Cancer has been one of the many plagues of the 20th century, haunting humanity on a daily basis and killing millions upon millions over time. The scientific community has relentlessly pursued trials and treatments for this disease, without much progress demonstrated to the community at large. We still rely on treatments like chemotherapy and radiation, hoping against hope for the elusive cure.
The statistics are devastating. In most countries, there’s a high chance of cancer at some point in your life. GMOs, smoking, chemicals, diet and exercise habits all contribute to the possibility of illness. But, with that said, leading scientists also have something to say about the way cancer is currently being looked at: more of a commodity than a disease.
Cancer is a money spinner for ‘big pharma.’ It’s also a business affair for some charities that raise money and research programs receiving grants. There is no shortage of credible sources willing to speak out against these organizations; that scientific fraud and manipulation go a long way to aid questionable practices.
One scientist, a two-time Nobel Prize winner and a founder of molecular biology, had this to say: “Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organizations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.” –Linus Pauling, Ph.D. [1]
The chemist and peace activist took his work seriously. [2] Considered to be one of the more important contributors to science, Pauling was one of many who spoke out against the concerns surrounding research, publications and the continual fabrication of the real situation still eluding us today.
Dr. Robert Sharpe sums up the culture of illness as such, “…in our culture, treating disease is enormously profitable, preventing it is not… preventing the disease benefits no one except the patient…” [3]
And here’s another independent claim from one Dr. Irwin Bross, a former director of one of the largest cancer research institutes in the world, the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute. He talks about the waste of budget in animal research:
“The uselessness of most animal model studies is less well known. For example, the discovery of chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of human cancer is widely heralded as a triumph due to use of animal model systems. However, these exaggerated claims are coming from or are endorsed by the same people who get the federal dollars for animal research. There is little, if any, factual evidence that would support these claims. Practically all of the chemotherapeutic agents which are of value in the treatment of human cancer were found in a clinical context rather than in animal studies.” [4]
Our health has a worrying trend attached to it.
SOURCES:
[1] Curing Cancer. Retrieved from [National Press.Org]. http://nationalpress.org/images/uploads/programs/CAN2009_Marshall.pdf
[2] Linus Pauling. Retrieved from http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1954/pauling-bio.html
[3] Ryan, R. B.Sc. Cancer Research – A Super Fraud. Retrieved from http://vivisectionresearch.ca/Cancer%20Research%20a%20Super%20Fraud.pdf
[4] ibid.
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I was diagnosed with cancer 40 years ago. I Ignored it and never had a further examination and I’m 73 years old now and still here.
Your story is not uncommon. Misdiagnosis is the key to the creation of the false narrative that these cancer drugs actually work. They rarely do. Add statistical manipulation, research fraud, cherry picked/hidden research, poorly run studies and a multi-billion dollar industrial medical complex protected by governmental agencies and mainstream media. The manipulated masses don’t stand a chance. Rich, poor, high IQ or average IQ – the brainwashed are a lost cause and a money making opportunity.
wwht type of cancer did you have ?
Linus Pauling’s hallucinations to the contrary notwithstanding, cancer is not a “nutritional deficiency.” Pauling is the poster boy for what is called the “Nobel disease,” a mental condition that results when someone who is an expert in one area believes that his or her expertise magically extends to other areas. That’s not to mention Pauling being the poster boy for medical quackery in general. See http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease.
The hallucination for which Pauling is best known is that vitamin C is a virtual panacea, and is a “cure” or preventive for cancers. Alas, that didn’t help Pauling much, or his wife, since they both died from cancer.
One of Linus Pauling’s researchers, Arthur B. Robinson (chemistry, CalTech, PhD, UCSD) discovered that, yes, diet does have a strong influence on the development of cancer. Contrary to all expectation, however, but in accordance with the obvious-to-some paradigm that, yes, cancer cells also have nutritional requirements, and some nutrients might accelerate their growth, “In experiments involving the induction of squamous cell carcinoma in 1846 hairless mice that were maintained on a wide variety of diets, it was found that those diets with the least optimum balance of nutrients had the greatest inhibitory effect on growth of cancer. Rate of onset and severity of tumors was caused to vary over a 20-fold range by means of dietary balance alone. These experiments suggest that dietary variation in general and intentional malnutrition in particular should be given special attention in the control of existing cancer in humans.”
“…The experimental results are remarkable for three reasons. First, the rate of growth of cancer varied over a 20-fold range as a function of the amounts of ordinary nutrients. Second, the most cancer retarding diets were those for which anecdotal accounts exist for similar retardation of human cancer. Third, the overall results suggest that those diets that would conventionally be considered least suitable for ordinary mouse and human nutrition caused the greatest inhibition of cancer growth.” (http://www.nutritionandcancer.org/view/nutritionandcancer/oism_nac.pdf)
Robinson had been “president and tenured professor of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine” but these experiments caused a falling out with Pauling, resulting in a libel suit that Pauling had to settle out of court. Pauling refused to accept the fact that, at low doses, vitamin C actually ACCELERATED the grown of cancer, since it contradicted his pet theory:
“At the new institute, on Sandhill Road, Robinson devised some mouse experiments to test this amazing theory [Pauling’s vitamin C/cancer hypothesis]. By the summer of 1978, he was getting ‘highly embarrassing’ results. At the mouse-equivalent of 10 grams of Vitamin C a day–Pauling’s recommended dose for humans–the mice were getting more cancer, not less. Pauling responded to the unwelcome news by entering Robinson’s office one day and announcing that he had in his breast pocket some damaging personal information. He would overlook it, however, if Robinson were to resign all his positions and turn over his research. When Robinson refused, Pauling locked him out and kept the filing cabinets and computer tapes containing nine years’ worth of research. They were never recovered. Pauling also told lab assistants to kill the 400 mice used for the experiments. Pauling’s later sworn testimony showed that the story about the damaging information was invented, while experiments by the Mayo Clinic conclusively proved that the theory about cancer and Vitamin C was wrong.” (http://www.independentscientist.com/)
Clearly, in some cases, nutrients exacerbate disease, such as tyrosine acting almost like fertilizer for melanoma. It comes as a surprise to those who never got past fifth grade science that cancer cells and pathogenic organisms also have nutritional requirements, which can be the basis for some disease treatments. It comes as a surprise to most of us that Pauling would have been blind to something so obvious. Folic acid is another example. “Paradoxically, inhibition of folic acid metabolism has been used as a mechanism for successful elimination of malignant cells, but insufficient folic acid levels in normal cells have been associated with DNA damage and altered DNA methylation conditions that have been associated with malignant transformation. Interference or prevention of folic acid metabolism is then potentially both a cause of malignancy and a means to induce apoptosis or necrosis in malignant cells.” (http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/life-science/learning-center/biofiles/biofiles-5-6/folic-acid-metabolism.html/). Compounds known as antifolates are used to treat some cancers, by interfering with a cancer’s ability to uptake or use folic acid.
As James Watson suggested, “Free-radical-destroying antioxidative nutritional supplements may have caused more cancers than they have prevented.” (http://rsob.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royopenbio/3/1/120144.full.pdf) There is no question, epidemiologically speaking, that some of those substances prevent cancer when present in the diet in reasonable amounts. Which ones of these substances, in what combination, and in what amounts, should be considered as conditionally “essential” are all great unknowns. I would suggest that too low a dietary amount of these substances that are not yet considered “nutrients” could be considered, not causative of cancers, but non-preventive–of SOME cancers–and, to that extent, I would say that there is a germ of truth to what Pauling said. I suggest that we look at them as having a U-shaped dose/response curve. But the fact that science is incredibly slow to adapt sometimes is no excuse to go railing against cancer research.
Cancer research, like all other human enterprises, is conducted by, gasp, human beings, with human failings. There is no shortage of egotism among scientists, there is no shortage of infighting, or any of the other problems associated with bureaucracies and human organizations. The hallucination that there is some “the cure” for “cancer” that is being repressed by “BigPharma” is widespread, despite the fact that, if any good cure were to appear, it would be a guarantee of a Nobel Prize, adulation, and unlimited research money, which should prove to you that it doesn’t exist. Anyone with a “cure” could name his or her price. If I had a bottle of a liquid that could cure pancreatic cancer, do you not realize that I would be an instant millionaire? And if there were some “the cure” that were in everybody’s kitchen, as seems to be so frequently proclaimed, do you not think that you would be unable to stop the succession of cure stories? Imagine, for instance, that you had a cure for blindness: do you imagine that you would be able to stop the news of blind people suddenly being able to see? If people dying of cancer suddenly started walking out of their houses free of the disease, do you not think we would know about it? Yes, there are problems in the scientific community: but it lives and learns.
Someone here is receiving a fat check from the FDA. Hahaha. Don’t know much about Pauling, but last time I checked, the number of death by vitamins vs. number of death by meds taken as prescribed showed vitamins weren’t nearly as dangerous as drugs. And I have never seen a vitamin C cancer treatment with only 10 mg. The number is more like 100g, or 100,000mg of C injected, and from what I heard, it’s not performed in the US. How can any of this be acceptable? These treatments can’t be patented. What a shame, no money for big pharma! 🙁 But what the heck do I know? Lol. Peace!
You sound like a monsanto rep trying to convince the world G.M.O.’s are a good thing. calling a nobel prize winner a quack. no G.M.O.’s dont drink the kool-aid people.
I’d like to apologize on behalf of myself and my fellow homo sapiens for the failings of our intelligence. Not only are we not equally knowledgeable in all areas, but our intelligence itself is so variable that many of us can be experts in one field but total idiots in others. For that reason, most of us don’t seek to answer legal questions by asking auto mechanics, and we wouldn’t seek to answer questions about botany by questioning professors of Russian literature.
It might be obvious to your mechanic that your car won’t start because of a loose ignition wire, but it might take you days to figure out the same thing by yourself, if you ever do. You might be able to prepare prize-winning souffles in your kitchen, while your accountant would have trouble boiling water. So, yes, we are all different, with different capabilities and different limitations.
That doesn’t mean that sometimes someone not in a field cannot see something that those too close to a question might miss, and it doesn’t preclude the existence of a rare super-genius who can cross areas of knowledge willy-nilly. Even then, though, you’re going to discover an innate limitation of the human mind: the amount of knowledge that exists is far too vast for one person to comprehend.
To assume that Pauling’s expertise could be magically extended to other areas of endeavor is not intellectually tenable. Instead of looking at the Nobel, look at the ideas, and their own validity, or lack thereof. I don’t care if you’re a nun, a death row inmate, a kindergartner, or a Nobel Prize winner: in my book, your ideas stand or fall on their own merits–or lack thereof.
Scientists and, one might also argue, academics in general, have no shortage of egotism, a consequence, perhaps, of the vast amount of stupidity in the world. In the case of science, that egotism can be good in that it leads to test after test, which ultimately validate or fail a particular notion, and thereby advances the field of study, although, when engrained, it may hinder the progress of science. I’d recommend Thomas Kuhn’s best-known work on that question, and I’d equally recommend Professor Goldman’s lectures on “The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It.” That egotism can be the basis for intellectual blindness to any questioning of one’s ideas, which appears to have been the case with Pauling.
The disease of imagined expertise is so widespread that it may very well endanger the survival of the human species. It afflicts Ted Cruz and other political nutjobs, for instance, who hallucinate themselves to have knowledge of science, and who deny the existence of a phenomenon, global warming, the reality of which should be obvious to anyone with more than a few functioning neurons. Because these nutjobs have political power, their hallucinations, based on their imagined expertise, cause them to reject the notion that we should regulate pollution, the overwhelming stupidity of which affects us as well as future humans–if humanity has a future.
Only a touch of intellectual curiosity would compel one to investigate the question of the “Nobel disease,” and one would discover that other equally ranked academics have suffered from it. It may be more than just an inherent limitation of the mind, however. Another problem comes into play, and that is the fact that many of the Nobel recipients are at an age when other failings occur, failings such as senility. As Diamandis states, “Winning a Nobel Prize is a great personal achievement. Some Nobel laureates may consider that their award is a certificate of competence in any field. This may prompt them to undertake projects or accept positions which are beyond their capabilities. Since Nobels are awarded when the laureates have usually passed their prime, caution should be exercised when these individuals are offered highly influential positions in academia and elsewhere.” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23729580)
Luc Montagnier helped discover HIV, but his Nobel propelled him into hallucinatory beliefs about homeopathy. Kary Mullis, who discovered the polymerase chain reaction, believes that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, and believes that climate change and the ozone depletion problem are all conspiracies on the part of scientists in order to obtain funding. The list goes on and on, and, as I said, Pauling is just the poster boy.
A related disease described by the Skeptic’s Dictionary is the “M.D. Disease,” described as “an affliction of certain medical doctors that causes them to embrace strange or scientifically unsound ideas, even outright pseudoscience, not necessarily later in life.” (http://skepdic.com/nobeldisease.html) A list of those doctors would be too numerous to mention; all you have to do is visit a bookstore, to find, for instance, best-sellers written by doctors that blame virtually all of humanity’s medical ills on [fill in the blank: wheat, soy, fluoride, aspartame, etc., etc.].
As far as Pauling goes, I was attracted, at first, by the observation that led to his set of notions about vitamin C. He observed that dry-nosed primates, which includes us, have lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C, but that, in species that haven’t lost that function, the amount of vitamin C produced is prodigious. He figured that we are “supposed” to have a lot of vitamin C bebopping around in us, and that, by correcting for that loss, i.e., by supplementation, we could prevent many diseases, including the common cold, and he even eventually went way out on a ledge and decided that more vitamin C would even cure diseases such as cancer.
Clearly, such hypotheses are testable, and the fact that his own assistant got opposite results to his theory enraged Pauling. No one else has been able to verify those ideas either. That does not mean that, somewhere in the universe, there does not exist some one cancer or another condition that might not be treated successfully that way. It is quite clear, after decades of looking, that vitamin C is not a panacea. People haven’t started living forever without disease since vitamin C supplementation became popular a few decades ago, or perhaps you haven’t noticed that. One might wonder why Pauling never looked at primates who still synthesize vitamin C to see if they all live forever without disease due to the magical properties of vitamin C: alas, they don’t. Lemurs, for instance, suffer from West Nile, E. coli infections, malaria, and numerous other diseases, despite the presence of great quantities of circulating vitamin C. Nevertheless, I consider it sane to take a few hundred milligrams of it a day.
One of the most amusing “theories” that invokes Pauling’s hypotheses can be found in Medical Hypotheses. I wondered at first if the article suggesting a new species, “homo sapiens ascorbicus,” might not have been satire, but the author is well known for his support of Pauliing’s lunacy: “The long term, daily full correction of the ancient primate mutation resulting in Homo sapiens’ genetic defect for GLO, by the spaced ingestion of the required levels of ascorbate would have so many salutary effects (3, 12, 13) on so many different human physiological and pathological processes that it would be tantamount to creating a new human sub-species, a sort of biochemical “Superman”, who would be more robust, tougher and more resistant to diseases and stresses and have a much longer life span.” (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306987779900938)
In short, I hate to tell you this, but Pauling ended up as a quack. That doesn’t denigrate the good of his early career. And that doesn’t mean that there are not some germs of truth underlying some of his quackery. The Linus Pauling Institute, by the way, is a good source for nutritional information.
My mom was diagnosed with colon cancer 5 yrs ago. At the same time my uncle was diagnosed with colon cancer. My mom had the legion removed but refused any chemo or radiation and her Dr was very unhappy with her. She chose instead to complete change her diet by removing all processed foods and only eating meats such as fish but having her diet 70% dark green veggies. She has gone in regularly for check ups and the cancer has never returned. My uncle had his cancer removed and started his chemo treatment. Not only was he miserable from the treatment most of the time, but after he would be off his treatment for a while her would go back get his check up and the cancer would have spread somewhere else. He died a horrible death a year and a half after his diagnosis.
Michelle, what you did was probably the best thing, i can directly say that nutrition and stress are the key factors towards developing cancar particularly with digestive, intestinal and exoglands cancers. As a student who has done 9 month research in cancer, i might be only a junior, but i honestly i worked with colorectal cancer cell lines and yes chemotherapy has effect but if used too long it don’t work. But the interesting thing is that cancer cells have a large amount of lipids (fat), therefore a low carbs and fat diet could be the resolution with a high amount of antioxidants which come from vegetables and a combination with exercise. It could work. But again its hard to say, for colorectal cancer, chemotherapy is recognized as the best treatment for this type of cancer. Like i said i am only a junior and i don’t know whether i will percervier with research but, i can say there is good and honest scientists but is whether they get the funding, publicity and whether they have good collegues and companions with them that will support them right to the end.
pauling The man