Cancer cure with

JP is receiving a highly myelosuppressive chemotherapy regimen for the next 3 days for his lymphoma. The chemotherapy orders specify ifosfamide, carboplatin, and etoposide. The goal of this cycle of chemotherapy is to put the cancer into remission so that his lymphoma can be cured with a bone marrow transplant. 

Increased diagnosis of prostate cancer is attributed in part to the increased utilization of PSA testing. In fact, the American Cancer Society (ACS) now recommends measurement of PSA in addition to digital rectal examinations (DREs) in men over 50 years of age. Early detection of clinically localized prostate cancer can potentially result in a cure with radical prostatectomy or other treatments. PSA tests are used to monitor therapeutic efficacy and detect recurrent disease in patients with prostate cancer. 

Based on results on thousands of patients who underwent ECT for a variety of tumors, Xin32 has published extensive data in tabular from. Table 1 shows short-term (6 months) efficacy of ECT whereas Table 2 give the long-term cure rate of various cancers treated with ECT. The results, it is claimed,32 are equal to or better than those obtained by other techniques, i.e., surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. It is further claimed32 that ECT can also be applied to patients who cannot be treated by conventional techniques owing to their old age, general poor health, multiple ailments or advances cancers. 

Interestingly, the debate went beyond the regulated parties. Economists and libertarians commenced a campaign to let the marketplace determine which drugs were effective. Advocates of laetrile (a purported cancer cure), fought in court for an exception to the effectiveness requirements for drugs intended for persons with terminal illnesses that could not be treated by any approved or recognised methods. 

There are several books on the history of the development of taxol, which is one of the most remarkable stories in product development. In fact, it inspired the 1992 motion picture Medicine Man, starring Sean Connery as a research botanist looking for a cancer cure in the Brazilian rain forest. For a time, it became a moral drama pitting the needs of patients of intractable ovarian and breast cancer against the passions of environmentalists to preserve an obscure Pacific yew tree. Suffness and Wall are two of the principals in this story, and they wrote (1995) It [Taxol] is not an obvious winner till the very end, and there were a number of times till the very end when it seemed highly likely that it would not be put into development at all, or that once it had been accepted, it would be dropped. More than 30 years passed between the discovery of taxol, with its potential as an anticancer drug, and its approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical use. 

Monroe Wall of the USDA Eastern Regional Research Laboratory had been collecting plants for steroids that are oxygenated at positions 11 or 12, which could be converted into cortisone and related compounds. The search for a cancer cure led Wall to move to the Research Triangle Institute in 1960, to work on the isolation of plant-derived antitumor agents. Wall requested specimens of plants showing KB activity, and worked with a 30 lbs shipment of bark in late 1964. The procedure included extraction by ethanol, followed by concentration and partition between water and an organic solvent. He found that fractions from this extract were active in vivo for mice with... 

Therapeutic modalities in cancer treatment may involve surgery, radiation, and/or chemotherapy. The objectives of cancer chemotherapy include (1) cure, (2) reduction in tumor size, and (3) prolongation of life. At the present time, approximately 50 percent of patients with cancer can be cured, with drug treatment estimated to contribute in 17 percent of cases. Cancer chemotherapy can be curative in testicular cancer, diffuse large cell lymphoma, Hodgkin s disease, choriocarcinoma, certain childhood tumors (acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Burkitt s lymphoma, Wilms tumor, and embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma). Certain cancers are more resistant to chemotherapy than others (e.g., lung and colon). 

Compared to other solid tumors, ovarian cancer is relatively responsive to chemotherapy, but unlike testicular cancer, cure is not common for patients with advanced disease. Prior to the incorporation of cisplatin or carboplatin into treatment regimens, chemotherapy for advanced-stage ovarian cancer consisted of combinations of alkylating agents and doxorubicin. Response rates from such regimens were of the order of 33-65%, and fewer than 10% of patients survived 5 years [51]. 

More and more patients seek advice on complementary medicine via the Internet. It is therefore important to monitor the validity of such advice. In one survey, most of the 13 most popular websites on complementary medicine for cancer recommended cancer therapies for which there was no evidence of efficacy (30). Three of the sites overtly discouraged cancer patients from using conventional therapies. When the study was repeated, this time focussing on HIV instead of cancer, the results were virtually identical (31). These findings were similar to those of another study of 61 popular websites on herbal medicines for cancer (32). Most of these sites were commercial by nature and claimed cancer cures through herbal medicines, with little regard for current regulations. 

Bonakdar RA. Herbal cancer cures on the Web noncompliance with The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Earn Med 2002 34(7) 522-7. 

Somehow, the status of alternative cancer therapies is akin to the role played by Australian nurse Sister Elizabeth Kenny in the treatment of polio. Her ways of assisting polio patients were more or less all that was available at the time, although often vilified, until the Salk and Sabin vaccines appeared on the scene. (With the qualifier that most new polio cases are now said to be caused by the vaccine itself.) Thus, we await the magic bullet for cancer, which may be unsuspected, but whose discovery may be fortuitous, as with penicillin and other antibiotics. No one would have anticipated that there could be such destroyers of infection as penicillin, though their existence and use were apparently known in native folklore medicine. Such may be the course for a cancer cure, that is, some native plant remedy may already be in existence, only awaiting discovery by modem medicine. Combining serendipity and purpose, someone might come up with an effective, universal vaccine. 

A persistent mmor regarding cancer cures pertains to the previously mentioned Compoimd-X — supposedly a mysterious, secretive, and potent formulation originating with the Plains Indians, or maybe southwestern Indians, or even Canadian Indians. It is supposed to cure both external and internal cancers, but it seems no one wants to talk about it, what is in it, or how it works. Presumably it is a herbal mixture of unknown makeup, although Chaparral and bloodroot may be in it. A rumor is that a pharmaceutical company was once interested, and along these fines a certain toothpaste contains bloodroot (Sanguarine canadensis) as an anticavity agent. 

Finally, there is both information and misinformation floating around about the curative powers of plants and herbs, and still other substances. No one can tell whether we are dealing with facts or with speculations. The National Institutes of Health is belatedly trying to sort it out, and is sponsoring a survey to accumulate information about unorthodox cancer cures or remissions that have been substantiated and documented by M.D.s or their equivalent. This is sound policy, given the fact that you do not know whom to beheve, and people are liable to say anything. This brings up the point that an absolute cure that is both definitive and decisive is the objective. 

---