Read an Excerpt
You Can Say No to Chemo
Know Your Options, Choose for Yourself
By Laura Bond Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
Copyright © 2013 Laura Bond
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60925-966-2
CHAPTER 1
Accept the Diagnosis Not the Prognosis
'Words can become swords and cure or kill just like a scalpel.' Dr Bernie Siegel, author of Peace, Love and Healing
March 2011. I've just turned twenty-eight, and I'm back in Australia after five years in London. The conversation, the same one I will have over and over again, goes something like this:
'What are you doing back in Perth?'
'Mum's just had a health scare,' I say, stalling.
Then, putting the person out of their misery, I add: 'We just found out she has ovarian and uterine cancer.'
'Is she having chemo?' they ask, their voice rising in hope.
'No, she's definitely not having chemo.' Pause.
'Wow, she's brave,' they say. But what they're thinking is: 'She's mad.'
The only thing more shocking than telling someone your mum has cancer is, apparently, revealing that she is not having chemotherapy. Yet ask a group of oncologists (doctors who specialise in the treatment of cancer) what they would do if they were given a diagnosis and their answer might surprise you. In 1986, in a survey conducted by the McGill Cancer Centre in Canada, 64 out of 79 doctors (that's 81 per cent) said in the confidential questionnaire that they would not submit to a common chemotherapy drug, cisplatin, while 58 out of 79 believed that all the therapies offered were not acceptable to them or their family members. Why? Many believed the chemotherapy drugs were ineffective and came with an unacceptable degree of toxicity. A more recent poll by the Los Angeles Times came to a similar conclusion. In the survey 75 per cent of oncologists reported that chemotherapy and radiation were unacceptable as treatments for themselves or their families.
This lack of faith in oncological drugs is mirrored elsewhere: Phillip Day, a UK-based health researcher and author of Cancer: Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth, regularly talks with oncologists around the world and most of them admit they would not take their own treatment. 'They're quite forthright about that,' says Day.
At the time of writing, I know of two Australian oncologists with prostate cancer, both of whom are being treated exclusively by a holistic doctor. Can you imagine if their patients knew? How can doctors recommend a therapy they themselves would refuse? The answer is simple. By suggesting patients go outside the box and try alternative cancer treatments, oncologists risk losing their medical licences and livelihoods. 'In Australia and the United States today, doctors can be struck off and sent to jail for "harming their patients' right to life" in using nutrition and lifestyle changes instead of chemotherapy to treat cancer,' says Day. But as a cancer patient you've got a lot to lose too. Your life is at stake.
Going Her Own Way
When mum was first diagnosed, she figured there must have been a mistake. We all did. It just didn't seem possible that someone who had spent decades eating healthy food, practising yoga and riding the zeitgeist of 'crazy' alternative therapies – chakra balancing, kinesiology, cranio-sacral therapy – could get cancer.
It didn't help that her outward symptoms were ruthlessly subtle – ovarian cancer is not called the 'silent killer' for nothing. Mum had been experiencing a faint but persistent drawing pain in her lower abdomen, her periods would stop and start again and she was feeling bloated. She saw her GP and asked to have the CA 125 blood test and a trans-vaginal ultrasound. She'd read years before that these two tests provide the best indication of ovarian cancer. Indeed, in an ongoing study of 200,000 women, British doctors found that using the tests in tandem detected 90 per cent of ovarian cancer cases.
But even after these two tests came back positive mum was convinced the tumour, or whatever the dark mass was that the ultrasound had revealed, wasn't really anything to worry about. That is until the night following her hysterectomy. The surgeon, who'd spent the evening poring over mum's pathology report, delivered the diagnosis: that she had ovarian cancer and it was in her uterus too. Mum broke down in tears.
'It's a very aggressive form of cancer, and I'd really urge you to have chemo,' said the surgeon. Through her tears mum managed to blurt out, 'I'm not having chemo.' Now it's one thing to tell yourself you'll never have chemotherapy, but it's quite another matter, when your life is hanging in the balance and you're hooked to a morphine drip, to tell a leading gynaecological oncologist that you won't be taking his advice.
Mum spent those first two weeks agonising over whether she was being stupidly self-righteous. It didn't help that almost everyone – best friends, Chinese and Western doctors alike – were all shaking their heads in despair. But us kids? We supported mum from the start. Having grown up in a house where vitamins and ouija breathing were used to treat everything from sore throats to broken hearts – and where it was normal to find mum upside down in a headstand machine or supervising the dog's acupuncture – we knew that the natural way was the only way for mum.
After years of eye rolling and scepticism, my brothers, sister and I had come to trust in mum's unconventional advice. We'd reluctantly dissolved homeopathic tablets under our tongues, and watched as mosquito bites vanished; rubbed Swedish bitters on our foreheads, too hung over to argue, and felt migraines lift; we'd begrudgingly booked in for 'vitamin cocktails' to ward off the flu while all around us fell ill ... We believed alternative medicine could work.
The Truth about Your Choices
Mum's knowledge of natural medicine provided a glimmer of hope in those dark hours in hospital. She knew of doctors defeating cancer with vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide, and had heard of end-stage cancer patients who'd travelled to alternative clinics in Mexico and Germany and returned tumour-free. She'd never expected, not in her wildest nightmares, to need the information, but in those grim days following her diagnosis, she was glad she had it. There were choices.
Sadly, for most cancer patients there are only three options: cut, poison or burn: statistics reveal 67 per cent of cancer patients submit to surgery, 80 per cent receive chemotherapy and 60 per cent have radiation. And yet, with the exception of Hodgkin's disease, acute lymphocytic leukaemia and testicular cancer, as well as a few rare cancers, chemotherapy makes little difference to long-term survival (i.e. at least five years beyond diagnosis of the primary disease). One major study, published in the Scientific American in 1985, found that chemotherapy was 'somewhat effective' in only 2-3 per cent of cancer patients.
But worse than that, chemotherapy can kill. A 2008 British study conducted by the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcomes and Deaths found that chemotherapy actually contributes to a quarter of cancer deaths. In addition, the late Dr Hardin B. Jones, one of the world's top statisticians, led a twenty-five-year study which found that 'untreated cancer victims live up to four times longer than treated individuals'.
Far from being a fringe conspiracy, the ineffectiveness of chemotherapy is acknowledged by some of today's most popular and brilliant minds. In the best- selling book SuperFreakonomics Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner mention that a typical chemotherapy regime for non-small-cell lung cancer costs more than $40,000, but helps extend a patient's life by an average of just two months. They write: '... it is easy to envision a point in the future, perhaps fifty years from now, when we collectively look back at the early twenty-first century's cutting-edge cancer treatments and say: We were giving our patients what?'
Even those at the heart of conventional medicine acknowledge the limitations of cancer drugs. In April 2012 Dr Otis Brawley, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS), criticised mainstream cancer treatments. In a speech to health journalists he admitted that doctors frequently lie about the success rates of both screenings and treatments – including PSA exams for prostate cancer, bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy10 – calling the current system 'a subtle form of corruption'.
So where were the front-page headlines? Sadly, the other side of the story rarely makes the news. Instead, we are told that a cure for cancer is 'just around the corner' and that survival rates are improving. In November 2011 Macmillan Cancer Support released a paper stating that: 'Overall median survival time for all cancer types forty years ago was just one year, now it is predicted to be nearly six years.' So should we applaud the apparent progress, or should we, like Phillip Day, take the statistics with a pinch of salt? 'Torture the data long enough and eventually it will confess to anything,' quips Day.
Doctored Figures
Certain factors give official figures a brighter sheen: we are now catching cancer at an earlier stage, which means patients are not necessarily living longer after they get cancer, rather, they're living longer after they are diagnosed with the disease; non-invasive cancers like ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) – also known as 'zero-grade cancer' – are included in statistics; and the word 'survive' has been redefined to mean only five years.
'My aunt – who had all the chemo offered – is forever immortalised as a breast cancer "survivor",' says Day. 'She survived the five years, but died six months after that. So she's "cured" and dead.'
Twenty-five years ago Day embarked upon a worldwide quest to find the 'answer' to cancer. The result? He discovered the clinics getting the best results were focusing on nutrition, stress management and lifestyle changes. 'They weren't doing chemotherapy and radiation at all. That surprised me,' says Day.
'Chemo Saved My Life'
Of course, it goes without saying that conventional treatment works for some people. We all have friends or loved ones and know of celebrities who've chosen the conventional route and are doing well. When Olivia Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer she opted for surgery and eight months of chemotherapy. Today, more than twenty years later, she is still gracing magazine covers having not only defied her diagnosis but also, it would seem, the ravages of ageing.
But chemotherapy is rarely the whole story: 'The chemotherapy might have shrunk the tumour to the point where the patient is sent home, but what's never recorded is whether the patient, having had a major lifestyle wake-up call, improves their diet, starts exercising and looks after themselves better,' Phillip Day surmises.
When faced with cancer, most patients want to pull out all the stops, and increasingly that means stopping by the reiki healer or Chinese doctor and taking potent supplements. A recent survey at MD Anderson Cancer Center, found an astounding 83 per cent of patients were using alternative medicine alongside conventional treatments. Yet these added extras are never considered in cancer statistics. Instead, 'progress' is pinned exclusively on medical advancements and not to patient initiative.
For Newton-John, meditation, homeopathy, acupuncture and relaxation techniques were just some of the healing therapies she turned to following conventional treatment. She also reportedly takes digestive enzymes and vitamin D daily (see Chapter 4) and is passionate about eating healthy, organic food. While Newton-John managed to bounce back from chemotherapy, many more don't. According to Ciaran Devane, CEO of Macmillan Cancer Support: 'Cancer treatment is the toughest fight many people will face and patients are often left with long-term health and emotional problems long after their treatment has ended.'
Leukaemia, heart failure and infertility are just some of the listed side effects of doxorubicin, a common chemotherapy drug, while 5 FU, another one, is so toxic some doctors refer to it as 'Five Feet Under'. While we constantly read about 'new breakthrough treatments', the reality is that many patients are offered drugs that are decades old. One of my blog readers from the UK, Jayne Brown, was shocked to discover that the same chemotherapy drug used unsuccessfully on her late partner in 1993 was given to her friend in 2007. 'I am incredulous that with twelve additional years of research, the chemo cocktail given to my partner is still part of mainstream medicine,' says Brown.
It's worth bearing in mind that up to three-quarters of all published research on pharmaceutical drugs in the medical literature is now believed to be ghost-written by public relations firms, hired by drug companies. The fact that cancer is profitable to many – more than $40 billion is spent worldwide each year on cancer drugs – is a truth that cannot be ignored. 'Chemotherapy is certainly good for the balance sheets of pharmaceutical companies. It builds careers. It may even offer patients and their families hope in hopeless times. But it is not an effective weapon against the vast majority of solid carcinomas in adults,' according to acclaimed medical journalist Ralph Moss.
But most of us don't ask questions: 'Patients are often vulnerable, frightened and don't fully understand their disease,' says Kathryn Alexander, naturopath, detoxification expert and author of Dietary Healing: The Complete Detox Program. 'When I ask patients why they have chosen certain treatments they will often say, "The doctor seemed so nice". While it is obviously better to have a kind specialist than one who is abrupt and rude, being nice does not qualify as a treatment, and the advice given needs to be properly evaluated.'
Tunnel vision can take over when you receive a diagnosis. Thoughts turn to friends or loved ones who lost the battle and hopelessness sets in like rising damp; any reservations about conventional treatment vanish and fear takes hold. Suddenly, any option sounds like a good one, even if it comes with death as a 'side effect'. Radiation? Bring it on. Surgery? Sign me up. Cancer-causing chemicals? You bet.
'Every day we get dozens of calls from people all over the world,' says New York-based physician Dr Nicholas Gonzalez. 'These people did all the "right" things – the surgery, the chemo – now the cancer is in their brain and their lungs and their liver. They're scared and they've started to look into alternatives.'
Embracing Health vs Fighting Disease
We've collectively bought into the idea that harm caused by the healer is an inevitable part of the 'battle' against cancer. But it doesn't have to be this way. For the last twenty-five years, Dr Gonzalez has been treating cancer patients with individualised diets, enzymes and coffee enemas – with phenomenal success.
'I have patients now in their mid-nineties that have been with me for twenty years,' says Dr Gonzalez. 'I have a woman with pancreatic cancer who lives in Texas. I haven't seen her in about eight years, but she always sends me a Christmas card.'
When mum first decided to stray from the conventional path, she assumed it would be a lonely journey. How wrong she was! We quickly discovered the alternative cancer community is a thriving population, which is driving demand for holistic practitioners worldwide. Indeed, according to research published in Australian Family Physician, patients in Australia now visit alternative practitioners almost as frequently as they do their GP. Professor Ian Brighthope, a leading medical doctor and surgeon, has witnessed a dramatic change in public opinion in the last thirty-five years: 'It has been interesting to see how something like high-dose vitamin C – regarded as absolute quackery – has become mainstream,' he says.
Around the world, the natural health movement is rapidly gaining momentum. Britons now spend £450 million a year on complementary and alternative medicine, and in America sales of organic food and beverages have grown from $1 billion in 1990 to $26.7 billion in 2010. People are hungry for real, unprocessed food along with unadulterated information about their healthcare options. Thankfully, reliable research is now available through leading health news hubs like Natural News.com and Mercola.com. Boasting millions of readers, these websites are able to disseminate leading health news at breakneck speed. With more and more information available, patients are now arriving at appointments with printouts and a list of questions to ask, rather than simply an array of symptoms to treat.
Making important medical decisions can be exceptionally stressful and at times incredibly lonely, but this book will help you navigate the darkness. You will find details of cutting-edge alternative treatments – like hyperthermia and ozone therapy (see Chapters 7 and 9) – which have reversed countless cases of 'terminal' cancer. I will also touch on the exciting field of molecular oncology and mention a groundbreaking technique which allows doctors to identify cancer cells years before normal marker tests (see Chapter 10). At the back of the book you will find a helpful Resources section with lots of information on the tests, treatments, clinics and specialists mentioned in the text.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from You Can Say No to Chemo by Laura Bond. Copyright © 2013 Laura Bond. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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