Medical Treatments for Cancer

Chemotherapy & Brain Confusion

2006-10-24T06:24:00.000-07:00

Source: American Society of Clinical Oncology

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chemotherapy causes changes in the brain's metabolism and blood flow that can last as long as 10 years, a discovery that may explain the mental fog and confusion that affect many cancer survivors, researchers said on Thursday.

The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that women who had undergone chemotherapy 5 to 10 years earlier had lower metabolism in a key region of the frontal cortex.

Experts estimate at least 25 percent of chemotherapy patients are affected by symptoms of confusion, so-called chemo brain, and a recent study by the University of Minnesota reported an 82 percent rate, the statement said.

"People with 'chemo brain' often can't focus, remember things or multitask the way they did before chemotherapy," Silverman said. "Our study demonstrates for the first time that patients suffering from these cognitive symptoms have specific alterations in brain metabolism."

Comment from Cancer Answers: We have many cancer patients who come and tell us they became forgetful and "slow" after their chemotherapy treatment.

Endangering Your Health for Profit

2006-10-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

Death By Medicine: Millions of Lives Lost at the Hands of Conventional Medicine

It is estimated that in America last year, nearly $2 trillion was spent on health care - and virtually all that money was spent on treating disease. Despite this massive expenditure on treatment, more Americans are sicker than ever before.

Tha answer is simple - when you are sick it is highly profitable to various giant corporations. When you are well, it doesn't profit them much at all.

Prescription For Disaster is a landmark investigative journal. Click link below to see video:
http://www.mercola.com/dvd/prescription_for_disaster.htm

Death by Medicine, Part I
Source: http://www.mercola.com/display/router.aspx?docid=30236

Death by Medicine, Part II
Source: http://www.mercola.com/display/router.aspx?docid=30247

American medicine frequently causes more harm than good.
The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million.
Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million.
The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million.
The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million.
The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936.

It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.

Paediatric Cancer: Morbidity & Mortality

2006-10-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

The New England Journal of Medicine Resident e-Bulletin
Vol.355 No.15, October 12 2006

Q: Do long-term survivors of pediatric cancer have the same morbidity or mortality rates as their peers?

A: No. Long-term survivors of pediatric cancer are more likely to have diminished health status and to die prematurely than are adults who have never had childhood cancer. In one study by Mertens et al. (Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2001), investigators found statistically significant excess rates of death from subsequent cancers (standardized mortality ratio [SMR], 19.4), from cardiac causes (SMR, 8.2), and from pulmonary causes (SMR, 9.2). In the study by Oeffinger et al. published in this issue of the NEJM, survivors of childhood cancer were found to have a higher rate of illness owing to chronic health conditions.

Cancer Research and Statistics

2006-10-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

How Statistics Make Things Look Good

Source: Trastuzumab: hopes and realities.
Lancet Oncology 3:137-144. 2002. Brian Leyland-Jones.

Trastuzumab (Herceptin) is reported to be effective and well tolerated for breast cancer. The treatment costs US$40,000.

The research result showed that with Herceptin survival was increased by25%

Let us look at the figures critically. The median survival duration was 25 months for patients assigned chemotherapy + trastuzumab compared with 20 months for those allocated chemotherapy alone.

The increase in survival was only 5 months. It sounds better if we say 25% rather than 5 months.

The research result showed that with Herceptin survival was increased by 45%

Median survival with trastuzumab + chemotherapy = 29 months

Median survival with chemotherapy only = 20 months.

Increase of survival time = 9 months. This is translated as increased survival by 45%.

The research result showed that with Herceptin survival was increased by40%

Median survival with trastuzumab + paclitaxel = 25 months

Median survival with paclitaxel alone = 18 months

Increase of survival time = 7 months. This is translated as increased survival by 40%.

Cancer Market Growth

2006-10-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

Cancer Market Growth Dependent Upon Success of Targeted Therapies - Will They Provide Enough Benefit to Patients to Succeed?
Frost & Sullivan Thursday, September 1, 2005
Source: Quarterly Analyst Briefing on Cancer Market Growt h

The cancer therapy market is undergoing a shift in the revenue generation. The older chemotherapeutic drugs are no longer the sole source of revenue generation and the future of this market is dependent upon the success of targeted therapies.

These therapies, such as Rituxan/MabThera and Glivec are already dominating their markets in terms of revenues and this trend of targeted therapies is now moving into the larger cancers that have tremendouspatient-population.

The question is: can targeted therapies be as successful as they need to be to drive revenue and at the same time provide substantial benefit to patients?

"The targeted therapy segment in the global cancer market is expected to drive revenue growth through 2011. Targeted therapies are used in conjunction with chemotherapy and therefore provide market expansion instead of competition with existing agents," says Frost & Sullivan's Research Analyst

for the Pharmaceuticals group, Jason McKinnie. "Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are focusing more attention on specific cancer targets and are embracing targeted therapy as the future of cancer treatment."

Can Tamoxifen Prevent Breast Cancer?

2006-10-05T02:18:00.000-07:00

The Evidence that Tamoxifen can Prevent Breast Cancer is Largely Wishful Thinking
Source: A Travesty, at Women's Expense, L.A. Times, June 22, 1992

The evidence that tamoxifen can prevent breast cancer is largely wishful thinking. To make matters worse, the risks to healthy women of a wide range of serious complications, including uterine cancer, fatal liver cancer, liver failure, life-threatening blood clots and crippling menopausal symptoms are unacceptable.

Swedish studies suggest that tamoxifen increases mortality in post-menopausal women who do develop cancer in the other breast during treatment; these cancers were highly aggressive and treatment-resistant. This evidence appears confirmed by studies showing that while tamoxifen reduces breast cancer in rats, cancers that do develop are highly malignant.

Tamoxifen triples the risk of uterine cancer, even in patients followed for relatively short periods. However, Richard Peto, a leading British supporter of the trial, dismisses the risk as "no big deal," since uterine cancer is curable by hysterectomy.

Tamoxifen is also a "rip-roaring liver carcinogen". Recent Swedish data suggest a more than 50% increase in new cancers, including gastrointestinal, among breast cancer patients treated with tamoxifen.

Mammography: Profit Not Prevention

2006-10-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

International Journal of Health Services, 31(3):605-615, 2001.
by Samuel S. Epstein, Rosalie Bertell, and Barbara Seaman
Source: Cancer Prevention Coalition

Mammography screening is a profit-driven technology. Contrary to popular belief and assurances by the U. S. media and the cancer establishment- the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and American Cancer Society (ACS) - mammography is not a technique for early diagnosis.

In fact, a breast cancer has usually been present for about eight years before it can finally be detected. Screening should be recognized as damage control, rather than misleadingly as "secondary prevention."

DANGERS OF SCREENING MAMMOGRAPHY

1. Radiation Risks
Radiation from routine mammography poses significant cumulative risks of initiating and promoting breast cancer. Premenopausal women undergoing annual screening over a ten-year period are exposed to a total of about 10 rads for each breast. The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each rad of exposure increasing breast cancer risk by 1 percent, resulting in a cumulative 10 percent increased risk over ten years. Furthermore, breast cancer risks from mammography are up to fourfold higher for the 1 to 2 percent of women who are silent carriers of the A-T (ataxia-telangiectasia) gene.

2. Cancer Risks from Breast Compression
Mammography entails tight and often painful compression of the breast, particularly in premenopausal women. This may lead to distant and lethal spread of malignant cells by rupturing small blood vessels in or around small, as yet undetected breast cancers.

UNRELIABLITY OF MAMMOGRAPHY

Falsely Negative Mammograms: Missed cancers are particularly common in premenopausal women owing to the dense and highly glandular structure of their breasts. Missed cancers are also common in post-menopausal women on estrogen replacement therapy.

Falsely Positive Mammograms: Mistakenly diagnosed cancers are particularly common in premenopausal women, and also in postmenopausal women on estrogen replacement therapy, resulting in needless anxiety, more mammograms, and unnecessary biopsies.

Over-diagnosis: Over- diagnosis and subsequent over-treatment are among the major risks of mammography. The widespread and virtually unchallenged acceptance of screening has resulted in a dramatic increase in the diagnosis of ductal carcinoma-in-situ (DCIS), a pre-invasive cancer. Some 80 percent of all DCIS never become invasive even if left untreated.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The American Cancer Society (ACS) has close connections to the mammography industry. Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents, and in its every move, the ACS promotes the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker.

The mammography industry also conducts research for the ACS and its grantees, serves on advisory boards, and donates considerable funds - produces advertising, promotional, and information literature for hospitals, clinics, medical organizations, and doctors; produces educational films; and, of course, lobbies Congress for legislation promoting availability of mammography services.

ACS promotion continues to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer.

Bucking the Cancer System

2006-10-05T01:36:00.000-07:00

The High Stakes of Cancer Prevention
by Samuel Epsterin and Liza Gross (in: Tikkun Magazine, Nov/Dec 2000)
Source: Cancer Prevention Coalition

Over the past twenty years cancer patients have become increasingly frustrated—but also increasingly organized. Disillusioned with the cancer establishment's definition of "progress" and "prevention" and fed up with the toxic side effects of conventional treatments, grassroots cancer activists convinced forty members of Congress to investigate the efficacy of alternative therapies. Congress enlisted the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional think tank, to do the job. In 1990, OTA identified some 200 promising studies on alternative treatments, and concluded that NCI had "a mandated responsibility to pursue this information and facilitate examination of widely used 'unconventional cancer treatments' for therapeutic potential."

Yet mainstream cancer organizations have not followed the OTA's recommendations. For example, in the January 1991 issue of its Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the ACS dismissed the Hoxsey therapy, a nontoxic combination of herb extracts developed in the 1940s by populist Harry Hoxsey, as a "worthless tonic for cancer." However, a detailed critique of Hoxsey's treatment by Dr. Patricia Spain Ward, a leading contributor to the OTA report, concluded just the opposite: "More recent literature leaves no doubt that Hoxsey's formula does indeed contain many plant substances of marked therapeutic activity."

In his recently published book, When Healing Becomes a Crime, Kenny Ausubel chronicles the cancer establishment's unbridled—and scientifically unsubstantiated—attacks against the Hoxsey treatment and other promising new therapies, without even bothering to investigate their effectiveness.

This is not the first time that ACS claims of quackery have been called into question or discredited. A growing number of other innovative therapies originally attacked by the ACS are gaining acceptance. These include hyperthemia, Tumor Necrosis Factor, (originally called Coleys' Toxin), hydrazine sulfate, and Burzynski's antineoplastons. Well over 100 promising alternative nonpatented and nontoxic therapies have already been identified. Clearly, such treatments merit clinical testing and evaluation, with ACS and NCI funds, using similar statistical techniques and criteria as those established for conventional chemotherapy.

Bypassing the blithely unresponsive NCI and ACS, the National Institutes of Health created its own agency, the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), in 1992 to study unconventional approaches to treatment. In 1998, eight years after the OTA's report, Congress upgraded the OAM to an independent institute, The National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine. Soon thereafter, the Society begrudgingly abandoned its decades-long crusade against "quackery."

When President Nixon launched the war on cancer in 1971, the cancer establishment seized the opportunity to pursue its own narrow self-interest. Its policies and strategies on cancer continue to ignore the essential steps required to wage an effective battle against the disease and remain based on two myths: First, that there has been dramatic progress in the treatment and cure of cancer. Second, that any increase in cancer incidence and mortality is due to an aging population and smoking—discounting evidence that occupational exposures and urban air pollution are also implicated in many cases of lung cancer—while denying any significant role for involuntary and avoidable exposures to industrial carcinogens.

Breast Cancer Therapy - A Shift of Paradigm

2006-10-05T00:42:00.000-07:00

Source: Trastuzumab - Hopes and Realities
Brian Leyland-Jones
Lancet Oncology 3:137-144. 2002.

Breast cancer is a devastating disease. Despite improvements in care in recent decades 45–50% of patients diagnosed with breast cancer will develop refractory or resistant disease. Treatment of breast cancer relies on a combination of approaches, including surgery, radiotherapy, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, and supportive treatments.

In metastatic breast cancer, hormone therapy and chemotherapy are the mainstays of treatment. However, in many cases, especially in advanced disease, the cancer does not respond to conventional treatment.

The major obstacles to success are the presence or development of drug resistance by tumour cells and the lack of treatments with sufficient tumour selectivity. The many agents used in cancer chemotherapy have cytotoxic or cytocidal activity. They are not selective and they destroy not only the cancer cells but also the normal tissues and cells of the patient. Thus, conventional cytotoxic drugs seem to be near their therapeutic limits. Side-effects of chemotherapy are debilitating in many patients and adversely affect quality of life.

The emergence of biological therapies based on monoclonal antibodies represents a fundamental shift in drug development for cancer therapy. One of the major expectations of the use of monoclonal antibodies in cancer therapy is that exploitation of the specificity of the immune system will achieve selective therapeutic effects without the commonly severe toxicity of chemotherapy.

For more infomation on Trastuzumab, click on link below:
Herceptin

The Hype - We are Winning the Cancer War

2006-10-05T00:39:00.000-07:00

The High Stakes of Cancer Prevention
by Samuel Epsterin and Liza Gross (in: Tikkun Magazine, Nov/Dec 2000)
Source: Cancer Prevention Coalition

It's hard to find someone these days who hasn't had firsthand experience with cancer. (Many people are) hoping to help find the magic bullet—a cure. That cure, we hear again and again, is just around the corner. And now, for the first time since President Richard Nixon launched the war on cancer in 1971, public officials are talking about an all-out effort to wipe out the disease in our lifetime. Cancer makes good politics. Who can argue against fighting cancer?

The cancer establishment has a long history of trivializing or ignoring prevention initiatives. Both the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) are fixated on damage control—screening, diagnosis, and treatment—and genetic research, and are largely indifferent to cancer prevention. For the American Cancer Society, that indifference approaches outright hostility.

This aversion to prevention is complicated by conflicts of interest springing from the cancer establishment's intimate connections with corporate America.

Don't Believe the Hype

Last March, newspapers across the country dutifully heralded a decline in cancer incidence and mortality, citing the latest annual report of the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, and other cancer organizations.

Despite such celebrated claims of progress against the disease, the facts tell a different story.

Overall five-year survival rates for all cancers have remained virtually static since 1970, from 49 to 54 percent for all races combined.
Dr. John Bailar, formerly an epidemiologist at the NCI and now chair of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Chicago, has found that reduced mortality rates are more likely the result of earlier detection and diagnosis rather than improved cancer treatments.
Cancer incidence has escalated to epidemic proportions over recent decades, with lifetime risks in the United States now reaching one in two for men and one in three for women.
In 2000, more than 1.2 million new cancer diagnoses are expected, and some 550,000 Americans will die from the disease. The overall increase of all cancers from 1950 to 1995 was 55 percent.
Meanwhile, the incidence of a wide range of non-smoking cancers, such as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and adult brain cancer, is increasing at proportionately greater rates, including an alarming rise in childhood cancer of over 20 percent.

What then is driving the modern cancer epidemic?

Study after study points to the role of runaway industrial technologies, particularly those based on petrochemicals. The explosive growth of the petrochemical industry since the 1940s has …, produced a dizzying array of synthetic chemicals that have never been screened for human health effects: of the roughly 75,000 chemicals in use today, only some 3 percent have been tested for safety. For over fifty years, in other words, the American public has been unknowingly exposed to avoidable carcinogens from the moment of conception until death.

Heart Damage

2006-09-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

Cardiac Toxicity
Source: Regional Cancer Institute

Chemotherapy drugs are toxins and therefore can cause damage to the heart. As a result of this damage, the heart is unable to pump enough blood to supply the body with essential oxygen and nutrients.

Although several chemotherapy drugs may cause cardiac toxicity, the most common ones are the anthracyclines such as: (Adriamycin®doxorubicin, daunomycin, epirubicin, mitoxantrone and idarubicin). Alkylating agents and vinca alkaloids can also contribute to heart damage.

In addition, radiation therapy to the chest wall or area around the heart can affect the blood vessels supplying the heart, leading to a “heart attack”. Since many patients, especially those with lymphoma or breast cancer receive both anthracycline-based chemotherapy and radiation therapy, there may be a cumulative effect on the heart.

Comment from Cancer Answers: What is cardiac toxicity?

Cardiac toxicity is damage to the muscles of the heart caused by chemotherapy drugs used to treat cancer. The damage can occur during or shortly after the completion of therapy. Some chemotherapy drugs can cause heart damage that is only apparent months to years after the completion of cancer treatment.

Liver Damage

2006-09-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.tirgan.com/hepatox.htm

Liver tissue can be damaged in the process of treating cancer. These may result from:

Chemotherapy Drugs: Andriamycin, Methotrexate, Carboplatin, 6-Mercaptopurine, DTIC, BiCNU, L-Asparaginase, Pentostatin.
Radiation
Infections
Antibiotics and other drugs, etc

Signs and symptoms:
Damage to the liver may be very mild and may be without any symptoms. But this can be detected by the liver functions in blood tests. In more severe cases of liver damage, patients may become jaundiced and develop other problems such as:

Coagulation problems and bleeding
Fatigue, weakness
Confusion
Coma

Side Effects of Chemotherapy / Radiotherapy

2006-09-29T04:45:00.000-07:00

Source: Cancer Source Managing Side Effects of Treatment

Each type of cancer is treated differently and each treatment has different side effects. Here is a comprehensive list that applies to all types of cancer and treatments.

+ Anemia
+ Anxiety
+ Appetite Loss
+ Bladder
+ Bone Issues
+ Breathing Problems
+ Chemotherapy Side Effects
+ Depression
+ Diarrhea
+ Dry Mouth
+ Fatigue
+ Fluid Balance
+ Hair Loss
+ Infection
+ Lymphedema
+ Mouth Sores
+ Nausea and Vomiting
+ Neurological Disturbances
+ Pain
+ Radiation Side Effects
+ Sexual Issues
+ Sleep Issues
+ Swallowing
+ Wound Care
+ Other Side Effects

Lung Damage (Acute Pulmonary Toxicity)

2006-09-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

Source: Onclogy Resource Centre

Some cancer treatments may cause lung damage. The damage may include inflammation or pneumonitis, which reduces the amount of oxygen that can be absorbed.

Lung tissue is normally very elastic and it expands as you breathe, in order to provide a larger space for air.

Another kind of damage is scarring or fibrosis, which reduces the elasticity of the lungs, and reduces the amount of air that can be taken in.

Fibrosis can occur several months after pneumonitis has healed or it can occur without any inflammation. Fibrosis may be progressive - meaning it gets worse with time, and may become a long-term complication.

Comment from Cancer Answers:

What medical treatment causes lung damage?
Both chemotherapy and radiation therapy may cause lung damage.

Radiation to the chest cavity commonly causes lung toxicity. Cancers that may be treated with radiation to the chest cavity include breast cancer, lung cancer, and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Symptoms may not occur until 2-3 months after radiation treatment.

Is there a treatment to reverse lung damage?
There is no specific treatment to reverse lung damage

Prostate Cancer - Hormone Therapy Linked to Heart Disease

2006-09-20T05:46:00.000-07:00

According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on 19 September, 2006 androgen-deprivation therapy for prostate cancer may increase the risk for heart disease. The study identified 73,196 Medicare enrollees diagnosed with locoregional prostate cancer and studied them for about four and a half years after diagnosis.

Men who were on hormonal therapy had a higher incidence of coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and sudden death, compared with men who were not on hormones.

Given the increasing use of hormone therapy for prostate cancer, the authors urged physicians to weigh its benefits against potential increased risks for diabetes and heart disease.

To read free abstract, click link below:
Journal of Clinical Oncology

Making Choices

2006-09-16T04:20:00.000-07:00

Brenda Hunter, Ph. D., a renowned psychologist and author, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy but opted for holistic healing instead of chemotherapy or radiotherapy. In her book: Staying Alive, she wrote:

I have discovered that cancer is a complex multifaceted illness with deep roots that extend not only into our bodies but into our minds and sprits as well. To heal our bodies, we must heal our lives.

We should not just treat our bodies with surgery, powerful drugs and radiation and expect to get and stay well. We need to change the internal and external terrain of our lives that caused the cancer cells to proliferate with abundance in the first place.

A visit to the oncologist is one of the scariest things on earth. Conventional medicine’s “cut, poison and burn” approach to cancer just didn’t make sense to me. Why take a sick body with a depressed immune system and subject it to a treatment protocol that might damage vital organs and cause secondary cancers? Frankly, the “cure” sounded barbaric.