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4 Apr 2004 23:15:16 -0000

" Cancer Decisions "

THE MOSS REPORTS Newsletter (04/04/04)

 

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

Newsletter #127 04/04/04

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THE MOSS REPORTS

 

 

More than thirty years have elapsed since the war on cancer was officially

declared by President Nixon. Yet despite the enormous effort expended in terms

of manpower, resources and money, we are no closer to winning the war than we

were on the day it was declared. New drugs are constantly being approved, but

while it is true that many of these drugs can cause a temporary shrinkage in

tumor size, very few have yet been found that will eradicate any kind of cancer

permanently. When the temporary shrinkage of tumors without any prospect of real

prolongation of life can generate so much profit for drug companies there is

little incentive for them to investigate different, less toxic approaches that

may offer a real chance of influencing the outcome in many cancers.

 

Dr. Ralph Moss has spent the past thirty years monitoring the field of oncology,

investigating the scientific basis of both conventional and alternative cancer

treatments. He has written more than 200 reports - the Moss Reports - on various

kinds of cancer. Each of these reports offers a thorough analysis not just of

the standard treatments for a particular type of cancer but also the full range

of useful alternative and complementary treatments that, because they do not

promise vast financial rewards to the drug companies, have yet to find a place

in mainstream medicine.

 

To order a Moss Report, or to schedule a phone consultation with Dr. Ralph Moss,

please call Diane at 1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367 when calling from outside the

US). You can also order reports through our website,

http://www.cancerdecisions.com

 

 

LOSING THE WAR ON CANCER

 

 

An article of great importance has appeared in Fortune magazine. It is titled

" Why We're Losing the War on Cancer. " The author, Clifton Leaf, is Executive

Editor of the magazine and is himself a survivor of adolescent Hodgkin's

disease. So he is no stranger to cancer or to the potential of modern treatment

to cure some of its less common manifestations.

 

Leaf recognizes that he himself was extraordinarily lucky in surviving. But he

still has the courage to ask, " Why have we made so little progress in the war on

cancer? " He readily acknowledges the flood of recent favorable publicity for

drugs such as Gleevec, Herceptin, Iressa, Erbitux and most recently Avastin.

" [T]he cure has seemed closer than ever, " he says.

 

" But it's not, " he continues. " Hope and optimism, so essential to this fight,

have masked some very real systemic problems that have made this complex,

elusive, relentless foe even harder to defeat…[W]e are far from winning the war.

So far away, in fact, that it looks like losing. "

 

Leaf gives some facts about cancer that are well known to insiders but will come

as a shock to many readers:

 

--More Americans will die of cancer in the next 14 months than have died from

every war that the US has fought…combined.

 

--Cancer is about to replace heart disease as the number one US killer. It is

already the biggest killer in many age groups.

 

--Even adjusting for age, the percentage of Americans dying from cancer is about

the same as it was in 1971 (when Nixon declared the war on cancer) or even back

in 1950! Meanwhile, age-adjusted deaths from heart disease have been slashed by

59 percent and from stroke by 69 percent during that same half-century.

 

--The much-vaunted improvement in survival from cancer is largely a myth.

" Survival gains for the more common forms of cancer are measured in additional

months of life, " says Leaf, " not years. "

 

--Most of the improvement in longevity of cancer patients can be attributed to

life style changes (the promotion of which has not been a conspicuous priority

for the National Cancer Institute) and especially to early detection.

 

--The few dramatic breakthroughs (such as in Hodgkin's disease) mainly occurred

in the early days of the war on cancer. There has been little substantial

progress in recent decades…despite nearly ubiquitous claims to the contrary.

 

--According to one biostatistician at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, long-term

survival from common cancers such as prostate, breast, colorectal and lung " has

barely budged since the 1970s. "

 

--According to Andy Grove, the chairman of the Intel corporation and a major

" player " in funding research, " It's like a Greek tragedy. Everybody plays his

individual part to perfection, everybody does what's right by his own life, and

the total just doesn't work. "

 

Today, Leaf concludes, the cancer effort is " utterly fragmented - so much so

that it's nearly impossible to track down where the money to pay for all this

research is coming from. " And what money! Leaf estimates that US $14.4 billion

is spent each year on cancer research. " When you add it all up, Americans have

spent…close to $200 billion, in inflation-adjusted dollars, since 1971. " It is

certainly justifiable to ask for an accounting of that one-fifth of a trillion

dollars.

 

 

Irrelevant Research

 

 

What have we gotten for that huge sum? In fact, research has become increasingly

irrelevant to the real-life problems faced by cancer patients. " The narrower the

research niche, " says Leaf, " the greater the rewards the researcher is likely to

attain. " Particularly thought-provoking is his assertion that cancer research is

fundamentally flawed in its orientation. Cancer scientists have self-confidently

created " animal models " and artificial cell lines that supposedly mimic an

equivalent human disease, such as breast, colon or lung cancer. These scientists

then triumphantly " cure " cancer in these laboratory models. But cell lines and

tumors growing in mice are drastically different from spontaneous human tumors,

the kind that afflict us and our loved ones. A flawed model is not likely to

yield useful results. Those who closely follow the cancer field have become

inured to an endless series of " breakthroughs " in mice that almost never pan out

when tried in the clinic.

 

According to one of America's most celebrated cancer researchers, Dr. Robert

Weinberg of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), " a fundamental

problem which remains to be solved in the whole cancer research effort, in terms

of therapies, is that the pre-clinical models of human cancer, in large part,

stink. "

 

Prof. Bruce Chabner of Harvard University expressed similar frustration: " Cancer

researchers say, 'I've got a model for lung cancer!' Well, " says Chabner, " it

ain't a model for lung cancer, because lung cancer in humans has a hundred

mutations. It looks like the most complicated thing you've ever seen

genetically. "

 

Why then are these artificial and intrinsically misleading systems still being

used? The answer is simple. These artificial models are " …very convenient,

easily manipulated, " says Vishva Dixit of the Genentech company. " You can assess

tumor size just by looking at [them, ed.]. " There's no thought, still less

acknowledgement, given to the fact that shrinking a tumor, especially in a

mouse, has little to say about human survival or well-being.

 

" Hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted every year by drug companies

using these models, " says Weinberg. But with the huge profits to be made from

tumor-shrinking drugs like Avastin, Erbitux and oxaliplatin, what incentive do

they have to stop?

 

 

Shrinking Tumors

 

 

Leaf also tackles the subject of cancer regression, or shrinkage of tumors,

pointing out that it is a totally inadequate measure of the effectiveness of a

drug. (This is a theme I dealt with in depth in my book, Questioning

Chemotherapy, and many times since then.) " It is exciting to see a tumor shrink

in mouse or man and know that a drug is doing that, " says Leaf. " It is a

measurable goal. " But, he adds, " tumor regression by itself is actually a lousy

predictor for the progression of disease. " The sad truth is that " regression is

not likely to improve a person's chances of survival. " Read those words over

carefully - you do not encounter such ideas often in mainstream publications.

 

By contrast, what really matters, says Leaf, is stopping metastases (secondary

growths), which kill the great majority of cancer patients. " So you'd think that

cancer researchers would have been bearing down on this insidious phenomenon for

years, " he says. In reality quite the opposite is true. Fortune magazine's

examination of NCI grants, going back to 1972, revealed that less than 0.5

percent of study proposals focused primarily on metastases. Half of one percent!

Of nearly 8,900 grant proposals awarded last year, 92 percent didn't even

mention the word metastasis.

 

According to I.J. (Josh) Fidler of M.D. Anderson, the study of metastases is

avoided by cancer researchers because it is a tough and so far unfruitful field,

and not likely to yield quick and easy results. Instead, researchers focus on

techniques and avenues that they know will produce measurable results in the

laboratory. The attitude, Fidler says, is " Here's an antibody I will use, and

here's blah-blah-blah-blah, and then I get the money. " (Fidler, to his great

credit, has published over 250 scientific articles on combatting metastases.)

 

The current crop of new drugs comes in for scathing criticism as well. A study

done in Europe showed that twelve new anticancer drugs approved in Europe

between 1995 and 2000 were no better in terms of improving survival, quality of

life, or safety than those they replaced. But as far as the drug companies were

concerned they had one big advantage: they were several times more expensive to

purchase than the old drugs. " In one case, " says Leaf, " the price was 350 times

higher. "

 

Leaf points out that two new blockbuster drugs, Avastin and Erbitux, are lacking

in substantial effectiveness. Avastin, he says, " managed to extend the lives of

some 400 patients with terminal colorectal cancer by 4.7 months. " And Erbitux?

" Although it did indeed shrink tumors, it has not been shown to prolong

patients' lives at all. " Still, a weekly dose costs $2,400.

 

The article then features a list of " Miracle Cures That Weren't, " including

radiation therapy, interferon, interleukin-2, endostatin and Gleevec. As Leaf

himself admits, Fortune itself once featured Interleukin-2 on its cover with a

huge headline reading: " Cancer Breakthrough. "

 

Yet despite the profound importance of what Leaf has to say in this article, you

are unlikely to see the article cited as front-page news. I was dismayed to find

that, this morning, for example, the total number of citations at Google News

for this article was three (out of 4,500 news sources). By comparison, at the

time of its announcement Erbitux was generating over 1,000 articles per day in

the same search engine.

 

Leaf's article can be ordered online at

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,598435,00.html (The March issue

of Fortune in which it appeared may still be available at some newsstands.)

However, excellent though this article is, and delighted though I am to see this

subject aired so prominently, I do regret the fact that Leaf did not take his

arguments quite far enough. For instance, he includes a section on " how to win

the war, " but this seems anemic and hard to follow compared to his previous

incisive analysis. In my opinion, he doesn't deal with the basic economic and

political underpinnings of the war on cancer. The emphasis on

ever-more-profitable drugs is dictated by the very nature of Big Pharma and its

unhealthy influence on the whole research and approval apparatus.

 

Also, Leaf fails to cite the most prominent critics of the war on cancer,

especially those with an orientation towards complementary and alternative

medicine (CAM). Thus, while he hits the nail squarely on the head in many

instances (as, for example, when he discusses the danger of equating temporary

tumor shrinkages with increased survival), he also misses many other important

aspects of the problem that are well known to people who have followed this

field for decades.

 

When he quotes a scientist as saying, " We have a shortage of good ideas, " this

is likely to elicit incredulity from the CAM community. There are scores of

excellent researchers who have proposed exciting new ideas for treating cancer

over the last few decades. Most of them have been ignored or dismissed out of

hand. Some have even been persecuted. My 1980 book, Cancer Industry, discussed

eight such cases. A dozen years later I published Cancer Therapy, which contains

reviews of over a hundred unconventional treatments, most of which could still

be usefully pursued. Many treatments discussed in my book Antioxidants Against

Cancer have still not been examined, much less acted upon.

 

Let me give one example of an original idea that has been studiously ignored by

the mainstream. I recently received a reprint from my colleagues Eva and Laszlo

Csatary, MD, of their latest results using MTH-68. This treatment is based on

the non-toxic Newcastle disease virus vaccine and is seemingly quite beneficial

in select cases, especially in brain cancer. The article appears in the most

recent issue of the Journal of Neuro-Oncology, with co-authors from respected

institutions in Germany, Hungary and California. It is not the first such

article that Dr. Csatary has published. I myself co-authored a best case series

with him on this topic in 1999, which appeared in a respected peer-reviewed

journal. Admittedly, this is not exactly a " new " idea, simply an unrecognized

one. In fact, the name of the compound, MTH-68, refers to the date of its

discovery...1968, three years before the war on cancer was launched, and before

many of today's cancer researchers were even born. Despite

repeated articles and letters, press releases, news conferences and appeals to

governmental authorities, this promising treatment has made little progress in

the world of conventional medicine. The response from the American " cancer

establishment " to the Csatarys' work has been a thundering silence.

 

But this June, 25,000 oncologists will once again gather at the American Society

of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting for their annual four-day convention. Don't

expect any center-stage attention, though, for promising non-toxic treatments,

such as MTH-68, which could provide true departures from the quagmire of the

stalled war on cancer. Even Mr. Leaf, for all his trenchant criticism, seems

unaware or unconcerned that there are many other treatments that are potentially

valuable, yet are being systematically ignored. And they will continue to be

ignored until the public, Congress and scientific community wake up to the fact

that the most powerful force driving cancer research is Big Pharma's need for a

hefty bottom line and a quick return on its investments.

 

It is enough to make the angels weep.

 

 

--Ralph W. Moss, PhD

 

=======================

 

References

 

Csatary LK, Moss RW, Beuth J, et al. Beneficial treatment of patients with

advanced cancer using a Newcastle disease virus vaccine (MTH-68/H). Anticancer

Res. 1999 Jan-Feb;19(1B):635-8.

 

Csatary LK, Gosztonyi G, Szeberenyi J, et al. MTH-68/H Oncolytic viral treatment

in human high-grade gliomas. Journal of Neuro-Oncology 2004;67:83-93.

 

Leaf, Clifford. Why we're losing the war on cancer. Fortune 2004;149(6):76-97..

 

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