Dying To Have Known (A Gerson Therapy Documentary)

Pixel8

victorhelsing wrote: »

I understand your knowledge of science and medicine is limited, but please be informed that most children just don't smoke enough to have measurable rates of lung cancer.

Seriously... do you believe smoking is the only thing that causes lung cancer?

How do you explain all those people who don't smoke but DO get lung cancer?:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908215940.htm

Monty Burnz

Pixel8 wrote: »

Proves that overall all cancer death rates have improved by 2.3% with conventional medicine

You still don't understand your own choice of graph.

Sorry, just noticed your edit that you read the graph wrongly, that's to your credit.

Iwannahurl

victorhelsing wrote: »

Of course my argument was specious. Just to be clear, are you claiming that a conspiracy between the AMA and tobacco companies has managed to suppress the success of the Gerson therapy for more than 50 years?

No.*


















*Even though this is the forum for such antics.

Pixel8

Has anyone bothered to read the studies cited on Gersons own website?

http://www.gerson.org/GersonTherapy/studies.htm

victorhelsing

Pixel8 wrote: »

Seriously... do you believe smoking is the only thing that causes lung cancer?

How do you explain all those people who don't smoke but DO get lung cancer?:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908215940.htm

Smoking is not the only cause of lung cancer. I lost a good friend a few years ago who was a lifelong non-smoker to lung cancer. Lung cancer (like any other) can be due to environmental carcinogens (cosmic radiation, factory smokestacks, etc.) but nothing is quite as good for causing lung cancer as placing your lips directly around the smokestack.

I wrote earlier that smoking prevents cancer in men. You have misquoted me multiple times as claiming that smoking cures cancer. That is untrue. I need to clarify.

Smoking prevents cancer in men, even though it causes lung cancer in about 15% of them and contributes to bladder cancers which are considerably less common. However, smoking dramatically accelerates development of cardiovascular disease, which affects virtually all smokers, and often results in the premature end of their lives before they have a chance to develop other cancers. Prostate cancer, for example, is present in about 80% of 80 year old men, and almost all men at 90 years, in autopsy studies. So if a man lives long enough, he will develop prostate cancer. Skin cancers also increase dramatically with age. By killing men prematurely with heart attack and stroke, smoking prevents cancer.

To avoid misunderstanding, I must also state that MOST 80 year old men with prostate cancer on autopsy died of causes unrelated to their prostate cancer, and many did not even know they had it. Skin cancer, while very common in the elderly, is exceptionally well treated by conventional medicine.

Saying that smoking prevents cancer in men is a half truth, which is a whole lie. I intended it as an oblique jest.

victorhelsing

Pixel8 wrote: »

Has anyone bothered to read the studies cited on Gersons own website?

http://www.gerson.org/GersonTherapy/studies.htm

I did a little cherry picking of my own, among the articles you listed, since so many of them dated back more than 60 years, most of which were German.

I took the first one, since that is available on the internet. It lists six wonderful cases demonstrating the benefits of Gerson therapy. This is precisely what has interested, and frustrated me, about the Gerson therapy for so many years (yes, I read Gerson's original Fifty cases book many years ago).

There are so many reasons to express concern about this kind of work, most of them related to half-truths arising from selection bias and confounding variables.

First, what kind of patients were they studying here?

Melanoma, ductal breast cancer, lobular breast cancer, non Hodgkin's lymphoma, cholangiocarcinoma and astrocytoma (brain tumor). That's quite a smorgasbord. Strange that we don't have a study of the same kinds of tumors. Maybe they were selected from whatever came in that day/week/month when the study began, that would be interesting...


When were the patients admitted to the study?

Oops.

1981, 1997, 1998, 1999, 1997, 1996 - start Gerson therapy (almost 20 year period).


Perhaps they got their cancer diagnosis at the same time?

1979, 1996, 1992, 1999, 1997, 1993 - original diagnosis (about 20 years).


A rational observer can look at these results and be intrigued that something interesting may be going on with the therapy, although as the authors of that study admit, there are LOTS of confounding variables.

The selection bias is a real problem with the Gerson claims. Even when you have interesting individual results, the question is, how does this therapy do on average? What is the denominator (the total number of Gerson patients treated) from which these cases were hand picked to make a point?

I understand the desire to show one's therapy, car or mousetrap in the best possible light. But hand picking only the best cases, and discarding or ignoring those that don't look as pretty, is a classical means of deception. [Consider all of the infomercials claiming that some guy with a high school education figured out how to make millions and he taught a bunch of other guys with a high school education how they could too, and they all swear its true. What's the chance that I will make millions if I send in my $149 tonight before midnight? Even assuming that the testimony given in the infomercial is truthful, it is deceptive because they do not include the hundreds or thousands of others who failed on the "therapy".]

If you consider that the Gerson clinic has 20 or so beds, they could easily treat hundreds of patients per year. Multiply that by the almost 20 years over which these case studies were selected, and you have many thousands of patients. Even assuming these 6 cases are true, as written, they represent a potentially deceptive VERY SMALL fraction (1 per 1000) of the total number treated by the Gerson clinic in that time.

Are any of the Gerson proponents interested in how many people were treated vs. how many were "cured"? I am.

desertcircus

A documentary doesn't get around the fact that there are no properly peer-reviewed studies that indicate that the treatment is actually successful. And if there are too many variables to properly test a treatment, then there are too many variables to properly administer a treatment.

The rise in the incidence of cancers in the Western world, with a couple of spectacular exceptions (eg lung cancer), is largely a result of increased life expectancy. We have to die of something, and in a population that's managed to conquer or severely reduce almost every other mortality risk, we die of cell malfunction. It's brutal and horrible, and we may yet figure out how to reverse it, but the reason it's there is because we live longer. It's not cheeseburgers and mobile phones; it's old age.

Also: there are no controlling bodies limiting the use of the term nutritionist. Anybody can claim to be one; indeed, Gillian McKeith did.

Iwannahurl

The case study is a standard research method in a range of disciplines. Here's a University of Texas webpage on the topic -- the first page returned in a Google search. I don't believe that selection bias, for example, is relevant when critically reviewing such cases. It is made clear from the start that the cases are selected non-randomly.

A collection of fifty failed cases would also be very informative. I have met several GT successes and have known several 'failures', and I can't say what factors determined their medical outcomes. However, my impression is that GT successes are resilient, determined, highly organised and with good support networks. They need to be -- I recall Beata Bishop describing the GT as "quite diabolical, I assure you".

Why do you seem to infer, imply or assume that proponents of the GT are fraudsters and hucksters on a par with lottery scam artists or some such? At least that's the guilt by association that is suggested when you mention monetary scams.

The GT "cured incurables" that I met came from different backgrounds (Beata Bishop was a BBC writer I believe) and were honest and forthright regarding their advocacy of the GT. None of them was seeking monetary reward, at the time anyway. One of them was this guy, IIRC.

Can you not accept that these are honest well-intentioned people who just want to tell their story because they think it might be of help to other cancer sufferers?

Perhaps the quackery and huckster allegations are just the flip side of the conspiracy theories? Two polarised groups wildly slinging mud at each other and ignoring the human story that is, or ought to be, at the heart of the matter.

Iwannahurl

desertcircus wrote: »

A documentary doesn't get around the fact that there are no properly peer-reviewed studies that indicate that the treatment is actually successful. And if there are too many variables to properly test a treatment, then there are too many variables to properly administer a treatment.

The rise in the incidence of cancers in the Western world, with a couple of spectacular exceptions (eg lung cancer), is largely a result of increased life expectancy. We have to die of something, and in a population that's managed to conquer or severely reduce almost every other mortality risk, we die of cell malfunction. It's brutal and horrible, and we may yet figure out how to reverse it, but the reason it's there is because we live longer. It's not cheeseburgers and mobile phones; it's old age.

Also: there are no controlling bodies limiting the use of the term nutritionist. Anybody can claim to be one; indeed, Gillian McKeith did.

Incorrect on several points. It is completely erroneous, and non-scientific, to suggest that a multi-component intervention like the GT cannot be successfully tested experimentally. Metastatic cancer normally does not go away on its own. Prof Ulrich Abel, who critically reviewed the scientific evidence for cancer chemotherapy several years ago (finding it seriously deficient at the time) suggested ways in which such trials could be conducted. One possibility might be a variation on the crossover RCT.

The theory that rising cancer incidence can be attributed mainly to increased life span is not supported by the epidemiological evidence, IMO. Large scale population studies have demonstrated the importance of preventable "lifestyle" factors. For example, many studies have shown that breast cancer rates change when women move to a new country, providing evidence for the importance of lifestyle and environment in breast cancer risk. Other epidemiological studies have shown a similar pattern with prostate cancer among Japanese immigrants.

I have already referred to the INTERHEART study in this thread, which demonstrated the major importance of preventable factors in heart disease. The same claims about aging used to be made in relation to heart problems.

Monty Burnz

Iwannahurl wrote: »

The case study is a standard research method in a range of disciplines. Here's a University of Texas webpage on the topic -- the first page returned in a Google search. I don't believe that selection bias, for example, is relevant when critically reviewing such cases. It is made clear from the start that the cases are selected non-randomly.

Case study research is hardly applicable in testing the efficacy of a treatment method, is it? I too will quote from the first useful hit I got on Google:

Thus, use of a case study on one or several patients is an
excellent way for skilled clinicians to begin writing and sharing
their ideas. In this type of research reporting, all confounding
variables may be included rather than excluded, and the
author makes no predictions as to what the outcomes will be
for other therapists working with similar patients in different
clinical settings under different circumstances. One clinician's
idea, however, which has proven effective on one patient is a
seed for innovation that broadens our clinical awareness and
stimulates our curiosity as the care giver as well as the researcher
in each of us.

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Perhaps the quackery and huckster allegations are just the flip side of the conspiracy theories? Two polarised groups wildly slinging mud at each other and ignoring the human story that is, or ought to be, at the heart of the matter.

All we want from the Gerson people is their data. They don't seem to want to share it. Well, that and proof that the therapy works - we would all be delighted if it does.

victorhelsing

Iwannahurl wrote: »

The case study is a standard research method in a range of disciplines. Here's a University of Texas webpage on the topic -- the first page returned in a Google search. I don't believe that selection bias, for example, is relevant when critically reviewing such cases. It is made clear from the start that the cases are selected non-randomly.

A collection of fifty failed cases would also be very informative. I have met several GT successes and have known several 'failures', and I can't say what factors determined their medical outcomes. However, my impression is that GT successes are resilient, determined, highly organised and with good support networks. They need to be -- I recall Beata Bishop describing the GT as "quite diabolical, I assure you".

Why do you seem to infer, imply or assume that proponents of the GT are fraudsters and hucksters on a par with lottery scam artists or some such? At least that's the guilt by association that is suggested when you mention monetary scams.

The GT "cured incurables" that I met came from different backgrounds (Beata Bishop was a BBC writer I believe) and were honest and forthright regarding their advocacy of the GT. None of them was seeking monetary reward, at the time anyway. One of them was this guy, IIRC.

Can you not accept that these are honest well-intentioned people who just want to tell their story because they think it might be of help to other cancer sufferers?

Perhaps the quackery and huckster allegations are just the flip side of the conspiracy theories? Two polarised groups wildly slinging mud at each other and ignoring the human story that is, or ought to be, at the heart of the matter.

Every new treatment or development starts out as a case study. The first is to try, in just one patient or car, whether a particular thing seems useful. That's fine, and I have no fault with Gerson's experimentation in this area (which I note he was careful to document).

If you think you have an interesting effect, and only a few cases to try it out on, that's fine too. My favorite example on this was Walter Reed and his work on discovering the cause and developing a cure for yellow fever. In that case, some of the medical personnel working with Reed (including nurse Clara Maass and Dr. Jesse Lazear) allowed themselves to be infected by mosquitos to check their hypothesis and advance their work. (Maass and Lazear died, Reed survived). Even in such a small case study, even with a tragic number of deaths which might be considered "failures", the total number in the study is known and the results supported the ultimate development of a cure. Conventional medicine has no problem with the data from this kind of case study, although in current times, it would be hard to pass this kind of experimentation through an ethical review committee.

A new therapy that cures 10% of patients might be considered quite promising, if the current therapy cures only 2%. It makes no difference if that therapy is conventional or based on prayer or dust of horned toad (or mold or cowpox pus *).

But if you say to a scientist, "I have an exciting therapy that cured six patients", it is almost nonsensical by itself. The scientist is obliged to reply "Six out of how many?" If the answer is 6 out of 6, or 6 out of 10, or 6 out of 100, the scientist has a genuine reason for interest. If the answer is "Just six." the scientist can only reply "Golly". What else would you expect him to say?

* - Although the alternate medical community routinely claims that conventional medicine is unwilling to consider new therapies, conventional medicine did adopt mold and cowpox pus (penicillins and smallpox vaccine) as preferred treatments once there effectiveness was proved in studies having both number cured AND number treated. It is a curious phenomenon that even to this day, there is great hue and cry among the alternative medicine folks (INCLUDING Gerson proponents) AGAINST antibiotics and vaccination. This is baffling to me and does not argue well for their motivations or the science behind their methods.

desertcircus

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Prof Ulrich Abel, who critically reviewed the scientific evidence for cancer chemotherapy several years ago (finding it seriously deficient at the time) suggested ways in which such trials could be conducted. One possibility might be a variation on the crossover RCT.

The theory that rising cancer incidence can be attributed mainly to increased life span is not supported by the epidemiological evidence, IMO. Large scale population studies have demonstrated the importance of preventable "lifestyle" factors. For example, many studies have shown that breast cancer rates change when women move to a new country, providing evidence for the importance of lifestyle and environment in breast cancer risk. Other epidemiological studies have shown a similar pattern with prostate cancer among Japanese immigrants.

The second part first: breast cancer may have an environmental cause. Cancer as a whole, though, becomes more prevalent with age, and deaths caused by cancer are higher the older a population is.

The first part: Ulrich Abel. There's something worrying about a man people were claiming had an article published in the Lancet on the subject of chemotherapy, only to backtrack embarrassingly when it was pointed out that it simply wasn't true. There's something still more worrying about the fact that one of the people making the claim is Matthias Rath. And it doesn't help that one of the journals he's managed to get published in is the Gerson Institute's own publications.

Iwannahurl

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Case study research is hardly applicable in testing the efficacy of a treatment method, is it? I too will quote from the first useful hit I got on Google:


All we want from the Gerson people is their data. They don't seem to want to share it. Well, that and proof that the therapy works - we would all be delighted if it does.

"One clinician's idea, however, which has proven effective on one patient is a seed for innovation that broadens our clinical awareness and stimulates our curiosity."

Pity that key opinion leaders in the world of oncology and preventive medicine are so resistant to having their curiosity stimulated, and have a limited, drug-dominated view of what constitutes "seed for innovation".

Mind you, to be fair, the pharmaceutical industry has proved quite keen to trawl herbal medicine for possible compounds that it can test and turn into cancer treatment blockbusters! Funny how ethnographic research, which sometimes uses SHOCK HORROR PROBE qualitative methods, is acceptable when it leads to patentable outcomes.


As for "all we want from the Gerson people", I have never heard that they "don't seem to want to share" their data. Quite the opposite I would have thought. In fact, my impression was always that they were more than keen to draw attention to the details of their work. TBH, I don't know what's changed.

desertcircus

A scientist who produced accurate, reliable results that could be reproduced by other scientists which indicated that they had a significantly better record than existing treatments would win the Nobel Prize. It's very simple: if the testing indicates that the treatment works, and it's reproducible, then we accept that it works. A university medical department able to produce real results would be made for a solid decade, no matter whether any pharmaceutical firms wanted to stick with the existing stuff.

Iwannahurl

Conventional medicine has no problem with the data from this kind of case study, although in current times, it would be hard to pass this kind of experimentation through an ethical review committee.

The ethics angle is an interesting and important one, and possibly crucial. I haven't researched this of late, so I don't know how things stand in cancer research currently. However, IIRC it used to be regarded as unethical to conduct RCTs among patients with advanced cancer. The (formerly?) unique ethics of cancer treatment research also led to the (IMO strange) situation in which experimental drugs were licensed for clinical use before their efficacy was demonstrated in Phase 3 trials. You may recall the FDA classification of Treatment Investigational New Drug. The TIND "compassionate use" facility is unlikely to be extended to the GT, curiously enough.

I take your point re vaccinations etc. However, I have already addressed this general issue.





EDIT: This bit caught my eye in the TIND/Compassionate Use webpage linked to above.

Who Is Regulating Compassionate Drug Use?
The FDA regulates this practice, but the decision to offer the drugs to the public is entirely up to pharmaceutical companies.
The drug companies create the rules about their own compassionate use. There is no one policy or process followed by the FDA or drug companies.

Rhetorical questions: who do you think has the cosier relationship with the FDA, the Gerson Institute or the pharmaceutical industry? Which of these parties has enough clout to make up its own rules about compassionate use of experimental treatments?

victorhelsing

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Pity that key opinion leaders in the world of oncology and preventive medicine are so resistant to having their curiosity stimulated, and have a limited, drug-dominated view of what constitutes "seed for innovation".

Mind you, to be fair, the pharmaceutical industry has proved quite keen to trawl herbal medicine for possible compounds that it can test and turn into cancer treatment blockbusters! Funny how ethnographic research, which sometimes uses SHOCK HORROR PROBE qualitative methods, is acceptable when it leads to patentable outcomes.


As for "all we want from the Gerson people", I have never heard that they "don't seem to want to share" their data. Quite the opposite I would have thought. In fact, my impression was always that they were more than keen to draw attention to the details of their work. TBH, I don't know what's changed.

You rightly point out that there's plenty of greed in the pharmaceutical industry to stimulate interest (as Monty reminds) in anything that works. And there is huge money (and international fame) for anyone who would cure cancer in the way the Gerson therapy claims (no nasty chemo side effects, tumors completely eliminated, cures your syphilis/TB and migraine headaches at the same time). But the trick is, it really needs to work. The world is not going to heap mountains of cash or fame on somebody whose therapy for cancer does not actually do what it claims.

And in answer to your last point, I tried ever so hard to get Howard Straus from the Gerson Institute to give me anything I could use as a denominator (number of patients treated per month / year, etc.) or a percentage of cures for any cancer type, or for all cancer types, and eventually, all I could get from him was some 30% "favorable response" number that actually seems to be an echo from some very early claims made by Max Gerson back in the 1950's. I did very strongly make the point that the denominator or cure % was very important (and why), without useful result. Maybe your contacts are closer; I'd be happy to get the number from you if you can get it.

Monty Burnz

Iwannahurl -

We're on different sides of the debate, but I'd like to compliment you on the way you've carried on this discussion and the way you've made a good argument for your case.

An uncharacteristically high standard of discussion for Boards.ie. Are you sure you are in the right place?

Iwannahurl

victorhelsing wrote: »

You rightly point out that there's plenty of greed in the pharmaceutical industry to stimulate interest (as Monty reminds) in anything that works. And there is huge money (and international fame) for anyone who would cure cancer in the way the Gerson therapy claims (no nasty chemo side effects, tumors completely eliminated, cures your syphilis/TB and migraine headaches at the same time). But the trick is, it really needs to work. The world is not going to heap mountains of cash or fame on somebody whose therapy for cancer does not actually do what it claims.

And in answer to your last point, I tried ever so hard to get Howard Straus from the Gerson Institute to give me anything I could use as a denominator (number of patients treated per month / year, etc.) or a percentage of cures for any cancer type, or for all cancer types, and eventually, all I could get from him was some 30% "favorable response" number that actually seems to be an echo from some very early claims made by Max Gerson back in the 1950's. I did very strongly make the point that the denominator or cure % was very important (and why), without useful result. Maybe your contacts are closer; I'd be happy to get the number from you if you can get it.

With regard to the search for a denominator, I suspect that an awful lot of GT clinic patients are lost to follow-up. It is inevitable that the spectacular successes and the outspoken patients will receive more publicity. Dead people don't tell stories. However, such a situation in no way demonstrates that the GT does not have a therapeutic effect worthy of further investigation.

That name Howard Strauss rings a bell. I don't have any GT contacts. TBH I kind of lost the will years ago through disappointment in the gaggle of anti-science people drawn to the GT. Perhaps the last straw was that ridiculous claptrap about someone hearing Max Gerson's voice on the radio, revealing that he had been in fact poisoned. It's a shame really -- IMO Gerson himself was clearly a medical pioneer and a man of sincere convictions.

As a man before his time with ideas that conflicted with established orthodoxy, he has been compared with the likes of Ignaz Semmelweiss. But what can you do? It is said that "there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come". Maybe the GT's time will come eventually, or maybe never.

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." ~Winston Churchill.

Iwannahurl

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Iwannahurl -

We're on different sides of the debate, but I'd like to compliment you on the way you've carried on this discussion and the way you've made a good argument for your case.

An uncharacteristically high standard of discussion for Boards.ie. Are you sure you are in the right place?

Thanks. As I've said in an entirely different Boards forum, once the science genie is out of the bottle there is no going back. Regarding topics of this nature, there is no substitute for arguing from evidence (from whatever discipline). There is enough evidence "out there" to make at least a prima facie case for the GT, in my view (if only on sociological grounds!). However, you have to trawl for it and use reputable sources. Conspiracy theorists who resort to wild baseless speculation and who drag in wacky stuff of no earthly relevance are the real enemies of progress, IMO. Any decent medic with an open mind and an appreciation for science ought to be able to accept that there's a kernel of truth somewhere, if appropriate evidence is presented. But as soon as anyone mentions some crackpot theory you lose respect and credibility and the tiny baby of truth is thrown out with all the murky bathwater.

Are you suggesting Boards.ie is not the right place, or just Conspiracy Theories?! I've already said that this forum is no place for a serious discussion on this topic. It's a lost cause in this context.

Monty Burnz

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Are you suggesting Boards.ie is not the right place, or just Conspiracy Theories?! I've already said that this forum is no place for a serious discussion on this topic. It's a lost cause in this context.

I'm not referring specifically to the CT board - it's just that debates on Boards.ie frequently generate more heat than light, whereas I think your contributions to this thread have been quite the opposite.

Iwannahurl

desertcircus wrote: »

The second part first: breast cancer may have an environmental cause. Cancer as a whole, though, becomes more prevalent with age, and deaths caused by cancer are higher the older a population is.

The first part: Ulrich Abel. There's something worrying about a man people were claiming had an article published in the Lancet on the subject of chemotherapy, only to backtrack embarrassingly when it was pointed out that it simply wasn't true. There's something still more worrying about the fact that one of the people making the claim is Matthias Rath. And it doesn't help that one of the journals he's managed to get published in is the Gerson Institute's own publications.

That's just accusation by innuendo. So what if it wasn't the Lancet? Abel was a bona fide scientist/statistician and he produced a bona fide scholarly review article on the topic. AFAIK it was published in the peer-reviewed literature at the time, and can be found on PubMed. I can't locate the original monograph on which the paper was based, although I vaguely recall having a spiral-bound copy once. It was of course seized upon by advocates of 'alternative' cancer treatments.

For the record, several years ago I also encountered similar critiques in the literature on palliative medicine. If you want real hard-hitting criticism of conventional (aggressive) cancer treatment, go talk to some palliative care nurses and doctors. Some of the ones I've spoken to in the past were scathing, not least because they were left to pick up the pieces after terminal patients had been put through the horrors.

IIRC the majority of medications are administered in the last few years of life. I can't find a source for that claim just now, but while looking I found this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=drug-industry-influence-overmedication-in-nursing-homes-troubling

Iwannahurl

desertcircus wrote: »

A scientist who produced accurate, reliable results that could be reproduced by other scientists which indicated that they had a significantly better record than existing treatments would win the Nobel Prize. It's very simple: if the testing indicates that the treatment works, and it's reproducible, then we accept that it works. A university medical department able to produce real results would be made for a solid decade, no matter whether any pharmaceutical firms wanted to stick with the existing stuff.

Fair enough, let's hope real-world science always works in that linear fashion.

What about the gatekeepers though? It's not called peer review for nothing!

Pixel8

victorhelsing wrote: »

It is a curious phenomenon that even to this day, there is great hue and cry among the alternative medicine folks (INCLUDING Gerson proponents) AGAINST antibiotics and vaccination. This is baffling to me and does not argue well for their motivations or the science behind their methods.

There is opposition to antibiotics because Colloidal Silver is the most effective and natural antibiotic out there.

There is opposition to vaccines because of Mercury (Thimerosal) and Aluminium in the vaccines as well as dead human fetus cells.

Studies are showing that Mercury and Aluminium seem to be the most likely cause of Autism and other neurological disorders.

Mercury (Thimerosal) in a preservative used in practically ALL vaccines.

Mercury is pretty toxic, some say the second most toxic substance known to man but i don't think thats true... it is still toxic though and is also in our tooth fillings if you have Silver Amalgams (contain 53% mercury). It doesn't have to be toxic enough to kill you, just enough to make your life a bit of a misery...

They do an experiment in The Beautiful Truth and you can see Mercury vapour coming off the amalgam of a tooth which is being brushed (against some sort of screen), doesn't look good at all!

I had 3 mercury fillings removed about a year and a half ago, been getting better since then although i tried a lot of things, not sure which has worked the best but i still do feel the Vitamins may have played the most part.

Here's what a dentist in Food Matters has to say about Mercury fillings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67PHSkTSOxI

desertcircus

According to the good folks at Bad Science, they can't find anything on PubMed that matches the description. There's some better detail here: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/02/andreas_moritz_legal_intimidation_in_the.php, near the bottom. It was done in 1992 and isn't either a systematic review or a meta-analysis, specifically deals with cases of advanced epithelial malignancy (which are almost never treated with chemo anyway), and doesn't appear to have been followed up in any real way. Furthermore, Abel's more recent research is into chemotherapy itself - specifically, comparing different regimes of chemo for outcomes - which would indicate that he thinks chemotherapy has positive value.

desertcircus

Pixel8 wrote: »

There is opposition to antibiotics because Colloidal Silver is the most effective and natural antibiotic out there.

There is opposition to vaccines because of Mercury (Thimerosal) and Aluminium in the vaccines as well as dead human fetus cells.

Studies are showing that Mercury and Aluminium seem to be the most likely cause of Autism and other neurological disorders.

Mercury (Thimerosal) in a preservative used in practically ALL vaccines.

Mercury is pretty toxic, some say the second most toxic substance known to man but i don't think thats true... it is still toxic though and is also in our tooth fillings if you have Silver Amalgams (contain 53% mercury). It doesn't have to be toxic enough to kill you, just enough to make your life a bit of a misery...

They do an experiment in The Beautiful Truth and you can see vapour coming off a tooth which is being brushed, doesn't look good at all!

I had 3 mercury fillings removed about a year and a half ago, been getting better since then although i tried a lot of things, not sure which has worked the best but i still do feel the Vitamins may have played the most part.

Here's what a dentist in Food Matters has to say about Mercury fillings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67PHSkTSOxI

Oh dear Lord. I thought this particular brand of nonsense had been killed off by the end of Andrew Wakefield's career? It appears not.

In order:

No, colloidal silver is not the most effective antibiotic. Any evidence for that claim?

The MMR vaccine is grown in a cell line derived from a single aborted foetus from the 1960s, but nothing in it was ever actually in a womb.

No studies show that mercury causes autism. That's flat-out untrue.

The mercury involved in amalgam fillings may or may not be dangerous; there's disagreement on the matter. It's by no means open-and-shut.

victorhelsing

Pixel8:

It is pointless to argue science with someone who does not believe in science.

Have you been probed recently?

CiaranMT

Pixel8 wrote: »

There is opposition to antibiotics because Colloidal Silver is the most effective and natural antibiotic out there.

There is opposition to vaccines because of Mercury (Thimerosal) and Aluminium in the vaccines as well as dead human fetus cells.

Studies are showing that Mercury and Aluminium seem to be the most likely cause of Autism and other neurological disorders.

Mercury (Thimerosal) in a preservative used in practically ALL vaccines.

Mercury is pretty toxic, some say the second most toxic substance known to man but i don't think thats true... it is still toxic though and is also in our tooth fillings if you have Silver Amalgams (contain 53% mercury). It doesn't have to be toxic enough to kill you, just enough to make your life a bit of a misery...

They do an experiment in The Beautiful Truth and you can see vapour coming off a tooth which is being brushed, doesn't look good at all!

I had 3 mercury fillings removed about a year and a half ago, been getting better since then although i tried a lot of things, not sure which has worked the best but i still do feel the Vitamins may have played the most part.

Here's what a dentist in Food Matters has to say about Mercury fillings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67PHSkTSOxI

Oh dear.

Iwannahurl

desertcircus wrote: »

According to the good folks at Bad Science, they can't find anything on PubMed that matches the description. There's some better detail here: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/02/andreas_moritz_legal_intimidation_in_the.php, near the bottom. It was done in 1992 and isn't either a systematic review or a meta-analysis, specifically deals with cases of advanced epithelial malignancy (which are almost never treated with chemo anyway), and doesn't appear to have been followed up in any real way. Furthermore, Abel's more recent research is into chemotherapy itself - specifically, comparing different regimes of chemo for outcomes - which would indicate that he thinks chemotherapy has positive value.

Those Bad Science people chose their name well.

Here's Abel's 1992 paper on PubMed -- I already posted the link in this thread. AFAIK it's just an abridged version of the original monograph, which was published by the reputable German firm Hippokrates Verlag. It was a serious work by a serious academic. Of course the fact that it was widely touted by 'alternative' advocates was bound to lead to suspicion. As is so often the case, it's not what's said but who says it that counts.

Abel's paper was exactly what it said in its title: a critical review of the literature. Standard scientific practice -- every research paper starts with such a review, however brief. He didn't deal with "cases", just with the quality of the evidence for chemo at the time.

You are plainly wrong about chemo and epithelial cancers, IMO. "Most cancers are cancers of the epithelial cells. Cancers of the epithelial cells are called carcinomas. Carcinomas make up about 85% of all cancers." Source: Cancer Research UK.

Are you really claiming that advanced/metastasised epithelial cancers are "almost never" treated with chemo? What is your source for that surprising claim?

The whole point of Abel's critique, IIRC, was that advanced epithelial cancers were the most common cancers (and the biggest killers) yet it was in this large group that chemo was having least effect at the time, as well as the evidence base being very shaky. In other words, unproven chemo treatments were being used to treat a very large number of cancer patients for little or no benefit in terms of overall increased survival or improved quality of life.

I believe the situation was/is better for the less common cancers, especially those of the blood and lymph system. However, even major advances in this area would have comparatively little effect on overall mortality because of the overwhelming predominance of epithelial cancers.

I also appreciate that the situation may have improved greatly since Abel's critique, both in terms of the quality of the science and the gains made in patient survival (and QoL, which should not be forgotten). 1992 was a long time ago...

Iwannahurl

Ulrich Abel published his critique twenty years ago. How much has cancer treatment advanced since?

Currently, cancer has surpassed cardiovascular disease as the No. 1 cause of death in 9 states in the United States. Of interest, currently more than 150 agents are officially approved for the treatment of cancer worldwide.

Unfortunately, the most common epithelial cancers, which cause more than 75% of cancer deaths, remain incurable.

[...]

The most common epithelial tumors (such as lung, colorectal, and prostate cancer) still remain difficult to treat, and lung cancer, for example, is responsible for 30% of cancer deaths, with little improvement in survival during the past decade. This is probably because these common epithelial tumors harbor multiple molecular derangements that make them refractory to narrowly targeted agents.

Source: Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2007 Jan;82(1):107-9. Cancer symposium for the practitioner: introduction to solid tumors.

Pixel8

desertcircus wrote: »

A scientist who produced accurate, reliable results that could be reproduced by other scientists which indicated that they had a significantly better record than existing treatments would win the Nobel Prize.

Linus Pauling did win the Nobel Prize, twice, and he says he cured cancer with mega dose Vitamin C. That sounds to me like Cancer is a Vitamin C deficiency disease.

Another interesting thing is that Vitamin C is not in most meats, only liver and one or two other meats, so someone like myself who eats a lot of meat and not many vegetables could easily become deficient in Vitamin C pretty quick and in my own case, that seems to be true.