Cancer Therapies

Traditional Therapies

Surgery

This is the time honored method. The gold standard. No organ, no -itis. The problem is that most of these organs perform a function. The problem with cancer is that it is an error in gene copying, so unless you get the whole tumor, it ultimately will not work, which is why it is coupled with X-rays and Chemotherapy. Of course, if an organ has gotten in its own way, some or all of it will have to be removed to correct this.

Chemotherapy

Frankly, I know too little about this to comment. What you can say is that they seem to be improving their technique with it over the years, but it usually has horrible side effects for the patient.

X-rays

This is like saturation bombing. It takes out the German airplane factory, but also every house and school and playground near it. I have read that radiologists are looking for ways of tagging cells for destruction, but my impression is that this is all theoretical. I am guided by the experience of my friends fathers' who worked on the Manhattan Project and subsequently at Argonne National Labs. First, several hundred Röntgens were safe, but this number kept coming down. They say if the astronauts had gone to the moon a few months later, a solar wind would have killed them with radiation. Once again, it can horrible side effects for the patient.

Non-Traditional Therapies

Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol)

Vitamin D is not technically a vitamin, it is a hormone pre-cursor. I cannot find this on the web, but I watched Michael Roizen M.D. of the Cleveland Clinic on a PBS special, and he said that they thought vitamin D was a gene checker of some kind. Well, this suggests a solution for solving the gene copying problem that gets right at the heart of the problem. It will probably prove important to include calcium somehow with this, perhaps through dried fruit, but maybe tablets will suffice.

Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)

Research by Mark Levin, et al, at the National Institutes of Health have found that when tumor tissues are saturated with vitamin C through intravenous administration that hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is created a the site of cancer cell, and will kill it. What is interesting is that normal cells are not killed. It is not known how the vitamin C knows which cells are which. Levine's paper is here:

http://integrativemed.kumc.edu/documents/Ascorbate%20Acid%20Kills%20Cancer%20Cells.pdf

There are heartbreaking problems with this therapy. Here is one story I heard: a doctor I was receiving intravenous vitamin C from was treating a patient with renal cancer. The woman had had the cancer for some time (years), but apparently was down to her last chance. She came to the clinic 3 days every week for intravenous vitamin C. This came to be quite a burden. Forty-five minutes one way, an hour or two of therapy, and forty-five minutes home. The therapy appeared to work, and it kept her alive, but she got tired of the trips to the clinic, and just stopped the treatments and died. So, it is not just a matter of finding the treatment, but it is also important to be able to get this treatment at home or close to home, and such treatment will not be paid for by any health plan, public or private.

My own internal medicine doctor did some research with a Herta Spencer and they found that vitamin C is a chelator and robs the body (bones, presumably) of calcium. He says that the body does not readily replace the lost calcium, which is important. I knew vitamin C is a chelator, however, as in many therapies it is a matter of weighing the good against the bad, and my take is that this going to turn out to be an important therapy. He drags his feet. He won't administer this therapy, and forgets, delays and in the end has never helped me to help myself.

I don't believe that this therapy actually solves the gene copying problem, but perhaps it kills most or eventually all of the copying errors, and then the body can continue unhampered. I have read elsewhere that NO (nitrous oxide) may also be created by vitamin C and kill offending cells.

Update: Levine has continued his research and found that intravenous vitamin C works pretty well against pancreatic, brain, and ovarian cancers:

http://www.seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Health/2008/20080804-2-VitaminC.htm

Coenzyme Q10

Coenzyme Q10 is an enzyme involved in the production of ATP in the cell's mitochondria. ATP is what the cell uses as energy. Q10 has been involved in only two very small trials, one published, one not published. The published trial involved 32 advanced breast cancer patients. The trial was a two year experiment, and all patients were living at the end of the trial. The only other trial was with 30 prostate cancer patients. These trials are so small as to almost not be science, but were nevertheless interesting.

The method of operation is not known. The speculation is that perhaps Q10 improves the operation of Natural Killer cells (NK cells). They go out and do their job of killing tumor cells and cells infected by viruses by releasing proteins that cause the target cell to die by apoptosis.