Medical orthodoxy

A Canadian physician. Dr. Guylaine Lanctot, wrote an expose titled The Medical Mafia How to Get Out of it Alive and Take Back Our Health Wealth about the medical situation in both Canada and the United States and has been harassed for his pains. Like Clarence E. Mullins, Robert S. Mendelsohn, and some others, she is skeptical about the widespread use of vaccinations. Earlier, in England, Donald Gould contributed a book with the similar title. The Medical Mafia How Doctors Serve and Fail Their Customers. There seems to be enough dissent to go around, and more remains to be said about this resistance to medical orthodoxy. 

All this is especially vexing if medical orthodoxy cannot even come up with successful therapies or cures, for example, in the treatment of cancer. Hence, the emergence of unorthodox or alternative therapies — the raison d etre of the medical underground. It is obviously a catch-22 situation, and a time for investigation and reckoning. 

The foregoing listing is like a Who s Who and What s What in alternative medicine. The gauntlet has been thrown and the joust continues, with medical orthodoxy (still) questioning nutritional supplements such as vitamin E, and their statistics are sure to be contested. It all seems more like a presidential race, the public relations machine of the Republicans vs. that of the Democrats, rather than objective science. 

A reasonable question is whether there are not some cures already in existence, held in abeyance by the interminable wrangling between medical orthodoxy and alternative medicine Such wrangling can of, course, be viewed as political and economic, as well as scientific. Given that many or most of the unorthodox treatments may not be substantiated with documented cures - the same holds true for orthodox... 

All things considered, then, folic acid (or one of its derivatives) should be further studied as an anticancer agent, especially as it has been listed as an inhibitor for the same enzymes inhibited by the usual cytotoxic chemo agents. It is a substance natural to the body, and not some mysterious chemical or questionable plant or animal extract. Effective dosage levels and the best method of administration would have to be determined and the side effects established. If most doctors are reluctant to give even B12 or B-complex shots, megadoses of folic acid may not be on the cards. As with other cancer treatment alternatives, the patient may have to look at avenues other than medical orthodoxy. 

However, the fact remains that no general, systematic, absolute cure for cancer has been found, either within the mainstream or without. If a cure does indeed exist outside the mainstream, the applications have been haphazard and the results random, with no substantive, repeated clinical evidence, at least according to medical orthodoxy. Whether by design or happenstance, the opposition of medical orthodoxy to anything unorthodox has been constant, but the wall of resistance may be crumbling, for alternative medicine is viewed by many as the wave of the future. 

Also mentioned in the previously cited article is the finding that vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, has been found to destroy cancer cells, as Linus PauUng said. Translation to an effective cancer eure apparently remains controversial, at least to medical orthodoxy and the publie. 

The conventional wisdom is to avoid what has not yet been scientifically proved. The counterargument is that medical orthodoxy refuses to conduct tests in an impartial manner, preserving its own impregnabihty. Consequently, alternative treatments mostly remain in the realm of folklore, anecdote, and hearsay (or heresy). However, and whatever the case, if the processes involved cannot be explained in a basically scientific and objective maimer, then it cannot be determined whether the therapy actually works or whether someone is fudging, misrepresenting, or manipulating the facts of the matter, or else lying. These remarks of course apply even more if there is money to be made. 

The role and efficacy of plants and herbs and of alternative medicine will be discussed in the following text. It may be commented, however, that medical orthodoxy will remain skepticaL if not hostile, unless biochemical (or biological) explanations can be provided for the beneficial action of these altemative therapies. (This is further complicated by matters of financial reward and of saving face.) But even here, these biochemical explanations are not necessarily the last word. 

There is also a cancer hotline, 800-422-6237, an NCI-supported service located at various points around the United States. This can be used to obtain information about conventional treatments, that is, the accepted protocols and publications of medical orthodoxy.)... 

The pubhc deserves to know what works and what does not, and the degree of the in-between successes, as obtained from a fully independent and impartial appraisal. The public needs this information right now, this very day, as do the practicing medical doctors, Uterally in the trenches, who require the imprimatur of sanctification. Whether or not promising alternative treatments can infiltrate the body r ains speculative, however there arise the usual problems of egos, power, and money. If medical orthodoxy comes up with a solution first, it is by definition okay, but not so for an outsider. The question is complicated by the necessity of clinical trials and by factors like who will be the patients, who will administer and conduct the trials, and judge the results. 

All this is at the expense of the billions spent on conventional cancer treatments and everything that goes with it. But it shows no improvement in overall survival rates. Instead of speaking of the cancer industry, somehow medical welfare seems equally appropriate for both the research and the practice. A fear has been instilled, which sends the victim rushing to organized medicine for assistance, a fear that is justified, considering the inadequacy of medical orthodoxy in combating cancer. 

Lastly, but importantly, in a chapter titled Chemical Carcinogenesis, the following cited authors note that vitamin C inhibits carcinogenesis in the stomach by blocking the formation of nitrosamines from the nitrosation of amines (Williams and Weisberger, in Amdur et al.,1991, p. 146). This is aside from the usual view of medical orthodoxy that vitamin C has no special therapeutic effects other than the alleviation of scurvy (e.g., Marcus and Coulston, in Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, pp. 1568-1571). 

Native to Europe and Africa, it has spread all over, and the root contains anthroquinones and glycosides, along with various tannins and oxalates, which can be poisonous. It was used in the 1930s as a component of the herbal remedy Essiac, or Essiac tea, but was discounted by medical orthodoxy. Then, in 2004, a mixture of Essiac herbs was shown to inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells in vitro. Subsequent animal studies showed antioxidant, anti-inflammatoiy, and anticancer activity, but further research is needed. 

We mention again Nieper anticancer therapy as profiled, for instance, by Richard Walters [1993]. Described as a complex nutritional and metabolic therapy, it variously involves vitamins, minerals, laetrile, animal and plant extracts, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines such as that called BCG, for bacillus Calmette-Guerin, a weakened strain of tuberculosis bacillus. The latter has entered medical orthodoxy as a treatment for bladder cancer.)... 

The comment can be added that those of medical orthodoxy agree to certain protocols of treatment to protect their backsides. In other words, even if the treatment fails (or almost always fails), it will still be recognized (in court) by the attending physician s medical peers as the therapy of choice. Not necessarily so with alternatives, although a consent form is signed. 

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. 

Thus, we must confront the reluctance of medical orthodoxy to consider substances or drugs that are not synthesized in some kind of commercial operation, utilizing the technical expertise of the pharmaceutical industry. For everything, natural or synthetic, will ultimately have to be explained in the terms of high science. Everything, sooner or later, takes on the cast of modem scientific theory. Consider, for instance, Cordell s Introduction to Alkaloids (1981), which proceeds to discuss the chemistry of alkaloids that mostly occur naturally in plants and herbs. It is a technical work of the highest order, which not only describes plant sources, but provides routes for synthesis and production of many of the natural alkaloids. 

Also consider excluding from the circle, such bastions of medical orthodoxy as the Memorial Sloan-Ketteiing Cancer Center (MSKCC), the M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston, and maybe even the Mayo Clinic. Let them go their own way, as they have done and continue to do, with surgery, radiation, conventional chemotha--apy, and such other avenues of their choosing. The last thing needed is negativism and obstructionism toward anything outside the domain of established medical orthodoxy. 

It goes almost without saying that one should view cancer personally and should anticipate its eventuality, whether in oneself, family members, or Mends. The cancer victim, unfortunately, is too often a pawn in a vast money-making machine. The available information is conflicting, calling for discernment or buyer beware caution — with the poor and noninsured mostly forsaken. The seeking out of preferred modes of treatment reduces to an impasse between medical orthodoxy and alternative medicine. Inasmuch as medical orthodoxy is as close as one s family physician — and the success rates for conventional cancer treatments are too often dismal — the emphasis here will be otherwise on alternative therapies. 

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