For at least one hundred years established cancer research and treatment has been based on the principle that only one cell in the body needs to become abnormal for it to reproduce itself to form a cancer mass. Research based on this concept has produced treatments that charge into these cells or masses to kill them quickly. Even after a mass is excised with no obvious cancer left, doctors are prescribing radiation and/or chemotherapy or hormone inhibitors (if the cells are hormone related) — all on the chance that one cell may have escaped the scalpel and settled in another part of the body to continue to proliferate. These treatments concentrate so completely on destroying abnormal cells that the patient is often destroyed in the process. Although this system has not led to a cancer cure, conventional research and treatment still follow the concept that cell proliferation is unrelated to a biological breakdown in body function.
An enormous amount of research has taken place which should have changed the established concepts of cancer, ergo, research and treatment, but it seems to be ignored or simply not understood.
Many years ago some prisoners were asked to serve as guinea pigs by allowing cancer cells to be grafted to their skin. (Of course, they were given some consideration in sentence reduction.) Some of the cancer grafts took, but others were rejected. This was an important clue that our own systems exercise control over whether we are prone to accept a graft and become cancer victims or whether physiologically our own systems can protect us against cancer. The outcome should have alerted the cancer establishment that there were other factors than the one in place for so many years. This was the first evidence that cancer is a systemic problem and that a healthy immune system would reject cancer.
Another important clue to the systemic nature of cancer was the rise in cancer in the transplant population from the use of immuno-suppressive drugs which were necessary to avoid a rejection of the transplanted organ.
The Drs. Heilstrom, a husband and wife team doing research at the University of the State of Washington, delivered a paper at a science writers’ seminar at Carefree, Arizona, stating that the immune system was an important factor in cancer control and that radiation and chemotherapy depressed the immune response. This information pointed in the direction of an overall biological breakdown instead of a localized one.
Dr. Judah Folkman at Harvard University also delivered a paper at another science writers’ seminar showing that cell production is integrally related to other physiological processes. This valuable information was never recognized as pointing to a new approach in cancer research and treatment.
Cancer is a physiological problem — a breakdown in body chemistry. What is a breakdown in body chemistry? It is a physiological dysfunction which can be responsible for the production of abnormal cells and a weak immune system unable to eliminate those cells.
One alternative doctor, Max Gerson, M.D., who had a clinic in Nanuet, New York, believed that cancer was caused by a breakdown in liver function. Another, Dr. William Donald Kelley, concluded that it was a breakdown in pancreatic function. Dr. Denis Burkitt claimed that colon cancer developed from a low roughage diet. Do you think that one is right and another wrong? Actually, all are correct.
The body is made up of many systems and each system has many roles. There is the digestive system, glandular system, nerve system, elimination system, lymphatic system, endocrine system, circulatory system and others. If any of these systems is out of order there is a biological dysfunction. Not every breakdown leads to cancer, nor is every breakdown permanent. The body has powerful self-healing capability. We tend to abuse it beyond its ability to sustain health, thereby causing the body to manifest symptoms of ill health which can be minor or serious. Unfortunately, treatment usually only addresses symptoms, instead of the underlying causes.
If true progress is to made in cancer treatment, it’s time to rethink the underlying concepts which guide the massive, costly efforts now searching for the “cure.”
