Simple answer to cancer?

02/11/10 | djf

[djf]

Could it be that simple???

Last evening, Coast to Coast AM had a very interesting guest on. A Doctor (MD type doctor, not a person with a doctorate in basket weaving).

He talked about some things that had been detected in the body, energy states, cell membranes, that sort of thing. Sounded a little kooky in places, but overall, he knows what science is, and the basics of biochemistry, I've read enough abstracts and reviews to know that.

He made - what was to me - a fantastic and startling claim. That most, if not all cancers, are actually the result of a weakened immune system trying to fight off an infection by the common yeast Candida Albicans.

The second part of the claim, which was even more crackpot than the first, was that these infections (and the underlying cancer) can be cured by a simple household cleaning agect. Good ole baking soda, sodium bicarbonate!!

Now - just for the record - I said, "Yeah, nutjob, looney tunes, musta drank too much crankase oil last night." And it is Coast to Coast, which is only slightly more credible than publications featuring Bat Boy.

So I started doing a bit of net research last night. And continued with more today.

And - ANd- AND - I know everyone has bated breath right now.... There are literally THOUSANDS of testimonials on the net of people who have either under doctors (some doctors, in fact damn few doctors, because to subscribe to such a theory is almost an immediate guarantee of having their credentials ripped out from under them) therapy, or even by themselves individually, have cured their cancer with baking soda. Cancer of all types. Lung cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, even some of the deadlier and fast acting brain cancers.

Now I'm posting this for discussion purposes only and no claims are being made or therapies recommended.

But I cannot see what would be the purpose of anybody (patients or doctors) to lie about being cured. And in case after case, we can see the radiologic reports of people with lethal cancers who have been told to go home and die, only turn return and be re-scanned six months later without even so much as a planters wart showing up in the scans!!

So....

WAZZUP, ya think? Any FReeper experiences?

[Lancey Howard]

This is exactly the kind of thing our troubled social security system does not need right now.
Same with the economy, which depends to a significant extent on a healthy pharmaceutical industry.

[aruanan]

But I cannot see what would be the purpose of anybody (patients or doctors) to lie about being cured.

Lying is stating that something is so that one knows is not so. One can also state that something is so that is not so and not be lying, simply mistaken.

[TigersEye]

Thanks. Mighty nice of you.

[djf]

I’ve heard that there is a lot - a WHOLE lot!!!! - of state pension funds invested in big Pharma.

And have no reason to doubt it.

[LucyJo]

Great cleaning agent too - just make a paste using baking soda, dishwashing liquid, and a little water.

[whatisthetruth]

I take ACV with Apple Cider and a little H20. Delicious and good for mild food poisoning, however for full scale food poisoning, I take a few gulps full strength, by then taste doesn't matter, relief does, lol!

[djf]

Understood.

But for instance I’ve read reports - credible reports - that say that the “Restasis” stuff they prescribe for dry eyes actually only works for ten percent of the people who use it.

The doctors who prescribe it know that and the pharma company that sells it know that.

I imagine the only people as a group who don’t know that are the people buying it.

So who’s “lying”??

Maybe their eyes moisten up when they start crying over how they wuz ripped off blind!!

[count-your-change]

Well, I’ve used baking soda and don’t have cancer so it must be true. o.k.

[Habibi]

“Do you honestly think JAMA would be overflowing overnight with articles and testimonials? Do you think cancer doctors and drug suppliers who have Mercedes and kids with braces are gonna be happy?”

Ok, I’ll play with you. Let us suppose that a cure for cancer has been suppressed by Oncologists/Pharma etc.. Unless I miss my guess, oncologists are just as likely to have cancer as the rest of the population. If it is well known within the oncological circles that baking soda cures cancer (and it must be true since they are supposedly suppressing the information), then you would find oncologists with much lower death rates due to cancer.

I am currently unaware that such a scenario is accurate, as the information would have leaked out into the life insurance industry, which would be reflected in their actuarial tables. They, of course, would have cheaper life insurance premiums than the rest of us. Now, not only do you have to have the oncologists, and their MD buddies, and the whole insurance industry in on the cover up, but you have to keep all of them quiet about it so it doesn’t leak out to the rest of the population. Do you really think such an improbable conspiracy is even possible?

No, oncologists are taking chemo and radiation, and having cancer surgery just like the rest of the population in treating their cancers. I suspect that they are dying from cancer at a slightly lower rate than the rest of us since they will spot it quicker in themselves, and get treatment earlier than the rest of us. I have a oncologist friend, that I played in the dust of childhood with long ago. She’s had her cancer surgery. She’s had her chemo and lost all of her hair. Various pubs list her in the top 10 in her field. She’s still following normal protocol for her neoplasm. Your scenario would be big news to her I would think.

Ok, I’m not playing the game anymore. The idea that the medical establishment is hiding effective treatments from the rest of us seems rather paranoid to me. If you really believe such stuff based on the premise that they’re all keeping it a secret from the rest of us, then I am not the only one that is “quite an optimist”, and I would also have to “have a lot of faith” that such an improbable veil of secrecy could be maintained.

[aruanan]

I am all for making an informed and well researched decision. And think most people who use alternatives are generally well informed on their treatments as well as their disease--from a poster on another thread.

The problem is twofold:

1. Most of what people who take the 'alternative' route use for research is without scientific merit.

2. They generally lack both the knowledge and ability to understand the papers that present the results of basic science research. This is not a put-down; it’s just a statement of fact. And it's true for any subject that presupposes a certain depth of knowledge on a particular topic, whether the engineering of coal-fired electric generation plants, the handgrinding of solid carbide surgical burrs, or restaurant management. The sheer amount of information (and mis-information) that's out there on any subject is staggering. It takes a great deal of time and effort just to get a sense of what's current in one little area of one little area.

Suppose someone is diagnosed with colon cancer and says he doesn't trust his doctor because the doctor will just recommend surgery and is in league with the surgeons to give them more work. The thought of surgery is really scary and confirms both the presence of a deadly disease and his inability to do anything about it. Consequently, in order to regain some feeling of control, he decides to take the 'alternative' route to treatment and to do his own research. Besides, coffee enemas and macrobiotics, both things he can do at home, sound a lot more “natural” than colon resection and chemotherapy.

Since he doesn't trust medical science because of its alleged self-interest, everything medical science says is suspect. Then where will he go for information? To those who sell alternative medications and procedures? What about their self-interest? Does he type in 'colon cancer' AND 'cures' into some web search engine? If he does, he'll come back with literally thousands of web pages (7,400,000 from Google.com using the above criteria) that would take thousands (or millions) of hours to read. But even then he would only have scraped the surface and all the while the cancer is progressing.

The lone researcher still must devise some way of separating the pages with accurate information from those that are simply untrue or from those that are actively misleading. How will he do it? Simply being willing to do research will do nothing to halt the progression of his cancer. The tumor doesn't give a rat's ass (tumor immunology joke since a lot of cancers are implanted on a rodent's hind quarters) about how hard the person it's going to kill is willing to work to become truly knowledgeable about it. It has its own timetable.

If he wanted to go to scientific journals in the field of medical research in general, cancer in particular, and colon cancer specifically, he would be faced with the same problem. If he went to PubMed, a resource of millions of peer-reviewed journals in the fields of medical science, and entered ‘colon cancer’ AND 'review' into the PubMed Query in order to find papers that give an overview of the subject of colon cancer and the research being done in it, he would get a return of 2475 articles. And these are not the primary papers. If he looked up 'colon cancer', he would get a return of 20727 papers on the subject. If he entered 'cancer' AND 'review' he would be presented with a return of 270,705 papers. If just 'cancer,' then 2,347,612 papers. Which should he choose?

To be able to understand what the papers are saying, he would have to acquire sufficient background in anatomy and physiology (both animal and human), biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, epidemiology, genetics, pharmacology, statistics, surgery, and so on. Where should he start? To be able to read the papers intelligently he would need to know how those results applied to males versus females, to old versus young, with this or that complicating condition and whether the results were obtained in a way that others could independently reproduce.

After that, he would still need adequate knowledge and experience to judge the validity of the conclusions drawn by the researchers. And finally, he would need some method to determine whether he is picking one thing and rejecting another because it is true or because it does or doesn't appeal to what he has already decided he wants to be true.

He cannot do this by surfing the web no matter his degree of sincerity.

Meanwhile, he has been diagnosed with a particularly deadly form of cancer that needs treatment NOW. What should he do? The best thing, since he lacks both time and expertise, is to go to those who have gone through all of the training described above. These people are medical doctors. Some specialize in the diagnosis of the disease; some, in the medical treatment of it; some, in the surgical or radiological treatment of it. They work together to pool their knowledge on the subject as it applies to one particular person in order to find the most effective way of treating the disease in that individual. The single individual becomes the beneficiary of many hundreds of thousands of hours of study and experience that he could not possibly acquire on his own.

Yeah, sometimes the doctors are wrong. They aren't God, though some may appear to believe they are on a first name basis with him. They don't know everything. But in general medical doctors will be far more likely to know what to do in a given medical situation than a clerk at the GNC with a GED and a certificate in herbal bowelology he got mail order from The Center for Wholistic Healing.

[DollyCali]

BTTT

[djf]

I’m not playing any kind of games.

I simply posted something I heard because FReepers are, as a group, generally more intelligent, have far more of an open mind, and have the wherewithal to look at things and make up their minds for themselves.

If there is ANY EVIDENCE that this therapy is at least as effective as chemo and radiation then it needs to come into the spotlight.

And since you are the one that brought it up, I seem to have heard recently something to the effect that 80% of people in the oncology field have stated they WOULD NOT take the standard protocols. The protocols they make a living at prescribing every day.

[aruanan]

But for instance I’ve read reports - credible reports - that say that the “Restasis” stuff they prescribe for dry eyes actually only works for ten percent of the people who use it.

The doctors who prescribe it know that and the pharma company that sells it know that.

I imagine the only people as a group who don’t know that are the people buying it.

So who’s “lying”??

No one. There is no way of knowing ahead of time that you are part of that 10% unless you try it.

No pharmaceutical company company claims that its medication to treat a certain condition will work the same in all people who use it. All medications have different degrees of effectiveness depending on the type of disease, its progression, and other complicating conditions such as the individual's own unique physical nature, general state of health, the patient's gender, age, etc, etc, etc.

[jonrick46]

Thank you for the tip on ear wax. I often have a nasty ear wax buildup and resort to using my Water Pik with hot water. It is an unpleasant experience. The use of hydrogen peroxide would be a great solution for my problem. Do you dilute it? How long do you let it sit in your ear?

[Habibi]

“I seem to have heard recently something to the effect that 80% of people in the oncology field have stated they WOULD NOT take the standard protocols.”

Cite the article and we can talk about it. :-)

[aruanan]

The use of hydrogen peroxide would be a great solution for my problem. Do you dilute it? How long do you let it sit in your ear?

A peroxide is what is used in something like the Murine earwax removal kit (carbamide peroxide). With this, the peroxide is in a thick liquid vehicle that keeps it inside the ear rather than running out as hydrogen peroxide in water would. You add the drops, tilt your head to run it back in as far as it will go and lie there for ten or fifteen minutes listening to all the popping of the peroxide. Later you gently flush it out with warm water using the included syringe. I first used this when I was about 22 and was horrified to see all the chunks of wax and dead skin come out but was amazed at being able to hear all the little pops and clicks of the aerated water running in the sink. Of course, they caution the user not to get too enthusiastic with squirting the water lest he perforate his ear drum.

[djf]

Well, no doubt medical technology and information and the biological sciences are beyond alot of people.

Kinda in the same way auto mechanics is.

And we KNOW FOR A FACT that auto mechanics are always benevolent, trustworthy individuals who would never in a million years tell you something needs replaced when it was still good, right?

;=)

Doctors are people in a profession. There are good ones and bad ones. No matter what, they are men, not gods.

So t’s not like the medical industry itself has some kind of high falutin ethical standards that make them unquestionable.

[DollyCali]

I do the hydrogen peroxide &/or rubbing alcohol in ear daily. Undiluted. Put some on q-tip & make sure it is a generous amount. can use eye drop. It dries up any excess moisture helping to prevent fungus growth ... and if you have ever had a bad ear fungal infection you will really be committed to this regime. It tends to also help keep down bacteria and other nasties that can cause you problems. My GP told me this about 30 years ago when both my son & I had reoccurring ear infrections/problems. Never an incident for either of us since

[djf]

And remember. A person might pay $100 for an alternator, but that same person would pay 100 thousand dollars for a liver!!!

[aruanan]

And remember. A person might pay $100 for an alternator, but that same person would pay 100 thousand dollars for a liver!!!

You can live without an alternator but you can't live without a liver.