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THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter (10/18/03)

 

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Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. Weekly CancerDecisions.com

Newsletter #104 10/18/03

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We received the following letter this week:

 

 

" Thanks again and my warmest praise for the great moral

courage you originally showed in publicly going against

the greed-mongering establishment; plus your continuous

and serious efforts, and time-consuming work, in

opening the minds of so many people, both patients and

professionals, to the realities behind the multitude of

cancer truths and falsehoods within our all-too-often

corrupt institutions. You deserve to be nominated for a

Nobel prize in Medicine, and I do NOT say that to make

you feel good. --Richard M.

 

 

Well, we doubt if a Nobel prize is in our future. But

we would be very happy to increase the rs to

our newsletter by January 1. Please, if you haven't

done so already, send a copy of this free newsletter to

all of your friends who are concerned about cancer. We

have never advertised this letter and so it grows

exclusively by word of mouth. Please help us to spread

accurate information on the effectiveness of cancer

treatments, conventional and alternative.

 

 

Also, please remember that we offer Moss Reports on

about 200 different cancer diagnoses. If you or a loved

one needs help in making choices please check out our

service at www.cancerdecisions.com

 

 

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A FRIENDLY SKEPTIC LOOKS AT POLYMVA

 

 

 

In December 1998, I had the pleasure of receiving a

visit from Dr. Merrill Garnett. Dr. Garnett is a former

naval dentist who took up medical research in 1959 and

directs a small center in Long Island, NY, called the

Garnett McKeen laboratory.

 

 

On the day in question we had lunch, listened to his

son playing the piano, and spent time talking about the

nature and origin of his research. There is no doubt in my

mind that Dr. Garnett is a highly original thinker.

 

 

He told me how he had experimented with thousands of

compounds before coming up with a proposed anticancer

agent which he dubbed PolyMVA. PolyMVA contains the

rare metal palladium, whose behavior is not unlike that

of platinum, the source of major anticancer drugs. He

also presented me with copy of his autobiography,

" First Pulse: A Personal Journey in Cancer Research. "

This little book was illustrated with oil paintings by

his daughter, Joy. I enjoyed reading it and came away

convinced that Dr. Garnett was both an affable person

and a serious scientist, who had dedicated a long

career to finding useful treatments for cancer. I say

all this to emphasize that in the " friendly skeptic "

equation I incline more towards friendliness than

skepticism.

 

 

However, what do we really know about the clinical

effects of Dr. Garnett's compound? Not much. The name

PolyMVA is intended to convey that the substance is

composed of a combination of minerals, vitamins and

amino acids (i.e., MVA). PolyMVA contains various such

agents, but its distinctive core is a combination of

palladium and the antioxidant lipoic acid. Another name

for this combination is " LAPd, " which is humorously

appropriate for an agent whose purpose is to " arrest "

cancer cells. (It is also known as synthetic DNA

reductase or Polydox.)

 

 

Dr. Garnett was granted a patent on PolyMVA in 1995. At

the time of his visit, he was offering his agent free

to any patient whose doctor would enroll in a clinical

trial then underway. It was a generous offer, which has

since been withdrawn. Five years later, PolyMVA has

become a pricey and increasingly popular supplement,

full-page ads for which regularly appear in alternative

medicine magazines such as the Townsend Letter for

Doctors & Patients (October 2003), Integrative Cancer

Therapies (September 2003) and the ICHF newsletter

(Autumn 2003),

 

 

At the 31st annual Cancer Control Society meeting in

Universal City, CA, this Labor Day weekend, PolyMVA was

the " show stealer " according to a long-time observer of

alternative medicine, Michael Culbert. At one point,

people who had reputedly survived fatal diseases

through the use of unconventional methods were asked to

come on stage. Of the 30 who appeared, 13 (by Culbert's

count) ascribed their recovery in whole or in part to

PolyMVA.

 

 

In promotional materials proponents say that more than

300 physicians around the world are using PolyMVA

either by itself or in conjunction with other

treatments. This figure may be exaggerated, but even so

it is clear that some physicians are indeed using

PolyMVA. Among the practitioners who are now praising

it are the dentist and homeopathic physician David

Korn, whom Culbert describes as medical director of the

Aeris Cancer Treatment Center in Tempe, Ariz. (This

information is outdated, since the Aeris clinic

recently closed its doors.) Dr. Korn is quoted as

saying that he has seen " complete recoveries " in cases

of prostate cancer and lymphoma, and that PolyMVA is

" the drug of choice for brain cancer. " He also says

that it is " wonderful for prevention, " at a dose of

half a teaspoon to one teaspoon daily.

 

 

In his own newsletter, Mr. Culbert reprints an opinion

piece by the cardiologist Stephen Sinatra, MD, FACC,

medical director of the New England Heart and Longevity

Center in Connecticut, director of www.DrSinatra.com

and editor of the Sinatra Health Report newsletter.

According to this commentary, Sinatra and his personal

" circle of physicians " ward off illness by employing a

healthful life style. In particular, these doctors

prevent cancer by taking " the most powerful nutrients

known to man for prevention. And if we ever get cancer

(the odds are slim), we have cancer's strongest natural

enemies ready and waiting. "

 

 

The centerpiece of Dr. Sinatra's prevention strategy is

PolyMVA. Dr. Sinatra is quoted as making some

extraordinary statements about the agent. For example:

" We've finally won the war against cancer…It's the

biggest breakthrough in the war against cancer. " He

further claims that PolyMVA can help stop breast,

brain, lung and many other forms of cancer. If he

himself had cancer, he says, he'd take PolyMVA " without

hesitation. "

 

 

 

PolyMVA is supposedly effective for animal tumors as

well. A well-known holistic veterinarian, Marty

Goldstein, DVM, reports using it on pets and has even

formed a company, www.poly4pets,com, to market the

product to veterinarians for their patients.

 

 

 

Where's the Proof?

 

 

 

At a promotional website, it is said that Pharmakon

Laboratories performed studies in mice using PolyMVA.

The animals were first injected subcutaneously in the

scruff of the neck with the agent. When the tumors

reached a certain size (200 to 400 cubic millimeters),

the mice were treated with either PolyMVA or an inert

substance, either by mouth or intravenously. The test

lasted 4 weeks and the volume of each tumor was

determined twice per week. Necropsies were performed on

all animals at the termination of the study. A

reduction in tumor size compared to the control group

was seen in all cases. " This reduction was

statistically significant in the orally treated animals

when the dose was 1 mg/mouse, " the report read. " It was

significant in all the intravenous treated group. "

 

 

" Based on the data from this study, " the site reads,

" this synthetic reductase [i.e., PolyMVA] administered

orally at 1 mg/mouse or IV [intravenously] at 0.5, 1 or

2 mg/mouse significantly reduced the growth of the

glioblastoma tumor cell line " in these laboratory

animals.

 

 

This is all well and good. Animal studies are necessary

to lay the groundwork for clinical trials in humans.

But there is no author or citation given for this mouse

study. To my knowledge, no write-up of such a test has

ever been published except in this informal report on

the Internet.

 

 

At another promotional website,

www.polymvasurvivors.com, mention is prominently made

of what are called " clinical studies. " But what is

discussed there are not formal clinical studies at all,

nor even an academic paper, but a talk delivered by

Rudolf E. Falk, MD, at the Adjuvant Nutrition in Cancer

Treatment Symposium, held on March 10th 1994. Dr. Falk

is described as an " ontological surgeon " at the

University of Toronto. (The authors obviously mean

" oncological surgeon. " ) In fact, Dr. Falk left the

University of Toronto in 1985 to form his own private

Falk Oncology Centre in that city, specializing in

alternative treatments. I can find no record of this

speech, or any other writings of his on PolyMVA, as

having been published in any journal.

 

 

To quote from the summary attributed to Dr. Falk, " 95

patients were treated in a modified Phase 2 study. " It

is not at all clear what he means by this and

unfortunately we cannot ask him, since he died in

1998. However, referring to a " Phase 2 study "

implies a formal clinical trial, yet there is no record

of such a trial in the standard databases. I suspect

that these were simply patients that Dr. Falk treated

in the course of his busy daily practice. Patients in

this " study " included those with " breast, lung,

colorectal, prostate, pancreatic, ovarian, malignant

melanoma and primary brain neoplasia. " Ninety percent

of the patients had supposedly " failed all available

therapy. " At the time of the speech, 88 were described

as surviving on the therapy with a mean survival time

of 9 months. According to Dr. Falk, the anticipated

survival time of this group from available statistics

would vary from 20% to 60% at 6 months. However, it is

important to note that all of these patients also

received what Dr. Falk describes as " moderate doses of

chemotherapy. "

 

 

It was certainly understandable that Dr. Falk gave

these patients a more established treatment in addition

to the experimental one, PolyMVA. But since these

patients also received chemotherapy, one cannot exclude

the strong possibility that any temporary improvement

in tumor size and patients' clinical status was due to

the effect of chemotherapy rather than to the PolyMVA

treatment. Also, where is the follow-up on these

patients? Nine months is usually not enough time to

draw any conclusions concerning the effectiveness of a

cancer treatment. Patients sometimes experience

transient benefit, only to decline rapidly a few months

later.

 

 

In addition, the 20 to 60 percent survival figures that

Falk gives are essentially uninterpretable, not only

because it is impossible to separate out the effects of

chemotherapy from those of PolyMVA, but also because

the patient sample itself was inherently so diverse. It

is simply not possible to draw conclusions from such a

'study' when there has been no attempt to standardize

the patients by making sure that they all had the same,

or closely comparable, disease and stage, and all had

similar performance status at the outset.

Furthermore, the effect of something as seemingly

nebulous as patient motivation can itself be profound.

Highly motivated patients who have sought out a

treatment represent effectively a different sample from

the more passive, fatalistic, stay-at-home patients who

provide the raw material for many statistical tables.

 

 

In short, there is a powerful selection bias at work in

putting together such groups. Patients who traveled to

Dr. Falk's Toronto clinic for treatment came imbued

with determination and hope. (I saw this first hand

when I visited him in the mid-1990s.) A recent study by

Elizabeth Lamont, MD, of the Massachusetts General

Hospital, Boston, showed that patients who travel to

receive treatment survive much longer than those who

simply accept treatment at their local clinic, even

when the two treatments are the same in all formal

aspects.

 

 

Click or go to these two web pages for my previous

articles on Dr. Lamont's findings:

 

 

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/092003.html

 

and

 

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/092703.html

 

 

At the www.polymvasurvivors.com website it is further

stated that " the first 27 patients…were all considered

terminal, and all refused to continue with

chemotherapy. " They were therefore placed on a " health

promotion program " as outlined in chapter 23 of book

" The Definitive Guide to Cancer, " published in 1997 by

Burton Goldberg, founder of Alternative Medicine

magazine.

 

 

" The cancers involved brain, tongue, esophagus, lung,

breast, stomach, colon, pancreas, prostate, lymph,

blood, and marrow, " the website continues. " All had

metastasis. All were given 5 drops [of PolyMVA, ed.]

four times daily as a loading dose. 13 reported

improvements in either appetite, weight gain, increased

energy or reduction in pain within the first 7 days of

starting PolyMVA. At the end of 14 days, 6 additional

patients reported improvement. None of the 27 patients

reported adverse reactions. We learned from this small

study (1) that the initiating dose was inadequate, (2)

rapid improvements can be expected in patients with a

variety of malignant conditions, (3) LAPd is non-toxic.

When given this low dose, some patients demonstrated

clinical changes indicating early improvement. "

 

 

I am not sure who the author of these astonishing words

is supposed to be. One clue is that the subject of the

cited chapter in the Goldberg book is Lawrence H.

Taylor, MD, of Chula Vista, California. In that popular

book he is quoted as saying that " research on PolyMVA

is ongoing in the United States and Mexico. " He further

describes PolyMVA in glowing terms as a " new concept in

nutritional supplements….It repairs the abnormally

altered gene that is believed to set the cancer

mechanism in motion. " According to the same chapter,

" preliminary indications are that PolyMVA is effective

against brain tumors, glioblastomas, and lung, ovarian

and breast cancers. "

 

 

About brain tumors, Dr. Taylor is quoted as saying that

" even in the late stages with extensive symptoms of

partial paralysis, memory changes, and ambulatory

abnormalities, there was a quick and prolonged return

to normal function. " (p. 508). As to breast cancers,

Dr. Taylor states that " late stages with extensive bone

metastasis have reported resolution of the bone loss

and reduction in pain " (ibid.).

 

 

All of these are extraordinary claims and therefore

deserve the closest scrutiny. Who exactly is Lawrence

Taylor? According to the Goldberg book, Dr. Taylor is a

" top physician " whose experience includes " four decades

of studying the problem of cancer. " Yet according to

the website of the California Medical Board, on March

1, 1996, Lawrence H. Taylor, MD, had his medical

license revoked as a result of disciplinary action

rendered by the Board. No further practice by him is

permitted in that state. Oddly enough, the Goldberg

book, which was published in the following year, failed

to mention this salient fact, although it did state

that Dr. Taylor's patients were being treated in

Tijuana, Mexico.

 

 

The fact that " none of these patients reported adverse

reactions " in 14 days is hardly definitive proof that

PolyMVA is non-toxic! It should be obvious that serious

adverse effects can and do emerge beyond an arbitrary

two-week mark. And the author (whoever he or she is)

has apparently never heard of the placebo effect. I

also cannot see how one can conclude that " rapid

improvements can be expected in patients with a variety

of malignant conditions " from the above so-called

study.

 

 

TO BE CONCLUDED WITH REFERENCES NEXT WEEK.

 

 

 

--Ralph W. Moss, PhD

 

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IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER

 

 

The news and other items in this newsletter are

intended for informational purposes only. Nothing in

this newsletter is intended to be a substitute for

professional medical advice.

 

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