advance: ‘The movement of the mechanical arm means we can fire radiation from multiple angles in quick succession, making it easier to tackle deep tumours that are often positioned very close to vital organs.’

Julia Solano, who manages radiotherapy services at UCLH, says: ‘I’d call it the Rolls-Royce of cancer treatments, but that sounds old-fashioned. It’s more like a Ferrari or an Aston Martin: beautifully made and with great speed and technical ability. It will be good for treating children as well because it’s so quick and so accurate.’

Helen was six weeks pregnant when doctors discovered a tumour in her brain in October 2009. Although benign, the tumour was growing near her pituitary gland at the base of the brain and pressing on her optic nerve. This was gradually making her blind.

‘My vision started to go blurry but I thought it was to do with the pregnancy or my contact lenses,’ explains Helen. ‘So I went to the optician to have my lenses checked and they said something was not quite right behind my eye. Those first weeks were so scary, not knowing why I was losing my sight.’


Pioneering: The new treatment has less side-affects and each session is only two minutes
Pioneering: The new treatment has less side-affects and each session is only two minutes


Helen was referred to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, where a scan was carried out. ‘We were driving up the M1 when they called and said they had to get me an emergency bed at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. I was told to pack an overnight bag – that’s when I realised it was serious.

‘We just drove in silence. We were both thinking the worst. When we got home, I just burst into tears and said “I’m going to die!” Mick had to calm me down.’

The scan confirmed that Helen had a tumour pressing on her optic nerve. At three months pregnant, she underwent brain surgery at UCLH to remove the jelly-like mass known as a craniopharyngioma.

Helen says: ‘It’s pretty rare and they don’t know what caused it – the pregnancy hormones could have made it grow. If I hadn’t had my eyes checked, I don’t know what would have happened. All I could think about were the things I was going to miss, that I might not even have a baby.’

Surgeons removed most of the tumour and Helen could see when she came round from the anaesthetic.

In May 2010, she gave birth to Mylo without complications. But just a few months later, Helen started getting vision problems again. The tumour was back and even larger.

‘This time, I knew the signs and I went to the doctor straight away. It had grown back really quickly and was the size of a Brussels sprout.’

It is often impossible to remove a brain tumour completely. Previously, radiotherapy was not offered to all brain tumour patients because in some cases the risks were believed to outweigh the benefits, even if a second bout of surgery might be necessary.

But the TrueBeam process means radiotherapy may now be offered earlier on to stop the tumour regrowing.

Helen underwent the treatment in June. A scanner was used to produce a 3D image of Helen’s head and this was used to plot the position of the tumour on a computer.

The radiographer has to adjust the position of the machine several times during conventional treatments. But TrueBeam rotates continuously around the patient to deliver the radiation in correspondence to the computer brain map. The machine is also synchronised with the patient’s breathing pattern.

Helen has responded well to her treatment and the hope is her tumour will not grow back. ‘Now I’ve got my independence back and can enjoy being a mother,’ she says.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2072541/Cancer-treatment-Pioneering-new-radiotherapy-machine-destroy-brain-tumours.html

Saturday, 8 October 2011

Steve Jobs dead at 56, his life ended prematurely by chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer


jobs



Thursday, October 06, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)

(NaturalNews) It is extremely saddening to see the cost in human lives that modern society pays for its false belief in conventional medicine and the cancer industry in particular. Visionary Steve Jobs died today, just months after being treated for cancer with chemotherapy at the Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, California. In recent months, he appeared in public photos as a frail shadow of his former self. The thin legs, sunken cheek bones and loss of body weight are all classic signs of total body toxicity observed in chemotherapy and radiotherapy patients.

Steve Jobs reportedly underwent both. His chemotherapy treatments at the Standard Cancer Center are now well known (http://www.marksmarketanalysis.com/...), and his secret radiotherapy treatments in Switzerland have now been made public by former Apple executive Jerry York.

Jerry York confided in Fortune Magazine about Steve Jobs' secret flight to Switzerland to receive radiotherapy treatment for his cancer (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01...). Fortune Magazine kept this secret until Jerry York died in March of 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_...)), after which Fortune Magazine decided its confidentiality agreement with York no longer applied, and it published details about Jobs' secret visits to Switzerland (http://gawker.com/5737092/steve-job...).

Fortune Magazine also repeats another fact about Steve Jobs that rarely appears in the press: Namely, that Steve Jobs underwent a secret liver transplant which raised eyebrows among many who wondered why a member of the wealthy business elite could receive a liver transplant essentially on demand while everybody else had to wait on a long transplant list (http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-24/...).

In January of this year, Roc4Life.com reported:

"Jobs' medical leave is due to cancer, but no one knows whether it stems from his 2004 battle with pancreatic cancer or complications from a secret liver transplant in 2009. According to recently deceased off-the-record source from Apple's Jerry York, Jobs took an unpublicized flight to Switzerland in 2009 to undergo unusual treatment at the University of Basel. Switzerland's University of Basel known for their radiotherapy treatments for neuroendocrine cancer and it's unavailability in the U.S. Experts say Jobs' pancreatic cancer has a history of reappearing and spreading to vital organs at a slow-growing pace, which probably explains the medical leave."

In other words, there is no question that Steve Jobs underwent multiple conventional cancer treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

In the end, however, even Steve Jobs could not overturn the laws of biochemistry. When you poison the human body, the result is the deterioration and eventual shut down of the body. Chemotherapy does not work! This fact should now be obvious, and yet every year, more and more people choose chemotherapy to their own demise -- people like Farrah Fawcett, Peter Jennings, Patrick Swayze, Michael Douglas and many others (http://www.naturalnews.com/027047_c...).

Don't they see that conventional cancer treatments do not work?

Losing Steve Jobs is a loss of a great visionary

It is striking that people who are geniuses in their own fields can understand so little about the fundamentals of human health. Steve Jobs was arguably one of the most influential visionaries of our time, and his development of human-technology interfaces revolutionized modern computing. Had he achieved another twenty years of life -- and lived to 75 -- he would have no doubt contributed to our world in even more profound and positive ways.

Yet his remaining life was stolen from him by the cancer industry and its poisons. This is yet another frustrating example of how the modern medical system harms our society. It steals from us the longevity of visionary individuals who have so much more to offer our world in terms of creativity and innovation.

Of course, you can't blame the cancer industry for causing Jobs' cancer in the first place. Some other cause had to have been present to get the cancer growing -- probably a combination of nutritional deficiencies and exposure to environmental toxins. And yet the cancer establishment says nothing to people about correcting obvious nutritional deficiencies that lead to cancer, even when most cancers can be prevented for mere pennies a day.

The simple combination of vitamin D and selenium, if taken in combination, could probably prevent more than 80% of all cancers in America (http://www.naturalnews.com/021892.html). Yet the American Cancer Society and all the mainstream cancer non-profits don't dare advocate vitamin D or selenium. If solutions were readily available to everyone, how would the cancer industry maintain its profitability?

The dark side of Apple

This gets us to the dark side of Apple, because just as the cancer industry is a greed-driven monstrosity that incessantly seeks profits at the expense of others, Apple has increasingly become a corporation that has routinely chosen for-profit domination over public service. This is not so much about Steve Jobs himself as it is about those who surrounded him and ultimately exploited his talents for their own selfish agendas.

Apple iPhones, for example, were recently exposed as secret tracking devices that record your location and upload that data back to Apple headquarters (http://www.naturalnews.com/032239_i...).

By any honest account, Apple operates today with a mindset of total monopolistic domination, requiring apps to be sold through its iTunes, where Apple takes an unfair cut of every sale. In fact, Apple has come to very much resemble the Orwellian Big Brother image that once made it famous in its January 22, 1984 Superbowl ad, which positioned Apple's Macintosh computer as freeing people from tyranny. Watch that ad at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhsW...

What's so striking about this commercial is that, in many ways, Apple has become the very thing it once claimed to oppose -- domineering control, automaton conformity, and centralized command over the expression of musicians and programmers alike. The text of the ad says, "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."

Thanks to companies like Apple, 2011 sure is a lot like 1984. A clever response to all this appears in a parody video that pits Steve Jobs in that "1984" video as a way to show that Apple acts more like Big Brother with each passing day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zhH...

Anyone who has ever owned an iPhone knows all about being locked into a technology from which there is no free choice to do what you want with it. Why aren't iPhones sold as "unlocked" from the get-go? Why do you have to hack your own phone just to free it from Apple's domineering control? And why does your phone track your every move even without your permission or knowledge?

In fairness, this is almost certainly due to the greedy business types who surrounded Steve Jobs, and not Jobs himself. Jobs always seemed to be more of a humanitarian, but his concepts for innovation inevitably got swept up into the circus of profit.

Live by principle, because that's the only thing you take with you

The more you look into the story of Steve Jobs and Apple, the deeper it all gets. And that brings us back to Steve Jobs and the topic of principles and ethics. All the wealth in the world couldn't save Steve Jobs from cancer, of course.

Here's a question for you: In his final days of life, would Steve Jobs have traded every bit of wealth he owned for a healthy new liver and pancreas? You bet he would! And yet he couldn't. Because it doesn't work that way. When it comes to organ health, there are no second chances. You're given one set of organs to live with, and if you can't figure out how to take care of those with nutrition, healthy foods and avoidance of environmental toxins, all the money in the world can't save you.

Importantly, you don't take money with you when you die, so collecting dollars or cars or even gold is little more than a short-term distraction set in the physical world. What you do take is a karmic record of your actions; a "universal log file" of your principles and ethics, if you will. And that's what matters in whatever experience or reality awaits us beyond this one, whether you believe in Heaven, or reincarnation, or ascension to higher plane of existence.

Was Steve Jobs a positive influence on our world? Yes, I think so

I don't pretend to be qualified to judge Steve Jobs on all his actions here on our planet, but the only honest question in helping to answer that is this: "Is our world better off because of Steve Jobs' influence? Or is it worse off?"

On the whole, I believe Steve Jobs himself was a creative visionary whose talents eventually became co-opted by less-than-ethical corporate interests which operated outside his core intentions. This is precisely the reason why brilliant people should always be wary of "investors" or men wearing suits, because the whole purpose of venture capital is to grant people who don't know how to really create wealth a way to sink their claws into those who do.

This is why I have consistently and successfully resisted all venture capital and buyout attempts targeting NaturalNews. To bring in big money people would destroy the heart and soul of what NaturalNews is all about, in the same way that all the big money people who eventually surrounded Steve Jobs ultimately compromised what was originally an uplifting vision for human freedom and expression.

(Even in the health industry, I can't even tell you all the stories of brilliant, visionary people who have been betrayed by investors and corporate interests. It happens almost 100% of the time.)

The real lesson in Steve Jobs' passing, then, is not "oh wow look at all these cool gadgets he left us" -- because that's the juvenile view -- but rather "what can we learn from Steve Jobs about staying authentic in our own lives and our own decisions?"

What I've learned from Steve Jobs is that staying true to your vision is far more important than being commercially successful or collecting material wealth. Walking a path that gets your face on the cover of business magazines requires too much compromise of ethics and principles. The business community, after all, doesn't usually celebrate real geniuses who share things with the world and make nothing from it. It only celebrates those who find clever ways to extract billions of dollars from the hands of consumers.

In fact, you might even say that the business world actually punishes those who bring real innovation to the world -- people such as free energy inventors, most of which you have never heard about because they ended up mysteriously dead before they could bring their inventions to market. Steve Jobs was celebrated because his innovations were consistent with the culture of mass consumerism and unbridled corporate greed -- buy more computing stuff, and buy it often! That makes investors rich, and that's the name of the game in the business world.

Steve Jobs was celebrated, in other words, not for who he was on the inside, but for all the other people who got rich off him along the way. And that's a shame, because even after his passing, I feel like we never knew the real Steve Jobs at all -- the Steve Jobs who probably wanted to make the world a better place yet repeatedly found his talents being distorted and leveraged for bottom-line profits in a culture of greed that only cares about finding new ways to convince consumers to part with their money.

Steve Jobs may be dead, but the domineering greed of those who extorted his talent lives on. The iPhone 5 will probably be out in a year or so, so we can all throw away our old electronics which end up in a toxic landfill somewhere, and then replace it with new electronics made in a slave labor factory in China. Isn't technology great?

Either way, may Steve Jobs rest in peace. May his name never be used for commercial exploitation again.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033793_Steve_Jobs_chemotherapy.html

Friday, 7 October 2011

Killer cancer treatment: How toxic chemotherapy kills both cancer cells and cancer patients

Tuesday, October 25, 2005 by: Dani Veracity

"If cancer specialists were to admit publicly that chemotherapy is of limited usefulness and is often dangerous, the public might demand a radical change in direction—possibly toward unorthodox and nontoxic methods, and toward cancer prevention. ...The use of chemotherapy is even advocated by those members of the establishment who realize how ineffective and dangerous it can be." - Ralph W. Moss, author, The Cancer Industry

Imagine that you own a house that is absolutely perfect and beautiful with all the necessities, except that it has some rodents inside. When you call the exterminators, they tell you that they won't be able to target just the rodents, as these rodents are of an especially stealthy breed. They tell you they're just going to set off a series of explosions in your house that may kill the rodents. They warn you, "Oh yeah, it may destroy some of your house in the process, but, hey, you want those rodents out of your house, right?" There's probably no way you would allow that; instead, you would do some research and find other, more specific and less generally destructive ways of getting rid of the rodents.

The allegorical exterminators' logic makes no sense; yet, it's the same logic that doctors who prescribe chemotherapy follow. Like the exterminators' explosions, chemotherapy doesn't exclusively target cancer cells; it also harms your good cells, destroying some of your body – your "house" – in the process. As a result, many chemotherapy patients lose their hair, develop immune deficiencies, lose weight and vomit. Chemotherapy poisons your body as a whole in an attempt to kill the cancer cells before the "treatment" brings your body to an unrecoverable state.

As Gary Null and James Feast write, "(After chemotherapy,) the hope is the cancer is going to be totally dead and you are only half dead and recover." Unfortunately, some people are more than "half dead" after chemotherapy and remain damaged for the rest of their lives, no matter how long or how short that life may be. They never realize that according to many alternative health practitioners, there are safer ways of combating many types of cancer.

Former chemotherapy patient Anne explains in Michio Kushi's and Alex Jack's book, The Cancer Prevention Diet: "My mind rebelled at the thought of another six months of that poison. On several occasions, the doctor couldn't perform chemotherapy treatments on me because my white blood cell count was dangerously low. I promised my body I would not undergo any further chemotherapy treatments."

Anne's account reflects the feelings of all too many cancer patients who have suffered through months of often debilitating chemotherapy. The side effects that chemotherapy patients feel and others see – the extreme nausea and vomiting, the hair loss, the weight loss – are indicative of the intense havoc that chemotherapy is causing within the body. According to the Life Extension Foundation, chemotherapy drugs are "cytotoxic," meaning that "they kill cells that are extremely active." Cancer cells are, of course, extremely active. However, so are the cells of the hair and the immune system, for example, which accounts for chemotherapy's destructive side effects.

As if these side effects are not enough, cancer therapy commonly includes surgery and radiation, both of which have their own dangers and side effects. As Professor Null writes in his Complete Encyclopedia of Natural Healing, "The mainstream medical establishment often prescribes mastectomy, radiation and chemotherapy to treat cancer, an approach that has been described as a slash-and-burn strategy." The treatment for breast cancer is unfortunately often the general rule among cancer treatment – cut off the affected organ, poison the body with chemotherapy and then harm the body even more with radiation.

In Get Healthy Now, Professor Null describes one woman's experience with mainstream medicine's approach to breast cancer treatment: "Three days later, she had her breast lopped off. That was followed up with lots of chemotherapy. Her hair fell out and she vomited 24 hours a day. She couldn't keep any food down. Then they did radiation and her skin burnt up and two of her ribs broke." He concludes, "Most people don't know how dangerous radiation is. I had seen enough. I wouldn't touch any of that medicine with a 10-foot pole." Surgical removal of the cancerous body part also has its own aftereffects, of course, requiring not only the normal recovery after any surgery, but also coping with the psychological effects of having a body part removed.


It may all be unnecessary in the first place


As cancer patients suffer from the side effects of chemotherapy and other methods of mainstream cancer treatment, the fact remains that according to many medical practitioners, these treatments are unnecessary and sometimes do more harm than good. In response to chemotherapy's many side effects, Dr. Atkins says in Burton Goldberg's Alternative Medicine, "Only in situations in which chemotherapy is proven to be effective and curative would I recommend it. In general, this might be testicular cancer."

Many people also think that surgery can sometimes do more harm than good: Biopsy, for example, may in fact spread cancer cells, according to Professor Null. Furthermore, the most extreme example of unnecessary cancer therapy – treatment for false positive cancer diagnoses – is more common than we'd like to believe, according to Critical Condition authors Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele.
If, as many people believe, mainstream cancer treatment is sometimes ineffective and always harmful to the body as a whole, then what is the alternative? Goldberg writes that Ukrain, which is made from the alkaloids of the greater celandine plant and the pharmaceutical Thiotepa, "can do everything chemotherapy does but without the side effects, so it renders chemotherapy largely unnecessary." The beauty of Ukrain is that it, unlike chemotherapy drugs, it only targets the cancer cells and not your healthy ones. Furthermore, good nutrition – vitamins, minerals, fiber, fresh fruit and vegetables, juices and medicinal herbs – can do wonders against cancer. Of course, you need to discuss a treatment plan that is right for your type of cancer and your body with a medical professional, preferably a naturopath. But before you say yes to chemotherapy, remember what it does to your body and consider all available treatments.

The experts speak on chemotherapy:

"Chemotherapy poisons your body as a whole in an attempt to kill cancer cells"
As Duesberg explains, AZT had been designed to work as would any other chemotherapeutic drug. "chemotherapy," he says, "is a rational but desperate treatment for cancer." The toxic drug given in the process will kill any and all growing cells in the patient. After a short round of chemo, "the hope is the cancer is going to be totally dead, and you are only half dead and recover." Duesberg points out that the dangerous violence of the method, which is slaughtering cells wholesale, not targeting only cancer cells, is evident in the side effects. "You lose your hair, you lose weight, you get pneumonia, you get immune deficiency, because it's severe cellular intoxication. You kill a lot of good cells, too."
Aids A Second Opinion by Gary Null PhD with James Feast, page 429
 
"How chemotherapy harms your body"
In September 1986, Anne decided to stop chemotherapy despite the opposition of her oncologist. "My mind rebelled at the thought of another six months of that poison," she observes. "On several occasions the doctor couldn't perform chemotherapy treatments on me because my white blood cell count was dangerously low. I promised my body I would not undergo any further chemotherapy treatments."
The Center Prevention Diet by Michio Kushi & Alex Jack, page 131

Other treatments, with significant side effects, are being investigated for more serious forms of the disease. Immunosuppressive drugs that have been used for cancer chemotherapy and organ transplants may reduce the autoimmune response. These drugs are cytotoxic; that is, they kill cells that are extremely active, which in autoimmune disease are white blood cells.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 1373
 
Nausea is usually a passing symptom that will almost always go away by itself. In most cases, I recommend natural remedies for nausea because they are often as effective as some of the prescription antiemetic drugs, but they do not cause unnecessary side effects. The only exception to this rule, however, is in the case of cancer patients who are receiving chemotherapy; the kind of intense nausea they may experience can be so severe that stronger measures may be needed.
Secret Remedies by Earl Mindell RPh PhD, page 204

"The tri-fold approach to mainstream cancer therapy"
The mainstream medical establishment often prescribes mastectomy, radiation, and chemotherapy to treat breast cancer, an approach that has been described as a slash-and-burn strategy. This approach may be in for a reappraisal with the recent insight by the medical world that breast cancer is actually three different diseases, with indistinct boundaries, rather than one. In other words, only some breast cancers fit the image of a disease that is fast-growing and fast-spreading. Two other categories of this condition exist, the slowest-growing of which may never spread or be life-threatening at all. With this realization comes the idea that giving everyone with breast cancer chemotherapy may be unnecessary. Considering the harmful effects of chemotherapy, the belated nature of this realization is disturbing, to say the least.
Complete Encyclopedia Of Natural Healing by Gary Null PhD, page 72
 
Dr. Atkins regards chemotherapy as otherwise dangerous and best avoided in treating the majority of cancers. Only in situations in which chemotherapy is proven to be effective and curative would I recommend it, he says. In general, this might be testicular cancer …
Alternative Medicine by Burton Goldberg, page 595

Three days later, she had her breast lopped off. That was followed up with lots of chemotherapy. Her hair fell out and she vomited 24 hours a day. She couldn't keep any food down. Then they did radiation and her skin burnt up and two of her ribs broke. Most people don't know how dangerous radiation is. I had seen enough. I wouldn't touch any of that medicine with a 10-foot pole.
Get Healthy Now by Gary Null, page 762

I try never to use radiation treatment -- which is even more dangerous than most forms of chemotherapy -- without also using hyperthermia, says Dr. Atkins. Thanks to hyperthermia, we can shrink tumors with far less radiation to get the same therapeutic outcome, and our patients' immune systems and overall health are faring much better as a result.
Alternative Medicine by Burton Goldberg, page 609

If prostate cancer develops, mainstream medicine typically offers prostatectomy, or removal of the prostate, chemotherapy, and radiation. All are ineffective and often dangerous. Surgery, like biopsy, can actual spread cancer cells, and often decreases sexual potency and urinary control. PACT, a prostate support group, advocates hormonal blockers to induce cancer shrinkage, which may hold the disease at bay for several years, followed by a prostatectomy or cryosurgery (freezing of the prostate). The most common hormonal blockers are Lupron and Fludamide. As prostate cancer is generally slow growing, patients, especially those in the early stages, have time to try less harmful methods of treatment.
Complete Encyclopedia Of Natural Healing by Gary Null PhD, page 308
 
Rufer and her husband sued Abbott Laboratories, UWMC, and the cancer specialist who treated her. UWMC and the doctor argued that they had relied on the Abbott test results. Abbott denied all responsibility, even though the literature distributed with its tests made no mention of the potential for false positives. What's more, according to a court opinion, it turned out that Abbott also had access to reports that false positive results on its assay led to unnecessary cancer treatment before 1998. It received over forty complaints of false positives, including multiple complaints of unnecessary chemotherapy and surgery before Jennifer Rufer's first treatment in April 1998.
Critical condition by Donald L Barlett and James B Steele, page 63

To reduce the need for steroids, immunosuppressants such as azathioprine, 6-mercaptopurine (also used in the treatment of some cancers), or cyclosporine may be substituted. Various chemotherapy agents and organ transplant antirejection drugs are also used. Again, these medications have their own problematic or dangerous side effects. Therefore, thoughtful consideration of a treatment plan coordinated by the patient's physician is required.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 614

The diagnosis of bilateral lung cancer was confirmed by x-rays, a CAT scan, and a lung biopsy. Like Dr. Meshad, the physician at the center recommended against chemotherapy. Ruth's prognosis was not good: the cancer was aggressive and her history of liver disease made the use of chemotherapy dangerous.
Sharks Still Don't Get Cancer By Dr I William Lane, page 155

"Alternatives to chemotherapy and other forms of mainstream cancer treatment"
In other words, alternative therapies may pose a serious threat when a patient, if swayed toward alternatives, loses the opportunity to receive the (extremely) effective orthodox treatment? Run that by me again. Time and time again it has been confirmed that the proven medical treatments are not only ineffective but dangerous. The vast majority of patients with cancer live longer and better if left without the orthodox treatments. Oncologists will not accept these treatments for themselves. No scientific research is needed to prove that fresh vegetables, fruit, juices, medicinal herbs, vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc. are not harmful to the body. It would be nice if there were proof that surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy were not harmful.
Health In The 21st Century by Fransisco Contreras MD, page 224

Finally, if cancer specialists were to admit publicly that chemotherapy is of limited usefulness and is often dangerous, the public might demand a radical change in direction—possibly toward unorthodox and nontoxic methods, and toward cancer prevention. By constantly touting the promise of anticancer drugs, orthodox practitioners ward off this challenge to their expertise and scientists parry the threat radically new concepts represent to their long years of research. The use of chemotherapy is even advocated by those members of the establishment who realize how ineffective and dangerous it can be.
The Cancer Industry by Ralph W Moss, page 84


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/012727_chemotherapy_cancer_treatments.html