July 1996 (updated from March)
Some Statements Regarding Medical State of the Art in Cancer Treatment
Examining the history of any given subject illuminates the current status of the field. Such an exercise is especially true of medicine. In the old days, the standard orthodox line such as: "leave the professional work to the professionals" was broader than it became towards the end of the 19th century. In the pre-civil war period, "Professionals" might include homeopaths, surgeons, general practitioners, herbalists, and even barbers (Tonsorialists and phlebotomists). The restricted definition of who was an "orthodox" practitioner of the healing arts really only congealed after that time.
A professional in most spheres dealing with things like furnaces, cars, plumbing or electrical wiring of a house, comes in, analyses, does a diagnosis, and then tells you what's wrong, and gives you an estimate of cost to get things back to normal. In the U.S.A. in the 20th century the attitude towards health hasn't been much different. The body is a thing that seems to operate on fuel, and liquids and air, and we go along until something goes wrong, and then we call a professional: the Doctor.
In some instances, perhaps even in many instances, the professional doesn't have an answer. Cancer is such an instance. Today, as we near the 21st Century, we are listening more closely to the old saw that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In the case of cancer, for most of the last 40 years---especially since Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was published and we realized we were poisoning our world and ourselves---we have supposed this to mean to get rid of the carcinogens. Then 10 years or so ago, the cancer professionals acknowledged that the statistics of cancer amongst vegetarians was lower consistently than for meat eaters. Only then did we hear the cancer professionals say: eat more fruits and vegetables. But this had been a commonplace amongst "health-nuts" for over a hundred years before these professionals suggested it. The health-nuts talked about "pure" foods, and "devitalized" foods, and the result on the blood, and it just seemed like so much hokum to medical experts. The standard stance on such claims was: food is food is food--the FDA takes care of purity, and as for blood: There is no pure or impure.
It seems only after massive numbers of people were turning to "pure" foods for their own reasons, despite the standard professional line, that the cancer professionals started listening to the biochemists who had been looking at the reactions of cancer cells in test tubes and rats to specific compounds delivered by common foods. Then they realized some of the rationales for eating "natural foods". This was done grudgingly by many cancer professionals, since this was a semi-validation of the theory behind Laetrile: which is that cancer is a special form of nutritional deficiency disease.
Then of course, they had to admit there was such a thing as impure blood, since beef, for an example, was found to contain inordinate amounts of di-ethyl-stilbesterol, a synthetic estrogenic compound used to fatten beef cattle. And it had become well established by 1970 that estrogenic compounds could be carcinogenic. Eat the cow, get more sex steroids than normal, be predisposed to cancer. So the reasoning went along quite nicely with what the health nuts said. But the professionals answered: but this is science, what you say is hokum. In other words, the health nuts were irrational when they proposed pure foods for pure blood and healthy bodies. When the professionals said the same thing, it was rational. The health nuts scratched their heads. It's the same thing, but not really, because...the professional's reasons were...what? Gooder?
No, not exactly, but it is a fact that "intuitive" processes can sometimes be way wrong. Scientific method is a method of proving intuitions, or of revealing possible error. This is a deep issue that involves a great deal more than we can delve into in an editorial. Suffice it to say either route can go too far alone.
With cancer, the professional-orthodox practitioner of the healing art has come face to face apparently with a mystery which broaches no solution. The problem is that the professional field has been unwilling to come right out and say: we have no answers, nothing we do really works..(there are a few significant exceptions, of which more later). But the general public recognizes this sober reality. So it should be no wonder that people cast further afield than the standard scope of treatment. And it makes sense for the suffering patient to do so. In a life and death situation, it does increase the odds of survival to have a large spectrum of choices. To apply all of them may be contra-indicated, but to select those with a good track record, which can be complementary, is an intelligent thing to do. People also have warrant to seek out those things which have yet to be approved if their options are truly restricted, as it so often is in cancer. As a matter of personal freedom, this also carries a force of law.
But there are those who would disagree. There are those who would protect us, even when we don't want protection. How is it conceivable, that when some one decides he or she wishes to utilize an alternative drug, or food supplement, or whatever, that the F.D.A. can say "no" on the basis of "effectiveness"? Using the substance or compound Laetrile as an example: shouldn't it merely be the F.D.A. commission to insure that whatever Laetrile is available in the U.S. is pure, the good stuff, and not inert, rancid, or fake? Instead, though you decide you want Laetrile, having nothing to lose by using it...many people use Laetrile along with the standard regimens of chemotherapy and radiation...you must either leave the country, or enter into court to sue for the right to use it. This isn't protection, it's a burden. The FDA insists all those who suffer from cancer be content with standard modalities of treatment, which are Surgery, Radiation and Chemotherapy (SRC). But people also recognize that the F.D.A. and other organizations which tow the SRC line are wrong, and are turning to alternative modalities of treatment for cancer in droves.
It's no wonder that standard medical practitioners are now softening their attitudes towards alternative modalities. Not simply because the New England Journal of Medicine showed how much business was flowing into the alternative practices over the standard ones, though that must have influenced some M.D.s who currently boast alternative mixed practices. I think rather the medical professional is expanding their regimens--and this especially is true for the oncologist--because they see what pitiful little there is to offer the cancer patient in the standard program.
Medicine is an empirically derived body of knowledge at it's roots. Many of the rationales for the use of various treatments are only today being transformed from empirical to rational therapies. This has been understood for a long time, as is evidenced in the 1906 edition of Saunder's Question-Compends, No. 7: "Essentials of Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Prescription Writing", wherein we find these questions and answers:
What is therapeutics?
Thereapeutics (Therapeno, I take care of, or cure) deals with the application of remedies to the cure of or the relief from disease, and may be either emperical or rational.How does empirical differ from rational therapeutics?
When a remedy is given in any disease because it has succeeded in similar cases before, although the manner in which it acts is often not understood, it is given empirically. When a remedy is prescribed because, from a knowledge of its action on the body, it is likely that it will antagonize or overcome a particular pathological condition, it is administered on the rational plan. Rational therapeutics is the more scientific, and is the outgrowth of pharmacology.
The writer in the typical circumlocutive style of the times says that knowing how something works transforms the emperical--as well as the intutive--into rational methodology. The popularization of scientific method that was sweeping all fields of knowledge since the 18th century created in many medical men and women a sense of shame over the "merely" empirical knowledge which formed the bulk of their field. This was a general trend of the times, and there grew a class distinction between those who could derive procedures in any field "on theoretical grounds alone" as opposed to those who relied merely on "proven" methods. The theoretical physician was a cut above the experimental physician. The same as in physics.
The field of pharmacology around the turn of the century was still relatively focused on understanding the existing pharmacopoeia which, judging by Parke, Davis & Company's 1909 "Manual of Therapeutics", consisted of about 80% herbal derived medicines or compounds. This rationalization of medicine, through the introduction of pharmacodynamics and biophysics into therapeutics is still going on, so vast is the empirical data-base. The concept of "modern" pharmacology is popularly conceived by relative experts to have begun around the second world war. Physics began to make inroads into biochemistry and organic chemistry. Indeed, more and more the field of medicine is interfacing with physics, and the most up-to-date physician must have more than a passing interest in dynamics or kinetics to excel in his practice.
The advances of chemistry and the prejudice for rational medicine, combined to reduce "herbalism" and "folk" therapies which worked but which had no rational explanation as to why or how into disrepute. If distinction was made between the empirical as opposed to the rational-guided physician, a special contempt was reserved for medical answers being found or formulated by a non-professional, or anyone "outside" the accredited profession or field. But even within the field answers to problems have often come only through extreme hardships, a good example of which is the life of Ignaz Phillip Semmelweiss.
Semmelweis (1818-65) was a physician born in Buda, Hungary. He deduced the causes of "child-bed fever", called in those days "puerperal fever", which took the lives of numerous mothers who birthed in hospitals. The standard theory of puerperal fever was it was due to a "miasma" or a simple a statistic of the "condition" of pregnancy. It was in reality a proliferating septic infection given birthing mothers who had been operated upon by doctors who came directly from operating on cadavers. Semmelweis' solution was to simply wash the hands, instruments and environs thoroughly. This simple approach to the problem was highly successful, nevertheless it cost Semmelweiss his position and reputation, being castigated as a "kook," and eventually he even took his own life by infecting himself in order to prove that "sepsis" or infection arose from unsanitary operating procedures. Later in England, Lister proved independently he was right.
The resistance to new ideas in any field has always managed to keep the majority far behind the State of the Art. In most cases, this resistance is merely an inertia within familiar paradigms.
A paradigm is a map in consciousness which defines the limits of the possible, and the impossible, typically concentrating on Known quantities. A paradigm is intimately connected to perception, and is both formed by means of perception, and also influences perception. We alter our personal paradigms somewhat by our interests. For a good example of this, consider your car. When you first get the car, without really looking, you start seeing models similar to yours all over, whereas before you may never have noticed one. It's as if they were invisible. My conception that you may have had a car, in order to relate to this example, is an example of a paradigm exerting it's influence in my thinking. My world conception is formed through perception, the memory of which is synthetically manipulated somewhat in my thought, but the confines of these elements actually have a life of their own. Unconsciously, the paradigm exerts its influence on perception and expression.
A paradigm, when it is passive, something we receive without thought, can be a prison. When we expand our consciousness to question, or wonder why something is not so, or why it is, we are testing this map. Columbus altered the limited flat-world paradigm which had so restricted sea-going adventures. Michael Faraday, whom we call the father of electrodynamics, was an experimentalist who, by the results of his work, extended the map of the world-paradigm which before was mostly mechanical and chemical in the spheres of science. Benjamin Franklin and even Mesmer had helped born the new paradigm, and tweak the envelope of the ages old world conception. By slow degrees, these new elements "modernized" the world paradigm. Something new, different, alters the paradigm under which we labor. We don't actually demolish or destroy this paradigm, because in the process a new map is created. Growth demands paradigms dissolve and change. They are transformed, but not destroyed. If they aren't changed, it is stagnation and hypnosis.
Depending on the measure of inertia in our paradigm, we may never see the value of things formed in a different paradigm. It may require more work, more effort than we wish to exert. A prejudice exists for the familiar. Then again, we may not be able to see the new things. When someone like Royal Rife appears on the scene and through his broad first had experience in many different fields and his mastery of those different fields, presents a synthesis of his knowledge, the paradigms floating about in his audience's heads are being assaulted violently. Rife did more than present a theory, he appeared on the world stage with facts, and the methods of proving them, and the result was mixed: on one hand marvelous enthusiasm and acceptance; on the other a dumb stare for the most part, and doubt. At once, seemingly, there appeared a marvelous microscope, and not only that, a cure for dread cancer. It inspired; It was hard to swallow.
Rife had elicited the support both moral and financial, of two practical San Diego industrialists to get started: Timken a Ball-bearing magnate of the time and Bridges, owner of the Bridges Carriage Company. But after his first successes with his microscopes, and later his frequency instruments, his most avid supporters were doctors, M.D.s. These were intelligent men and women who recognized what worked, and could quickly perceive that Rife was on the cutting edge in terms both of microscopy and a method of approach to infectious or parasitic disease.
Then this state-of-the-art technology got side-tracked. Partially due to the passive paradigms of people of his time. But I think that was only part of the problem. There are also those who have created an intentional world order which they will defend against all reason. Actually people from around the turn of the century were becoming accustomed to rapid growth in the sciences, and expected great things from new technologies. It was quickly becoming "an age of wonder." And it wasn't the medical fraternity per se which nipped Rife's contributions in the bud. Rather, the introduction of unfair business practices within the relatively pure field of medical science, is what stepped in to limit Rife's discoveries. Looking into this sinister topic, rather skeptically at first, I came to realize that after all, we are dealing with individuals, people, who like everyone else, have personal, philosophical, moral, and/or financial agendas. Each one is under the influence of a paradigm which they have constructed, either consciously or unconsciously, and which permits or also compels all their actions.
This is true of those whose reputations were built up on the foundation of presenting a theory. Many medical writers were against Rife's findings for poly- or pleo-morphism in disease causing organisms from the start. They had promoted mono-morphism, and this was something they were prepared to defend. The allied organizational bodies like the A.M.A. and F.D.A. could be influenced by those current leaders under the influence of the dominant paradigm. These peer-review and watch-dog bodies are like the hall-monitor in school. They look for trouble, and very likely will end up making something out of nothing, to fulfill the meaning of their role.
But there is also the uglier aspects of greed, envy, vindictiveness, and willful blindness. A little bit of all these factors and more has played a role in suppressing the positive truths surrounding Rife, Laetrile, and a host of other alternatives touching on the field of disease in general, and cancer specifically. When Rife refused to sell his ray-treatment outright to certain important figures in the A.M.A., he soon found himself in court.
Before I conclude this already overly long editorial, I wish to return to the idea of the "empirical" data-base. The state of the art in any field arises from antecedents, from precedents. There is precious little that springs de novo into the world as a finished perfection, if anything. This precursor field for all science and medicine is human experience. Memory, intuition, the subjective sensing of our way by hunches, "soft-reasoning", leaning on comparatives, is the bulk working material which the artist in his field molds into a well-honed form. The field may be one principally concerned with beauty, or knowledge, or making and doing in some form or another. And while the scientist may focus the image, eliminate, like a sculptor, the obscuring and irrelevant mass, in approaching the state of the art, time has shown the error in closing the mind to those rejected parts, regarded as useless today based on current knowledge. For example: we tend to laugh at stories of doctors bloodletting, thinking it a thing of the past. But recent research indicates that, for men at least, and postmenopausal women, bleeding makes sense. It is because of the incremental storage of iron in the body (as ferritin), which may be more factorable in heart disease than cholesterol or fat. Bleeding allows for the sloughing off of this excess, as the iron is utilized then in the formation of fresh blood. [For example see the research by Jerome Sullivan, The Lancet, June 1981. A lay summary was also published in Reader's Digest, October 1995:"Is Iron Making You Sick?", by S.Chazin, pg. 138.]
So, when talking about medicine, one is especially discussing a field which really does combine the two worlds of man's experience: empiricism and intuition on one hand; and an ever changing field of scientific fact. It must never be forgotten though, that the unknowns of biology--of life--are so large, that no ratio between them and the known is possible. So it not only pays to keep an open mind, it is compulsory if we would partake in even greater wonders. I will leave off with more from Saunder's Question-Compends, for my reader's "edification."
What are remedies? Remedies are the agents employed in the treatment of disease.How may remedies be classified? Remedies are subdivided into mechanical, physical, dietetic, hygienic, and pharmaceutic agents. The first four classes are usually treated of in works especially devoted to such subjects.
What are mechanical remedies? Venesection; local blood-letting by means of leeches, cups, scarifications, incisions, or punctures; bandages; splints; sutures; ligatures; acupressure needle and forceps; acupuncture; aspiration; frictions; massage; stomach and colon washing, etc., are mechanical remedies.
What are physical remedies? When Rontgen rays, light, heat, cold, electricity, galvanism, or other of the physical forces are used in the treatment of disease, they are spoken of as physical remedies. They are treated of at length in works on physics and in books devoted to them exclusively.
What is meant by dietetic remedies? All relating to the food of the sick (In many diseases, the diet is of equal importance to, or of more importance than, medication--e.g.,in diabetes mellitus and in various forms of dyspepsia.) or to special plans of diet are included under this head. [N.B.: emphasis mine]
Related links:Some statements about Standard Treatments
(http://www.navi.net/~rsc/chemorad.htm)
The Nitrilosides in Plants and Animals
(http://www.navi.net/~rsc/nitrilo1.htm)
Remedies that have a curative effect on cancer
(http://www.navi.net/~rsc/jones10.htm)
Health Search and Jump Page
(http://www.navi.net/~rsc/hlthsrch.htm)
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This Web page was written and made by Roger Cathey, Research Associate of the ROBERT CATHEY RESEARCH SOURCE.
All pages Copyright © 1996 R.S.Cathey.