Foundation for Advancement in Cancer Therapy
Non-Toxic Biological Approaches to the Theories,
Treatments and Prevention of Cancer

2024
Our 53rd Year

Can the Cancer Problem Be Solved?By Dr. Virginia Vetrano

In 1931 there came from the press a little book by Dr. Shelton on Cancer.

On page 101 of this same book he says. “I have often thought that where operations are made for the removal of early cancer, they might prove ultimately successful if they were followed up properly. The patient is sent away from the hospital without any instruction about how and what to eat and how to live. He or she is allowed to return to the same mode of living that laid the foundation for the cancer in the first place. There is quite naturally a recurrence in a short time.”

REMOVAL OF CAUSE

In this quotation it is strongly suggested that were the removal of cancer followed by a strict adherence to all of the rules of Hygienic living, recurrence would be rare. Discussing this thought with Dr. Shelton, he said: “Physicians and surgeons place too much stress upon the removal of all cancerous tissue,- thinking that if they leave behind only one cancer cell, this will result in a recurrence of cancer; but they place no stress at all upon the need for removal of cause. It should be obvious that there were no ‘cancer cells present prior to the initial beginning of the cancer, and yet cancer developed. If cause can result in the evolution of cancer, initially, where there has been no cancer, the persistence of this cause can result in the evolution of another cancer after all cancerous tissue has been removed. That removal of cause is far more important than the removal of every vestige of cancerous tissue is shown by:

  1. The fact that it has been shown experimentally that cancer cells arise in great numbers of instances and are destroyed by the body without ever developing into cancer.
  2. That cancer, even in advanced stages, sometimes gets well spontaneously.
  3. That under Hygienic care cancerous growths are often reduced to less than a fourth their original size.
  4. That great numbers of precancerous stages and what are considered early cancer are completely recovered from through a process of Hygienic care.”

He thinks that all of this means that the body itself can take care of a few remaining cancer cells, once its condition has been greatly improved. No cancer cell has ever been observed to revert to a normal cell. Once a cell has become cancerous, the condition is regarded as irreversible. But they die easily and it is Dr. Shelton’s view that, until the systemic condition of the body has deteriorated below a certain standard, it easily rids itself of any cancer cell that may arise locally. He thinks that spontaneous recoveries, which are very rare, indicate that bodies that are greatly deteriorated, sometimes recover sufficiently from their state of deterioration, that they are able to free themselves of masses of cancer cells, not perhaps by restoring these cells to a normal state, but by treating them as foreign bodies; that is, by disintegrating them and casting out the debris.

THE GREATEST ADVENTURE

My interest in all this was aroused when, upon recently viewing The Greatest Adventure, Jack Trop’s Hygienic movie, I saw the scars where a malignant melanoma had been removed from the right upper chest of R. J. Cheatham, of Detroit, Mich. This melanoma was removed in 1948. Mr. Cheatham tells us that his surgeons gave him but a relatively short time to live. Not wanting to die, he says he tried everything that was advised, including X-rays, radium, massage and other things. He says that he grew worse rather than better under these forms of treatment. Then he procured all of Dr. Shelton’s available books, including some that can be had only through the used book stores, and read and studied these carefully. He adopted a Hygienic way of life, whereupon his health began to improve. To me his case seems like verification of the suggestion made by Dr. Shelion in 1931, that, if cause is removed coincident with or folio’ wing the removal of the growth, recurrence will be rare. I realize that one case of this kind is not sufficient to establish the truth of Dr. Shelton’s idea but .think that it is a significant indication that his suggestion may have great merit.

I asked Dr. Shelton why he had not followed up this idea and he replied that he had not had opportunity to do so. He says that as a rule people who submit to operation for the removal of cancer and of so called benign tumors do not come to him for aftercare and instruction in a correct way of life. “As: a general rule,” he added, “these people are in such a rush to get back to the mode of life out of which their troubles evolved that they have to wear asbestos-soled shoes to prevent burning their feet.”

MIGRATION OF CELLS

The melanoma gets its name from the fa.ct that it is composed of melanin-pigmented cells. Melanin is the dark, amorphous pigment of the skin and hair.. Malignant melanoma, which was the diagnosis of Mr. Cheatham’s disease, is a tumor (cancer) which usually develops from a nevus (mole) consisting of black masses of cells with a marked tendency .to metastisis. Metastasis is the transfer of disease from one organ or part to another not directly connected with it.

Metastasis in the case of cancer may be described as the migration of a cancer cell or cells from the cancer to some other part of the body, and a spontaneous grafting of the migrated cell into or upon the part to which it has migrated. Dr. Shelton doubts that these migrations and spontaneous grafts ever really occur. It is his thought that when cancer develops in two or more parts of the body, either concomitantly or successively, they are evolutions out of systemic causes. He says that if and when the medical and surgical professions ever recognize the true causes-of cancer, they will be forced to revolutionize their whole conception of it.

OPERATION AND FASTING

In the Sept. 1957 issue of Natural Hygiene, Muriel Egizi tells her story. Briefly, she had a breast. removed for carcinoma, “all infected tissue, glands and muscles” being removed. Her red blood count was low and she was unable to bring it back to normal. For five years following the operation she and her physician struggled with her blood count, but they could do nothing about it. Then she came in contact with Hygiene and, after several attempts to fast, she says: “I decided to take a trip to Texas and put myself under the care of Dr. Shelton. My fast lasted 21 days and I am happy to report that the results were all that I had hoped for, and more than I really expected … It was over five years since the operation for cancer and for the first time in all those years my blood count was back to normal.”

When I asked Dr. Shelton if she had cancer, he said: “I don’t know. The anemia would suggest that this may have been a correct diagnosis, but there is still the possibility that she had nothing more serious than a diagnosis of cancer.” Assuming that is was not cancer, it is still something to the credit of Hygiene that she regained a normal blood count. It is difficult for the average person to understand how a fast can enable the body to build blood; the common thought is that this requires much food, with the emphasis usually on flesh food. Dr. Shelton says: “The finest materials in the universe out of which to build blood are the reserve stores of the body. The blood-making organs do a remarkably fine job of building blood when the body has been freed of its toxic load.”

RECOVERY WITHOUT OPERATION

Another case, that of Mrs. C. E. Doolin of Dallas, Texas, who was told that she had cancer of the breast and advised to have her breast removed, but who made a full recovery without operation, should emphasize the importance of not submitting to the knife unless and until the existence of cancer is unmistakably established. Mrs. Doolin’s case is recorded in the film. Dr. Shelton, who supervised her fast and after-care, assures me that she did not have cancer but that she was merely one of many thousands who are yearly told that they have cancer when they have nothing more significant than an enlarged node or a hardening in the breast. He says that he has witnessed great numbers of recoveries of such patients in his practice, several of them much more dramatic than that of Mrs. Doolin. As thousands of such cases have recovered health under Hygienic care and thousands more have died as the result of operations and a still greater number have been severely crippled by the mutilation of the operation, certainly nobody should think of undergoing an operation without first giving Hygiene every possible opportunity to restore health. Even if an operation must ultimately be resorted to, a previous period of Hygienic living will build in the patient the best possible condition for the operation. Dr. Shelton says that even this is not an adequate safeguard in all cases. For, in many cases in which the enlargement is not totally obliterated by a Hygienic way of life, it is rendered harmless and no operation should be thought of.