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Cancer Decisions

THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter (12/21/03)

 

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

Newsletter #113 12/21/03

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HOLIDAY SCHEDULE

 

 

 

We want to wish all of our readers and clients a joyous

holiday season and a great New Year. If you are

struggling with a diagnosis of cancer, we hope that

this year will bring you good news and that the

scientific community will make solid progress towards a

cure for this scourge.

 

 

Our office will be closed on Christmas and New Year's

Day. There will be no newsletter next week. Our next

issue will greet the New Year on January 3, 2004.

Otherwise, we are maintaining normal hours throughout

the holidays. Our toll-free number for Moss Reports

within the US is 800-980-1234. If calling from abroad,

please call 814-238-3367. You can also always order a

Moss Report on your particular diagnosis by visiting

our secure website, www.cancerdecisions.com. We also

offer phone consultations and research services.

 

 

As a holiday special we are offering $100 off the

combination of any Moss Report (normally $297) and a

phone consultation with Dr. Moss (current cost of $297

per 30 minutes) when the two are ordered at the same

time. This would total $494 for both. Just mention the

code NL-2 when you order. This offer is good until

December 31, 2003. In the new year the phone

consultations will be $350 per 30 minutes. The Moss

Reports will remain at $297.

 

 

 

CANCERGUIDES

 

 

 

Every year the Center for Mind Body Medicine (CMBM)

holds its " CancerGuides " program. The next such program

will be held from January 25-31, 2004, at the Claremont

Resort and Spa in Berkeley, California. This is a

training program for health and mental health

professionals and patient advocates who want to

responsibly integrate complementary and alternative

approaches in their work with cancer patients. For many

years, it has been an honor for me to be associated

with this program, as a member of its Advisory Council,

and in various capacities with its director, James

Gordon, MD. A few openings are still available for this

excellent week-long event. For program information

please call 202-966-7388 or go to the CMBM's website

at:

http://cmbm.org/trainings/CancerGuides/index.htm

 

 

 

MY VISIT TO EUROPEAN CLINICS

 

 

 

Every year since the mid-1990s I have paid site visits

to physicians in Europe who are using innovative ways

of treating cancer. The information I gain on these

trips helps to keep our 200+ Moss Reports on different

cancer diagnoses up-to-date.

 

 

This November, I took a more than 3,000-mile odyssey

through several countries, talking to doctors and

studying the work of their clinics. My journey began on

November 1, when I spoke at the Cancer Congress of the

37th Annual Medicine Week ( " Medizinische Woche " ) in

Baden-Baden, Germany. This year, the Cancer Congress

was jointly sponsored by the German Society of Oncology

(called the " DGO " in German) and the Society for

Biological Defense Against Cancer (the 20,000-member

" GfBK " ). For those not familiar with the event,

Medicine Week is a massive meeting, which attracts

thousands of participants and exhibitors of innovative

medical techniques from all over Europe. The meeting

program alone runs to 300 tightly packed pages.

 

 

The chairman of Medicine Week is E. Dieter Hager, MD,

PhD, who also directs the BioMed hospital in Bad

Bergzabern. Earlier in the year, he asked me to speak

about the safety and effectiveness of radiation

therapy. Naturally, I gave some statistics on the use

of this major treatment modality. But I also drew

attention to the way in which radiation is almost

unquestioningly accepted as effective while

complementary and alternative (CAM) treatment

modalities are regarded with skepticism and are held to

a much more rigorous standard of proof. This was of

great interest to an audience mainly composed of

doctors who practice unconventional cancer treatments.

 

 

Medicine Week is a reminder of just how powerful the

movement for integrative medicine is in Germany. On a

personal level, my participation in this event gave me

a chance to renew my long-standing connections with

many European practitioners who regularly attend this

meeting. As an honorary member of the DGO, it is always

heartening for me to return to a country in which

complementary medicine is regarded with such great

respect.

 

 

 

Over the Alps

 

 

 

After the meeting, my next destination was Italy. My

goal in going there this year was to visit some

celebrated Italian practitioners of complementary and

alternative medicine, to assess the status of CAM in

Italy, and to explore possibilities for future

cooperation with these doctors.

 

 

My first stop was the St. Gerardo Hospital, a huge

public medical center in a northern suburb of Milan

(Monza). There I met with Paolo Lissoni, MD, the

director of radiation oncology, and several of his

colleagues. For nearly 20 years, Dr. Lissoni has been

doing remarkable work on the role of the pineal gland

in cancer, in particular the use of the hormone

melatonin (which is secreted by the pineal gland) as a

supplemental treatment. In the 1990s his work came to

the attention of a wider audience through such books as

" The Melatonin Miracle: Nature's Age-Reversing,

Disease-Fighting, Sex-Enhancing Hormone " by Dr. Walter

Pierpaoli and the late William Regelson, MD.

 

 

To give some idea of his contributions, Dr. Lissoni is

the author of over 250 PubMed-listed articles, of which

87 are clinical studies and 33 are randomized

controlled trials (RCTs). This is certainly something

of a record for a complementary approach to cancer and

gives the lie to the idea that alternative medicine is

fundamentally anecdotal and unresearched.

 

 

Yet although Dr. Lissoni was recently an invited

speaker at the US National Cancer Institute in

Bethesda, Maryland, his work has garnered far less

attention in the oncology community than it deserves.

 

 

We also spoke about a more recent interest of his, the

psychological dimensions of the cancer problem. I shall

certainly have much more to say about Dr. Lissoni and

his work in future writings.

 

 

To view a picture of Dr. Paolo Lissoni, click or go to:

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/images/lissoni2.jpg

 

 

My visit to Dr. Lissoni was followed by a drive to the

lovely central Italian city of Bologna. This is a

historic center of medical research and its medical

school is among the most venerable in the world. I met

with Giancarlo Pizza, MD, and his coworker (and wife)

Caterina De Vinci, MD. Dr. Pizza heads the

immunotherapy unit in the urology department at the

Sant' Orsola-Malpighi Hospital. This is another huge

(1,500 bed) state hospital, named for Marcello Malpighi

(1628-1694), an early anatomist who, appropriately

enough, discovered and named many features of the

genitourinary tract.

 

 

To view a picture of Dr. Pizza and Dr. De Vinci, click

or go to:

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/images/pizza2.jpg

 

 

Dr. Pizza and his team have evolved a remarkable

protocol for cancer using transfer factor,

interleukin-2 and other immune therapies in the

treatment of cancer. Their work is well documented and

is currently being evaluated in a clinical trial by

scientists at Columbia University, New York. It is a

rich area for future exploration.

 

 

From Bologna I drove to Rome, where I was scheduled to

speak at a morning-long seminar on " chemoprevention " at

the Santa Famiglia Hospital, a gynecological hospital

affiliated with the University of Rome. My hosts there

were Massimo Bonucci, MD, an oncologist and

pathologist, whom I had first met in Baden-Baden, and

his lovely family. I had been hoping for years to take

Dr. Bonucci up on his invitation to visit - and, happily,

the time finally came.

 

 

To view a picture of Dr. Massimo Bonucci and his wife,

Frederica, click or go to:

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/images/bonucci2.jpg

 

 

The Santa Famiglia seminar combined an exploration of

the theme of cancer prevention with an examination of

some non-conventional approaches. Other speakers,

besides Dr. Bonucci and myself, were Dana

Flavin-Koenig, MD, an American-born physician who came

from Berg, Germany for the meeting, and Aldo Mancini,

MD, of the Fondation Pascale and the Italian National

Cancer Institute, Naples. Dr, Mancini is doing

fascinating work with a substance called LSA-CM,

derived from a sarcoma cell line, in the experimental

treatment of cancer (Mancini 2000).

 

 

The attendees were mainly doctors and nurses at this

modern and well-equipped hospital. Simultaneous

translation was provided by, Louis Mauro, MD, who grew

up in Brooklyn, New York, but now lives and works in

Rome. Participants said that this meeting was the first

of its kind in the Eternal City and was considered a

great success, an important step towards introducing a

new way of looking at the cancer problem.

 

 

 

HOWARD UNIVERSITY SPEECH

 

 

 

When I returned to the US my long journey was not yet

over. On December 3, I had the honor of giving the

Family Practice " Grand Rounds " lecture at Howard

University Hospital in Washington, DC. (Webster defines

" Grand Rounds " as a " formal presentation by an expert

on a clinical issue, " usually given before the start of

a department's work day.) Essentially, I gave an update

of my book, Questioning Chemotherapy-a matching set

with my Baden-Baden lecture on radiation therapy. My

host at Howard was Matt Irwin, MD, a resident in the

Family Practice department; my co-presenter on this

occasion was Jeffrey White, MD, director of the Office

of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine

(OCCAM) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), himself

a Howard University graduate.

 

 

Incidentally, Howard University Hospital was founded in

1862 as the " Freedmen's Hospital, " and is part of the

country's most famous historically Black university.

The hospital has been rated among the nation's finest

by US News magazine. I consider it a great honor to

have been asked to give this speech to a group of

interested and well-informed physicians.

 

 

This month-long journey confirmed my feeling that,

little by little, there continues to be a convergence

of conventional and alternative medicine into the

emerging field of integrative oncology. No one has a

monopoly on the truth and there have been some advances

(as well as setbacks) on both sides of this divide. The

important thing is to agree upon a single set of

criteria, a " level playing field, " for evaluating

treatments. I think that the most crucial consideration

when determining the worth of any treatment should be

the concept of patient benefit. The practice of

gauging the efficacy of a treatment by the arbitrary

measure of whether it can bring about temporary tumor

shrinkage should be abandoned in favor of randomized

trials that take overall survival and quality of life

as their end points.

 

 

As I said in my presentation at Howard University, this

is not just a question of science, but is also a

question of justice. CAM treatments should not be held

to an impossibly high standard that more familiar

treatments are no longer required to attain. We

recognize the principle of " equal justice under the

law " as the foundation of a civilized legal system. We

now need to extend this principle to the different arms

of medical treatment. This is a message that seems to

resonate with most people's basic sense of fairness. It

is also the path towards the evolution of a more

effective cancer therapy.

 

 

 

PAT McGRADY DIES

 

 

 

I note with sadness the passing of Patrick McGrady,

Jr., on Friday, December 12, 2003. He died of a blood

clot at the University of Washington hospital,

following knee surgery. He was 71 years of age. I knew

Pat for over 25 years. I first met him in the Central

Park West apartment of his father, Patrick McGrady,

Sr., who was the long-time science editor for the

American Cancer Society (ACS) and one of my early

mentors.

 

 

Pat McGrady, Jr., continued his father's tradition of

independent thinking and strongly held opinions. I will

always remember the article he wrote for Esquire

magazine in the mid-1970s, " The American Cancer Society

Means Well, but the Janker Clinic Means Better. " This

had an electrifying effect and first brought to the

public's attention the innovative nature of some

non-conventional German treatments. His comments on his

father's institution were scathing: " …the ACS wages a

covert and effective campaign to keep methods it

disapproves of from seeing daylight in the research it

funds. " The ACS has since modulated its stance on

non-conventional treatments, thanks, in part, to Pat

McGrady Jr.'s outspoken criticisms and the quieter

admonitions of his father.

 

 

When Pat Sr. himself died of cancer in 1980, his son

decided to dedicate himself to helping other patients

find more effective treatments. He therefore founded

CANHELP, a service devoted to providing such

information. For more than two decades Pat McGrady

helped thousands of people cope with their disease

through his counseling service.

 

 

For many years, he was closely associated with Glenn

Warner, MD of Seattle, and Rudolph Falk, MD of Toronto,

both now deceased, as well as the German physician

Wolfgang Scheef, MD, the former director of the Janker

Clinic. He was especially active in trying to prevent

Dr. Warner from losing his medical license. When the

revocation occurred, Pat denounced the medical quality

commission's action as a travesty, both " unjust and

cruel. "

 

 

Pat had had a long and distinguished journalism career

before he came to the cancer field. An accomplished

linguist, he was Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek

magazine; president of the American Society of

Journalists and Authors; news editor for the Congress

of Cultural Freedom in Paris; and a staff newsman for

Associated Press, United Press International, and the

Chicago Sun Times. He wrote a number of books, but was

best known for the " Pritikin Program for Diet and

Exercise, " co-authored with Nathan Pritikin, which was

published in 1979 and was on the New York Times

Best-seller list for a year. The money earned as

co-author on this project gave him the independence to

launch his CANHELP service in 1983.

 

 

He is also well known for his Cancer Patients' Bill of

Rights, one of the first attempts to codify the idea of

freedom of choice in the cancer field. He and I

attended many conferences together and it was always

stimulating to swap notes with him at the American

Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and other

meetings. I will miss these fruitful encounters.

 

 

For an obituary of Patrick McGrady, Jr., please click

or go to:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/152838_mcgradyobit17.html

 

 

 

--Ralph W. Moss, PhD

 

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References:

 

 

Cerea G, Vaghi M, Ardizzoia A, Villa S, Bucovec R, Mengo S,

Gardani G, Tancini G, Lissoni P. Biomodulation of cancer

chemotherapy for metastatic colorectal cancer: a randomized

study of weekly low-dose irinotecan alone versus irinotecan

plus the oncostatic pineal hormone melatonin in metastatic

colorectal cancer patients progressing on

5-fluorouracil-containing combinations. Anticancer Res. 2003

Mar-Apr;23(2C):1951-4.

 

Lissoni P, Malugani F, Bukovec R, Bordin V, Perego M, Mengo

S, Ardizzoia A, Tancini G. Reduction of cisplatin-induced

anemia by the pineal indole 5-methoxytryptamine in

metastatic lung cancer patients. Neuroendocrinol Lett. 2003

Feb-Apr;24(1-2):83-5.

 

Lissoni P, Malugani F, Malysheva O, Kozlov V, Laudon M,

Conti A, Maestroni G. Neuroimmunotherapy of untreatable

metastatic solid tumors with subcutaneous low-dose

interleukin-2, melatonin and naltrexone: modulation of

interleukin-2-induced antitumor immunity by blocking the

opioid system. Neuroendocrinol Lett. 2002 Aug;23(4):341-4.

 

Lissoni P, Vaghi M, Ardizzoia A, Malugani F, Fumagalli E,

Bordin V, Fumagalli L, Bordoni A, Mengo S, Gardani GS,

Tancini G. A phase II study of chemoneuroimmunotherapy with

platinum, subcutaneous low-dose interleukin-2 and the pineal

neurohormone melatonin (P.I.M.) as a second-line therapy in

metastatic melanoma patients progressing on dacarbazine plus

interferon-alpha. In Vivo. 2002 Mar-Apr;16(2):93-6.

 

Pizza G, De Vinci C, Lo Conte G, et al. Allogeneic

gene-modified tumour cells in metastatic kidney cancer.

Preliminary report. Folia Biol (Praha). 2003;49(4):147-59.

 

Pizza G, De Vinci C, Fornarola V, Palareti A, Baricordi O,

Viza D. In vitro studies during long-term oral

administration of specific transfer factor. Biotherapy.

1996;9(1-3):175-85.

 

Pizza G, De Vinci C, Cuzzocrea D, Menniti D, Aiello E, Maver

P, Corrado G, Romagnoli P, Dragoni E, LoConte G, Riolo U,

Palareti A, Zucchelli P, Fornarola V, Viza D. A preliminary

report on the use of transfer factor for treating stage D3

hormone-unresponsive metastatic prostate cancer. Biotherapy.

1996;9(1-3):123-32.

 

Pilotti V, Mastrorilli M, Pizza G, De Vinci C, Busutti L,

Palareti A, Gozzetti G, Cavallari A. Transfer factor as an

adjuvant to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) therapy.

Biotherapy. 1996;9(1-3):117-21.

 

Mancini A, Borrelli A, Masucci MT, A conditioned medium from

a human liposarcoma-derived cell line induces p53-dependent

apoptosis in several tumor cell lines. Oncol Rep. 2000

May-Jun;7(3):629-37.

 

McGrady, Patrick M. The Revocation of Dr. Glenn Warner's

License is Unjust and Cruel. Online at:

http://www.internetwks.com/canhelp/enrage.html

 

 

 

 

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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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