Six stubborn myths about cancer - The internet is awash with misinformation about cancer, with...

The internet is awash with misinformation about cancer, with potentially tragic consequences for patients

There are few illnesses as terrifying in the public consciousness as cancer. With up to a third of us getting cancer at some stage in our lives, it is almost impossible to remain untouched by the disease. As an ominous reminder of our mortality, cancer scares us to the point that discussions about it are often avoided and the language we use is couched in euphemisms.

The recent Channel 4 documentary "You're killing my son" told the story of Neon Roberts, a young boy whose treatment for a brain tumour was halted by his mother Sally, who remained convinced that radiotherapy would cause long-term harm and wanted to try alternative medical treatments.

After a difficult court battle, Neon received radiotherapy, leaving his mother somewhat unimpressed. "Death by doctor is very common, but thankfully, because of the internet these days a number of us have educated ourselves," she says in the documentary. "There's so many other options that we've been deprived of, denied."

The Neon Roberts case is tragic and reveals the quagmire of misinformation that surrounds the disease, but Ms Roberts's comment should not be completely dismissed. Misguided though she might be, her point that the internet is full of information about cancer cannot be denied. Much of it is dubious and outlandish, but differentiating between fact and fiction can be difficult and a host of myths about cancer have found...

While the internet is a potentially fantastic source for information (Cancer Research UK has some very useful patient resources), great care must be taken to avoid treating spurious information as factual. Carl Sagan's famous dictum that, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", should always be kept in mind when dealing with promises of miracle cures.

Absent from the article, and from the FDA "fakes" list is: calorie-restricted ketogenic diet (R-KD). People are using it, even in surprisingly late stage cancers, to shrink tumors. Hyperbaric therapy may help (D'Agostino). .....
The curious thing about cancer is that tumor cells survive primarily on glucose, and to a lesser extent on glutamine (but cannot thrive on ketones). Oncologists take advantage of the glucose uptake to get tumors to show up on Xray, but they don't allow themselves to consider using this fact to treat it (why? primarily because consensus medical views on diet and blood lipids are nearly upside down from reality, which is a whole separate scandal). .....
Healthy cells in most of the body can run on glucose (from carbs, primarily) or fat or ketone bodies. Brain cells can't use fat, but run just fine on ketone bodies metabolized from fat, but you only produce ketones when in nutritional ketosis (the Inuit diet, if you will). The "R" in R-KD is because there is as yet no direct way to control glutamine levels other than by restricting overall caloric intake. .....

Thanks for bringing this up, the benefits of ketogenic diet and/or glucose reduction may be starting to get more attention. Diet may be one of the essential factors in prevention and/or treatment of cancers.

See more in this post: New Method of Killing Cancer Cells Developed - FR / Sci-News, 2013 July 19 / 2013 July 24

..... Here is one that's based on the method of substitution - feeding the body ketones and eliminating glucose (which the tumor cells crave - several tests, like PET scan and recently enhanced MRI+glucose are using this fact to identify cancer).
From Starving Cancer: Ketogenic Diet a Key to Recovery - CBN, by Lorie Johnson, 2013 June 21

..... not a surprise to Dr. Dominic D'Agostino, who researches metabolic therapy. When he and his team of scientists at the University of South Florida removed carbohydrates from the diets of lab mice, the mice survived highly aggressive metastatic cancer even better than when they were treated with chemotherapy. .....
The Ketogenic Diet
All cells, including cancer cells, are fueled by glucose. But if you deprive them of glucose, they switch to the alternate fuel, ketone bodies.
Except cancer cells. A defect prevents them from making the switch to using ketone bodies as fuel and therefore, cancer cells can only survive on glucose. All other cells can use either glucose or ketone bodies.
"Your normal cells have the metabolic flexibility to adapt from using glucose to using ketone bodies. But cancer cells lack this metabolic flexibility. So we can exploit that," Dr. D'Agostino explained.
People like Hatfield, who want to deprive their cells of glucose and fuel them with ketone bodies instead, eat what's known as a ketogenic diet. It consists of almost zero carbohydrates, but lots of natural proteins and fats.
Gloria said the food on the ketogenic diet is in every grocery store and is pretty easy to prepare. .....

Jobs had the one type of pancreatic cancer that is curable.

He had a type that is more amenable to treatment than other types, but not necessarily more curable.

Given that Jobs underwent surgery to remove his tumor in 2004 and died in 2011, his seven-year survival after treatment is consistent with the average survival for these kinds of tumors, Libutti said.--Dr. Steven Libutti, pancreatic cancer expert and director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Cancer Care in the Bronx.

I tend to agree with Dr. Gorski's assessment (mentioned in the original article of this thread), which I have read in-depth. The kook quackery probably had no effect on Steven Jobs' survival, and Steven Jobs actually did undergo conventional, evidence based treatment.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.