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So right Alan. Now if I could just get this pencil

sharpener back to working.

Lots of people would like to cure cancer. I would too.

So I've

thought about it and come up with a recipe for how to do

it:

1. Start with a deep understanding of the underlying

science.

A good beginning would be general, organic and

biochemistry,

cell biology and genetics. If you don't have those,

how are

you going to begin to understand what's going on in

the

tumors? You'll also need a good bit of medicine and

human

physiology (mouse physiology too.)

2. Follow that with a deep study of the cancer you are

trying to

cure.

What *exactly* is the difference between a healthy

cell and a

tumor cell in your favorite cancer? Are there genetic

mutations? Which ones? Are there cell signaling

molecules

involved like testosterone? How are they involved?

How

about signal receptors, amplifiers, transducers,

promoters,

suppressors, and so on? What is it that is causing

your

cancer cells to multiply? What allows them to

metastasize?

How do they escape immune system activation, hormone

deprivation, chemotherapy, and other anti-cancer

treatments?

The cell biology is a foundation, but you'll also need

to

understand a lot about the human body and how the

cancer

operates in the context of the complete organism.

You'll

need to meet and treat some real live cancer patients,

and

maybe even dissect some dead ones - or at least look

at the

photos of dissections.

3. Come up with a theory about how to intervene.

You know the basics and you have figured out the

differences

between cancer and healthy cells, now you need a

theory about

how to intervene in the disease process.

How do the existing treatments function in the cancer

environment and why do they succeed or fail?

Will turning off a signal molecule do it? Can you

find the

cancer cells and kill them with drugs? Is there a

molecule

of a particular shape and electrical configuration

that you

can count on to suppress expression of an oncogene or

stimulate the expression of a tumor suppressor gene?

You get the idea. It's like figuring out what size

capacitor

will smooth out the hum in your radio receiver or, if

you

like, what flavoring to put in your eggnog. Well,

it's a

dozen orders of magnitude more complicated than that,

but the

concept is similar.

4. Build up some lab skills.

Learn how to extract DNA from cells, replicate it, and

isolate specific genes. Learn how to sequence a gene

and

compare it to a genetic database.

Build up your skill with the electron microscope.

You'll

need to be able to image the disease processes inside

the

cells.

Learn how to handle and take care of mice, how to

dissect

them, and how to recognize and characterize tumors

inside

them.

5. Test your theory.

Start with running chemistry experiments. Do the

drugs

you've designed interact with the chemicals in the

body in

the way you thought they would?

Good. Then check the effect on actual cells. Culture

some

healthy cells and some disease cells and try out the

drugs.

Are the effects in the cell what you wanted?

They are? Great! Bring out the mice. Let's find out

if the

cellular reactions in the test tube work the same way

in a

living mammalian cancer patient, i.e., a mouse.

We've done the basics. Now we run Phase I, Phase II,

and

Phase III controlled clinical trials and do a thorough

statistical analysis of the results.

Did the patients with your new treatment have extended

life

and regression of symptoms and biomarkers? Yes?

Congratulations! You've done it!

That's really all there is to it.

What's that you say? Isn't there a shortcut without going

through all of that? What if you don't want to study

bioscience

and medicine for twenty or thirty years? What if you're

not real

good with that kind of stuff? What if you don't want to

put in

years of 60 hour weeks in the lab? What if you're not

keen on

reading scientific papers every night when you go home?

What if

you don't like to hang around sick people in hospitals and

clinics? What can you do that is an "alternative" to all

of

that?

Well, you can always do what the alternative medicine

folks do.

Go out and pick some herbs. Pick ones that look just

right to

you. Study the shape, the color, the smell. Use your

intuition

and your imagination to tell you which ones will cure

cancer. If

you can find an old Indian medicine man and get his

opinion,

that's even better. Tell him you want to know how he

treats

cancer. Explain it to him - you know, it's what happens

when you

get old and sick and die.

You don't need to figure out what the herbs do in the test

tube,

the cell, or the mouse, and you don't need to run clinical

trials

and analyze results. Just sell the stuff to people on the

Internet who think they might have cancer and see if any

of them

say they think, maybe, they got better. If you sell a

thousand

bottles of the stuff and one or two folks write back and

say,

"Gee, that was good", then you're onto something. All the

other

folks probably thought it was good too, but were too busy

getting

on with their lives to write to you.

And incidentally, if you've done this for cancer

treatment, you

can surely fix televisions, computers, automobiles, and

jet

engines the same way. After all, they're a lot less

complicated

than cancer. If you can cure cancer without studying

biochemistry, medicine, and genetics, then surely you can

fix

your iPad without studying electronics. Just go down to

Radio

Shack and pick some parts that look just right and stick

them in.

You'll get it fixed up in no time.

Alan

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I wonder how the ancient inhabitant of the

American Continent figured out how to develop crops like corn without studying

the requisite botanical issues for twenty or thirty years, without

figuring out the gene sequence, etc etc.

And if the scientific method is so very

good at solving problems, how is it that in the centuries since it was

developed and with the billion upon billion of dollars showered on scientific

discovery in the name of the War On Cancer declared almost 40 years ago, there

has been so little advance?

And is there any difference between a prestigious

scientific medical centre making ‘ we can cure you’ statements with

no evidence to back them but their faith that they are ‘right’ and

the claims of a traditional healer?

I’ve never seen the real difference

between the spurious claims made by herbalist and others and those misleading

claims made by men in white coats.

Just my skewed view of the world –

probably because I am uneducated and therefore incapable of understanding the

loftier heights of True Belief In Science.

All the best

Prostate men need enlightening, not

frightening

Terry Herbert - diagnosed in 1996 and

still going strong

Read A Strange Place for unbiased information at http://www.yananow.org/StrangePlace/index.html

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Terry Herbert wrote on

Tuesday, July 17, 2012 9:12 PM:

Hello Terry,

Since you asked, here are my answers (I bet you knew I couldn't

resist answering :)

> I wonder how the ancient inhabitant of the American Continent

> figured out how to develop crops like corn without studying the

> requisite botanical issues for  twenty or thirty years, without

> figuring out the gene sequence, etc etc.

They figured out a lot of things - how to plant corn, how to make

bows and arrows, how to start fires, how to skin a buffalo, and a

lot more besides.

There were some other things they didn't figure out, for example,

how to build an automobile or a computer.  I may be wrong, but I

believe that, without developing science and technology, they

would NEVER have figured those things out.  I don't see how you

can build an electronic computer without learning some serious

math and science, not to mention advanced materials and circuit

manufacturing.

Sometimes we get lucky and find that a common plant turns out to

help with a human ailment.  Aloe vera and witch hazel help with

skin rashes.  Mint helps settle an upset stomach.  The

chemotherapy drug docetaxel is a variation of something

originally isolated from tree bark, though I don't think you

could make a food or drink out of the bark that would treat

cancer.

Unfortunately however, I think it turns out that curing cancer is

a whole lot more like building a computer than it is like

soothing a rash or skinning a buffalo.  It would be wonderful if

I were wrong, but I think all of the indications so far are that

we are dealing with a truly hard problem that isn't going to

yield to clever intuition and trial and error.

> And if the scientific method is so very good at solving

> problems, how is it that in the centuries since it was

> developed and with the billion upon billion of dollars showered

> on scientific discovery in the name of the War On Cancer

> declared almost 40 years ago, there has been so little advance?

That's a good question, but let me turn it around for you.  How

is it that in somewhere around 150,000 years that homo sapiens

have been around, the old pick some herbs, say some incantations,

and engage in trial and error, hasn't cured cancer?  But in only

the last 40 or so years has some real progress been made.

I think the answer is that it's only in the last 40 years, or

maybe only since 1953 when DNA was deciphered, that we've had

enough basic understanding to even begin a serious attack on

cancer.  To do so earlier would have been a little like trying to

build a space ship when we hadn't yet learned anything about

physics, chemistry, gravity, or the shape of the solar system.

We still don't know nearly enough.  But unlike in the past, we're

amassing the requisite knowledge and technology at a pretty

amazing rate.  In 1952 nobody knew the structure of DNA.  In 1997

it took hundreds of researchers working in a multi-year project

to decode the human genome.  Today, in 2012, you can send a blood

sample and $10,000 to some labs and they can send you your

genome.  In a few years it will be $1,000.  In the 1960's we had

a pretty good idea what a gene was but hadn't isolated them or

figured out what each gene did.  Today we have isolated almost

all of them in the human and many other organisms from mouse to

worm to fruit fly to E. coli, and can make a pretty good guess at

what maybe half of them do.  In the lifetimes of our children

we'll probably know almost all of them.

That kind of progress was impossible in the past.

> And is there any difference between a prestigious scientific

> medical centre making ‘ we can cure you’ statements with no

> evidence to back them but their faith that they are ‘right’ and

> the claims of a traditional healer?

Very little difference - IF the statements have no evidence to

back them up and they are based solely on faith.

However I don't think any prestigious scientific medical center

would make such claims with no evidence, although I will admit

that there are liars and scoundrels with advanced degrees just as

there are liars and scoundrels without them.

But science is not, in essence, an enterprise of liars and

scoundrels, nor even of well meaning wishful thinkers.  It is an

enterprise using what some philosophers have called " common sense

made systematic. "

The scientific method is not by guess and by gosh.  It's based on

identifying scientific laws, on making repeatable observations

and experiments that can be repeated with the same results by

other researchers.  It is constantly building on a body of

knowledge, always challenging what it thought was solid, always

attempting to design experiments to prove or disprove a theory,

always advancing further and further.  It's not like the

alternative medicine people where each one has a totally

different theory, none of them with repeatable evidence, none of

them with anything more specific than vague platitudes like

" chemical imbalance " , and none of theories bearing much if any

relation to what went before.

> I’ve never seen the real difference between the spurious claims

> made by herbalist and others and those misleading claims made

> by men in white coats.

Humans are fallible.  We can be arrogant, foolish, and wrong.

But science offers us a method for overcoming that fallibility.

There are scientists out there whose word is not to be trusted,

and there are bricklayers and farmers whom I would trust with my

life.

But the enterprise of science itself does not seem to me to be at

issue.  I don't see any alternative to it.

A lot of people have trouble seeing this when we talk about

medicine.  I think that's because 1) medicine is still in an

early stage of development, 2) people sometimes get better with

no treatment at all and, 100% of the time, will eventually die

even with treatment, and 3) it's sometimes hard for us to know

whether an outcome is due to treatment or not.

But I think a good way to understand it is by analogy with

technology.  Is there any conceivable way to build an iPad

without knowing an extraordinary amount of science?  Is there any

way to fix a car without knowing how it works?  Is there any way

build an airplane without studying aerodynamics and many related

disciplines?

We understand this with technology because nature doesn't produce

iPads, cars or airplanes.  But nature does produce plants and

animals and people and maybe that is what makes us think that

science isn't needed in medicine.  But I think that's an

illusion.

> Just my skewed view of the world - probably because I am

> uneducated and therefore incapable of understanding the loftier

> heights of True Belief In Science.

Don't worry Terry, your ailment is 100% curable.  We're going to

fix you right up.  I can recommend a wonderful basic biology book

to get you started* :^)

    Alan

* Biology (9th Edition) by Jane B. Reece, A. Urry,

L. Cain and A. Wasserman

Neil , alas, died in 2004 at the young age of 58.  He was

a good scientist and an outstanding teacher.  Reading a used copy

of his book that I picked up for $2 at a library book sale about

eight years ago is what got me started in studying science.  The

book makes fascinating reading.  At any rate, it fascinated me.

Give it a try.  It might do the same for you.

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Nice post Alan. You have obviously

thought a great deal about this. As I understand it you described two

methods for curing prostate cancer.

1. There was the 'top down' method

which looks at the cancer cell / tumor through its interaction with

the host. This is real world evidence based and supported by

clinical models of the disease: Only very learned and skilled people

in the field(s) of cell biology, chemistry and so-on can use this

approach. [ As I see it, Alan's implication is that as patients

we cannot compare ourselves to the experts. As patients, our best

bet is to do our own study and become expert patients, so

we know what questions to ask doctors, and what treatments are

currently available. ]

2. Then there was the 'bottom up'

method practiced by traditional healers, medicine men, shamans and so

on. This is a hands on 'suck-it-and-see' empirical approach

supported by traditional models of human interaction with nature or

the world. Only very learned and skilled people in the field(s) of

plant and animal medicine can use this approach. [ Alan describes

some kind of web-feedback system for users of this method, but he

does not seem very convinced himself].

Alan's preference seems to be #1, with

him being an expert patient.

I'd go along with that. Enlist me

there, along with Alan and other expert patients.

However, I do not think #2 gets a fair

look-in. True, it has many inferior aspects compared to #1, but what

it does offer in some cases is a cure. Often we do not know how this

works, but as it is based on traditional knowledge that has been time

tested (i.e. “stood the test of time”), we know there is a

basis for it somewhere. A good example of this is method is found in

“Cancer Ward” written by Solzhenitsyn [ see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Ward

] One of the sub-themes of this book was the work of a doctor – an

oncologist at the cancer ward in the Gulag hospital - who perfected

use of the Siberian Birch fungus, Chaga for his cancer patients. His

knowledge was based on the Siberian shamans who used the malformed

bark outgrowths in a tea preparation containing the active

ingredient. This has now all been subject to high technology.

[ see

http://www.mycologyresearch.com/products.asp?product=Chaga

].

The good doctor's work (sorry I cannot

recall his name) very likely cured Solzhenitsyn, thus finally leading

to his trip to the West.

There is a third way –

a sideways approach that includes elements of #1 and #2 and a drizzle

of lateral thinking. This has helped me understand the disease in a

broader context, and directed my own efforts to a particular evidence

based methodology that suits me personally. [ see ISBN 9780954993511

].

Take

care,

Sam.

P.S.

The book is FREE. Just send your address in a private email to: georgiasamwilbury[at]gmail.com

 

Terry Herbert wrote on

Tuesday, July 17, 2012 9:12 PM:

Hello Terry,

Since you asked, here are my answers (I bet you knew I couldn't

resist answering :)

> I wonder how the ancient inhabitant of the American Continent

> figured out how to develop crops like corn without studying the

> requisite botanical issues for  twenty or thirty years, without

> figuring out the gene sequence, etc etc.

They figured out a lot of things - how to plant corn, how to make

bows and arrows, how to start fires, how to skin a buffalo, and a

lot more besides.

There were some other things they didn't figure out, for example,

how to build an automobile or a computer.  I may be wrong, but I

believe that, without developing science and technology, they

would NEVER have figured those things out.  I don't see how you

can build an electronic computer without learning some serious

math and science, not to mention advanced materials and circuit

manufacturing.

Sometimes we get lucky and find that a common plant turns out to

help with a human ailment.  Aloe vera and witch hazel help with

skin rashes.  Mint helps settle an upset stomach.  The

chemotherapy drug docetaxel is a variation of something

originally isolated from tree bark, though I don't think you

could make a food or drink out of the bark that would treat

cancer.

Unfortunately however, I think it turns out that curing cancer is

a whole lot more like building a computer than it is like

soothing a rash or skinning a buffalo.  It would be wonderful if

I were wrong, but I think all of the indications so far are that

we are dealing with a truly hard problem that isn't going to

yield to clever intuition and trial and error.

> And if the scientific method is so very good at solving

> problems, how is it that in the centuries since it was

> developed and with the billion upon billion of dollars showered

> on scientific discovery in the name of the War On Cancer

> declared almost 40 years ago, there has been so little advance?

That's a good question, but let me turn it around for you.  How

is it that in somewhere around 150,000 years that homo sapiens

have been around, the old pick some herbs, say some incantations,

and engage in trial and error, hasn't cured cancer?  But in only

the last 40 or so years has some real progress been made.

I think the answer is that it's only in the last 40 years, or

maybe only since 1953 when DNA was deciphered, that we've had

enough basic understanding to even begin a serious attack on

cancer.  To do so earlier would have been a little like trying to

build a space ship when we hadn't yet learned anything about

physics, chemistry, gravity, or the shape of the solar system.

We still don't know nearly enough.  But unlike in the past, we're

amassing the requisite knowledge and technology at a pretty

amazing rate.  In 1952 nobody knew the structure of DNA.  In 1997

it took hundreds of researchers working in a multi-year project

to decode the human genome.  Today, in 2012, you can send a blood

sample and $10,000 to some labs and they can send you your

genome.  In a few years it will be $1,000.  In the 1960's we had

a pretty good idea what a gene was but hadn't isolated them or

figured out what each gene did.  Today we have isolated almost

all of them in the human and many other organisms from mouse to

worm to fruit fly to E. coli, and can make a pretty good guess at

what maybe half of them do.  In the lifetimes of our children

we'll probably know almost all of them.

That kind of progress was impossible in the past.

> And is there any difference between a prestigious scientific

> medical centre making ‘ we can cure you’ statements with no

> evidence to back them but their faith that they are ‘right’ and

> the claims of a traditional healer?

Very little difference - IF the statements have no evidence to

back them up and they are based solely on faith.

However I don't think any prestigious scientific medical center

would make such claims with no evidence, although I will admit

that there are liars and scoundrels with advanced degrees just as

there are liars and scoundrels without them.

But science is not, in essence, an enterprise of liars and

scoundrels, nor even of well meaning wishful thinkers.  It is an

enterprise using what some philosophers have called " common sense

made systematic. "

The scientific method is not by guess and by gosh.  It's based on

identifying scientific laws, on making repeatable observations

and experiments that can be repeated with the same results by

other researchers.  It is constantly building on a body of

knowledge, always challenging what it thought was solid, always

attempting to design experiments to prove or disprove a theory,

always advancing further and further.  It's not like the

alternative medicine people where each one has a totally

different theory, none of them with repeatable evidence, none of

them with anything more specific than vague platitudes like

" chemical imbalance " , and none of theories bearing much if any

relation to what went before.

> I’ve never seen the real difference between the spurious claims

> made by herbalist and others and those misleading claims made

> by men in white coats.

Humans are fallible.  We can be arrogant, foolish, and wrong.

But science offers us a method for overcoming that fallibility.

There are scientists out there whose word is not to be trusted,

and there are bricklayers and farmers whom I would trust with my

life.

But the enterprise of science itself does not seem to me to be at

issue.  I don't see any alternative to it.

A lot of people have trouble seeing this when we talk about

medicine.  I think that's because 1) medicine is still in an

early stage of development, 2) people sometimes get better with

no treatment at all and, 100% of the time, will eventually die

even with treatment, and 3) it's sometimes hard for us to know

whether an outcome is due to treatment or not.

But I think a good way to understand it is by analogy with

technology.  Is there any conceivable way to build an iPad

without knowing an extraordinary amount of science?  Is there any

way to fix a car without knowing how it works?  Is there any way

build an airplane without studying aerodynamics and many related

disciplines?

We understand this with technology because nature doesn't produce

iPads, cars or airplanes.  But nature does produce plants and

animals and people and maybe that is what makes us think that

science isn't needed in medicine.  But I think that's an

illusion.

> Just my skewed view of the world - probably because I am

> uneducated and therefore incapable of understanding the loftier

> heights of True Belief In Science.

Don't worry Terry, your ailment is 100% curable.  We're going to

fix you right up.  I can recommend a wonderful basic biology book

to get you started* :^)

    Alan

* Biology (9th Edition) by Jane B. Reece, A. Urry,

L. Cain and A. Wasserman

Neil , alas, died in 2004 at the young age of 58.  He was

a good scientist and an outstanding teacher.  Reading a used copy

of his book that I picked up for $2 at a library book sale about

eight years ago is what got me started in studying science.  The

book makes fascinating reading.  At any rate, it fascinated me.

Give it a try.  It might do the same for you.

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Alan,

Tough to cure cancer when the emphasis of almost everyone involved is on

making money, not curing cancer.

There are some exceptions, but pretty few and far between.

I have a friend who is a doctor at a metro area hospital, and he says

most of the doctors are mostly concerned with

making as much money as they can.

I think the drug companies are probably worse.

Doug

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WHEN DID CANCER BECOME SUCH A CASH COW ??I'VE BEEN A RUNNER FOR 35 YEARS AND HAVE RUN IN OVER 800 RACES. 30 YEARS AGO RACES WERE FOR THE SPORT, USUALLY COST $5.00 EACH. ABOUT 25 YEARS AGO SOMEONE DISCOVERED RACES WERE CASH COWS, NOW THEY COST $35.00 +.WHEN DID CANCER BECOME SUCH A CASH COW ?? THERE IS MONEY IN TREATMENT, NOT MUCH IN CURES !! HENRY//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Good answer. ;)-- C.phone: mobile: jcchinnock@...This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete this e-mail and destroy any copies. Any dissemination or use of this information by a person other than the intended recipient is unauthorized and may be illegal.

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Sam on July 18, 2012 9:47 AM wrote:

> 1. There was the 'top down' method which looks at the cancer

> cell / tumor through its interaction with the host. ...

....

> 2. Then there was the 'bottom up' method practiced by

> traditional healers, medicine men, shamans and so on. ...

....

> However, I do not think #2 gets a fair look-in. True, it has

> many inferior aspects compared to #1, but what it does offer in

> some cases is a cure. Often we do not know how this works, but

> as it is based on traditional knowledge that has been time

> tested (i.e. “stood the test of timeâ€), we know there is a

> basis for it somewhere. A good example of this is method is

> found in “Cancer Ward†written by Solzhenitsyn [ see

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Ward ] One of the

> sub-themes of this book was the work of a doctor – an

> oncologist at the cancer ward in the Gulag hospital - who

> perfected use of the Siberian Birch fungus, Chaga for his

> cancer patients. His knowledge was based on the Siberian

> shamans who used the malformed bark outgrowths in a tea

> preparation containing the active ingredient. This has now all

> been subject to high technology.

I agree that my treatment of the alternative medicine community

was cavalier.  I wanted to emphasize the difference between the

science based approach and the " alternative " .

I agree that " traditional " medicine, developed over centuries in

Siberia, China, India, South America, Africa, and so on did

sometimes stumble upon some useful stuff.  For that matter, some

of what they did involved some pretty intelligent reasoning, and

some of the practitioners must have observed their patients

closely and seen what was working and what wasn't.

Today, the drug companies have already mined a lot of that work.

Researchers have gone out and retrieved traditional medicines and

tested them.  Chinese have done that in depth with traditional

Chinese medicine.  What they found was that most of what was

being done didn't work.  Some of it worked, but had limited

value.  Some of it had significant value, but required a lot of

advanced research to figure out why, and to isolate the true

active ingredients.

I don't know how much traditional medicine is still unexplored.

I'm sure there's some, but it's not an expanding field and when

it's exhausted, that's it.

I haven't read _Cancer Ward_.  I did a Pubmed search on " Inonotus

obliquus " (the latin name for Chaga mushrooms).  There were 32

articles about it, many of them claiming to have found anti-tumor

activity, though I didn't see that any of them used the word

" cure " .  I have a high regard for Solzhenitsyn as a novelist and

a human being, but I'm not yet ready to take his novel as

evidence of a cure.

I'm all for these serendipitous discoveries.  But when we find

one, we still need, as you say, to subject them to high

technology.  We need to study their mechanism of action, test

them on healthy and diseased cells, test them in mice and, if all

still looks good, run clinical trials.  If we don't do that,

we'll never be able to separate the winners from the losers like

laetrile, on which tens of thousands of gullible cancer patients

spent fortunes.

Thanks for the response.

    Alan

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Alan,

I regard you as one of, if not the, most informed people on this conference and

agree with your perspective expressed earlier.

I would like to add, as others have a little more sarcastically referenced, that

medicine has pursued the dollar versus honets treatment and this has become

political as well.

The prime example is the so-called War on Cancer initiated back in the 80s. That

led to a major research efforts but failed to take the one step that would have

made the single most meaningful step, either banning cigarette/tobacco sales or

heavily taxing them. Rather effort was directed at, and continues to be, at the

highest rate of return approaches to treatment, many of which have their own

sordid side consequences but higher financial gain.

If anything is revised in the healthcare arena, it needs to be, in my mind,

removal of pure monetary incentives replaced by cure based and prevention

incentives. This will be, if ever done, extremely difficult in the current

marketplace.

Rich L

Green Bay, WI

>

> > 1. There was the 'top down' method which looks at the cancer

> > cell / tumor through its interaction with the host. ...

> ...

> > 2. Then there was the 'bottom up' method practiced by

> > traditional healers, medicine men, shamans and so on. ...

> ...

> > However, I do not think #2 gets a fair look-in. True, it has

> > many inferior aspects compared to #1, but what it does offer in

> > some cases is a cure. Often we do not know how this works, but

> > as it is based on traditional knowledge that has been time

> > tested (i.e. “stood the test of timeâ€), we know there is a

> > basis for it somewhere. A good example of this is method is

> > found in “Cancer Ward†written by Solzhenitsyn [ see

> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Ward ] One of the

> > sub-themes of this book was the work of a doctor †" an

> > oncologist at the cancer ward in the Gulag hospital - who

> > perfected use of the Siberian Birch fungus, Chaga for his

> > cancer patients. His knowledge was based on the Siberian

> > shamans who used the malformed bark outgrowths in a tea

> > preparation containing the active ingredient. This has now all

> > been subject to high technology.

>

> I agree that my treatment of the alternative medicine community

> was cavalier.  I wanted to emphasize the difference between the

> science based approach and the " alternative " .

>

> I agree that " traditional " medicine, developed over centuries in

> Siberia, China, India, South America, Africa, and so on did

> sometimes stumble upon some useful stuff.  For that matter, some

> of what they did involved some pretty intelligent reasoning, and

> some of the practitioners must have observed their patients

> closely and seen what was working and what wasn't.

>

> Today, the drug companies have already mined a lot of that work.

> Researchers have gone out and retrieved traditional medicines and

> tested them.  Chinese have done that in depth with traditional

> Chinese medicine.  What they found was that most of what was

> being done didn't work.  Some of it worked, but had limited

> value.  Some of it had significant value, but required a lot of

> advanced research to figure out why, and to isolate the true

> active ingredients.

>

> I don't know how much traditional medicine is still unexplored.

> I'm sure there's some, but it's not an expanding field and when

> it's exhausted, that's it.

>

> I haven't read _Cancer Ward_.  I did a Pubmed search on " Inonotus

> obliquus " (the latin name for Chaga mushrooms).  There were 32

> articles about it, many of them claiming to have found anti-tumor

> activity, though I didn't see that any of them used the word

> " cure " .  I have a high regard for Solzhenitsyn as a novelist and

> a human being, but I'm not yet ready to take his novel as

> evidence of a cure.

>

> I'm all for these serendipitous discoveries.  But when we find

> one, we still need, as you say, to subject them to high

> technology.  We need to study their mechanism of action, test

> them on healthy and diseased cells, test them in mice and, if all

> still looks good, run clinical trials.  If we don't do that,

> we'll never be able to separate the winners from the losers like

> laetrile, on which tens of thousands of gullible cancer patients

> spent fortunes.

>

> Thanks for the response.

>

>     Alan

>

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Rich on July 19, 2012 1:50 PM wrote:

> I regard you as one of, if not the, most informed people on

> this conference and agree with your perspective expressed

> earlier.

I can name a number of people in this group who know more about

treating prostate cancer than I do (Chuck, Terry and for

starters - and probably others that don't post often but know

what they're doing.)  I'm just the most opinionated and the

biggest blabbermouth group member :)

> I would like to add, as others have a little more sarcastically

> referenced, that medicine has pursued the dollar versus honets

> treatment and this has become political as well.

>

> The prime example is the so-called War on Cancer initiated back

> in the 80s. That led to a major research efforts but failed to

> take the one step that would have made the single most

> meaningful step, either banning cigarette/tobacco sales or

> heavily taxing them. Rather effort was directed at, and

> continues to be, at the highest rate of return approaches to

> treatment, many of which have their own sordid side

> consequences but higher financial gain.

Working at NCI I can tell you that they have an extensive

campaign to get people to quit smoking.  A lot of the money that

they put into public education is put into the anti-smoking

campaigns.  There have also been a lot of laws restricting

smoking in public places like airplanes, restaurants and so on,

and there's a lot of tax on tobacco.  There are even the warnings

that cigarette makers have been forced (kicking and screaming) to

put on the packaging.

I don't know what to think about banning cigarettes.  On the one

hand, if somone wants to smoke, drink, eat, or drug himself to

death, or hurt himself in wild adventure sports, and does it

without hurting anyone else, well, maybe that's his business.  On

the other hand if he gives himself a terrible disease or injury

by irresponsible behavior, and then wants Medicare or Medicaid to

take care of him at everyone's expense, then maybe that's our

business too.  My mind is still open on this issue.

> If anything is revised in the healthcare arena, it needs to be,

> in my mind, removal of pure monetary incentives replaced by

> cure based and prevention incentives. This will be, if ever

> done, extremely difficult in the current marketplace.

I agree, and I agree that it will be extremely difficult.

However, even within the current market based health care system,

I think there are some things we can do with regulations that

will help to harness the power of capitalism and self-interest to

the needs of the public good.  In other words, if we can't get

everyone to contribute to healthcare for purely altruistic

reasons, maybe we can make it more profitable to do things for

the public good.

One thing we can do is require that clinical trials compare a new

treatment to existing best practices and not just to placebo.  If

we have seven blood pressure drugs already, then if another one

tries to get approved it could be required to demonstrate that

it's better than, or at least just as good as, the existing

drugs, not just better than a placebo.  We could get much less

money invested in " me too " drugs that attempt to cash in on the

big markets and more money invested in new drug ideas.

Another thing we can do is require that all clinical trials that

take a dollar of public money, or use any bit of government

financed research, or maybe even are just registered with the

government regulatory agencies, make ALL of their results public

- even if the trial fails and the drug never goes to market.

This will make research results available to everyone instead of

forcing every lab and drug company to re-invent the wheel and do

its own tests and trials that have already been done.  It will

also allow researchers to spot errors in trial reports where the

data doesn't actually support the claims made by the sponsor.

Yet another thing we can do, as you implied, is direct public

funds that go to hospitals and clinics into the ones that produce

the best results, the lowest infection rates, and so on, rather

than just pay for services rendered regardless of the outcomes.

I know that the " Affordable Care Act " ( " Obamacare " ) is

controversial, but whatever you think of the mandatory insurance

provisions, some of the insurance reforms have to be helpful,

like eliminating pre-existing condition restrictions and removing

caps on total payments.

I personally believe that this kind of regulation doesn't hurt

the insurance industry because all of the companies have to

comply.  With regulations forbidding refusal to insure

pre-existing conditions, a company can insure them without having

to worry that their competitors will price them out of the

market.  The competitors will have to play by the same rules.

A lot of people in America fear socialized medicine (which I

think actually turns out to be quite good in some countries and

pretty bad in others.)  But even if we keep medicine and

insurance private, I think there's a lot we can do in the sphere

of government regulation to make it more responsive to people's

needs.

    Alan

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I hope those who read this will accept it

is written tongue in cheek, as much of my writing is. I’m feeling good:

the winter sun is shining and, for the moment all is well in my world. But…..here

goes

Ah! The arrogance of those True Believers

who worship at the Altar of Science!! I had every intention of posting a detailed

commentary on Alan’s posts but was unfortunately diverted from what would

have been an amusing task by another task which will no doubt be derided by the

True Believers. I was making it easier to access the 1,100 plus stories of men

diagnosed with prostate cancer who have shared their stories on my site –

see http://www.yananow.org/query_stories.php

I say the True Believers will deride the time spent on this task because, as

they all agree, there is no value in anecdotal evidence. That is regarded as potentially

dangerous since it has not been vetted by Scientists and has not been published

in a Scientific Study in an Approved Peer-Reviewed Journal. The

Scientific Truth only resides in such places.

So I will limit my comments (which are not

aimed at Alan or Rich or any other True Believer specifically but at some of

their beliefs) to just two statements:

Alan states the obvious when he says

<snip> But science is not, in essence, an enterprise of liars and

scoundrels, nor even of well meaning wishful thinkers. <snip> No one ever said they were, but applying basic logic it is clear that to True Believers, “non-science”

(or alternative medicine in this context) IS

an enterprise of liars and scoundrels, and well meaning wishful thinkers. Talk

about generalization!!

Alan goes on to claim that science has the

answers – and doesn’t depend on guesswork - <snip> The

scientific method is not by guess and by gosh……… It's

not like the alternative medicine people where each one has a totally different

theory…. <snip> I don’t

know how many readers of this post will roar with laughter, as I did at the

concept that so many Science People do NOT each have totally different theories.

True Believers should ask us nonentity “non-scientific”

scoundrels if any of us have EVER been presented with a different theory

as to what we should do, having been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Any

different theories out there? And what is the outcome if any bold “non-scientists”

may have dared to ask for details of relevant Scientific Studies in Approved

Peer-Reviewed Journals to support the theory presented? What? There are none? Is

the recommended course of action based on guesswork then, or Scientific Belief?

In the sixteen years since I have had a

personal but uneducated interest in this disease of ours I have read time and

again that a study, to be published at some time in the future, will

demonstrate clearly the value of a specific course of action, notably the Gold Standard

of Surgery. It will show outcomes and morbidity associated with this Sacred Treatment

and show that alternatives are as nothing. Many studies have been published

over that time, including one published only this week which you can read about

here http://tinyurl.com/7srwpgq

None of these studies support the Scientific Belief as enunciated by Oracles

such as Prophet Catalona Of The Gold Standard in his webpage http://www.drcatalona.com/qa/faq_initial-treatment.asp

from which this is a relevant extract:

Q: Do you feel that a radical prostatectomy offers the best

chance for a " cure " of prostate cancer?

A: Yes, I do. That belief is based upon my own published

results, the research literature, my own prostate cancer screening studies, and

my professional experience. that surgery I essential for all case of prostate

cancer.

All my own work indeed.

All the studies I have seen have been

rejected on multiple grounds, usually to do with the structure of the study or

the way in which the information is gathered. So why not set up a well structured

study and agree on how the data will be collected. Is that truly so hard? Or

will any such study demonstrate the truth of Willet Whitmore’s paradox “Is

cure necessary in those in whom it may be possible, and is cure possible

in those in whom it is necessary?”

As I say, I could go on ad nauseam, as I o

often do, but I won’t. I will ask a simple question of the True Believers

– what should I do now? My PSA has risen from 5.9 to 8.7 in three months

while I am on Zoladex and Casodex (my full story is here http://www.yananow.org/display_story.php?id=984

since anyone interested in answering the question will need more data than

that) I am seeing a Minor Oracle, the oncologist who I like and trust next

Tuesday (Monday US time) so I would appreciate it very much if the True Believers

who subscribe to this list would be good enough to post the Universal Way which

I should take. There must be One Way, surely, since it is only the liars and scoundrels, and well meaning wishful thinkers who each have totally different theories.

All the best

Prostate men need enlightening, not

frightening

Terry

Herbert - diagnosed in 1996 and

still going strong

Read A Strange Place for unbiased information at http://www.yananow.org/StrangePlace/index.html

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I suggest the German system as an alternate.

Also note that most cost-effective treatment protocol studies seem to come from

Canada and the UK where the profit incentive does not drive one to the highest

margin treatment discovery.

We agree.

Rich

PS I stand by my comment BUT,if you prefer being known as a " blabbermouth " , who

am I to argue. So be it. All you list as helpful and knowledgeable and,

foremost, helpful.

>

> > I regard you as one of, if not the, most informed people on

> > this conference and agree with your perspective expressed

> > earlier.

>

> I can name a number of people in this group who know more about

> treating prostate cancer than I do (Chuck, Terry and for

> starters - and probably others that don't post often but know

> what they're doing.)  I'm just the most opinionated and the

> biggest blabbermouth group member :)

>

> > I would like to add, as others have a little more sarcastically

> > referenced, that medicine has pursued the dollar versus honets

> > treatment and this has become political as well.

> >

> > The prime example is the so-called War on Cancer initiated back

> > in the 80s. That led to a major research efforts but failed to

> > take the one step that would have made the single most

> > meaningful step, either banning cigarette/tobacco sales or

> > heavily taxing them. Rather effort was directed at, and

> > continues to be, at the highest rate of return approaches to

> > treatment, many of which have their own sordid side

> > consequences but higher financial gain.

>

> Working at NCI I can tell you that they have an extensive

> campaign to get people to quit smoking.  A lot of the money that

> they put into public education is put into the anti-smoking

> campaigns.  There have also been a lot of laws restricting

> smoking in public places like airplanes, restaurants and so on,

> and there's a lot of tax on tobacco.  There are even the warnings

> that cigarette makers have been forced (kicking and screaming) to

> put on the packaging.

>

> I don't know what to think about banning cigarettes.  On the one

> hand, if somone wants to smoke, drink, eat, or drug himself to

> death, or hurt himself in wild adventure sports, and does it

> without hurting anyone else, well, maybe that's his business.  On

> the other hand if he gives himself a terrible disease or injury

> by irresponsible behavior, and then wants Medicare or Medicaid to

> take care of him at everyone's expense, then maybe that's our

> business too.  My mind is still open on this issue.

>

> > If anything is revised in the healthcare arena, it needs to be,

> > in my mind, removal of pure monetary incentives replaced by

> > cure based and prevention incentives. This will be, if ever

> > done, extremely difficult in the current marketplace.

>

> I agree, and I agree that it will be extremely difficult.

>

> However, even within the current market based health care system,

> I think there are some things we can do with regulations that

> will help to harness the power of capitalism and self-interest to

> the needs of the public good.  In other words, if we can't get

> everyone to contribute to healthcare for purely altruistic

> reasons, maybe we can make it more profitable to do things for

> the public good.

>

> One thing we can do is require that clinical trials compare a new

> treatment to existing best practices and not just to placebo.  If

> we have seven blood pressure drugs already, then if another one

> tries to get approved it could be required to demonstrate that

> it's better than, or at least just as good as, the existing

> drugs, not just better than a placebo.  We could get much less

> money invested in " me too " drugs that attempt to cash in on the

> big markets and more money invested in new drug ideas.

>

> Another thing we can do is require that all clinical trials that

> take a dollar of public money, or use any bit of government

> financed research, or maybe even are just registered with the

> government regulatory agencies, make ALL of their results public

> - even if the trial fails and the drug never goes to market.

> This will make research results available to everyone instead of

> forcing every lab and drug company to re-invent the wheel and do

> its own tests and trials that have already been done.  It will

> also allow researchers to spot errors in trial reports where the

> data doesn't actually support the claims made by the sponsor.

>

> Yet another thing we can do, as you implied, is direct public

> funds that go to hospitals and clinics into the ones that produce

> the best results, the lowest infection rates, and so on, rather

> than just pay for services rendered regardless of the outcomes.

>

> I know that the " Affordable Care Act " ( " Obamacare " ) is

> controversial, but whatever you think of the mandatory insurance

> provisions, some of the insurance reforms have to be helpful,

> like eliminating pre-existing condition restrictions and removing

> caps on total payments.

>

> I personally believe that this kind of regulation doesn't hurt

> the insurance industry because all of the companies have to

> comply.  With regulations forbidding refusal to insure

> pre-existing conditions, a company can insure them without having

> to worry that their competitors will price them out of the

> market.  The competitors will have to play by the same rules.

>

> A lot of people in America fear socialized medicine (which I

> think actually turns out to be quite good in some countries and

> pretty bad in others.)  But even if we keep medicine and

> insurance private, I think there's a lot we can do in the sphere

> of government regulation to make it more responsive to people's

> needs.

>

>     Alan

>

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Unfortunately, it is very hard to determine the most "cost effective

PCa treatment" as there is no universal way to accurately determine

treatment effectiveness. As a result, most surgeons measure treatment

success at 10 years if a patient exhibits a PSA reading below 0.2 ng/ml

- even though 5% to 10% of these "cured" patients will still end up

with a

PSA reading above 0.2 ng/ml after 15 years. In addition, most

radiologists now measure treatment success at 10 years if a patient

exhibits a PSA

reading that doesn't exceeded their lowest reading (Nadir) by 2 ng/ml.

On average, the same 5% to 10% of those 10 year "cured"

patients will end up with a PSA reading above 2 ng/ml after 15 years.

What complicates the usefulness of the Nadir+2 measurement further is

that Radiologists agreed during the past decade to abandon their

previous ASTRO measure which was based on three sequential years of

increased PSA readings (over Nadir) to determine treatment failure.

Unfortunately, a large number of applicable published reports contain

the "less accurate" ASTRO measure.

On top of this it appears (based on published pretreatment PSA, Gleason

and Staging values) that PCa treatments such as surgery and seeds-only

are, on average, the favored treatment by men with less

advanced PCa. This results in up to a +7% average 10 year treatment

result

bias compared to other treatments. s Hopkins was able

to shed some light on the larger bias issue mentioned above by

measuring

treatment effectiveness for a sequential group of 2,691 patients at 1,

3, 5, 7, 10 and 15 years both based on the 0.2 ng/ml measure and the

ASTRO measure (Nadir+2 results were still "experimental" at that

time). The 0.2 ng/ml

results were 97%, 90%, 85%, 81%, 77% and 68%; while the ASTRO results

(for exactly the same set of 2,691 patients) were 96%, 92%, 90%, 90%,

90% and 90% (note the ASTRO measurements for year 5 through year 15

stayed

strangely constant at 90%) . For this

group of patients the ASTRO measure produced a 10 year result that was

17% higher and a 15 year result that was 32% higher than the 0.2 ng/ml

result. Changing to the Nadir+2 measure appears to have brought these

numbers closer together but it appears that they are still

"artificially" higher at 10 years by possibly 12% than more

conservative 0.2 ng/ml measure.

Probably the only way to resolve this situation long term is to require

all PCa

doctors to publish both 0.2 ng/ml and Nadir+2 results so it is possible

to fairly compare average 10 and 15 year treatment results before the

cost of treatment is factored in.

A paper I wrote about a year ago is attached for those who have not

seen it yet if you would like to look into

this matter further (it is also summarized at www.rcogpatients.com).

Carl

Rich wrote:

I suggest the German system as an alternate.

Also note that most cost-effective treatment protocol studies seem to

come from Canada and the UK where the profit incentive does not drive

one to the highest margin treatment discovery.

We agree.

Rich

PS I stand by my comment BUT,if you prefer being known as a

"blabbermouth", who am I to argue. So be it. All you list as helpful

and knowledgeable and, foremost, helpful.

>

> > I regard you as one of, if not the, most informed people on

> > this conference and agree with your perspective expressed

> > earlier.

>

> I can name a number of people in this group who know more about

> treating prostate cancer than I do (Chuck, Terry and for

> starters - and probably others that don't post often but know

> what they're doing.) I'm just the most opinionated and the

> biggest blabbermouth group member :)

>

> > I would like to add, as others have a little more

sarcastically

> > referenced, that medicine has pursued the dollar versus honets

> > treatment and this has become political as well.

> >

> > The prime example is the so-called War on Cancer initiated

back

> > in the 80s. That led to a major research efforts but failed to

> > take the one step that would have made the single most

> > meaningful step, either banning cigarette/tobacco sales or

> > heavily taxing them. Rather effort was directed at, and

> > continues to be, at the highest rate of return approaches to

> > treatment, many of which have their own sordid side

> > consequences but higher financial gain.

>

> Working at NCI I can tell you that they have an extensive

> campaign to get people to quit smoking. A lot of the money that

> they put into public education is put into the anti-smoking

> campaigns. There have also been a lot of laws restricting

> smoking in public places like airplanes, restaurants and so on,

> and there's a lot of tax on tobacco. There are even the warnings

> that cigarette makers have been forced (kicking and screaming) to

> put on the packaging.

>

> I don't know what to think about banning cigarettes. On the one

> hand, if somone wants to smoke, drink, eat, or drug himself to

> death, or hurt himself in wild adventure sports, and does it

> without hurting anyone else, well, maybe that's his business. On

> the other hand if he gives himself a terrible disease or injury

> by irresponsible behavior, and then wants Medicare or Medicaid to

> take care of him at everyone's expense, then maybe that's our

> business too. My mind is still open on this issue.

>

> > If anything is revised in the healthcare arena, it needs to

be,

> > in my mind, removal of pure monetary incentives replaced by

> > cure based and prevention incentives. This will be, if ever

> > done, extremely difficult in the current marketplace.

>

> I agree, and I agree that it will be extremely difficult.

>

> However, even within the current market based health care system,

> I think there are some things we can do with regulations that

> will help to harness the power of capitalism and self-interest to

> the needs of the public good. In other words, if we can't get

> everyone to contribute to healthcare for purely altruistic

> reasons, maybe we can make it more profitable to do things for

> the public good.

>

> One thing we can do is require that clinical trials compare a new

> treatment to existing best practices and not just to placebo. If

> we have seven blood pressure drugs already, then if another one

> tries to get approved it could be required to demonstrate that

> it's better than, or at least just as good as, the existing

> drugs, not just better than a placebo. We could get much less

> money invested in "me too" drugs that attempt to cash in on the

> big markets and more money invested in new drug ideas.

>

> Another thing we can do is require that all clinical trials that

> take a dollar of public money, or use any bit of government

> financed research, or maybe even are just registered with the

> government regulatory agencies, make ALL of their results public

> - even if the trial fails and the drug never goes to market.

> This will make research results available to everyone instead of

> forcing every lab and drug company to re-invent the wheel and do

> its own tests and trials that have already been done. It will

> also allow researchers to spot errors in trial reports where the

> data doesn't actually support the claims made by the sponsor.

>

> Yet another thing we can do, as you implied, is direct public

> funds that go to hospitals and clinics into the ones that produce

> the best results, the lowest infection rates, and so on, rather

> than just pay for services rendered regardless of the outcomes.

>

> I know that the "Affordable Care Act" ("Obamacare") is

> controversial, but whatever you think of the mandatory insurance

> provisions, some of the insurance reforms have to be helpful,

> like eliminating pre-existing condition restrictions and removing

> caps on total payments.

>

> I personally believe that this kind of regulation doesn't hurt

> the insurance industry because all of the companies have to

> comply. With regulations forbidding refusal to insure

> pre-existing conditions, a company can insure them without having

> to worry that their competitors will price them out of the

> market. The competitors will have to play by the same rules.

>

> A lot of people in America fear socialized medicine (which I

> think actually turns out to be quite good in some countries and

> pretty bad in others.) But even if we keep medicine and

> insurance private, I think there's a lot we can do in the sphere

> of government regulation to make it more responsive to people's

> needs.

>

> Alan

>

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> I hope those who read this will accept it is written tongue in

> cheek, as much of my writing is. I’m feeling good: the winter

> sun is shining and, for the moment all is well in my world.

> But…..here goes

I wish I were there.  It's all heat and thunderstorms here in

land.

> Ah! The arrogance of those True Believers who worship at the

> Altar of Science!! I had every intention of posting a detailed

> commentary on Alan’s posts but was unfortunately diverted from

> what would have been an amusing task by another task which will

> no doubt be derided by the True Believers. I was making it

> easier to access the 1,100 plus stories of men diagnosed with

> prostate cancer who have shared their stories on my site – see

> http://www.yananow.org/query_stories.php I say the True

> Believers will deride the time spent on this task because, as

> they all agree, there is no value in anecdotal evidence. That

> is regarded as potentially dangerous since it has not been

> vetted by Scientists and has not been published in a Scientific

> Study in  an Approved Peer-Reviewed Journal. The Scientific

> Truth only resides in such places.

Very true.  Scientific Truth only resides in ... where was I?

I've lost track of Scientific Truth.

Ah well, however far it may be from Scientific Truth, I do regard

your website as a gem of health sites on the Internet and a great

resource for patients.

> So I will limit my comments (which are not aimed at Alan or

> Rich or any other True Believer specifically but at some of

> their beliefs) to just two statements:

> Alan states the obvious  when he says  <snip> But science is

> not, in essence, an enterprise of liars and scoundrels, nor

> even of well meaning wishful thinkers. <snip>  No one ever said

> they were, but applying basic logic  it is clear that to True

> Believers, “non-science†(or alternative medicine in this

> context) IS an enterprise of liars and scoundrels, and well

> meaning wishful thinkers. Talk about  generalization!!

I do at least make a big distinction between the liars and

scoundrels on the one hand, and the wishful thinkers on the

other.  The latter are in need of education.  The former would be

best educated by a little time in jail.

> Alan goes on to claim that science has the answers – and

> doesn’t depend on guesswork - <snip> The scientific method is

> not by guess and by gosh……… It's not like the alternative

> medicine people where each one has a totally different theory….

> <snip>  I don’t know how many readers of this post will roar

> with laughter, as I did at the concept that so many Science

> People do NOT each have totally different theories. True

> Believers should ask us nonentity “non-scientific†scoundrels

> if any of us have EVER been presented with a different theory

> as to what we should do, having been diagnosed with prostate

> cancer. Any different theories out there? And what is the

> outcome if any bold  “non-scientists†may have dared to ask for

> details of relevant Scientific Studies in  Approved

> Peer-Reviewed Journals to support the theory presented? What?

> There are none? Is the recommended course of action based on

> guesswork then, or Scientific Belief?

> In the sixteen years since I have had a personal but uneducated

> interest in this disease of ours I have read time and again

> that a study, to be published at some time in the future, will

> demonstrate clearly the value of a specific course of action,

> notably the Gold Standard of Surgery. It will show outcomes and

> morbidity associated with this Sacred Treatment and show that

> alternatives are as nothing. Many studies have been published

> over that time ...

<... A famous doctor's study and quotes elided ...>

I think your argument is an important one and it deserves a

serious answer.  At some risk of oversimplification, it seems to

me that your argument is this:

 1. Science has not solved the problem of curing prostate cancer.

 2. Scientific experts disagree and produce conflicting advice

    and conflicting studies about prostate cancer.

 3. Many scientific experts appear to have produced at best

    subjective statements, and at worst self-serving statements,

    about prostate and other cancers.

therefore:

 4. Science is a) not the path, or at least B) not the only

    path, to solving the cancer problem.

In answer to that I would offer the following:

I agree with all three of your premises.  I believe that all of

them are true.  It is the conclusion with which I disagree.  I

disagree completely with conclusion 4a, and disagree with just a

few reservations with 4b.

I'd like to begin with a little history.  Science is an ongoing

enterprise.  It goes back to at least the era of the ancient

Greeks and Babylonians, but it really began in earnest in the

Renaissance - the discoveries that the earth is round, that it

goes around the Sun and not vice versa, that the heart is an

organ for pumping blood, that air and water are made up of

molecules and those molecules in turn are made up of elementary

atoms, and on and on.

Each scientific development built on the past.  Each one extends

what we know and creates a bigger and stronger foundation to get

more and more and more knowledge.

It's a progressive process and it doesn't allow much in the way

of short circuits.  Until we knew how to make pretty pure glass

we couldn't make lenses.  Until we knew how to make lenses we

couldn't make microscopes.  Until we made microscopes we didn't

know that all plants and animals are made of cells.  Until we

learned the basics of chemistry, we couldn't figure out what

cells are made of.

It's a slow, step by step process.  A 15th century person could

no more explain the difference between a protein and a

carbohydrate than he could make a television set, a motorcycle, a

microwave oven, or a plastic toothbrush.

Slowly in human terms, but with blinding speed in evolutionary

terms, we have learned that cancer cells are ordinary cells of

our own bodies.  They're not bacteria or parasites.  They have

undergone genetic mutations - possibly due to carcinogens in the

environment but also possibly due to just the random mutations

that occur when cells replicate, and which accumulate over time

as we get older.  We have learned what some of those mutations

are.  We have learned that they're different from cancer type to

cancer type and from patient to patient, but they typically have

something to do with causing cell division to occur when it

should not, or causing cells to continue to live when they should

not.

We are making HUGE progress in these areas.  , one of

the people who discovered the structure of DNA, is still alive

today!  When I and most of the other people in this group were

children, and was a young man, no one knew what DNA was

made of.  No one knew that DNA carried the genetic code that

makes us what we are, and that can create cancer when it goes

awry.  Without that knowledge there wasn't even the possibility

of understanding what causes cancer.  But now, 60 years later, we

have thousands of pages of text books, terabytes of data, and

extraordinarily detailed three dimensional models of the genetic

materials and the many other kinds of molecules involved in

cancer.

So, in light of that history and that progress I'd like to

examine each of the premises of your argument:

 1. Science has not solved the problem of curing prostate cancer.

We haven't gotten there yet.  Cancer is one of those very, very

hard problems, like space travel, fusion energy, Alzheimer's

disease, and the Higgs Boson, that can't be solved in an

afternoon, or in a year, or in a decade.  It may take another

hundred years.  It may require a considerable build up of our

foundation of knowledge before we get the key bits of

information, and the key technologies, that enable us to make a

breakthrough.  But we have made progress.  The surgeries,

radiation techniques, hormone therapies and chemotherapies in use

today were all essentially invented just in our lifetimes.

 2. Scientific experts disagree and produce conflicting advice

    and conflicting studies about prostate cancer.

Science is an ongoing process.  Solid foundations have been built

that everyone agrees upon.  But the new parts, the parts that are

still unfinished, are the subjects of disagreement.

Everyone now knows what the prostate is and what it does.

Everyone now agrees that cancer is composed of cells of our own

body that are misbehaving.  Everyone now agrees that tumors are

cells with genetic mutations.  Everyone now agrees that

testosterone signaling is involved in prostate cancer growth.

Maybe that sounds obvious and unimportant, but it's not.  100

years ago a lot of that consensus wouldn't have existed.  50

years ago some of it would have been in dispute.  Naturally, the

scientists and doctors today disagree about the parts that are

not yet solidly established.  Alternative explanations have been

advanced and no one knows yet which ones are right.  I expect

that 50 years from now a lot of the controversies of today will

be completely resolved and beyond dispute.  But it takes time.

 3. Many scientific experts appear to have produced at best

    subjective statements, and at worst self-serving statements,

    about prostate and other cancers.

Absolutely true, but I don't think that has anything special to

do with science.  Doctors and scientists are people just like all

other people.  They have their ambitions and their failings.  I

don't think this bears on the question of whether science is the

right path to understanding and treating cancer.

I said above that I disagreed with what I took to be your

conclusion.  Namely (if you'll forgive my putting my words in

your mouth here):

 4. Science is a) not the path, or at least B) not the only

    path, to solving the cancer problem.

You have argued very eloquently and correctly that science has

not yet cured cancer in spite of quite a few years of trying.  In

opposition to that, I have argued that the 40 years of the " war

on cancer " , and the 400 years since the beginning of the

scientific revolution, have not been long enough.  But we can see

that progress has been enormous in that time and that it is

accelerating.  The more knowledge and technology that we have,

the more we can use that to expand our knowledge and technology

even further.  The tools of science, from electron microscopes to

x-ray diffraction, to atomic level computer simulations, to

genetic engineering, have all been created or enormously

developed in just the last 50 years.  Questions that took a

decade of hard lab work to answer 50 years can often now be

answered in a day of automated biochemistry experiments and

measurements - and sometimes in just a few minutes.  Knowledge is

piling up and our tools for accumulating it grow ever more

powerful.

What is the " alternative " ?  What is the method that the

alternative practitioners offer?  If they aren't using science to

find answers, what are they using?  Where do their

recommendations come from?  How do they know that they work?  In

what way are they accumulating knowledge?  What consensus have

they built over many thousands of years of medical practice?  All

the medical scientists agree on cells, protein, DNA, testosterone

signaling, uncontrolled cell division, metastasis.  What do the

alternative folks agree upon?  What have they established over

their thousands of years of effort?

I said that I disagreed with 4a above and, with a few

reservations, with 4b.  Here are the reservations.  There are

molecules in nature that have anti-tumor properties.  If we try

out enough random molecules, i.e., enough plant, animal, fungus,

and bacterial extracts, we will likely blunder into some that

work.  Without knowing how they work, we might still be able to

observe that some people who ingest some of these substances have

longer lifespans than people who don't.  Primitive people who

live closer to nature than we urbanites do have tried out a lot

of these and have found some with health giving properties -

though whether they've found any full cancer cures seems pretty

doubtful.  So, without using any science, they have made a

contribution to medicine.

I'm all in favor of benefiting from everything they have learned,

but I also think that if they're onto something, the right thing

to do with it is to take it through all of the steps that are

part of scientific cancer research - try it out in chemistry

experiments, try it out on cell cultures, try it out in mice,

then try it out in humans, and use valid statistical techniques

to evaluate the results.

> As I say, I could go on ad nauseam, as I o often do, but I

> won’t. I will ask a simple question of the True Believers –

> what should I do now? My PSA has risen from 5.9 to 8.7 in three

> months while I am on Zoladex and Casodex (my full story is here

> http://www.yananow.org/display_story.php?id=984 since anyone

> interested in answering the question will need more data than

> that) I am seeing a Minor Oracle, the oncologist who I like and

> trust next Tuesday (Monday US time) so I would appreciate it

> very much if the True Believers who subscribe to this list

> would be good enough to post the Universal Way which I should

> take. There must be One Way, surely, since it is only the liars

> and scoundrels, and well meaning wishful thinkers who each have

> totally different theories.

I don't know what you should do Terry or what you will be allowed

to do by the medical system.  From everything that I have read,

I'm inclined to think that the best thing would be to get a

prescription for abiraterone/Zytiga.

It is my understanding that it is only approved in the U.S. for

men who have tried and failed chemotherapy.  To get it in the

U.S. would require an off-label prescription - legal, but not

something that all doctors are willing to do.

Here is the scientific reasoning behind this recommendation, as

best I understand it:

Tumor cells that have become " castration resistant " often turn

out not to be " hormone refractory " .  They still require

testosterone in order to proliferate.  They get that testosterone

in two ways:

 1. They overexpress testosterone receptors.  These receptors are

    proteins inside the cell that bind to testosterone molecules

    and, when they bind, undergo a conformational change that

    ultimately results in cell division - a bad thing.

    When there are only a few testosterone receptor molecules in

    the cell, and only a few testosterone molecules, the two may

    not bump into each other very often and little signaling

    occurs.  But if the cell is making a lot of receptors, the

    chance of random collisions leading to binding reactions is

    much greater, even when the amount of T is small.

    Zytiga cuts down the amount of testosterone in the body very

    dramatically, way below what drugs like Zoladex can do.  So

    even if there are lots of receptors, there may not be many

    of the undesired reactions.

 2. Tumor cells can, themselves, produce testosterone.

    Zytiga prevents (or dramatically reduces) that.  LHRH

    agonists like Zoladex greatly reduce T production in the

    testicles.  But Zytiga reduces it everywhere.  It can do that

    because all of the places that produce T - the testicles, the

    adrenal gland, and the tumor cells - use the same biochemical

    pathway to do it.  That means that they use the same chain of

    chemical reactions that convert other molecules into T.

    Zytiga binds to one of the intermediate molecules (an enzyme

    called CYP17) in that chain, no matter where it happens to

    be, and prevents it from catalyzing the reaction that

    produces the next molecule in the chain.

Eventually, Zytiga will probably stop working.  Eventually, you

could develop a population of tumor cells that don't require T at

all in order to proliferate.  Then chemo, Provenge, or perhaps

some new treatment that doesn't involve hormone therapy is the

thing to try.

Maybe you could even benefit from taking chemo now, even

combining it with Zytiga if a doctor will do that for you.  Maybe

the best thing to do is to pound the cancer into the ground,

reducing it to as few and as dormant cells as possible.  But

that's a stressful approach and, as I say, you may not find a

doctor to work with you on that.

Finally I'd like to say that I wish you the very best of luck in

your battle.  I think of you a lot and if I believed in prayer

I'd be praying for you every day.  You've done a lot for a lot of

people with our disease and a great many people appreciate it.  I

hope that you have as long and as fine a life as it's possible

for any man to have.

     Alan

P.S. I know that you are a fine thinker and an eloquent writer,

but I think I may have hereby demonstrated my superiority as a

windbag :^)

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Alan,

I see you have added another epithet to

the collection describing your views of those who are not Persons of Science. Not

only are they “liars and scoundrels, … well meaning wishful thinkers’ but they are also uneducated - <snip> The

latter are in need of education. The former would be best educated by a

little time in jail. <snip> Hmmmmm….just

how do you define ‘education’? But that’s another subject

altogether.

The way in which you have represented my

views is simply so far from what they are that I have to consider that you have

used the straw man rhetorical technique (also classified as a logical fallacy) in

this misrepresentation of my position. In my previous post I was trying (and I

thought succeeding) in making a simple point. The behaviors you attribute to what

might be termed ‘non-scientists’ for the purposes of this

discussion - alternative medicine folk – do not differ significantly

in practice from those in the medical world who might be termed ‘scientists’

.. There are liars and scoundrels and well meaning wishful thinkers in

both camps. It is not only the alternative medicine folk where each one has a

totally different theory or where treatment can be by guess and by gosh. I

certainly did not say or imply the position you impute to me <snip> Science

is a) not the path, or at least B) not the only path, to solving the cancer

problem. <snip>

I am not a Luddite, uneducated though I am.

I had a clear understanding of the development of Science over the centuries

before I read your informative Science 101. I understand as Jules Henri Poincare

(1854-1912) said so eloquently “Science is built with facts as a house is

with stones -- but a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of

stones is a house.” Facts have to be sorted and categorized and defined

and analyzed. But, house can also be built of brick or timber – you don’t

have to have stones. There are potential problems with this. As the Australian

saying has it, if you cannot tell shit from clay, why it might be difficult to

build a brick house. And there is the nub of my problem with science. There is

the assumption that only a scientist can truly recognize building material,

which has to be stone. No one else can; no other material will do.

You denigrate the non-scientific

methodology of observation and experimental treatment which evolved ahead of scientific

development time and again in history. People have always understood that treating

illnesses in a certain way would cure them. They didn’t have microscopes,

they didn’t have computers, they couldn’t say why their treatments

worked, but they did. These early experimenters were only too often derided by

the experts of the time and found the conservatism of science, the slow

chipping of stone or the inability to use bricks, prevented progress. Can I

give some examples which I think me be relevant to illustrate this?

Perhaps the first one, because it is so

well known relates to scurvy and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). The creation of the

wealth which allowed science to develop was based on the ability of men to sail

ever longer voyages. These long voyages created significant problems, particularly

in the 16th and 17th century because of the high mortality

rate due to the diet on the ships. Many voyages were terminated simply

because there were not enough survivors in the crews to navigate the vessels

home. On one circumnavigation 1,400 out of 1900 men died, There was an early

recognition that eating certain foods or their juices could contain scurvy and

Woodall (1570–1643), an English military surgeon recommended in the early

17th century that citrus fruit be used to combat the disease. Alas,

he was not a scientist, so men continued to die in their thousands. A scientist

Lind (1716 -1794) finally carried out a study more than one hundred years

later in 1747. Some say this study was one of the first clinical experiments in

the history of medicine. The study demonstrated the value of ascorbic acid in

the prevention of scurvy. It was finally accepted towards the end of the 18th

century and by the early 19th century about 300 years after the

Woodall recommendation, the Royal Navy adopted the practice of ensure that

citrus juice was available in all ships..

Another well known disease is malaria. The

name derives from the Latin for ‘bad air’ because the Romans

thought the miasma rising off swamps was the cause of the disease, a belief

which continued for many centuries. Malaria presented a significant difficulty

for Western societies in maximizing the substantial resources in the

tropical countries where the disease was endemic. The inhabitants of those

countries, while having no microscopes or computers had worked out that if you slept

in smoky huts you reduced the incidence of the disease especially when this was

combined with an extract from the bark of the cinchona tree. The Jesuits accompanying

the Spanish invaders noted the efficacy of the practice in Peru and introduced the treatment to Europe during the 1640s, where it was rapidly accepted. But

it wasn’t until the 1890s – 350 years later - that with the help of

microscopes the cause of malaria was first identified and it was found that the

female anopheles mosquito was the most common bearer of the disease. Quinine

continued to be the only medication to control the disease, with the use of

fine mesh netting for another forty or fifty years. Despite the fact that the

disease was identified scientifically and its genesis understood more than 100

years ago, science has to date been unable to stop the deaths from the disease.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.2 million deaths a year

are due to malaria and, so it is said, this makes it the single most dangerous

disease. Although I am uneducated, it would seem to me to be likely that

malaria should be a more simple disease to cure than cancer.

And what of poor old Ignaz Semmelweis

(1818 –1865)? He observed that the incidence of women dying after

childbirth – mortality rate up to 30% or more – could be drastically

reduced if hands were thoroughly washed before treatment. Despite various

publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality to below 1%, his

observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of

the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He died in an

asylum and it wasn’t until Pasteur and Lister were able to confirm the

germ theory more than 100 years later that it was accepted by the medical

community. The lessons seem to have been forgotten today. There are many studies

showing that the lack of basic cleanliness in hospitals is associated with the

spread of potentially deadly germs.

And what of pellagra, the scourge of the

Southern States in the first two or three decades of the last century, killing

thousands (as it still does today in countries where maize/corn is the staple

diet)? The cure for this disease, which the medical community believed was probably

caused by a germ or some unknown toxin in corn, was simple – supplements

to the poor diet. In 1915, ph Goldberger showed pellagra was linked to diet

by inducing the disease in prisoners, using the Spartanburg Pellagra

Hospital as his clinic. This

was rejected out of hand by the medical community even though Goldberger was

able to show by 1926 that the addition of a small amount of brewers yeast could

improve the general health. But he couldn’t demonstrate how the brewer’s

yeast achieved this so and it was many years before pellagra diminished. Some authorities

believing this due to the better diets enjoyed as these States became more

prosperous.

There are so many other examples perhaps the

most recent of which, in more recent times is the identification of the bacterium

Helicobacter pylori (commonly just called H. pylori) and it’s part in the

development of duodenal ulcers. Despite the fact bacteria had been identified

in the stomach by the turn of the 19th century in a number of

countries and one Polish scientist had even suggested that this bacteria was

the involved in gastric problems, the conventional thinking was that no bacterium

can live in the human stomach. An American study published in 1954 failed to

observe the bacteria in 1180 stomach biopsies and all the earlier studies were

dismissed. Stress or spicy food being assumed to be the cause of this condition.

Marshall and Warren demonstrated in 1982 that this was not so and within a relatively

short time of only 12 years their work was accepted formally. It is now generally

accepted that about 80% of duodenal ulcers are caused by H. pylori. One of the

interesting side stories of both this development and that of penicillin was

that both were associated with petri dishes left over extended holiday periods –

much longer than they would normally have been kept.

With the knowledge of this background to

these developments, which are only a small part of many more examples I believe

that only too often Galbraith’s word are true: “Faced with the

choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so,

almost everybody gets busy on the proof.” Perhaps if there was less time

spent on proving that ideas that clash with current beliefs are ‘wrong’

or unacceptable and more time was spent on considering that there might

be some value in non-conventional thinking, we might make more progress. But a

society that cannot find a cure for the common cold may find it difficult

to find a cure for cancer using only the plodding pace of science.

All the best

Prostate men need enlightening, not

frightening

Terry

Herbert - diagnosed in 1996 and

still going strong

Read A Strange Place for unbiased information at http://www.yananow.org/StrangePlace/index.html

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THANK YOU TERRY! I COULDNT AGREE MORE WITH YOUR EXAMPLES OF COMMON SENSE. ALTERNITIVE CURES ARE WORTH CHECKING

OUT. SCIENCE IS NOT GOD. THIS REMINDS ME OF A BOOK TITLE THAT I HEARD OF CALLED DEAD DOCTORS DONT LIE. KEEP YOUR INSIGHT

COMING, I FOR ONE ENJOY IT. RESPECTFULLY DENNIS AKA MR BASEBALL AND A MAN WITH METASTIC PROSTATE CANCER WHO WILL

LOOK INTO ALL OPTIONS OF A POSSIBLE CURE TO THIS DISEASE. I AM A BELIEVER THAT THE GLASS IS HALF FULL NOT HALF EMPTY.

RE: How to cure cancer: What you need to know.

Alan,

I see you have added another epithet to

the collection describing your views of those who are not Persons of Science. Not

only are they “liars and scoundrels, … well meaning wishful thinkers’ but they are also uneducated - <snip> The

latter are in need of education. The former would be best educated by a

little time in jail. <snip> Hmmmmm….just

how do you define ‘education’? But that’s another subject

altogether.

The way in which you have represented my

views is simply so far from what they are that I have to consider that you have

used the straw man rhetorical technique (also classified as a logical fallacy) in

this misrepresentation of my position. In my previous post I was trying (and I

thought succeeding) in making a simple point. The behaviors you attribute to what

might be termed ‘non-scientists’ for the purposes of this

discussion - alternative medicine folk – do not differ significantly

in practice from those in the medical world who might be termed ‘scientists’

.. There are liars and scoundrels and well meaning wishful thinkers in

both camps. It is not only the alternative medicine folk where each one has a

totally different theory or where treatment can be by guess and by gosh. I

certainly did not say or imply the position you impute to me <snip> Science

is a) not the path, or at least B) not the only path, to solving the cancer

problem. <snip>

I am not a Luddite, uneducated though I am.

I had a clear understanding of the development of Science over the centuries

before I read your informative Science 101. I understand as Jules Henri Poincare

(1854-1912) said so eloquently “Science is built with facts as a house is

with stones -- but a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of

stones is a house.†Facts have to be sorted and categorized and defined

and analyzed. But, house can also be built of brick or timber – you don’t

have to have stones. There are potential problems with this. As the Australian

saying has it, if you cannot tell shit from clay, why it might be difficult to

build a brick house. And there is the nub of my problem with science. There is

the assumption that only a scientist can truly recognize building material,

which has to be stone. No one else can; no other material will do.

You denigrate the non-scientific

methodology of observation and experimental treatment which evolved ahead of scientific

development time and again in history. People have always understood that treating

illnesses in a certain way would cure them. They didn’t have microscopes,

they didn’t have computers, they couldn’t say why their treatments

worked, but they did. These early experimenters were only too often derided by

the experts of the time and found the conservatism of science, the slow

chipping of stone or the inability to use bricks, prevented progress. Can I

give some examples which I think me be relevant to illustrate this?

Perhaps the first one, because it is so

well known relates to scurvy and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). The creation of the

wealth which allowed science to develop was based on the ability of men to sail

ever longer voyages. These long voyages created significant problems, particularly

in the 16th and 17th century because of the high mortality

rate due to the diet on the ships. Many voyages were terminated simply

because there were not enough survivors in the crews to navigate the vessels

home. On one circumnavigation 1,400 out of 1900 men died, There was an early

recognition that eating certain foods or their juices could contain scurvy and

Woodall (1570–1643), an English military surgeon recommended in the early

17th century that citrus fruit be used to combat the disease. Alas,

he was not a scientist, so men continued to die in their thousands. A scientist

Lind (1716 -1794) finally carried out a study more than one hundred years

later in 1747. Some say this study was one of the first clinical experiments in

the history of medicine. The study demonstrated the value of ascorbic acid in

the prevention of scurvy. It was finally accepted towards the end of the 18th

century and by the early 19th century about 300 years after the

Woodall recommendation, the Royal Navy adopted the practice of ensure that

citrus juice was available in all ships..

Another well known disease is malaria. The

name derives from the Latin for ‘bad air’ because the Romans

thought the miasma rising off swamps was the cause of the disease, a belief

which continued for many centuries. Malaria presented a significant difficulty

for Western societies in maximizing the substantial resources in the

tropical countries where the disease was endemic. The inhabitants of those

countries, while having no microscopes or computers had worked out that if you slept

in smoky huts you reduced the incidence of the disease especially when this was

combined with an extract from the bark of the cinchona tree. The Jesuits accompanying

the Spanish invaders noted the efficacy of the practice in Peru and introduced the treatment to Europe during the 1640s, where it was rapidly accepted. But

it wasn’t until the 1890s – 350 years later - that with the help of

microscopes the cause of malaria was first identified and it was found that the

female anopheles mosquito was the most common bearer of the disease. Quinine

continued to be the only medication to control the disease, with the use of

fine mesh netting for another forty or fifty years. Despite the fact that the

disease was identified scientifically and its genesis understood more than 100

years ago, science has to date been unable to stop the deaths from the disease.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.2 million deaths a year

are due to malaria and, so it is said, this makes it the single most dangerous

disease. Although I am uneducated, it would seem to me to be likely that

malaria should be a more simple disease to cure than cancer.

And what of poor old Ignaz Semmelweis

(1818 –1865)? He observed that the incidence of women dying after

childbirth – mortality rate up to 30% or more – could be drastically

reduced if hands were thoroughly washed before treatment. Despite various

publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality to below 1%, his

observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of

the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He died in an

asylum and it wasn’t until Pasteur and Lister were able to confirm the

germ theory more than 100 years later that it was accepted by the medical

community. The lessons seem to have been forgotten today. There are many studies

showing that the lack of basic cleanliness in hospitals is associated with the

spread of potentially deadly germs.

And what of pellagra, the scourge of the

Southern States in the first two or three decades of the last century, killing

thousands (as it still does today in countries where maize/corn is the staple

diet)? The cure for this disease, which the medical community believed was probably

caused by a germ or some unknown toxin in corn, was simple – supplements

to the poor diet. In 1915, ph Goldberger showed pellagra was linked to diet

by inducing the disease in prisoners, using the Spartanburg Pellagra

Hospital as his clinic. This

was rejected out of hand by the medical community even though Goldberger was

able to show by 1926 that the addition of a small amount of brewers yeast could

improve the general health. But he couldn’t demonstrate how the brewer’s

yeast achieved this so and it was many years before pellagra diminished. Some authorities

believing this due to the better diets enjoyed as these States became more

prosperous.

There are so many other examples perhaps the

most recent of which, in more recent times is the identification of the bacterium

Helicobacter pylori (commonly just called H. pylori) and it’s part in the

development of duodenal ulcers. Despite the fact bacteria had been identified

in the stomach by the turn of the 19th century in a number of

countries and one Polish scientist had even suggested that this bacteria was

the involved in gastric problems, the conventional thinking was that no bacterium

can live in the human stomach. An American study published in 1954 failed to

observe the bacteria in 1180 stomach biopsies and all the earlier studies were

dismissed. Stress or spicy food being assumed to be the cause of this condition.

Marshall and Warren demonstrated in 1982 that this was not so and within a relatively

short time of only 12 years their work was accepted formally. It is now generally

accepted that about 80% of duodenal ulcers are caused by H. pylori. One of the

interesting side stories of both this development and that of penicillin was

that both were associated with petri dishes left over extended holiday periods –

much longer than they would normally have been kept.

With the knowledge of this background to

these developments, which are only a small part of many more examples I believe

that only too often Galbraith’s word are true: “Faced with the

choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so,

almost everybody gets busy on the proof.†Perhaps if there was less time

spent on proving that ideas that clash with current beliefs are ‘wrong’

or unacceptable and more time was spent on considering that there might

be some value in non-conventional thinking, we might make more progress. But a

society that cannot find a cure for the common cold may find it difficult

to find a cure for cancer using only the plodding pace of science.

All the best

Prostate men need enlightening, not

frightening

Terry

Herbert - diagnosed in 1996 and

still going strong

Read A Strange Place for unbiased information at http://www.yananow.org/StrangePlace/index.html

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Terry Herbert wrote:

> The way in which you have represented my views is simply so far

> from what they are that I have to consider that you have used

> the straw man rhetorical technique (also classified as a

> logical fallacy) in this misrepresentation of my position.

Terry,

I apologize if I have misrepresented your views.  If so, it was

because I misunderstood them, not because I intended to distort

them to win a point.

I'm having some trouble understanding what your view is.  Looking

at the examples in your latest posting, you have given a number

of examples of important medical discoveries that were presented,

sometimes by scientists or sometimes by non-scientists, that were

ignored by the scientific community until, eventually, they were

recognized and incorporated into the standard of medical care.

These discoveries included:

   Citrus juice as a treatment for scurvy, discovered by Dr.

   Woodall.  Woodall was trained before the era when

   scientific people mainly came out of universities, but does

   that make him a non-scientist?

   Sleeping in smoky huts reduced the incidence of malaria (it

   wasn't clear from your posting whether they people discovering

   this recognized that the smoke repelled mosquitoes, or whether

   they thought it has some other reason for its efficacy.)

   The discovery by Semmelweis of the role of doctor hygiene in

   preventing death from childbirth.  This famous discovery was

   by a doctor/scientist, but was rejected by other doctors

   mainly because it was a bother for them to wash their hands.

   The discovery that brewer's yeast cures pellagra, by ph

   Goldberger, a well-known scientist.

   The discovery that H. Pylori causes ulcers by the scientists

   Barry Marshall and Robin Warren - who won the Nobel prize for

   their discovery.

Is the point here that these discoveries were made by

non-scientists, not involving computers or microscopes?  But in

fact only one of the discoveries above (the smoky huts) was made

by people who were outside the scientific tradition and certainly

the latter two discoveries involved microscopes.

(I'll add here parenthetically that science is a method, not a

collection of tools.  Einstein, possibly the greatest scientist

of the last century, to the best of my knowledge, never used a

microscope, a telescope, a laboratory, or a computer.  When asked

by his new employers at Princeton University what equipment he

wanted, he answered that he wanted " a pad of paper, and a

pencil. " )

Is the point that these discoveries were not immediately accepted

by most scientists?  I understand that but don't know what

significance you draw from it.

Sometimes medical and scientific people reject something because

it is against their self-interest.  That was apparently the case

with Semmelweis.  In other cases, when someone comes up with an

idea that runs against conventional wisdom, it is typically

doubted, and not adopted, until others confirm it.  Most of the

time that's the right thing to do and it's good policy that makes

scientific sense.  Inevitably however, unconventional ideas that

happen to be right will suffer for some period of time.

You conclude:

> With the knowledge of this background to these developments,

> which are only a small part of many more examples I believe

> that only too often Galbraith’s word are true: " Faced with the

> choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no

> need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof. "

I'll buy that, but it's hardly unique to science.  People are

like that.  Alternative medicine people are like that even more

than scientific medicine people.  Consider, for example, the

number of people still hawking laetrile, Essiac tea, the Budwig

diet, magnetism, and other bogus cures long after they were

disproven.

> Perhaps if there was less time spent on proving that ideas that

> clash with current beliefs are ‘wrong’ or unacceptable  and

> more time was spent on considering that there might be some

> value in non-conventional thinking, we might make more

> progress.

What is it exactly that people should spend less time doing and

what should they spend more time doing?  If Joe Blow from

Backofbeyond, Nebraska says he cured prostate cancer by shining a

flashlight up his you know what, should Dr. Walsh stop what he's

doing and investigate this new idea?  Would that move us forward

faster than we're going now?  Or would it slow us down?

Which of the " ideas that clash with current beliefs " should we be

investigating, and what is it we should stop doing in order to do

that?

It could be argued that we devote a lot less time to proving that

false theories are false than we should.  The great bulk of

" alternative " medicine theories are never investigated at all by

scientists.  Only a few of the most popular ones, that have

harmed the most people, attract government or research institute

money to disprove them.  So far, disproving laetrile's value has

probably saved more lives than the invention of Zytiga.

I think you are right in saying that unconventional thinking is

tremendously valuable in scientific research but, alas, most

unconventional thinking turns out to be wrong - which is why the

conventional thinking is conventional.  It seems perfectly

reasonable to me that we treat unconventional ideas with some

initial skepticism and require proof that they work.  Some of

them DO work and are valuable and need to be adopted.  But most

of them don't.  So we have to be careful.

When someone comes up with a radical new idea we need open minds,

but we shouldn't drop everything we're doing.  Even some of the

brilliant and radical new ideas with tremendous scientific

rationale behind them, like the anti-angiogenesis theory of Dr.

Judah Folkman turned out to be very difficult to use in creating

cancer treatments.

> But a society that cannot find a cure for the common cold may

> find it  difficult to find a cure for cancer using only the

> plodding pace of science.

I just don't know what we can substitute for science.  Are you

advocating the use of unproven treatments?  Is the American Food

and Drug Administration wrong in demanding scientific proof of

the efficacy of a treatment before it can be used?  Should we

take some of the funding away from s Hopkins, or Memorial

Sloan Kettering, or the Mayo Clinic and give it to Joe Blow from

Backofbeyond and his fellow practitioners?  Is there a better way

to discover the truth than what we're doing?  What is it?

Everyone is frustrated by " the plodding pace of science " .

Everyone would love to see a cure for all cancers invented today

and put into practice by tomorrow.  But unless someone can show

me a better way to get from where we are to where we want to be,

I'm sticking with science.

Show me a better alternative.

    Alan

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Terry,

I'd like to add another point to what I have written.

I once sat in on a meeting of the Adult Treatment Editorial Board that advises

the National Cancer Institute on cancer treatments.  The board is made up of

about 50% research scientists and 50% clinicians, almost all from outside the

NCI.  The meetings are open and it was occurring in a conference room down the

hall from where I was working as a computer programmer.  So I went to see what

it was all about.

They discussed a number of new findings.  One was a report of a clinical trial

for which the results were ambiguous.  No benefit was demonstrated but it was

possible that more research would show something.

One of the board members spoke against the treatment.  He said that we need to

understand that research funds are finite.  The decision to fund further

research on any treatment is always a decision NOT to fund some other research. 

This particular research may go somewhere but we have no evidence that it will

and we shouldn't be stopping other research in favor of this.

The board had no power over NCI research funding but they could make

recommendations and did not recommend any further funding of this project.

I agree with you that we do need to keep open minds.  I agree that when

unconventional treatments are proposed, they should be investigated, but only

when they have significant scientific plausibility!  If the inventors of those

treatments have done no chemistry or biology experiments to demonstrate the

efficacy of the treatment, have no verifiable clinical data, and can only offer

an explanation for it like, " it restores a chemical imbalance " , or some similar

BS, then it has no plausibility and isn't worth an hour's time from someone who

could be working on something useful.

    Alan

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On July 19, 2012 9:38 PM, Terry Herbert

wrote:

> I hope those who read this will accept it is written

tongue in

> cheek, as much of my writing is. I’m feeling good:

the winter

> sun is shining and, for the moment all is well in my

world.

> But…..here goes

I wish I were there.  It's all heat and thunderstorms here

in

land.

> Ah! The arrogance of those True Believers who worship

at the

> Altar of Science!! I had every intention of posting a

detailed

> commentary on Alan’s posts but was unfortunately

diverted from

> what would have been an amusing task by another task

which will

> no doubt be derided by the True Believers. I was

making it

> easier to access the 1,100 plus stories of men

diagnosed with

> prostate cancer who have shared their stories on my

site – see

> http://www.yananow.org/query_stories.php

I say the True

> Believers will deride the time spent on this task

because, as

> they all agree, there is no value in anecdotal

evidence. That

> is regarded as potentially dangerous since it has not

been

> vetted by Scientists and has not been published in a

Scientific

> Study in  an Approved Peer-Reviewed Journal. The

Scientific

> Truth only resides in such places.

Very true.  Scientific Truth only resides in ... where was

I?

I've lost track of Scientific Truth.

Ah well, however far it may be from Scientific Truth, I do

regard

your website as a gem of health sites on the Internet and

a great

resource for patients.

> So I will limit my comments (which are not aimed at

Alan or

> Rich or any other True Believer specifically but at

some of

> their beliefs) to just two statements:

> Alan states the obvious  when he says  <snip>

But science is

> not, in essence, an enterprise of liars and

scoundrels, nor

> even of well meaning wishful thinkers. <snip> 

No one ever said

> they were, but applying basic logic  it is clear that

to True

> Believers, “non-science†(or alternative medicine in

this

> context) IS an enterprise of liars and scoundrels,

and well

> meaning wishful thinkers. Talk about 

generalization!!

I do at least make a big distinction between the liars and

scoundrels on the one hand, and the wishful thinkers on

the

other.  The latter are in need of education.  The former

would be

best educated by a little time in jail.

> Alan goes on to claim that science has the answers –

and

> doesn’t depend on guesswork - <snip> The

scientific method is

> not by guess and by gosh……… It's not like the

alternative

> medicine people where each one has a totally

different theory….

> <snip>  I don’t know how many readers of this

post will roar

> with laughter, as I did at the concept that so many

Science

> People do NOT each have totally different theories.

True

> Believers should ask us nonentity “non-scientificâ€

scoundrels

> if any of us have EVER been presented with a

different theory

> as to what we should do, having been diagnosed with

prostate

> cancer. Any different theories out there? And what is

the

> outcome if any bold  “non-scientists†may have dared

to ask for

> details of relevant Scientific Studies in  Approved

> Peer-Reviewed Journals to support the theory

presented? What?

> There are none? Is the recommended course of action

based on

> guesswork then, or Scientific Belief?

> In the sixteen years since I have had a personal but

uneducated

> interest in this disease of ours I have read time and

again

> that a study, to be published at some time in the

future, will

> demonstrate clearly the value of a specific course of

action,

> notably the Gold Standard of Surgery. It will show

outcomes and

> morbidity associated with this Sacred Treatment and

show that

> alternatives are as nothing. Many studies have been

published

> over that time ...

<... A famous doctor's study and quotes elided ...>

I think your argument is an important one and it deserves

a

serious answer.  At some risk of oversimplification, it

seems to

me that your argument is this:

 1. Science has not solved the problem of curing prostate

cancer.

 2. Scientific experts disagree and produce conflicting

advice

    and conflicting studies about prostate cancer.

 3. Many scientific experts appear to have produced at

best

    subjective statements, and at worst self-serving

statements,

    about prostate and other cancers.

therefore:

 4. Science is a) not the path, or at least B) not the

only

    path, to solving the cancer problem.

In answer to that I would offer the following:

I agree with all three of your premises.  I believe that

all of

them are true.  It is the conclusion with which I

disagree.  I

disagree completely with conclusion 4a, and disagree with

just a

few reservations with 4b.

I'd like to begin with a little history.  Science is an

ongoing

enterprise.  It goes back to at least the era of the

ancient

Greeks and Babylonians, but it really began in earnest in

the

Renaissance - the discoveries that the earth is round,

that it

goes around the Sun and not vice versa, that the heart is

an

organ for pumping blood, that air and water are made up of

molecules and those molecules in turn are made up of

elementary

atoms, and on and on.

Each scientific development built on the past.  Each one

extends

what we know and creates a bigger and stronger foundation

to get

more and more and more knowledge.

It's a progressive process and it doesn't allow much in

the way

of short circuits.  Until we knew how to make pretty pure

glass

we couldn't make lenses.  Until we knew how to make lenses

we

couldn't make microscopes.  Until we made microscopes we

didn't

know that all plants and animals are made of cells.  Until

we

learned the basics of chemistry, we couldn't figure out

what

cells are made of.

It's a slow, step by step process.  A 15th century person

could

no more explain the difference between a protein and a

carbohydrate than he could make a television set, a

motorcycle, a

microwave oven, or a plastic toothbrush.

Slowly in human terms, but with blinding speed in

evolutionary

terms, we have learned that cancer cells are ordinary

cells of

our own bodies.  They're not bacteria or parasites.  They

have

undergone genetic mutations - possibly due to carcinogens

in the

environment but also possibly due to just the random

mutations

that occur when cells replicate, and which accumulate over

time

as we get older.  We have learned what some of those

mutations

are.  We have learned that they're different from cancer

type to

cancer type and from patient to patient, but they

typically have

something to do with causing cell division to occur when

it

should not, or causing cells to continue to live when they

should

not.

We are making HUGE progress in these areas.  ,

one of

the people who discovered the structure of DNA, is still

alive

today!  When I and most of the other people in this group

were

children, and was a young man, no one knew what DNA

was

made of.  No one knew that DNA carried the genetic code

that

makes us what we are, and that can create cancer when it

goes

awry.  Without that knowledge there wasn't even the

possibility

of understanding what causes cancer.  But now, 60 years

later, we

have thousands of pages of text books, terabytes of data,

and

extraordinarily detailed three dimensional models of the

genetic

materials and the many other kinds of molecules involved

in

cancer.

So, in light of that history and that progress I'd like to

examine each of the premises of your argument:

 1. Science has not solved the problem of curing prostate

cancer.

We haven't gotten there yet.  Cancer is one of those very,

very

hard problems, like space travel, fusion energy,

Alzheimer's

disease, and the Higgs Boson, that can't be solved in an

afternoon, or in a year, or in a decade.  It may take

another

hundred years.  It may require a considerable build up of

our

foundation of knowledge before we get the key bits of

information, and the key technologies, that enable us to

make a

breakthrough.  But we have made progress.  The surgeries,

radiation techniques, hormone therapies and chemotherapies

in use

today were all essentially invented just in our lifetimes.

 2. Scientific experts disagree and produce conflicting

advice

    and conflicting studies about prostate cancer.

Science is an ongoing process.  Solid foundations have

been built

that everyone agrees upon.  But the new parts, the parts

that are

still unfinished, are the subjects of disagreement.

Everyone now knows what the prostate is and what it does.

Everyone now agrees that cancer is composed of cells of

our own

body that are misbehaving.  Everyone now agrees that

tumors are

cells with genetic mutations.  Everyone now agrees that

testosterone signaling is involved in prostate cancer

growth.

Maybe that sounds obvious and unimportant, but it's not. 

100

years ago a lot of that consensus wouldn't have existed. 

50

years ago some of it would have been in dispute. 

Naturally, the

scientists and doctors today disagree about the parts that

are

not yet solidly established.  Alternative explanations

have been

advanced and no one knows yet which ones are right.  I

expect

that 50 years from now a lot of the controversies of today

will

be completely resolved and beyond dispute.  But it takes

time.

 3. Many scientific experts appear to have produced at

best

    subjective statements, and at worst self-serving

statements,

    about prostate and other cancers.

Absolutely true, but I don't think that has anything

special to

do with science.  Doctors and scientists are people just

like all

other people.  They have their ambitions and their

failings.  I

don't think this bears on the question of whether science

is the

right path to understanding and treating cancer.

I said above that I disagreed with what I took to be your

conclusion.  Namely (if you'll forgive my putting my words

in

your mouth here):

 4. Science is a) not the path, or at least B) not the

only

    path, to solving the cancer problem.

You have argued very eloquently and correctly that science

has

not yet cured cancer in spite of quite a few years of

trying.  In

opposition to that, I have argued that the 40 years of the

"war

on cancer", and the 400 years since the beginning of the

scientific revolution, have not been long enough.  But we

can see

that progress has been enormous in that time and that it

is

accelerating.  The more knowledge and technology that we

have,

the more we can use that to expand our knowledge and

technology

even further.  The tools of science, from electron

microscopes to

x-ray diffraction, to atomic level computer simulations,

to

genetic engineering, have all been created or enormously

developed in just the last 50 years.  Questions that took

a

decade of hard lab work to answer 50 years can often now

be

answered in a day of automated biochemistry experiments

and

measurements - and sometimes in just a few minutes. 

Knowledge is

piling up and our tools for accumulating it grow ever more

powerful.

What is the "alternative"?  What is the method that the

alternative practitioners offer?  If they aren't using

science to

find answers, what are they using?  Where do their

recommendations come from?  How do they know that they

work?  In

what way are they accumulating knowledge?  What consensus

have

they built over many thousands of years of medical

practice?  All

the medical scientists agree on cells, protein, DNA,

testosterone

signaling, uncontrolled cell division, metastasis.  What

do the

alternative folks agree upon?  What have they established

over

their thousands of years of effort?

I said that I disagreed with 4a above and, with a few

reservations, with 4b.  Here are the reservations.  There

are

molecules in nature that have anti-tumor properties.  If

we try

out enough random molecules, i.e., enough plant, animal,

fungus,

and bacterial extracts, we will likely blunder into some

that

work.  Without knowing how they work, we might still be

able to

observe that some people who ingest some of these

substances have

longer lifespans than people who don't.  Primitive people

who

live closer to nature than we urbanites do have tried out

a lot

of these and have found some with health giving properties

-

though whether they've found any full cancer cures seems

pretty

doubtful.  So, without using any science, they have made a

contribution to medicine.

I'm all in favor of benefiting from everything they have

learned,

but I also think that if they're onto something, the right

thing

to do with it is to take it through all of the steps that

are

part of scientific cancer research - try it out in

chemistry

experiments, try it out on cell cultures, try it out in

mice,

then try it out in humans, and use valid statistical

techniques

to evaluate the results.

> As I say, I could go on ad nauseam, as I o often do,

but I

> won’t. I will ask a simple question of the True

Believers –

> what should I do now? My PSA has risen from 5.9 to

8.7 in three

> months while I am on Zoladex and Casodex (my full

story is here

> http://www.yananow.org/display_story.php?id=984

since anyone

> interested in answering the question will need more

data than

> that) I am seeing a Minor Oracle, the oncologist who

I like and

> trust next Tuesday (Monday US time) so I would

appreciate it

> very much if the True Believers who subscribe to this

list

> would be good enough to post the Universal Way which

I should

> take. There must be One Way, surely, since it is only

the liars

> and scoundrels, and well meaning wishful thinkers who

each have

> totally different theories.

I don't know what you should do Terry or what you will be

allowed

to do by the medical system.  From everything that I have

read,

I'm inclined to think that the best thing would be to get

a

prescription for abiraterone/Zytiga.

It is my understanding that it is only approved in the

U.S. for

men who have tried and failed chemotherapy.  To get it in

the

U.S. would require an off-label prescription - legal, but

not

something that all doctors are willing to do.

Here is the scientific reasoning behind this

recommendation, as

best I understand it:

Tumor cells that have become "castration resistant" often

turn

out not to be "hormone refractory".  They still require

testosterone in order to proliferate.  They get that

testosterone

in two ways:

 1. They overexpress testosterone receptors.  These

receptors are

    proteins inside the cell that bind to testosterone

molecules

    and, when they bind, undergo a conformational change

that

    ultimately results in cell division - a bad thing.

    When there are only a few testosterone receptor

molecules in

    the cell, and only a few testosterone molecules, the

two may

    not bump into each other very often and little

signaling

    occurs.  But if the cell is making a lot of receptors,

the

    chance of random collisions leading to binding

reactions is

    much greater, even when the amount of T is small.

    Zytiga cuts down the amount of testosterone in the

body very

    dramatically, way below what drugs like Zoladex can

do.  So

    even if there are lots of receptors, there may not be

many

    of the undesired reactions.

 2. Tumor cells can, themselves, produce testosterone.

    Zytiga prevents (or dramatically reduces) that.  LHRH

    agonists like Zoladex greatly reduce T production in

the

    testicles.  But Zytiga reduces it everywhere.  It can

do that

    because all of the places that produce T - the

testicles, the

    adrenal gland, and the tumor cells - use the same

biochemical

    pathway to do it.  That means that they use the same

chain of

    chemical reactions that convert other molecules into

T.

    Zytiga binds to one of the intermediate molecules (an

enzyme

    called CYP17) in that chain, no matter where it

happens to

    be, and prevents it from catalyzing the reaction that

    produces the next molecule in the chain.

Eventually, Zytiga will probably stop working. 

Eventually, you

could develop a population of tumor cells that don't

require T at

all in order to proliferate.  Then chemo, Provenge, or

perhaps

some new treatment that doesn't involve hormone therapy is

the

thing to try.

Maybe you could even benefit from taking chemo now, even

combining it with Zytiga if a doctor will do that for

you.  Maybe

the best thing to do is to pound the cancer into the

ground,

reducing it to as few and as dormant cells as possible. 

But

that's a stressful approach and, as I say, you may not

find a

doctor to work with you on that.

Finally I'd like to say that I wish you the very best of

luck in

your battle.  I think of you a lot and if I believed in

prayer

I'd be praying for you every day.  You've done a lot for a

lot of

people with our disease and a great many people appreciate

it.  I

hope that you have as long and as fine a life as it's

possible

for any man to have.

     Alan

P.S. I know that you are a fine thinker and an eloquent

writer,

but I think I may have hereby demonstrated my superiority

as a

windbag :^)

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Well Alan and Terry much to think about.

Though this discussion has got too complex for many who are not deep into the pros and cons, from my understanding, I perceive that you are both right.

Science now should know that they can access source material to treat illnesses in nature, many compounds these days are sourced from plants that indigenous people in eg the Amazion have been using for years. One reason to stop chopping it down.

The problem is sorting out what might do more harm than good and ensuring the pain is worth the benefit.

(I'm half way through 10 sessions on Taxotere and so far the side effects are worth the benefit, bone markers going the right way and PSA down from 495 to 403)

The other problem we have come across with herbal medicines is that there is little if any checks on quality of product.

The various agencies such as NICE in the UK are there to protect the users of drugs (and sometines to check cost effectiveness - how do you put a price on 9 moths QOL)

This is understandable

To balance the arguments we need a way of funding checks on the cheap ways of improving QOL and effective treatment that satisfies the regulators and ensures no unwanted side effects.

Drug companies need to make money to research, maybe universities would be the best bodies to research the cheaper stuff

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Metcalf wrote:

> Well Alan and Terry much to think about.

>

> Though this discussion has got too complex for many who are not

> deep into the pros and cons, from my understanding, I perceive

> that you are both right.

>

> Science now should know that they can access source material to

> treat illnesses in nature, many compounds these days are

> sourced from plants that indigenous people in eg the Amazion

> have been using for years. One reason to stop chopping it down.

>

> The problem is sorting out what might do more harm than good

> and ensuring the pain is worth the benefit.

I think you're probably right.  In our back and forth discussion,

I think Terry and I have emphasized the points of our

disagreement, but there's a lot we actually agree on.  I don't

want to put words in Terry's mouth (he speaks very eloquently for

himself), but I think he's not so much anti-science, he's more

anti-arrogance.  It's those arrogance pills they give out with

the medical school diplomas that really bother him.

I also recognize that many of the useful drugs we have today are

refinements of ingredients used in various traditional and folk

medicines found around the world.  What I really object to is

people who promote such treatments without going through the

scientific process needed to vet them, and people making claims

about them for which there is no evidence and often no scientific

plausibility.

> (I'm half way through 10 sessions on Taxotere and so far the

> side effects are worth the benefit, bone markers going the

> right way and PSA down from 495 to 403)

I wish you the best of luck with that.  Once you've been through

it I presume you'll qualify for Zytiga or Enzalutamide

(MDV-3100).  Hopefully you'll benefit from both the chemo and

follow-on Zytiga or whatever.

> The other problem we have come across with herbal medicines is

> that there is little if any checks on quality of product.

>

> The various agencies such as NICE in the UK are there to

> protect the users of drugs (and sometimes to check cost

> effectiveness - how do you put a price on 9 moths QOL)

>

> This is understandable

>

> To balance the arguments we need a way of funding checks on the

> cheap ways of improving QOL and effective treatment that

> satisfies the regulators and ensures no unwanted side effects.

>

> Drug companies need to make money to research, maybe

> universities would be the best bodies to research the cheaper

> stuff

In the U.S. it turns out that bulk of the research is funded by

the National Cancer Institute, not the drug companies.  NCI

receives research proposals, mainly from university labs, and

apportions its research funds to them as best it can.  It also

funds a lot of research in its own labs.

The drug companies usually get involved only after the drug has

proved itself in the laboratory.  The companies then fund the

final development of the drug, pay for the clinical trials, and

market them.

I think the system has some serious weaknesses, for example drugs

for rare cancers are typically not picked up, and the companies

sometimes hype the effectiveness of the drugs and often price

them exorbitantly.  But it also has strengths.  The profit motive

drives the energy of the professors and development of the drugs.

If it were up to me, I'd keep the system but reform it with

regulations it to better align the incentives with the needs of

patients.

    Alan

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Alan,

When you say <snip> I

think he's not so much anti-science, he's more anti-arrogance. It's those

arrogance pills they give out with the medical school diplomas that really

bother him. <snip> you hit a nail on the head!

Glad at least one of my messages got through

after all!! Perhaps the latest Yana E-Letter - http://www.yananow.org/ELetter10.htm

- will throw a bit more might on my unenlightened attitudeJ

All the best

Prostate men need enlightening, not

frightening

Terry

Herbert - diagnosed in 1996 and

still going strong

Read A Strange Place for unbiased information at http://www.yananow.org/StrangePlace/index.html

From: ProstateCancerSupport [mailto:ProstateCancerSupport ] On Behalf Of Alan

Meyer

Sent: Friday, 27 July 2012 12:03

PM

To: ProstateCancerSupport

Subject: Re:

How to cure cancer: What you need to know.

I think you're probably right. In our back and forth discussion,

I think Terry and I have emphasized the points of our

disagreement, but there's a lot we actually agree on. I don't

want to put words in Terry's mouth (he speaks very eloquently for

himself), but I think he's not so much anti-science, he's more

anti-arrogance. It's those arrogance pills they give out with

the medical school diplomas that really bother him.

I also recognize that many of the useful drugs we have today are

refinements of ingredients used in various traditional and folk

medicines found around the world. What I really object to is

people who promote such treatments without going through the

scientific process needed to vet them, and people making claims

about them for which there is no evidence and often no scientific

plausibility.

_

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There are all kinds of doctors. I always try to find doctors who teach at major medical centers or have published a lot of research papers. They think more like scientists and less like accountants (only thinking about how many patients they can see an hour and maximize the bottom line).

I do my research and ask a lot of questions. Doctors get bored too. The good ones like questions. If your doctor doesn't like questions, find another one. If they can't explain their answers or they don't make sense, another doctor is just a phone call away.

Find a doctor with a lot of experience. Four years of medical school does not make a doctor. Only after a residency and many years of practice (that is why they call it practice) has the doctor learned enough to give you first rate care for a

complicated problem, such as prostate cancer.

To be a good doctor you need a keen scientific mind. A study from University of Chicago, looked at a year’s worth of studies in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 1 in 8 of the studies constituted reversals of previously published results.

Sackett, often referred to as the “father of evidence-based medicine,†said: Half of what you’ll learn in medical school will be shown

to be either wrong or out of date within five years of your graduation; the trouble is that nobody can tell you which half, so the most important thing to learn is how to learn on your own.

To: ProstateCancerSupport Sent: Friday, July 27, 2012 2:25 AM Subject: RE: How to cure cancer: What you need to know.

Alan, When you say <snip> I

think he's not so much anti-science, he's more anti-arrogance. It's those

arrogance pills they give out with the medical school diplomas that really

bother him. <snip> you hit a nail on the head! Glad at least one of my messages got through

after all!! Perhaps the latest Yana E-Letter - http://www.yananow.org/ELetter10.htm

- will throw a bit more might on my unenlightened attitudeJ

All the best Prostate men need enlightening, not

frightening Terry

Herbert - diagnosed in 1996 and

still going strong Read A Strange Place for unbiased information at http://www.yananow.net/StrangePlace/index.html

From: ProstateCancerSupport [mailto: ProstateCancerSupport ] On Behalf Of Alan

Meyer

Sent: Friday, 27 July 2012 12:03

PM

To: ProstateCancerSupport

Subject: Re:

How to cure cancer: What you need to know.

I think you're probably right. In our back and forth discussion,

I think Terry and I have emphasized the points of our

disagreement, but there's a lot we actually agree on. I don't

want to put words in Terry's mouth (he speaks very eloquently for

himself), but I think he's not so much anti-science, he's more

anti-arrogance. It's those arrogance pills they give out with

the medical school diplomas that really bother him.

I also recognize that many of the useful drugs we have today are

refinements of ingredients used in various traditional and folk

medicines found around the world. What I really object to is

people who promote such treatments without going through the

scientific process needed to vet them, and people making claims

about them for which there is no evidence and often no scientific

plausibility.

_

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