Several therapies are considered here which would normally require the supervision of a doctor well versed in alternative remedies. These are not self-cures or remedies for the have-a-go alternative practitioner:
Homeopathy
An old and honoured remedy for cancer is mistletoe (Viscum major). It is even more potent when prepared as a homeopathic remedy. Rudolph Steiner developed it for use as Iscador. German giant homeopathic pharmaceutical manufacturers HEEL have a product called Viscum compositum, which is to be injected twice a week, alternating with Echinacea compositum. Another German manufacturer, Heilmittel GmbH produces a product range called Abnoba in which the host tree of the mistletoe is given key importance. Viscum grown on crab apple (Malus) is used for breast cancer, whereas that grown on hawthorn or spruce is best for cancers of the male genital organs; oak Viscum (Quercus) is recommended for cancer of the digestive tract (oesophagus, stomach, gall bladder, colon and so on). Pursue this line if you think it may have relevance for you.
Unfortunately, Viscums are potentially toxic and, although harmless as homeopathic remedies, this means that regulations make it a prescription-only medicine.
Other homeopathic substances may be helpful, however, such as clearing old diseases (nosodes) and hereditary weaknesses (miasms). You will learn more about these specialist approaches from a practitioner.
Ukrian
Ukrain was first developed in 1978 by Dr. Wassyl J. Nowicky, director of the Ukrain Anti-Cancer Institute of Vienna. It is a mixture of Greater Celandine (Chelidonium major) and an old a long-established cytotoxic drug, thiotepa. The idea is that the combination of the two makes treatment effective at far lower doses than the usual toxic amounts of thiotepa.
The plant Chelidonium Major has been known for centuries in Russia as a cure for cancer. It contains alkaloids with known anti-cancer activity. In this respect it is worth remembering the periwinkle plant (Vinca major), which has given us two modern cytotoxic drugs, vinblastine and vincristine.
Ukrain has been tested at the US National Institute for Cancer against over 60 lines of human cancer cells and found that in every case it arrested growth 100%. It seems that Ukrain causes a drop in utilization of oxygen. Normal cells are able to recover within a few minutes but for cancer cells this change is irreversible. They literally suffocate to death. Animal studies show that Ukrain is also a powerful stimulant of the immune system.
Unfortunately, Ukrain is not available in mainstream medicine and holistic doctors who use it are few and far between, unless you want to travel to Eastern Europe.
Laetrial
You do not have to look far into cancer alternatives before you will encounter the subject of laetrile, a chemical cyanide-like substance found in apricot and other kernels, apple seeds, lima beans, clover, and sorghum. In fact there are two types of laetrile: a patented product, Laetrile®, which is semi-synthetic, and laetrile/amygdalin manufactured in Mexico, which is made from crushed apricot pits.
Laetrile is used world wide against cancer, except in the USA, where it is not approved by the FDA. They say it doesn’t work and you may begin to suspect a political angle to this strange limitation of choice. While ever employees of major drug companies sit on the FDA board, no-one sensible would trust the objectivity of FDA views.
Once again the Internet has swept into the niche market and there are countless websites to sell you laetrile at a hefty price (considering it is only crushed nuts). Many clinics have sprung up, especially over the US border into Mexico, to service patients who hope that laetrile will work for them. But does it do any good?
It must be said the evidence is scant. Amygdalin was first isolated in 1830 by two French chemists and was used as an anticancer agent in Russia as early as 1845. Its first recorded use in the United States as a treatment for cancer occurred in the early 1920s but it was judged too toxic and studies ceased.
In the 1950s, a supposedly non-toxic intravenous form of amygdalin was patented as Laetrile® and in the 1970s the patented and natural forms enjoyed a vogue. But as the National Institutes for Cancer points out on its laetrile web page (http://www.nci.nih.gov/cancer_information) no unequivocal evidence has yet been forthcoming.
Perhaps the best that has been shown is that benzaldehyde, which is made from laetrile in the body, does have success against cancer cells. Also, by using the antibody/enzyme trick described above to carry amygdalin right to the tumour target cells (the “smart bomb”), its killing effect was 36 times greater than for amygdalin alone. Finally, amygdalin was shown to sensitize some cancer cells to radiation, which would in theory help someone who had opted for radiotherapy.
You must examine the evidence and make up your own mind. Remember one study showed that laetrile made patients worse (but only one). Laetrile should only be administered by a knowledgeable physician and there are few. It can be prescribed orally or by intravenous infusion.
Side effects of laetrile therapy are those of cyanide poisoning: nausea and vomiting, headache, dizziness, bluish discoloration of the skin due to oxygen-deprivation, liver damage, abnormally low blood pressure), difficulty walking due to damaged nerves, fever, mental confusion, coma, and eventually death. Surprisingly, the oral form is much more toxic than the IV route, so don’t suppose that the products you are being offered on the Internet are the safest way to take it.
Oxygen
“Everyone on this planet needs to be made aware that for several years now I have met and keep meeting people who no longer have AIDS, cancer, and almost any other disease you can think of, due to the continual and correct application of oxygen therapies.” — Ed McCabe (1992). Ed McCabe is currently in jail, 1998.
It has long been established that cancer cells do not thrive in oxygen. They like the dark lurking corners where healthy nutrition penetrates less, an environment which handicaps the local defender cells. This gives us yet another line of therapy, which is to maximize oxygen in the blood. Don’t mix this up with anti-oxidant therapy. Here we mean supplying extra oxygen to kill cancer cells which, in the presence of adequate anti-oxidants, does not harm healthy normal cells.
This can be done a number of ways:
- including supplying oxygen direct, via tubes in the ears or vagina
- ozone applied to a small sample of blood which is then re-injected
- intravenous peroxide infusions, which step up the free oxygen levels.
The aim is to get venous blood bright scarlet, with almost as much oxygen content as that in the arteries.
There is a certain paradox in all this, of course. We treat oxygen as harmful (hence anti-oxidants) yet here we use it therapeutically. It is not unlike chemotherapy, in that we are trying to kill cancer cells, before the treatment damages healthy cells. In this instance however, the safety margin is wide, unlike chemotherapy, where there is virtually no safety margin.
Homeopathy can help too. Special preparations called intermediate catalysts can increase intracellular metabolism, bringing more respiratory energy to the cells and more efficient use of oxygen.
Intravenous Terapy
It has been stated repeatedly in this book that good nutrition is your best protection from diseases brought about by environmental and other stress factors. It can unquestionably help prevent cancer but also help fight it and, in certain cases, can see it go into remission. Aware of this, some doctors think that administering intravenous infusions of key nutrients is important. They argue, correctly, that just because you swallow antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, essential fats and other minerals, that you necessarily get the full dose. Or even much of it.
Quite aside from the argument over how much vitamins and minerals you need, there is a problem called malabsorption, which may mean that you are not able to properly absorb vital nutrients. They may have gone down your gullet but necessarily into the blood stream and so to the cells that need them. The advantage of intravenous nutrient therapy is that a known dose has definitely been presented to the tissues. A further advantage is that it is possible to administer far higher doses than could possibly be taken by mouth. This can be of particular importance when we come to vitamin C therapy.
Scientists at the Bio-Communications Research Institute in Wichita, USA, have shown, in a test tube at least (in vitro, as we say), that a level of vitamin C of over 3 mgms per 100 mls will destroy cancer cells, just as chemotherapy does, but without the bad side effects. It happens that this blood level of vitamin C can be achieved easily by an intravenous infusion of at least 50 grammes of vitamin C, which is quite safe and non-toxic. As an extra bonus, vitamin C is a very powerful antioxidant.
Naturally, if an intravenous line is running, the doctor will take the opportunity to administer other nutrients at the same time: more vitamins and minerals, possibly complex homeopathic compounds.
Don’t worry about irresponsible newspapers announcing that vitamin C “causes cancer”: this story is released to the press every few years. As a lay person, you will probably not have noticed that this myth (for which there is no scientific justification) is always trotted out just before the announcement of a new drug “breakthrough” for cancer! That’s the cynicism of the drug industry for you.