If it were any good, my doctor would tell me about it...

[Guest guest]

Alternative Medicine

You Don't Have to be Sick: On the Edge with Burton Goldberg

" If it were any good, my doctor would tell me about it... "

 

 

 

 

 

Why it isn't therapeutic efficacy but ego and greed that determine

what cancer treatment options are available in the U.S.

 

 

I recently testified before the U.S. Congressional Committee on

Government Reform during a hearing on " Integrative Oncology--Cancer

Care for the New Millennium. " I was asked to discuss effective

alternative cancer treatments that are practiced in other countries,

yet not allowed to be used in the United States. But I also had to

address why conventional medicine in this country has stubbornly

refused to budge from its three therapeutic pillars of radiation,

chemotherapy and surgery. After a quarter of a century spending $2

billion dollars a year for cancer research--now $3 billion--the

results unequivocally show that these modalities as currently

practiced not only fail as cures but also unnecessarily destroy the

quality of cancer patients' lives. Why not embrace different

approaches that have been shown to work far more effectively?

 

The fact is that many powerful economic forces--pharmaceutical

companies, physicians' trade groups, insurance companies, the Food

and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health

(NIH)--want healthcare to stay exactly the way it is because they

are thriving under it. The reason alternative cancer treatments are

not yet mainstream has little to do with alleged therapeutic

ineffectiveness and far more to do with political control over the

therapy marketplace. Successful alternative approaches to cancer are

seen as a direct financial threat to this system. The politics of

cancer have an overriding influenceon the science of cancer and,

ultimately, on what cancer treatment options are available.

 

If you think that authorities in the government health agencies

would never sacrifice the well-being and lives of Americans to

maintain the status quo--if you think that " it couldn't happen here " -

-let me relate to you a shameful example that I shared with the

committee. All the facts have been well documented and are easy to

verify from public records.

 

In the late 1960s, physician and independent researcher Joseph Gold,

M.D., had an idea about a new approach to treating cancer. He

realized that most people do not die from the invasiveness of cancer

tumors themselves but from the side effects of the cancer process.

One of the chief side effects is a wasting process called cachexia:

extreme weight loss due to the loss of lean tissue and muscle mass.

 

Cachexia results from a peculiarity of cancer cell metabolism.

Cancer cells use glucose from the body as fuel and release lactic

acid as a waste product. The body detoxifies the lactic acid in the

liver and reconverts it into glucose, with a huge energy drain on

the patient. This new glucose is once again taken up and used as

fuel by the cancer cells, and the vicious cycle continues: the body

uses up its reserves and healthy tissue turning toxic cancer wastes

into new fuel for cancer cells.

 

Dr. Gold came upon a reference to a chemical called hydrazine

sulfate, an easily synthesized substance that could block a

particular liver enzyme necessary to convert lactic acid into

glucose. He reasoned that this could break the cycle and inhibit the

growth of cancer tumors while preserving normal tissue. He first

proposed using hydrazine sulfate to combat cachexia in 1969.

 

In various independent clinical trials in the U.S., the compound

significantly improved the nutritional status and survival of lung

cancer patients. In a study of 740 patientswith various types of

cancer, 51% of patients reported tumor stabilization or regression.

Almost half the patients also reported subjective improvement,

notably decreased pain and better appetite.

 

Similar studies were performedin Russia with almost identical

results. Four double-blind, placebo-controlled studies conducted in

the 1980s by Harbor-UCLA Medical Center reported increasedsurvival

rates for cancer patients using hydrazine sulfate. Because of this

success, certain officials in the FDA began to look for a

pharmaceutical company that would agree to undertake the expensive

testing necessary to get the drug approved and therefore widely

available.

 

Traditional chemotherapy attempts to kill cancer cells with poisons--

cytotoxins--that also poison and weaken the entire body.

Chemotherapy is expensive: every approved cytotoxin is the patented

product of a pharmaceutical company that spent tens or hundreds of

millions of dollars developing it and bringing it through the

approval process. Hydrazine sulfate, on the other hand, was dirt

cheap--treatmentcosts less than a dollar a day. In proper doses it

was virtually without side effects. It represented an entirely

different approach to cancer treatment.And it worked. It was, in

other words, a huge threat.

 

It was at this time that the National Cancer Institute decided the

best way to handle the situation was to sponsor studies of hydrazine

sulfate themselves, which allowed them complete control. Dr. Gold's

research had revealed two important caveats in using hydrazine

sulfate. First, dosage amounts were critical: too high a dose would

not only be devoid of beneficial effects but could create a toxic

environment that would increase mortality. Second, patients had to

absolutely avoid certain other drugs, including alcohol,

barbiturates and antidepressants; these negated hydrazine sulfate's

action. Yet in the NCI trials, 94% of the patients were taking those

very drugs that Dr. Gold had determined would deactivate hydrazine

sulfate and increase mortality.

 

In sabotaging the trials, the NCI not only managed to discredit the

drug's use in the minds of most of the world's doctors, but

undoubtedly added to the suffering and shortened the lives of many

of the patients involved in the trials.

 

Nevertheless, hydrazine sulfate, properly administered, just worked

too effectively to be totally quashed. In 1987, Jeff Kamen, at that

time Washington correspondent for Independent Network News

television, ran a series of articles on how the NCI was trying to

suppress the truth about hydrazine sulfate. His stories led to a

House oversight subcommittee ordering an investigation by the

General Accounting Office (GAO).

 

In 1994 an investigation was begun under the leadership of GAO

assistant director Barry Tice. His group compiled a report that

scathingly criticized the NCI. The report was initially titled " NIH

Actions Spur Continued Controversy Over Hydrazine Sulfate Therapy. "

 

On June 5, 1995, the report was sent out to the FDA, the Public

Health Service and the NCI for review. When top officials at the NCI

read the report their reaction was characterized by eyewitnesses as

going " ballistic, " and " really crazy. " The NCI went on a campaign to

have the GAO change the report--and they succeeded. In-house

politicians at the GAO altered or deleted damning portions of the

report and retitled it " Contrary to Allegation, NIH Studies of

Hydrazine SulfateWere Not Flawed. "

 

" You can imagine how upset I was--and still am--about that title, "

Barry Tice told Mr. Kamen in a subsequent interview. " The impact of

the changes and a few key deletions was tremendous. Those changes

took the NCI almost completely off the hook. "

 

Mr. Kamen wrote another article on this cover-up that provoked the

Senate Subcommittee on Investigation to look into the matter. They

managed to bring to light the facts as to how top officials in the

GAO overruled their own staff and buckled under political pressure

from the cancer establishment.

 

In a later interview, acting chief counsel of the committee, Mr.

Jeffrey Robbins, was asked about thevalidity of the NCI trials of

hydrazine sulfate. " The studies are flawed to the point of being

meaningless, " he said. Did the GAO tell the truth about the

NCI? " No, " Robbins replied. " And let me add this: I am not a doctor.

I do not know if hydrazine sulfate cures cancer, but I do know that

the American people did not get what they paid for in all of this:

an unbiased test of the drug, or for that matter an unbiased report

on the conduct of the NCI. That is wrong and should not stand.

 

" Yet, such is the power of the cancer establishment that hydrazine

sulfate is slated to be banned by the FDA in November of this year.

I implored the Congressional committee to not let this happen.

 

It can't happen here? It not only can, it is happening, and will

continue without citizen activism. Concerned readers can find out

more about hydrazine sulfate by visiting the websites

www.ngen.com/hs-cancer and kathykeeton-cancer.com. You can also

lodge a protest with the FDA by e-mailing FDA Commissioner Jane

E.Henney at www.fda.gov/comments/progform.html, or by telephoning

888-463-6332.

 

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