Re: More about me


Peter Moran wrote:
"PeterB" <pkm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1143682476.165803.247990@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Peter Moran wrote:
"PeterB" <pkm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1143666485.038794.205490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

You and FDA have had thirty years to bring chemo out of "experimental"
use and you have the balls to demand evidence from everyone else. You
make me want to puke.

PeterB

This looks like an admission that those peddling cancer cures have no
evidence.

The admission is yours. I've never peddled a cure for clinical cancer
and have no idea how many cases of remission are attributable to
intervention, natural or otherwise. My point is that you can't take
credit for host immunity successfully containing proliferation of
cancer simply because an intervention is applied.

Not even when most patients with invasive cancer will die of that cancer
without the intervention?

If your question is meant to suggest that "most patients with invasive
cancer will die of that cancer without the intervention," where is your
evidence? Most patients with invasive cancer die with their disease
regardless of treatment (and presumbaly sooner than they would have
otherwise.) Which invasive cancer and what type of intervention are
you referring to? The relatively small percentage of success with
regard to operable cancer has nothing to do with unnecessary use of
chemo in the majority of cancer patients.

Every testimonial assumes that things would have
gone badly without the Laetrile, zapper, enzymes or supplements. Why can't
we claim the same when our patients live on with no signs of cancer?

You're serious? Because it isn't evidence based medicine. You can't
claim a treatment is effective without controls. You don't know the
true risk-reward outcome for chemo in the majority of cancers. That
makes it quackery.

With natural
medicine, the argument that immuno-supportive agents provide a greater
assist than immunosuppresive ones is consistent with known
biochemistry.

It's not actually. Cancer has about a doizen ways of avoiding immune
surveillance including the fact that they are basically OUR cells and there
is no necessary reason for the immune system to attack them.

The fact cancer defeats the body's natural defenses doesn't mean
remission is not a function of host immunity or other natural defenses
when it occurs, however. Without controls, you can't know what role
intervention has played. It's rational to say that intervention
consistent with evolved metabolic processes is at least synergistic
with host immunity and overall homeostasis. This is true even if the
result in not adequate to defeat cancer. Chemo might very well cheat
the dealer out of a hand or two along the way, but we all know the
house wins in the long run.

In most
instances cancer develops in the presence of a normal immune system. The
gene functions that destroy aberrant cells through apoptosis are probably
more important in most cancers than the immune system, and there is sound
evidence for that, with some of the mutations being identified.

What is your evidence that most cancer develops in the presence of a
normal immune system, and what do you mean by "normal?" But we don't
need to confine the discussion to immune response. We already know
that vitamin C and Lysine (a naturally-ocurring amino acid) are crucial
for integrity of collagen and play a crucial role in preventing the
enzyme urokinase plasminogen activator from permitting cancer to
spread.
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/publication_library/interviews/cancer_dsalud2.htm.
The fact your sponsors are only interested in patented drugs that will
inhibit this enzyme, when Lysine is available for under $10 a bottle,
is not the least bit suprising.

There is also no evidence that boosting the immune system using the methods
that alternative practitioners use has any effect. Only a few cancers have
been shown to be susceptible to immune attack, and that is mainly with
targeted immune attack such as dendritic cell vaccines and specific
antibodies, as used by convenitonal medicine. Do you think we would not
use other forms of immune attack if we knew they worked?

I think you would use any patentable drug as long as it doesn't upset
the franchise.


Medline contains all my evidence. Try a search on "best supportive care"
if
you want to find out what happens with chemotherapy as opposed to no
chemotherapy even in desperate cases such as inoperable NSCLC.

Michael Mac Manus, M.D., a radiation oncologist at the Peter MacCallum
Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues clinically
followed 2337 confirmed and apparently incurable NSCLC patients who had
received palliative dose RT. Here is what he said: "Our data show that
close to 1 percent of patients with NSCLC have prolonged survival with
doses of palliative RT that would not normally be considered sufficient
for long term disease control." Read that again, very slowly. What he
is saying is that, without controls, an assumption has been made that
one patient out of ONE HUNDRED experiences a benefit from palliative
RT, EVEN THOUGH that intervention is not considered sufficient for
long-term disease control. In other words, greater survivability in
these 1% of patients is almost certainly NOT attributable to palliative
RT, but to some other, even numerous other, factors. Getting wet while
doing a rain dance doesn't make you a weather man.


You are completely misinterpreting this study, which I refer to on my web
site. It says nothing about what happens to the usual patient receiving
palliative radiotherapy for inoperable NSCLC. It is merely confirming the
findings of another study showing that low dose palliative radiotherapy is
rarely associated with extraordinarily prolonged survival amounting to cure.
Some of these patients were still alive ten years later, whereas most such
patients will not survive more than a year or so.

Same difference. It doesn't support your promotion of chemo.

There is nothing in this study to show that this result was due to immune
boosting.

I didn't say it did. But you are trying to use it to promote chemo.
That's unethical.

In fact, it can be predicted that at least forty per cent of
the non-survivors would have been using alternative measures to try and
boost their immune system.

We already know cancer is not yielding to treatment, regardless of
modality. Tell me why you think the 1% of longer-term survivors were
not more likely to have been helped by their own natural defenses,
rather than the chemo.

The results
are poor, but slightly better with chemotherapy . What are we trying to
hide when we freely publish where our results are so poor?

I do not consider medline publication to be a patient-friendly
outreach, but it doesn't suprise me you want to pat yourself on the
back for it. Something more approachable (in writing) in medical
facilities where chemo is dispensed would be more fitting and useful to
patients.

Maybe so. I suspect that this now applies in accord with modern standards
of informed consent.

I suspect the fine print is extremely small.

Why not
believe us when we we say we can cure 80-90% of breast cancers if we get
them early, and about fifty per cent or more of all bowel cancers?

Surgery is one tool in oncology that works, depending on the patient,
the cancer, and the prognosis. Of course, "works" is a relative term.
An unfortunate consequence of surgery is suppression of vital NK cell
activity, which makes patients more susceptible to development of
metastatic lesions. In the animal model, surgery-induced immune
suppression has been linked to tumor metastasis to the lung (Page et
al. 1994 a ; 1994b; Ben-Eliyahu et al. 1999). Human studies demonstrate
that those with low NK cell activity have an increased risk of
metastatic lesions (Levy et al. 1985; Schantz et al. 1987; Tartter et
al. 1987; Fujisawa et al. 1997; Koda et al. 1997).

Surgery does produce temporary immune suppression but there is little
evidence that this is significant compared to the chance of complete cure
that surgery offers many patients, and the palliative value of removing the
primary cancer in others. Having a progressive cancer anywhere is no
joke, and any argument along these libes presumes an equally effective
alternative..

I am supportive of excising cancer when the prognosis for doing so is
good and there is data to support it.

The plus side is
that use of anti-angiogenesis drugs can reduce the negative side
effects of surgery, and in those patients for whom prognosis is
otherwise poor, this may be their best option.

Unfortunately no anti-angiogenesis agent has yet proved of any great use in
human cancer.

Another reason, then, why research into non-patentable treatments
should be accelerated.

We are not even claiming to be able to cure the more desperate cases
where
chemotherapy is used as palliation. Many quacks are, but they don't
allow
their true results to be examined.

They must have learned it from you guys. I see no patient-friendly
publications by your sponsors showing the facts on use of chemo in the
majority of cancers.

"Your sponsors"? You were keeping things polite for a while.

You support conventional medicine and thus represent the drug makers.
I don't know how it say it more fairly than that.

Do you not yet see something here that you should be thinking about.?

I see something I should be concerned about. Your desire to paint
modern oncology as a patient's best option, when it is, at best, only
one.

It is unquestionably the best for many cancers. There are some cancers
where the prognosis is so poor with any kind of treatment that it hardly
matters, but even in those the most effective palliative options usually lie
with the mainstream.

A small percentage of cancers are yielding to standard treatment. The
lack of evidence tells me there is no real benefit with use of chemo in
the majority of cancer patients.


All I want you to do is realise that the quacks should be doing better...

I disagree. I think quacks should be fined and given jail time. That
means more conventional practicioners will have to share a cell with
one another than with a naturopath, if peformance is the measure of
judgement. Don't you think that's fair?


What naturopath can cure cancer?

I think you are happy to apply a double standard. What allopath can
cure cancer? How many dead cancer patients does it take to impugn
conventional methods for quackery?

that you are defending a situation which creates a veritable mine-field
for
the cancer patient.

I stand up for consumer access to information, choice of treatment
modality, meaningful regualtion, and public disclosure of clinical
data. I realize those are lofty goals. But your sponsors are not the
standard to which others can be held. If they are, Hulda will never
have to prove anything.

My sponsors? Who are they? You just cannot avoid the ad hominem, can
you? It is extremely offensive of you to accuse me of bad faith when I
have always assumed that you are sincere in your beliefs.

Sincerity doesn't make either one of us correct. Think of it this way.
I'm just here to help you get your message out.

I also note in the above only vague references to what you think alternative
cancer treatments can do. What methods do you favour, and what are the
results?

I'll have to address that a bit later. Cheers.

PeterB

.

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