NYT: Cancers Can Vanish Without Treatment, but How?

[Guest guest]

Good article, underscoring the complexity of the syndrome, which to the

perceptive eye argues against the efficacy of conventional treatments .

.. .

 

> Cancers Can Vanish Without Treatment, but How?

>

> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27canc.html?_r=1

> By Gina Kolata Published: October 26, 2009

>

> Call it the arrow of cancer. Like the arrow of time, it was supposed

to

> point in one direction. Cancers grew and worsened.

>

> But as a paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association

noted

> last week, data from more than two decades of screening for breast and

> prostate cancer call that view into question. Besides finding tumors

that would

> be lethal if left untreated, screening appears to be finding many

small

> tumors that would not be a problem if they were left alone,

undiscovered by

> screening. They were destined to stop growing on their own or shrink,

or even,

> at least in the case of some breast cancers, disappear.

>

> The old view is that cancer is a linear process, said Dr. Barnett

Kramer,

> associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes

of

> Health. A cell acquired a mutation, and little by little it acquired

more and

> more mutations. Mutations are not supposed to revert spontaneously.

>

> So, Dr. Kramer said, the image was an arrow that moved in one

direction.

> But now, he added, it is becoming increasingly clear that cancers

require

> more than mutations to progress. They need the cooperation of

surrounding

> cells and even, he said, the whole organism, the person, whose immune

system

> or hormone levels, for example, can squelch or fuel a tumor.

>

>

>

>

> Cancer, Dr. Kramer said, is a dynamic process.

>

>

>

>

> It was a view that was hard for some cancer doctors and researchers to

> accept. But some of the skeptics have changed their minds and decided

that,

> contrary as it seems to everything they had thought, cancers can

disappear on

> their own.

>

>

>

>

> " At the end of the day, I'm not sure how certain I am about this, but

I do

> believe it, " said Dr. Robert M. Kaplan, the chairman of the department

of

> health services at the School of Public Health at the University of

> California, Los Angeles, adding, " The weight of the evidence suggests

that there

> is reason to believe. "

>

>

> Read the full article here:

> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27canc.html?_r.....

>

> Resources

> Can Breast Cancer Tumors Vanish Without Treatment?