Professors Michael Zimmerman and Rosalie David in England have an intriguing suggestion in their recent study of mummies: cancer may be a largely man-made disease. The study found no evidence of the disease in ancient corpses — leading to the theory that cancer may be the result of diet, pollution, and other man-made causes such as early use of snuff.
The researchers examined tissue from hundreds of Egyptian mummies and found only one case with cancer traces. Likewise, an earlier study of thousands of Neanderthal bones produced only one sample with possible cancer traces.
Some of the first published accounts of cancerous growths have been linked directly to such man-made causes as the use of snuff.
Such accounts largely occurred in the last 200 years with early accounts of nasal cancer (from snuff) and scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps — both in the eighteenth century.
Source: Daily Mail
PatricP said,
“In 1993 I was doing some research on a clinic in Palm Springs California, called the Preventive Medicine Clinic. Specifically, I was tracking the outcomes of their 3,000 IV infusion patients, (sterile garlic, EDTA and macro-vitamins) to see what – if anything – we could learn. One of their patients was a very well known TV actor, fresh from a hit series called “The Love Boat,” suffering intermittent severe chest pain. His cardiologist told him he needed a quadruple bypass, and fast. This scared the life out of him. So he consulted with the wellness physician named Sean Degnan, who immediately ordered a series of 30 IV Chelation infusions, six days a week. At the end of the treatment, I interviewed the patient, the nurses, Sean Degan, MD and the cardiologist at Eisenhower medical center, who was pushing for a coronary artery bypass graft. The results were impressive, and indisputable.”
Wikipedia said,
“The efficacy, safety, and much of the theory behind these alternative practices are disputed by the medical community. In 2001, researchers at the University of Calgary reported that cardiac patients receiving chelation therapy fared no better than those who received placebo treatment.[27]”
Boom! Disputed.
Regarding the possibility that cinnamon plays a role in sugar metabolism, we seem to forget that “food is medicine.”
Blouise’s comments that I’d like to echo:
“America lags behind Europe in the area of testing many of these products.” (regarding herbals and alternative “medicines”)
“We are not nearly as “advanced” as we pretend to be.”
“It’s amazing that we pay so much for healthcare here when so many European countries are more medically advanced.”
lottakatz wrote: “This months Discover magazine has the feature article “Reckless Medicine” by Joanne Lenzer.”
(Blouise: I’ll check e-mail. Thanks.)
Elaine: I have done acupuncture on and off for twenty years. Although it might not actually cure certain diseases, it opens up the channels so one can heal. I went yesterday for a treatment, and she gave me some herbs ,too.
Blouise:
very funny a good laugh for the morning. I like my cinnamon with a lot of sugar and butter on white toast. Cant get any healthier than that, especially if the butter is from grass fed cows and the white bread is from unbleached organic flour and the sugar is raw. 🙂
Good lord, is it impossible to talk about medicine on the internet without some quack coming up with his personal anecdotes about a miracle cure?
Josh PC –
“There is a kernel of truth in what PatricP says, but when it is all that is said, much life saving information is left out. What he wrote was nothing more than a series of platitudes that are dangerous in their implications. If you don’t believe me, then go stop your mother from taking her heart medication, or your father from taking his diabetes medication, or you friend from…..”
Oh, there is far more than a “kernel” of truth – there is 32 years of serious research to back it up.
And regarding stopping mom’s heart meds and dad’s diabetes meds – I’m not sure what your area of expertise is, but thinking people do literally just that, every single day of the year – in controlled circumstances. Millions have ditched allopathic care for good.
Just to add a little fuel to the flame here, give a brief listen to this little anecdote:
In 1993 I was doing some research on a clinic in Palm Springs California, called the Preventive Medicine Clinic. Specifically, I was tracking the outcomes of their 3,000 IV infusion patients, (sterile garlic, EDTA and macro-vitamins) to see what – if anything – we could learn. One of their patients was a very well known TV actor, fresh from a hit series called “The Love Boat,” suffering intermittent severe chest pain. His cardiologist told him he needed a quadruple bypass, and fast. This scared the life out of him. So he consulted with the wellness physician named Sean Degnan, who immediately ordered a series of 30 IV Chelation infusions, six days a week. At the end of the treatment, I interviewed the patient, the nurses, Sean Degan, MD and the cardiologist at Eisenhower medical center, who was pushing for a coronary artery bypass graft. The results were impressive, and indisputable.
For brevity, I’ll fast forward 12 years. Mr. Love Boat never did have the surgery; remains pain-free; shocked his cardiologist by not returning for the operation.
Neither the nurses, nor Sean Degnan, MD, nor any of the other patients were surprised.
They had seen it all before, a hundred times over.
The moral of the story, it seems to me, is pretty simple: If a single clinic in a small town has so many positive patient outcomes that they have to lease out the vacant next door office just to store the wheelchairs, and walkers, canes and braces of patients who honestly don’t need them anymore . . . .
Maybe the wise will pay attention. Think Ignaz Semmelweis, before you crow quackery.
GingerBaker –
The “junk science” you refer to is coming from the collective experiences of my peers & I, who graduated from UCSD La Jolla school of medicine, Emergency Field Medicine department, and who are tracking some very ugly trends.
It stems from 32 years of treating well over 12,200 emergency patients, a significant number of whom were prescribed medications with no semblance of a proper physical & history.
Part & parcel to this experience is the tracking of thousands of physician-scribbled prescriptions that ought never have been done in the first place, by practitioners with literally zero “wellness” education, but particularly stimulating drug therapy discussions by comely pharmaceutical reps in very short skirts.
If you or anyone else came to the conclusion that I am anti-vaccine” you might want to go back and read it again. Consider this comment by James:
“If you’re in a high risk category, such that getting the flu could kill you, yeah, you better get a flu shot EVERY YEAR.”
You will not hear any criticism from me re: those in the “high risk” category. But that is not what we are doing. We are telling EVERYBODY to run down to WalMart and get a shot, even those with healthy systems.
And it is this universal, for-God’s-sakes-go-get-your-shot-now mentality that many of us happen to believe will turn out in the end to have been very, very foolish.
One man’s opinion.
Josh PC –
You were disturbed by my post, saying,”this mindset implies that we shouldn’t treat for diseases to begin with.” No, that’s not what my mindset implies. My consternation (and my experience over 32 years in emergency medicine) is OVER TREATMENT, and we literally have it down to an ugly science. For an excellent, very readable analysis, check out Shannon Brownlee’s “Overtreated: Why too much medicine is making us sicker.” The lady knows of what she speaks.
You state: “Any argument against human intervention in disease control & elimination should be met with persistent opposition.”
Yes, that’s our national “Terminator/Germinator” group-think, and to an ever-growing number of medical professionals, it’s lunacy. The fact is, germs, infections, bacteria – these are as important to the scheme of life as the so-called “good stuff.” This ridiculous notion of jabbing a needle at everything that wiggles, is as illogical as trying to kill all living insects, because they’re icky. In my work with Doctors without Borders, we discovered a fascinating matter in the jungles of Laos: Nearly a complete absence of nosocomial infections in highly imperfect, open air surgery fields. Meanwhile, our squeaky clean clinics of America cooties kill hundreds of citizens per day. Why do you suppose that is?
Germs, bacteria, viruses – they each serve a purpose. It is entirely possible to provide excellent care while recognizing the human body’s ability to grow an immune system that does its job. Certainly not in ALL cases. Instead, we’ve spawned a knee-jerk reaction to sneezes & colds, aches & pain. Which in turn provides fertile ground for an entire population of frightened citizens, more than willing to ingest billions of doses of drugs with side effects, “just in case.” And where do all those drugs end up? Why, in our water. As a medical consultant to the Girl Scouts, I discovered 30% of the girls under 9 were on prescription meds. In 1980 in was about 5%. I am not saying I know why. I am saying maybe we ought to find out.
You state: “The goal of medicine is & always will be for longevity of life, increased quality of life.”
Your flaw here is implying “medicine” & its players are of one, altruistic mind. Sadly, that isn’t even close to reality. I am a physician misbehavior investigator. We have in our files 2,490 doctor convictions last year, 11,000 in just the last decade. Another 2,018 so far this year. The NPDB holds files on 237,000 MDs considered “Dangerous” or “Questionable.” We have 204 doctors in prison for murder, with another 29 awaiting trial. The profit margins have skyrocketed so high that over a thousand surgeons have been convicted for performing hundreds of thousands of unwarranted operations. No, a major piece of the medical pie “goal” is pure, unadulterated greed.
Elsewhere on this post there is mention of the “dangers” of using herbal extracts. I strong recommend anyone who believes this to be true, to compare the death rates of “herbals” to those thoroughly-tested pharmaceuticals – you know the ones – like Avandia & Paxil, Liptor & Crestor, Vioxx & et al – that help boost our disease care system to among the top 10 leading causes of death in this country. Then, if you are truly objective, you’ll compare the multi-billion dollar fines of Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Merck & Pfizer, to whatever meager punishment you might discover against all those nasty vitamin makers.
Because you just never know. The next CoQ 10 capsule to take just may be your last.
Elaine,
We’re up late, as usual
When discussions were first going on about my granddaughter’s heart situation, the surgeon told us that there was a procedure being done in England that would be perfect for her but we would have to take her there because the procedure wasn’t yet approved here. I asked him why, if it had been approved in England for three years, it hadn’t been approved here. He used one word … politics.
As things worked out, she didn’t need that procedure but had she needed it, we would have taken her to England.
It’s amazing that we pay so much for healthcare here when so many European countries are more medically advanced.
Chronic pain can ruin one’s life. A good friend had back trouble and was worried about getting hooked on the drugs the doctors kept prescribing so she went to an acupuncturist. After 6 weeks her pain was gone. She has a procedure done every 6 months and remains pain free. It costs her less per year than the co-pay for doctors and drugs did and she doesn’t have to fill her body with a bunch of narcotics.
Blouise,
I am a believer in “alternative medicines” when traditional medicines don’t work or when doctors can’t diagnose a health problem. I don’t want to go into detail about my own medical history–but when “Western” doctors couldn’t diagnose my problem a couple of years ago and couldn’t figure out the cause of the severe physical discomfort I was experiencing–even after I had had a series of tests at a hospital, I didn’t know what to do. I was really disheartened. I finally decided to see an acupuncturist who was recommended to me by a close friend. After several acupuncture treatments and taking a daily Chinese herbal remedy, I now feel better than I have in many years.
P.S. I also recommend probiotics.
James M.,
I know the Lemon Myrtle thing was exhaustively tested by the French government many, many years ago before it was decided to use it in hospitals. America lags behind Europe in the area of testing many of these products.
There are also many surgical procedures that have been fully tested in Europe and in are use there but haven’t yet made it to our shores. We are not nearly as “advanced” as we pretend to be.
JoshOnPC,
I agree with you (and your wife) entirely on the matter of herbal remedies. The whole purpose of a drug study is to validate anecdotal claims made about drugs and eliminate the placebo effect. With herbal “drugs”, at best, you’re not doing yourself any harm (except wasting your money) and may benefit from a placebo effect. At worst, you actually are dosing yourself with an active drug without any guidance about its proper dosage or all of its effects.
One of the big game changers for the medical and pharmaceutical industry has been the move to deregulate the FDA and rely increasingly on self-policing and verification of products and treatments. This months Discover magazine has the feature article “Reckless Medicine” by Joanne Lenzer. It details some pretty poor industry practices that include outright, directed frauds in the writing of drug studies.
The FDA hasn’t the staff or inclination to actually do the research needed to separate bad or marginal trials from properly constructed ones and the reports they spawn. The move to fast-track as many drugs as possible has only exacerbated the problem.
Since industry runs its own trials and submits its own reports to FDA and to the medical community an industry rife with suppression of negative results for a new product (as drug companies are) produces a lot of products that are harmful.
Same for new medical techniques and non-drug products. According to the article physicians aren’t taught how to think critically about risk or even how to ferret out the information needed to base risk assessments on. They’re also too busy to do much more than take a drug or medical supply company representative’s word for the virtue of their product.
We are the beta testers for medical care and litigation and class actions have assumed the role proper oversight and rigorous testing and objective report writing should be playing is what I take away from the article.
Unfortunately the article isn’t available at the Discover website since it’s current.
Byron,
Here’s one just for you:
I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes. 🙂
anon nurse,
I have to disagree that PatricP made good points. That over-prescription of antibiotics is creating drug-resistant bacteria is true. That many Americans turn to medication rather than changing their lifestyles is also true. I’m also extremely sympathetic to his opinions on drug advertising (I took an elective on the laws regulating the FDA because I wanted to understand exactly what kept bullshit “dietary supplements” from being regulated as drugs).
However, PatricP also included the “evils” of vaccines in his claims. (Which makes his claims demonstrably false).
Even if vaccines did cause the problems PatricP attributes to them (which they don’t), they’d still be worth it as the greatest single advance in medicine since the germ theory and antiseptic.
Would you really rather live in a country with smallpox? or typhoid? or polio?
—
Also:
PatricP,
The viruses which cause the flu mutate at a terrific rate, and which strains of influenza are common changes from year to year. If you’re in a high risk category, such that getting the flu could kill you, yeah, you better get a flu shot EVERY YEAR.
anon Nurse,
Sent off an email too
Anon nurse,
Sorry … I missed the post about time … it all depends on how “hot” your simmer is and the number of drops you put in but usually it’s about a half an hour … clean the pot immediately as this is an oil and it leaves a sticky film after the herb is gone.
Steam distilled leaves
anon nurse,
My pharmacist friend does the ordering … I’ll remember to ask him … I think the herbalist is … duh … I have the bottle in the cupboard … wait a sec
Okay … It’s Nature’s Gift … naturesgift.com … the product is LEMON MYRTLE (Backhousia Citriodora) Organic, Australia, Steam Distilled Leavea … order a small bottle to start to see if you like it. It’s also great when diluted in water and poured down your drains … freshens them right up. I think they are located in Tennessee.
Just called my neighbor (we’re all night owls around here) … she gets her CINNAMON 500 mg capsules from Puritan Pride … puritan.com … 100 capsules to a bottle at around $5 but she says they’re having a sale right now 2 for the price of one etc.
Blouise, Thanks for the cinnamon tip — always good to know these things. Also, who is your supplier for the oil — do you order online? (Could/should use e-mail for this, but others might want to know, too.)
Josh, Thanks for the additional information.
Recently, an acquaintance’s cancer returned when she decided, against medical advice, to stop traditional therapy, in lieu of an “alternative” regimen. (With cancer treatments, I, personally, would be inclined to stick with mainstream treatments, or opt for a clinical trial, perhaps. Some of the side-effects are awful, but the outcomes are generally better, it seems.)
In response to an earlier comment, I felt that PatricP was expressing his frustration — I wouldn’t characterize his response as “hysterical.” He made a number of valid points, IMO.