Fw: Re: Re: Re: Anti Cancer, A New Way of Life

[Guest guest]

Alan, I don't know Dr. Gonzalaz personally, have never written to him and have no connections to him or any of his patients. But I do believe that he wrote a pretty good treatise on scientific bias which I would hope that people would keep in mind the next time they read any scientific research. Because the possibility that things are not always what they appear is quite real and relevant to all of us. However, I think you may be glossing over what he is revealing about government money and research. You know if there are problems for example with say automobiles and what they are doing to the environment it's not a proper line of reasoning to defend the manufacturers by suggesting that if we investigate them. their practices and try to rectify the situation by any means possible that it will result

in the end of the automobile industry and our having to ride bicycles and and horse drawn carts. I do not believe that it's necessary to use such extreme opposite polar examples as a means of warding off proper and justifiable criticism, inquiry and investigation. Of course we all try to make our points, myself included. No one is suggesting that we treat cancer using cottage cheese, cheese whiz, windex or motor oil. However keep in mind that we are treating Malaria right now with an herbal compound of the Artemisia species (1 of 300 species) of which all the technology and government scientific input of the past 200 years had been clueless and incapable of discovering. That's what happens when you set an almost idealogical set of wheels in motion and reject everything that does not fit properly into a preconceived system of scientific inquiry. Where it's my way or the highway. Had it not been for the fact that Chinese

medicine is actually accepted in China and much of Asia, we in the west would today not have the only existing cure for Malaria. And we have herbalists who lived 2,500 years ago in China to thank for that. What we do not have unfortunately, and what more unfortunately is never discussed by either us or the Chinese , is the methodology they used at arriving at that discovery. Not to mention that there are quite a few such herbal formulas that are right now being copied by the Pharmaceutical industry for commercial use. And some that already have been and are in current use. I think that Gonzalaz's overall point was that there is widespread corruption within our taxpayer funded government scientific agencies that is thwarting and damaging the ability of those agencies to properly carry out their mission. Personally, I don't care if the cure for cancer comes from

s Hopkins or ny the street sweeper. It matters not to me and it matters not to almost all people so afflicted. What Gonzalaz is saying however is that it very much does matter to those who run and comprise the system where the cure comes from. Yes, he is saying that they have preferences and will act on those preferences to the detriment of those who have the diseases that the money was appropriated for and entrusted for that purpose. There is a small city not far from me that back in the 1980's was put into receivership by the state and run by the state for several years. The city government had become systemically both incompetent and corrupt as well as a drain on state financial resources. The only solution was to get rid of everyone, shut the system down temporarily , run the day to day operations for a few years and then start again from scratch. Which they eventually did. I

believe that Gonzalaz is suggesting that in many regards that government funded research , including that done in house by government agencies and the granting of grants to private corp. and academic institutions is approaching or has approached similar proportions and cannot be fixed any longer by rearranging the deck chairs. On the HIV-Nevirapine trial I believe Gonzalaz was specifically referring on the ability of using this drug alone, by itself as a means to prevent the neo-natal transmission of the virus and not the use of the drug generally to treat HIV in combination with other anti-viral drugs as it was/is commonly used both then and today. Or in the use of the drug given to the infant in combination with other drugs as it is used today. However your point is taken and I have to say that I did not read the IOM report. Do you have a link? Does it say that Nevirapine

should be used, and is effective as a single agent to be given to the mother for the prevention of neo-natal HIV transmission? Or, is IOM saying something else with regards to Nevirapine? There is quite a bit out there on this drug for it's use with HIV but most of it is between 1999 and 2004. After that year I pretty much had to rely on PUBMED and in reading some of the articles, it's clear that the drug is always used in conjunction with other agents, never alone and that not just the mother has to be treated but the child as well. Those were not the issues of the trial that Gonzalaz was citing I believe. Don't forget that another good part of his paper on Scientific Bias was about his own trial and stem cell therapy and breast cancer. As always Alan, I thank you for your viewpoint and appreciate very much your point of view. BOB http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21561386http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21561322http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21555816http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21555806 BOB

> Alan, I have a few things to say on what you have written, but

> first I think you may enjoy reading this. It's written by a

> conventional MD who is involved in an alternative nutritional

> protocol for treating pancreatic cancer. This particular

> article which he has written so well is not to debate the

> merits of his protocol which was the subject of an NIH fraud

> investigation, as one of the supervisors of that 10 year study

> happened to have designed another protocol for the very drug

> his nutritional protocol was being compared to. Instead this

> particular article is essentialy about ''medical bias'' which

> in some cases actually ends up being institutional medical

> fraud presented as mainstream medical treatment and research.

> Instead of using what happened to his protocol as an example,

> because he does not want it to sound like sour grapes, he

> instead uses two other medical protocols as examples of the

> above.

> I have a few other things which I will post seperately.

> http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/bias.htm

> Cheers, BOB

Bob,

I read the article on bias by Dr. . I was appalled by

what he had to say about misconduct at NIH, assuming his

allegations are true. But I have to say that I have doubts about

his own objectivity.

A good part of his article focused on failures in the

HIV-Nevirapine trial in Uganda from 1997-99. One of the

citations he made was to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report

commissioned in 2004 to review the trial. Although he didn't say

so, he implied that the recruitment of the IOM, an arm of the

National Academy of Sciences, to review the trial was an

indication of misconduct in the trial. I actually found their

report on the web. Search for "REVIEW OF THE HIVNET 012

PERINATAL HIV PREVENTION STUDY" on Google (but you have to go

through some hoops to download it.)

It turns out that the 151 page study vindicated the Nevirapine

trial. What bothers me here is not that I believe IOM is right

and Dr. is wrong, I wouldn't know one way or the other.

What bothers me is that he never mentioned that the IOM report

directly contradicts his own view of the matter.

I also saw this in Dr. ' last paragraph:

"In the conclusion to my book, I call, with some seriousness,

for the closing of all government scientific institutions,

since they seem unable to rid themselves of the pernicious

biases that are forever the enemy of legitimate scientific

enterprise, and ultimately, the truth. ..."

"... closing of all government scientific institutions" seems to

me an astonishing, frightening, and totally irresponsible

recommendation. How could he write such a thing? Does he want

us to return to the days before NIH when only drug companies

could fund research? Does he want to return to the days before

the Food and Drug Administration when dust bunnies and floor

sweepings could be put into pills and legally sold as cures for

cancer? To my mind at least, it casts a more than reasonable

doubt about the man's credibility.

Personally, I do believe that bias exists in the scientific

community. I believe it is a serious problem. I believe that it

is caused by greed and or vanity, something that scientists are

no more immune to than anyone else.

However I don't know any way to combat this other than the

methods of peer review, standards of evidence, standard

guidelines for procedures in experimental studies and trials,

openness of information, and the disciplining of people who

violate scientific codes of conduct. These are applied

imperfectly in the scientific community, but they are applied.

They don't always work, but they often do. Malefactors sometimes

get away with their malfeasance but often they don't and are

kicked out of the academic community.

I don't see any evidence that any of these safeguards are applied

at all in the alternative medicine community. What peer review

is applied to the alternative medicine people? What standards of

evidence? What openness of records? What standard guidelines

for studies and trials? What codes of conduct? What

disciplining of people who violate them?

Are there *ANY* cases whatsoever where the alternative medicine

community has disciplined or publicly discredited and disavowed

one of its own practitioners? Can you point me to any at all?

The number of obvious quacks is enormous. Look at Quackwatch for

a listing of them. Have ANY of these been repudiated by the

alternative medicine community?

Dr. says we need to close down government research. And

what do we put in its place? Laetrile? Tibetan herbs? Shamanic

mantras? Essiac tea? Flaxseed and cottage cheese? Anything at

all that any snake oil salesman claims is a cure for our cancer?

He doesn't answer the question directly but he doesn't have

anything else to offer.

I don't know what to make of Dr. . Some of the specific

cases that he criticizes may be very worthy of criticism, but I

won't take his word for it. I don't trust what he says.

Bob, I think your imputation of problems and bias in the

scientific community is dead right. There are problems. They

are sometimes quite serious. But let's not leap from the frying

pan of academic and government science into the fire of

alternative medicine.

Alan