Chemotherapy, Alkaloids, and Other Plant Biochemicals

MORE ON CHEMOTHERAPY, ALKALOIDS, AND OTHER PLANT BIOCHEMICALS 

For some of the reasons previously addressed, there is sometimes a preference for localized chemotherapy injections into the cancer growth itself rather than intravenous injections, which presumably confines the effects to the cancerous mass proper. There are problems here as well, however, including that of the cancer further spreading or metastasizing, one possibility being that the drug chemical may in itself be carcinogenic. 

The body itself may try to fight off the chemotherapy via the immune system, manifested by fever and an increased white blood cell count, although the chemotherapy itself works against the immune system. Another quandary is that these symptoms may indicate that the immune system is reacting against the cancer, rather than against a conventional bacterial or viral infection. There are ways, in other words, that medical orthodoxy may misinterpret the body s resistance to cancer. 

In a further and much-repeated comment regarding chemotherapy, Mathew Suffness and John M. Pezzuto, the former from the National Cancer Institute and the latter from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, declared that conventional chemotherapy is ineffective against solid tumors, and only works against blood-related tumors (Hostettmann, 1991, Methods in Plant Biochemistry, Vol. 6, Assays for Bioactivity, pp. 72ff, 116). 

Such successes as there are against blood-related cancers can be judged intermittent, using such agents as Catharantheus and Vinca alkaloids, for example, vincristine and vinblastine, as derived from the Madagascar periwinkle Catharantheus roseus — 

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