WDDTY e-News Broadcast - 15 September 2005

[Guest guest]

" WDDTY e-News " <e-news

WDDTY e-News Broadcast - 15 September 2005

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:29:38 +0100

 

 

 

 

WHAT DOCTORS DON'T TELL YOU - E-NEWS BROADCAST No. 190 - 15 September 2005

 

 

 

 

NEWS CONTENTS

 

VITAMIN C: So it can kill cancer, just as the man said

MEDICAL CHECK-UPS: More harm than good

FOR WHOM DO THE BELLS TOLL? They toll for thee, allopathic medicine

 

 

VITAMIN C: So it can kill cancer, just as the man said

 

Whisper it in case you wake the pharmaceuticals, but Linus Pauling was

right all along. Very high doses of vitamin C can kill cancer, just

as the Nobel prize-winning chemist and physicist suggested.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda have

demonstrated the theory in laboratory tests. They used very doses of

the vitamin, in its ascorbate form, on nine cultures of cancer cells.

Only half the cells survived in five of the cell groups, and growth

of lymphoma cells was 'reduced by at least 99 per cent " . In other

words, the vitamin killed the cancer cells, and stopped their regrowth.

The therapy also worked with my own mother, whose end-stage breast

cancer was completely reversed by intravenous vitamin C.

But while medicine remains a front for the profit-crazy

pharmaceuticals, none of this ever sees the light of day, and cancer

sufferers continue to be given chemotherapy that debilitates and kills.

(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

 

* VITAMIN C isn't the only thing that is a cancer fighter. There are

plenty more treatments that have a long and impressive track record of

beating cancer, it's just that you're not supposed to hear about them.

 

 

 

MEDICAL CHECK-UPS: More harm than good

 

Apparently the Japanese do it all the time, and people with private

medical insurance do it quite a lot, too. They like to have regular

medical checks that include screening and scans.

But far from doing their bodies a massive favour, they are actually

putting themselves at unnecessary risk, according to the British

Medical Association (BMA).

Its Board of Science is concerned that people are not told of the

potential risks before having tests such as whole body magnetic

resonance imaging or the prostate specific antigen test for prostate

cancer. The board is so concerned that it is calling on the British

government to take greater control of unregulated screening

programmes, which generated around £65m revenues last year alone.

Dr Steven Laitner, speaking on behalf of the board, said the tests did

not offer any benefit and were more likely to harm. A whole body scan

is equivalent to a dose of 100 chest radiographs, and increased the

risk of a fatal cancer developing by 1 in every 2000 patients screened.

The tests are also often inconclusive and, worse, give false positive

readings, which cause unnecessary worry.

(Source: British Medical Journal, 2005; 332: 475).

 

 

FOR WHOM DO THE BELLS TOLL? They toll for thee, allopathic medicine

 

" Now doctors need to be bold and honest with their patients about

homeopathy's lack of benefit " thundered the front page of a recent

Lancet that carried an exhaustive review of scientific papers into the

therapy.

Most of the papers had been biased, or were just poor science, and

once the data had been reinterpreted, homeopathy was found to be

little better than placebo.

The only surprise to the Lancet editorial team was that the debate had

raged for 150 years when it was obvious from the start that homeopathy

was a nonsense. But, all along, everyone has been kind to homeopathy

and given it the benefit of the doubt, probably because it seemed to

offer a kinder and gentler face than that of conventional medicine.

Even the World Health Organization (WHO) has got in on the act, and

produced a very favourable review of homeopathy by selecting just

those reports that were positive and ignoring the rest.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, spokesmen from the homeopathy groups have

attacked the Lancet analysis, claiming that it, in turn, was biased

and used poor science.

Our job is not to defend homeopathy, and it must stand or fall on its

own merits, but we do have a few observations on inconsistencies that

have emerged from the debate.

We're surprised that the homeopathic groups have attacked the

meta-analysis purely on scientific grounds. Surely the importance of

homeopathy is that it treats the individual, and so the 'one size fits

all' approach of conventional medicine simply does not apply. The

drug companies have acknowledged as much in their admission that their

drugs work in only 30 per cent of cases, simply because each

individual has a different bio-chemical fingerprint. We are at the

dawn of a new era of drugs, which will be 'customised' to the

individual patient, a position that Samuel Hahnemann himself

identified when he founded homeopathy.

As such, the failure seems to rest more with the scientific models we

possess for measuring efficacy, and it is those that should be discarded.

Following on from that, The Lancet statement that 'doctors need to be

bold and honest. . .about homeopathy's lack of benefit " seems

one-sided. In the same breath shouldn't the doctor also be telling

the patient about conventional medicine's own lack of benefit? If

drugs really do work in just 30 per cent of cases, as the drug

companies maintain, it would seem to be the least he should do,

especially as the drug is likely to cause some adverse reaction

whereas the homeopathic remedy almost definitely won't.

In an accompanying and 'thoughtful' comment piece, one commentator

concludes by stating that the " ultimate proof is that science makes

progress in changing reality: in allopathic medicine by preventing,

alleviating, and curing disease ever more effectively " .

This is an interesting point. In the first place, better nutritional

standards and public hygiene have done more to prevent disease than

anything in medicine. Secondly, medicine is quite poor at 'curing'

any disease. Cancer and heart problems, to name but two, have reached

epidemic proportions, and they continue to kill far more sufferers

than medicine can cure, a term that needs to be used loosely.

The Lancet believes this is the final word in a debate between

allopathic and homeopathic medicines. But it never has been a debate

- it's been a dirty war, driven by the money machine behind

conventional medicine.

But, ultimately, it is the patient himself who will decide, and we

have a feeling that no amount of ranting at The Lancet's editorial

offices will cause him to hesitate in his determined stride to the

homeopath's surgery.

(Source: The Lancet, 2005; 366: 690, 691-2, and 726-32).