Editorials

The War on Cancer ?

cancer crab
Written by Alan V. Schmukler

Thought-provoking – Is the medical establishment interested in curing cancer or preventing cures?

The medical establishment is always asking for your money, claiming they want to find a cure for cancer. It isn’t so. In the U.S, cancer is big business for the drug companies, the doctors and the hospitals. Some years ago a cancer hospital in New York sued an oncologist who moved to another hospital taking his patients with him. The hospital stated that the patients “belonged” to them…as a commodity.

Over the last 50 years physicians with documented cures have been persecuted, prosecuted, driven out of practice or out of the country. The latest and perhaps best example of martyring such a doctor, is the case of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, from Texas.

Dr. Burzynski developed a type of targeted gene therapy called antineoplastons. Using this protocol he has cured many “terminal” cancers, including numerous stage four brain cancers. He documented this repeatedly and proved it so convincingly, that the people and agencies prosecuting him, acknowledged that “the efficiency of his methods is not an issue”. The problem, they declared, is that his methods weren’t “approved”.

In spite of his having a proven cure, the Texas Medical Board, over 10 years, seized his patient records and tried to close his clinic and revoke his medical license. They failed. The FDA spent 14 years and 60 million dollars taking Dr. Burzynski to five grand juries and two trials. He was found innocent. In a final act of corruption, the National Cancer Institute along with a pharmaceutical company, tried to steal Dr. Burzynski’s patents.

Next time you hear about the “War on Cancer”, remember that the war is really on… cancer cures!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bv-UxhKdg4

In this Issue:

Our interview is with homeopath Julian Jonas, who served as an instructor at the New England School for Homeopathy, the Finger Lakes School for Homeopathy, the Teliosis School of Homeopathy, the North East College of Healing Arts and Science and the New England School for Acupuncture.

In Cooper & Cancer, Julian Jonas tells the story of 19th century homeopath Robert T. Cooper, who had a unique way of curing serious disease, even cancer.

In Why Medicine is Not Scientific, Dr. Richard Pitcairn takes us from classical physics and quantum theory to the effect of consciousness on reality and connects the dots to homeopathy.

We present four more cured cancer cases from Dr. Edmund Carleton.

Dr.Tijana Ruzic manages an extraordinarily rare cure of West Syndrome using homeopathy.

Dr. Brian Kaplan discusses his use of Provocative Therapy in the context of case taking.

Kathrine Dehn describes homeopathy’s battles, victories and current status in Denmark.

John Harvey critiques’s Jeroen Holtkamp’s article (Jan 2012 ezine) questioning the miasm theory….. and Jeroen Holtkamp replies.

Dr. Dragana Blagojevic explores the myths, legends and characteristics of Chelidonium.

Robert Medhurst gives us a brief overview on the use of homeopathic remedies for detox / drainage.

Claudia De Rosa explains how homeopathic remedies may interact with drugs in terms of the four humours.

There are more cases and articles, two book reviews, letters to the editor, Elaine’s Quiz, The Plant Doctor, Tips and Secrets, a new Cartoon and the Crossword puzzle. So pull up a comfortable chair and enjoy. Send your comments, questions, articles and cases to [email protected]

About the author

Alan V. Schmukler

Alan V. Schmukler is a homeopath, Chief Editor of Homeopathy for Everyone and author of ”Homeopathy An A to Z Home Handbook”, (also in French, German, Greek, Polish and Portuguese). He is Hpathy’s resident cartoonist and also produces Hpathy’s Tips & Secrets column and homeopathy Crossword puzzles each month. Alan is a recipient of the National Center for Homeopathy Martha Oelman Community Service Award. Visit Alan at his website: Here.

32 Comments

    • Thank you Leela. The U.S. is thought of as an “advanced” country, but it is foremost in suppressing alternative cures. We have a long history of that.

  • Alan, I’ve seen that clip before but it bears (only just as its so amazing the way he delivers it) watching again. Tear jerking.

    He is not the only one being hounded!

    I am being harassed by the UK Trading Standards who demand that I remove more from my website than they have already made me do, as I refer to diet and health as if my product – wheatgrass and broccoli sprout juices – could have a benefit for ill people or help people stay well. Well, they do and I have amazing testimonials but am not allowed to publish them.

    This is one excerpt of their letter “For clarification, the 1939 Cancer Act 12(c) prohibits health claims made by health professionals in commercial communications. Therefore a GP giving nutritional advice to a patient is not covered (and may advise). The key element is whether the ‘communication’ is deemed to be ‘commercial’. The Department of Health (DOH) has given the view that product labelling, packaging or advertising in any form is a commercial communications. Therefore your website advertising wheatgrass and broccoli sprout juice would be considered a commercial communication.”

    Bizarre, not least as doctors in the UK spend about half of one day in their 5 years training discussing nutrition!

    • Dear Oliver,

      Yes,the system pretty much controls the flow of information, so both doctors and patients only get one side – that of Pharma. Pharma doesn’t want people to know about the healing powers of wheat grass, raw foods or anything else that they can’t make a fortune selling.

  • Thank you Leela. The U.S. is thought of as an “advanced” country, but it is foremost in suppressing alternative cures. We have a long history of that.

    • A mindset of needing to use the latest technology or discovery… often with not so much long term wisdom 🙂 But the US also has a history of allowing people to have freedom of thought and choice. Hopefully the latter with prevail over prejudice and limited mindsets…

  • The idea that doctors do not want to cure cancer is bizarre and insulting. The commercial activities of the bizarre US health system are a sideshow to the real business of health care. I have known people who have devoted their entire working lives to improving cancer survival rates, and their techniques have rarely involved anything likely to make anyone a huge profit – I vividly remember meeting Bill Heald, whose 5-year survival rates were among the highest in the world thanks to a combination of really sound knowledge of anatomy, and the less-than-advanced pharmaceutical product dilute antiseptic, used to flush away seed cells from wound sites.

    The reason scientific medicine rejects alternative-to-medicine therapies is not about closed mindedness, it’s about the scientific method. In the wacky world of alternative-to-medicine therapies, you are free to make any claim you like and demand that others refute it. Science adopts the opposite approach: if you make a claim you must prove it, and do so in a way that can be replicated by others. And scientific “suppression” is a risible idea. Scientists are seriously shit at suppressing stuff. I mean, really really bad. There’s almost no crank theory that has not been published and discussed somewhere – the other day found a supposedly serious journal of water chemistry discussing, with a completely straight face, mathematical explanations for homeopathy “water memory”. Tooth fairy science!

    Burzynski makes substantial profits through charging for participation in “trials” of patented therapies that have not been published in the peer-reviewed literature. He is therefore either a quack or a profiteer exploiting the desperate for personal gain. I can’t think of a third alternative. His behaviour is criticised not because he is going against the medical establishment’s massive conspiracy to suppress cancer cures, but because what he is doing is unethical.

    • I agree with you that most doctors do want to cure cancer, but this is not true for Pharma which has used its surrogates (the FDA,NCI, medical societies etc.) to suppress legitimate cures. If you still think that Pharma exists to help people and that the FDA is just trying to protect the public, then it will be difficult to dialogue with you. If that is the case, you need to get some history under your belt.

      Organizations like the AMA exist to perpetuate themselves and not to cure people. They too have suppressed important discoveries, including homeopathy. Unfortunately, because of the FDA, medical societies and the AMA, so much important information has been lost, that well meaning doctors have only primitive tools to work with.

      By labeling alternative medicine “wacky” you have ruled out anything that doesn’t come from a pharmaceutical company. That’s a rather small frame of reference. You believe that conventional medicine is more “scientific”, but that’s an illusion. Conventional medicine is largely based on research initiated, funded, interpreted and selectively published by pharmaceutical companies, which have a poor track record of telling the truth. Drugs supposedly arrived at scientifically are repeatedly withdrawn after killing thousands. Vioxx killed 60,000 Americans, the same number of my countrymen who died in the Vietnam war. Money has so corrupted the medical field, that there is little certainty of anything scientific coming out of it.

      Another cancer researcher was Max Gerson who spent years curing cancer and other serious diseases with unconventional methods. He presented numerous documented cures during U.S. senate hearings. Nevertheless his work was rejected by the medical community as “wacky”. Somehow we had arrived at the point where documented cures were seen as less valid than blinded studies. Gerson cured Albert Schweitzer’s wife of pulmonary tuberculosis after conventional treatments had failed. Schweitzer’s own Type II diabetes was cured by Gerson’s therapy and he and Gerson became lifelong friends.

      You said you found a serious journal of water chemistry discussing mathematical explanations for homeopathy “water memory”, which you called “Tooth fairy science”. If it was a serious journal, why didn’t you allow it credibility? It seems that certain ideas will always be unacceptable to you, regardless of the facts. The term “water memory” is not meant to be understood anthropomorpically, but rather describes proven aspects of the molecular behavior of water.

      Your criticism of Dr. Burzynski suggests that either you didn’t read my editorial carefully, or you’re determined that nothing will change your mind.

  • Dr Alan V Schmukler in the Editorial writes:Is the medical establishment interested in curing cancer or preventing cures? I suggest to the readers to acquire and read the book entitled ‘Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cance by Siddhartha Mukherjee an oncologist living in USA. It is the Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction 2011.

    Why ‘biography’? Biographies are for humans. The author explains that cancer is not a disease but a person, however deranged from human point of view. I am on Chapter Five p.337 of 472 pages. The rest of the book of 572 pages consists of Notes,Bibliography and Index.The book does not mention Alternative Therapies. But it bears no resemblance to the accusation that established medicine is not after curing cancer but preventing it.

    In my future reply I will expand on why I say this. But for the present, I will quote two quotations that the author attaches to the beginning of a chapter. On p.143, he quotes Voltaire “Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know (even) less, in human beings of whom they know nothing”

    Part Five starts with the quotation: “It is in vain to speak of cures, or think of remedies, until such time as we have considered of the causes… cures must be imperfect, lame and to no purpose , wherein the causes have not first been searched.” Robert Burton “The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1893

    I have a lot more to say in due course and also about my sister in London diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma (a very aggressive type)of the bladder from a biopsy from cystoscopy performed about five weeks ago at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. I have already got in touch with one of the homeopath oncologists mentioned in Julien Jonas article and my sister has already started taking the protocol prescribed. She does not want operation to remove the bladder and have a bag to collect urine externally attached when the chances of success are only 50%. Should I advise her strongly to undertake the operation along with homeopathy or agree with her wish not to have operation thinking that homeopathy alone would be sufficient? My sister knows nothing about homeopathy and her decision not to accept operation has nothing to do with her belief in homeopathic treatment

    • Often a difficult decision… and a personal one. Whatever the choice she should be prepared for the consequences. Hope she makes the right choice for herself with whatever you advise her.

  • Dear Dr. Cassam,

    It is really a shame that the medical establishment doesn’t open itself to new ideas. Because they do not, it leaves patients with difficult choices and little support. I wish you the best with your sister. God bless.

  • My Comments

    As I started to read Emperor of All Maladies I found it an extraordinary book. However it unfortunately makes no mention of Alternative Therapies. Nevertheless, it is not only very informative but it reads like a serious novel – a heartbreaking one.

    But the research and practice of treating cancer were done by dedicated oncologists who believed in what they were doing was for patient’s good and nowhere I got the impression that they were subsidised by pharmaceutical firms and a profit motive was involved. In fact, in many cases, they had to fight, mostly unsuccessfully, for government subsidies or appeal to the public for finance. Sure, some of them – especially oncologist surgeons – were full of hubris, self-importance.On the other hand, research oncologists occasionally competing with their other colleagues to be the first to have their new discovery published in scientific journals like Nature. But most of them sacrificing themselves with one track pursuit of the cause of cancer in humans. Howard Temkin, for example, moved to the laboratory in Wiscosin, a desolate place away from civilisation and frozen to find out “A cancer causing virus’s genome could become a physical part of a cell’s genes.” P.354. Eventually, all his labours went to nowhere. But what I am concerned is the dedication with which persons like him sacrificed their lives to this single pursuit – the cause of cancer in humans. However, the irony is that he himself years later, dies of pancreatic cancer.

    When profit motive was involved at the expense of their patient’s sufferings and financial ruin, Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee, devotes a whole chapter “The Map and the Parachute” Pp 321-333.

    In the earlier parts, the author describes the allopathic treatment of paediatric leukaemia and the chemotherapeutic drugs given to them causing havoc in them. It is just impossible to describe the sheer horror of what the patients underwent and in any case, died – probably more as the result of the side effects of the poisons administered. Yet, the doctors who administered the poisons got so pleased when there was a remission of a few weeks and after that they did not care or were busy administering the same combination or combination of newly discovered poison.

    But the most shocking description in the earlier part of the book is about mastectomy. For fifty or sixty decades, the oncology surgeons not only removed the breasts but what they called radical mastectomy.The patron saint of this was Halsted. Let me quote the author: “The radical mastectomy had thus edged into ‘supraradical’and then into ‘ultra radical , an extraordinarily morbid , disfiguring procedure in which the surgeons removed the breasts , the pectoral muscles, the axillary nodes, the chest wall, and occasionally the ribs, parts of the sternum, the clavicle, and the lymph nodes inside the chest.” P.194

    However, soon “the flaw in the logic (of radical and supraradical mastectomy) began to crystallize. If the tumour was locally confined to start with, Crille argued, then it would be adequately removed with local surgery and radiation, and maniacal stripping away extra nodes and muscles could add no possible benefit. In contrast, if breast cancer had already spread outside the breast, then the surgery would be useless anyway, and more aggressive surgery would simply be more aggressively useless. Breast cancer, Crille realized was either an inherently localized disease – thus curable by a smaller mastectomy – or inherently systemic disease – thus incurable even by the most exhaustive surgery.” P.197 because, it would have metastasized into lungs or liver or brain. But his was a lonely voice in the wilderness.

    The Halsted’s system was so powerful and taught at post-graduate oncology hospital’s that they refused to listen to these lonely voices sayings of reason and humanity that if cancer had not metastasized, even a lumpectomy would do and if it had, it would metastasize not just in the adjacent lymph nodes, but into liver, brain or other parts of the body and doing radical mastectomy would serve no purpose in prolonging the patients lives.

    Despite these objections, they refused to have statistical trials and see how many women survived after radical mastectomy and how many by local removal. Finally, feminist group started a protest and joined with lonely protests of this humanist oncologist. But by then hundreds of thousands of cancer patients went through extra radical surgery making their lives a hell. Even if it had metastasized in the other organs, they might have a few years of self-esteem and a fruitful life without even ordinary mastectomy.

    The most tragic part of this is that women with localized tumour underwent radical mastectomy permanently disfiguring them and losing self-esteem and causing havoc in her family for the rest of their lives when a simple lumpectomy would have given her a new lease of life.

    My eldest sister, now dead, underwent this bilateral mastectomy in Canada during this time – when she went in for investigation and biopsy and came out without her breasts. How tremendous shock she would have got. The fact that she lived for at least three decades after that, proved that she had a localised type of tumour that could have been dealt with simple lumpectomy possibly with radiation. Instead she had to live without breasts for the rest of her life.

    Finally, the feminist group realized what was happening and joined with these lonely few surgeons and finally put an end to this butchery.

    It is similar story for chemotherapy. The oncologists went on mixing a variety of poisons and if it gave a few weeks remission, they started using newly discovered and more poisonous drugs without the least concerns about the horrible side effects like nausea of an unheard of severity and of course many other side effects (anti-emetic drugs had still to be invented and even with them, the severity of nausea was such that they would be of little use)

  • I did not mean fifty or sixty decades (!).I, of course, meant five or six decades – fifty or sixty years

  • Dear Dr. Alan Schmukler,

    I am really grateful for your very kind and sympathetic response. You say that “It is really a shame that the medical establishment doesn’t open itself to new ideas”.

    But even those who practice ‘new ideas’, do not seem to me to be sure. For example, I have not received a single reply advising me to encourage my sister not to have surgery and rely on the homeopath oncologists for cure. And of course, they are right to be sceptical when advising on life and death issue.

    Although I am totally secular and do not go along anthrposophy philosophy, I attended a three full-day seminar in London in early 1990s on the treatment of cancer by ‘Iscador’. The seminar was attended by many oncologist physicians and surgeons, (membership to Anthropsophical Society is strictly limited to those medically qualified), my impression was that most of those present believed in combining Iscador therapy with orthodox allopathic treatment like surgery, radio and chemotherapies. It was their opinion that the use of Iscador considerably reduces the serious side effects of chemo and radiotherapies given along with them.(I have previously given detail of serious necrosis of the mandible of my wife after radiotherapy following surgery)

    On the other hand, homeopath oncologists strictly forbid the use of these two if their protocols are carried out. That causes a dilemma. Suppose my sister agrees for surgery and is treated with radio and/or chemotherapy, out goes the protocols she had faithfully carried out until the surgery.

    • Dr.Cassam,

      I need to correct a typo from my comment above. It should read:

      Homeopathy stimulates the immune system in the broadest sense, and that’s why it works best WITHOUT Chemo and radiation.

  • Dear Dr. Cassam,

    Since no one is claiming 100% cure of cancer in all cases, the decision about therapy remains an individual choice. When possible, the patient must have the information and weigh the choices. This doesn’t require a huge amount of detail.

    In the West, considerable resources including government funds, have gone into studying the effects and results of chemo and radiation. At the same time there has been virtually no support for alternative methods. For that reason it’s often hard to sort out which methods are most appropriate for a particular case.

    In many cases the choice comes down to this: Do you attack the cancer at the expense of the immune system and hope that works, or do you build the immune system and hope that is sufficient. There are also alternative methods that attack the cancer, but without the massive side effects of chemo and radiation. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. That’s why it’s a personal decision. Because we can’t know the outcome, we can’t make that choice for someone else.

    Homeopathy stimulates the immune system in the broadest sense, and that’s why it works best with Chemo and radiation. It is fair to ask BOTH the allopaths and the homeopaths what your sister’s chances are and what the methods involve. With that information she must decide.

    • There’s a typo in my statement above. It should read “Homeopathy stimulates the immune system in the broadest sense, and that’s why it works best WITHOUT Chemo and radiation.

  • Dear Dr Alan Schmukler,

    Although I am very much older than you, my knowledge of homeopathy or anything else is infinitesimal compared to yours. I very much appreciate all your encouraging comments. So please forgive me if I continue our discussion.

    In mid 1990s, I started homeopathy and acupuncture clinic with a Czech colleague in London who was not a homeopath. But he was orthopaedic surgeon, neurologist and was the Head of the Limb Centre next to Kingston Hospital until he retired or the Centre closed down. Unfortunately died a few years ago in Prague.

    However, after practising for less than four years, I came to the conclusion that we were simply not good enough to run such a practice and closed it down.

    However, as I was reading the book with sub-title A “Biography of Cancer”, I came across the following that might interest you and your readers.

    “In Lewis Carroll’s poem, when the hunters finally capture the deceptive Snark, it reveals itself not to be a foreign beast, but one of the human hunters sent to trap it. And so it had turned out with cancer. Cancer genes came from within the human genome. awaiting activation. Indeed the Greeks had been peculiarly prescient yet again in their use of the term “oncos”. Cancer was intrinsically “loaded” in our genome awaiting activation. We were destined to carry this fatal burden in our genes – our own genetic “oncos”. P. 362

    “Varmis and Bishop were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes in 1989. At the banquet in Stockholm, Varmus recalling his former life as a student of literature, read lines from the epic poem Beowulf, recapitulating slaying of the dragon in that story: “We have not slain our enemy , the cancer cell, or figuratively torn the limbs from his body”, Varmus said. “In our adventures, we have only seen our monster more clearly and described his scales and fangs, in new ways – ways that reveal a cancer cell to be, like Grendel, a distorted version of our normal selves.” P.363

    The reason I am quoting this is that may be cancer is our other distorted self. Hence the sub-title of the book – A Biography of Cancer. I have not read any further as I am simultaneously reading other publications.

    But it makes me wonder if cancer has anything to do with our immune system or our vitality. I have not read any further. But from what I have read so far, it does not look as if we are ever going to get rid of our other distorted selves.

    • Dear Dr. Cassam,

      You seem to be saying that, we have seen the enemy and it is ….us! The new science of gene expression or “epigenetics” may explain how the cancer miasm is passed along to the other generations. Epigenetics may also guide us to a means of preventing the expression of oncogenes. Homeopathy may already have some tools for that, in it’s antimiasmatic bag of remedies. Regarding treatment, homeopaths have successfully treated cancer with classical methods, and sometimes with the newer methods.
      In line with your suggestion that cancer is our “distorted self” is the approach of Dr. Dietmar Payrhuber, who uses Scholten’s method to find the patient’s life conflicts. The remedies that fit will, according to D.r Payrhuber: “Show a deep action upon the psychological constellation of the patient and are capable of dissolving malignant tissues to restore health”.*

      It’s rather poetic, but so is life itself.

      * Summary of cancer treatment: cure or amelioration of cancer by using mineral remedies; Abstract of the 6th Congress of the Liga Medicorum, AHZ 05/250 (Stuttgart 2005);

      ;

  • What an educative discussion! My daughter-in-law has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer cells and has initial surgery done. All this discussion will help us to handle the case better.

  • Dear Dr. Schmukler,

    As I wrote in my last comment, my knowledge compared to yours is negligible. For example, I do not know what ‘epigenetics’means.

    But let me clarify one important point. You write that in line with “your suggestion” that cancer is our other distorted selves…

    As a matther of fact I was quoting Varmis at the Nobel Prize ceremony in 1989 when he and Bishop were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery. I also thought that this was what the author meant by the sub-title “A Biography of Cancer”. But you have misinterpreted this into a psychological statement to which neither the Prize winners, nor the author and certainly not I, would hold any truck with.

    I will continue in my next comment because I lost what I had written and I don’t want it to happen again before I submit it.

  • (to continue)
    In the site you have quoted on the role of minerals, but let me quote first:

    “The tumour as a local symptom is a result of the disturbed life-force (C. Burnett, Curability of Tumours) and only part of the system. Since elements and minerals are the tiniest and most archaic units, out of which life springs, the potentized forms represent pristine archetypes, which must have profound organizing capacities (carbon for father/self-confidence and their attributes, chlorine for mother or child and their attributes, silica for the family and its attributes, and iodine for cultural transformation – see cases overleaf). In most cases the psychological constellation is already evident in early childhood and is more fully manifested later on”.

    This reminds me of the seminar in London on 27-28 April 1991 entitled “Opening Doors” by the Jungian psychoanalyst and homeopath Edward Whitmont.

    I know very little about Jungian philosophy. But Jung was deeply religious man and had nothing to do with Freud’s scientific approach.

    I remember an interesting example of what Edward Whitmont said at the seminar. He was going on a holiday or something with his family in his car and the car stalled. He got out of the car, took out a small piece of paper and presumably wrote a ‘remeddy’on it and stuck it on the body of the car an lo and behold, the car started to move!

    Whatever little I have read by and about Jung, I found them disturbing and disquieting.

    I am a strictly secular person and believe in scientific explanations. The above quotation from the site is what I think is the problem with homeopathy. I have supported Vithoulkas in writing both in ‘Homeopathic Links’and in his letter in ‘British Homeopathic Journal'(it was then called) when he attacked the Editors of ‘Homeopathic Links’for allowing some writers to openly attack science or claimed to be scientific when they were writing exactly the opposite.

    I don’t think our discussion is going to get us anywhere because we look at the world from the two opposite poles.

  • Dear Dr Schmukler,

    I very much regret my getting upset and I sincerely apologise for it. Please put it down to my old age. I will be 85 in April.

    I was then reminded of what Naomi Klein had commented.

    “Recognizing ambivalence, uncertainty and self-doubts in ones life is the foundation of mature psyche”.

    I failed that test. But I still think that what the author of “Emperor of All Maladies” meant and what Varnis said in his speech at the Nobel Prize giving ceremony, could not be reconciled with your interpretation. And especially attributing psychological attributes to some of the minerals, is entirely metaphysical and certainly has no bearing to the subject we were (or at least I) were discussing.

    The science philosipher Karl Popper defined what constituted science: that all theories or concepts which were inherently incapable of objective verification by established ‘scientific method’ were necessarily metaphysical.And none of your interpretation of what I had written about the book in question could pass that test.

    However, I agree with R.C. Lewontin, a geneticist: “Science is a social institution about which there is a great deal of misunderstanding even among those who are part of it. We think science is an institution, a set of methods, a set of people (scientists), a great body of knowledge that we call scientific, is some how apart from the force that rule our everyday lives and that govern the structure of our society. We think that science is objective. But ‘scientist’ do not begin life as as scientists, after all, but are social beings immersed in a family a state, a productive structure, and they view nature through a lens that has been molded by their social experience”.
    Quoted from his “Biology As a Science.”

    What Vithoulkas and I objected to was views of people like Jorg Wichmann and others like him. He wrote:
    “that homeopathy rests on a different tradition from science. This tradition is hermetic, which puts homeopathy in the same line as shamanism and alchemy”. In his provocative conclusion, he ends up by incredibly asserting that “Yes, homeopathy is as much a witchcraft as you have ever suspected it to be”. (there is a lot more to it) “Homeopathic Links 2/2004

    Yet, not only his letter was published in the the journal like ‘Homeopathic Links’ but was even awarded guest editorship of an issue.

    When I suggested that what you wrote, reminded me of Jung and his philosophy, I could be wrong with this association as I don’t know enough about Jung to make that comment. But it very much sounded like that and Dr Edward Whitmont’s seminar.

    Please accept my apology and forgive me for any hurt caused as the result.

    “Re

  • Dear Dr. Cassam,

    No apology needed, as I’m glad you have such passion and strong views. Knowledge has taken some interesting turns throughout history. People have been shunned for “unscientific” views, which later turned out to be correct. Only time will tell who is right. In the mean time, we can only judge by results that we are able to determine with relative certainty.

  • Avinash Agnihotri

    You write that that “My daughter-in-law has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer cells and has initial surgery done”.

    I am terribly sorry to hear that. I am not sure what you mean by the ‘initial surgery’. I assume that it means lumpectomy. I hope you have not missed what I quoted from the book”Emperor of All Maladies ealier on. I quote it again as a reminder:

    However, soon “the flaw in the logic (of radical and supraradical mastectomy) began to crystallize. If the tumour was locally confined to start with, Crille argued, then it would be adequately removed with local surgery and radiation, and maniacal stripping away extra nodes and muscles could add no possible benefit. In contrast, if breast cancer had already spread outside the breast, then the surgery would be useless anyway, and more aggressive surgery would simply be more aggressively useless. Breast cancer, Crille realized was either an inherently localized disease – thus curable by a smaller mastectomy – or inherently systemic disease – thus incurable even by the most exhaustive surgery.” P.197 because, it would have metastasized into lungs or liver or brain.

    If she has not been already given radio or chemotherapy, I suggest that you consult by email one of the homeopath oncologists mentioned in the excellent original article of Julius Jonas. I have done done so for my sister and she is already on his suggested protocol. I have told my sister not to accept radio or chemotherapy if she agrees to have surgery which is doubtful.

    It is now nearly eight weeks since cystoscopy was done and only yesterday, she had CT scan done. It might take perhaps two more weeks for her to be offered surgery. By that time, it might have spread much further. Malignant cells were found in the muscles adjoining the bladder in the biopsy of the material derived from cystoscopy. But under NHS there is nothing you can do.

    If you want the email addresses of the two homeopath oncologists, please email to me and I will send them to you by the same way. These were given to me very kindly by Mario Guilbuilt and Julian Jonas.

    My email address is: [email protected]

    I wish your daughter-in-law all the best.

  • Dr Schmukler earlier on remarked that “homeopathy stimulates the immune system in the broadest sense”.I am now quoting the comments by the author of ‘Emperor of All Maladies’:

    “These (onco)genes cascades notably were perversions of signalling pathways used by the body under normal circumstances. The “motility genes” activated by cancer cells, for instance, are the very genes that normal cells use when they require movement through the body, such as when immunological cells need to move forward toward sites of infection. Tumour angiogenesis exploits the same pathways that are used when blood vessels are created to heal wounds. Nothing is invented; nothing is extraneous. Cancer’s life is a recapitulation of the body’s life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own. Susan Sontag warned against overburdening an illness with metaphors. But this is not a metaphor. Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves. (p.388)

    The central therapeutic challenge of the newest cancer medicine, then, was to find, among vast numbers of similarities in normal cells and cancer cells, subtle differences (my emphasis) in genes, pathways, and acquired capabilities – and to drive poisoned stake into that exposed heel”. (Refers to the exposed Achilles heel in the Greek mythology) (p. 407)

    My question to Dr Schmukler is: can homeopathy on its own or along with allopathy, distinguish ‘subtle differences’ between the normal immunological genes, from cancer immunological genes so that the poisoned stake is aimed into the exposed oncogene’s immunological Achilles heel- without affecting the normal immunological genes that allow them to bring blood vessels to the area of the wound to effect its healing?

    Could homeopathy or indeed allopathy prevent the immunological oncogenes from copying the normal immunological genes?

    Next, I propose to come to the final closing comments by the author along with those that precede them.

  • Before I come to the author’s concluding comments, I would like to recapitulate what I have quoted earlier:

    “In Lewis Carroll’s poem, when the hunters finally capture the deceptive Snark, it reveals itself not to be a foreign beast, but one of the human hunters sent to trap it. And so it had turned out with cancer. Cancer genes came from within the human genome awaiting activation. Indeed the Greeks had been peculiarly prescient yet again in their use of the term oncos. Cancer was intrinsically “loaded” in our genome awaiting activation. We were destined to carry this fatal burden in our genes – our own genetic “oncos”. P. 362

    “Varmis and Bishop were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes in 1989. At the banquet in Stockholm, Varmus recalling his former life as a student of literature, read lines from the epic poem Beowulf, recapitulating slaying of the dragon in that story: “We have not slain our enemy , the cancer cell, or figuratively torn the limbs from his body”, Varmis said. “In our adventures, we have only seen our monster more clearly and described his scales and fangs, in new ways – ways that reveal a cancer cell to be, like Grendel, a distorted version of our normal selves.” P.363

    The reason I am quoting this is that may be cancer is our other distorted self. Hence the sub-title of the book – A Biography of Cancer

  • “In the end every biography must also confront the death of its subject. Is the end of cancer conceivable in the future? Is it possible to eradicate this disease from our bodies and societies for ever?

    The answers to these questions are embedded in biology of this incredible disease. Cancer, we have discovered, is stitched into our genome. Oncogenesis arises from mutations in essential genes that regulate the growth of cells. Mutations accumulate in these genes when DNA is damaged by carcinogens, but also by seemingly random errors in copying genes when cells divide. The former might be preventable, but the latter is endogenous. Cancer is a flaw in our growth, but is deeply entrenched in ourselves. We can rid ourselves of cancer,
    The, only as much as we can rid ourselves of the processes in our physiology that depend on growth – aging, regeneration, healing and reproduction.

    It is unclear whether an intervention that discriminates between malignant and normal growth is even possible. Perhaps cancer, the scrappy, fecund and invasive, adaptable cells and genes, is impossible to disconnect from our bodies. Perhaps cancer defines the inherent outer limit of our survival. As our cells divide and our bodies age, and as mutations accumulate inexorably upon mutations, cancer might well be the final terminus in our development as organisms”. (p.462)

  • Dear D.r Cassam,

    When we are healthy, the immune system discriminates between malignant and normal cells. In this industrial age, people become more toxic from a variety of sources, causing more mutation and a disordering of the immune system. In the end the problem of cancer is both a medical and a social one. The medical part of the problem is probably easier to solve. Exposure to hundreds of carcinogens, including radiation requires a revamping of vales in society.

  • Dear Dr Schmukler,

    I had giving some thought whether to keep our conversation alive and have decided on my part to discontinue after this last rejoinder. One reason – but not the main one – is that I do not know what exactly you mean by “revamping of values in society”.

    As I have bilateral macrodegeneration of retinas, I could not go to dictionaries with small prints and was restricted to the Thesaurus under Tools.

    Revamping = improve something by making major changes or major change intended to improve something.

    Do you mean that what I have quoted almost entirely from the author would need major changes in the societal value? Even then, I am not too sure what that means.

    I am just pasting your full answer for me to refer to:

    “When we are healthy, the immune system discriminates between malignant and normal cells. In this industrial age, people become more toxic from a variety of sources, causing more mutation and a disordering of the immune system. In the end the problem of cancer is both a medical and a social one. The medical part of the problem is probably easier to solve. Exposure to hundreds of carcinogens, including radiation requires a revamping of vales in society”.

    The first sentence is of course true. In fact, all what you say is true.

    But we are not talking about when we are healthy or we when are unhealthy in some other respect. We are talking about ‘cancer’ and what the author thinks are the chances of us ever winning that battle.

    Although he calls his book “A Biography of Cancer”, and remarks that all biographies have to end with the death of their subjects, he seems pessimistic about that happening with his subject. Although I might be entirely wrong in my interpretation of what he says, one of the main reasons is the theory of evolution (and that is why here after all)and the role of natural selection and the role of random mutations in it.

    Unlike Richard Dawkins and his school, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin do not subscribe to the view that ‘natural selection’ is the only way evolution proceeds. But that is another story.

    And cancer or oncogenes is tied up with random mutations. It arises out of fault in cell division giving rise to oncogenes.

    If I remember correctly, we have 46 chromosomes in each cell- 23 from each parent. Sometimes the head of chromosome 22 gets detached and joins with the detached tail of chromosome 9 (I think but it does not matter for my argument). This produces a distorted gene with different property to divide.

    Normal cells divide into two and the brake is applied to stop it from dividing further. But random mutation gives rise to cells that have no brakes and they go on dividing at great speed. Moreover, they do not have time to fully mature.

    On the other hand, different mutations, give rise to cells which have foot on the accelerator pedal and they also continue to go on dividing at great speed.

    Both of these varieties cause tumours but the former one is more aggressive one.

    Again, Neu gene was the name given to an octogen that was found in rat experiments that was different from other octogenes. Other octogenes could not be targeted by because they were within the cells and bounded by a thin oily barrier to prevent the chemotherapy to reach them. The product of the neu gene in contrast was a novel protein, not hidden deep inside the cell but tethered to the cell membrane with a large fragment that hung outside freely accessible to any drug.

    Antibodies are molecules designed to bind to the other molecules, and the binding can block and inactivate the protein. Normally, antibodies move towards, for example, a wound and create blood vessels around the wound to provide more oxygen and engulf foreign bacteria and destroy them thus helping to heal the wound. But mutations allow ongogenes to copy the antibodies and create blood supply around the tumour to give it sustenance and help it to grow faster.

    If we increase the resistance to the tumour by enhancing antibodies, the octgene antibodies also benefit by it by increasing their activities.

    In 1984, researchers discovered human homolog of the neu gene and called it homolog EGF Receptor (HER) or Her-2.

    It was noted by Slamon that this gene was highly increased in some human breast tumours but not in all. By some staining technique Slamon and his associates, divided them into Her-2 positive and Her-2 negative. They found that these two genes behaved quite differently. They found that breast tumours that had gene Her-2 negative, were very aggressive, metastasise very rapidly and were more likely to kill the patient and had worse prognosis compared to Her-2 positive.

    Normally all oncogenes are contained within the cell membrane. But Her-2 were clinging to the cell membrane with some part of them was outside the membrane And because they had some part that was exposed outside the cell membrane like Achilles heel, that could be attacked directly by chemotherapy through their exposed heel. This is where the search for Herceptin began.

    But in human term reduction rate was negligible. It was reduced from four to seven months at first by using Herceptin against normal cytotoxic drug mixture like Taxol.

    But statistically, Herceptil had saved human lives by 33% and that was considered unprecedented. In its honour huge cocktail was thrown by the company at the Hollywood Terrace with wine flowing.

    This was not the end of course. New combination drug called Gleeve followed and so on.

Leave a Reply to Dr Amir Cassam (Retd dental surgeon) X