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Cancer doesn't kill, Cachexia does

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Dennis Vogel:
Last time I was at the dentist I complained about yet another x-ray. The technician told me it only amounts to the same thing as a few minutes of radiation from the sun. I told her "yes, but at a much higher frequency" which shut her up. All radiation is not the same.

lilitalienboi16:

--- Quote from: Dennis Vogel on October 28, 2013, 12:40:26 PM ---Last time I was at the dentist I complained about yet another x-ray. The technician told me it only amounts to the same thing as a few minutes of radiation from the sun. I told her "yes, but at a much higher frequency" which shut her up. All radiation is not the same.

--- End quote ---

Yes, youre absolutely right dennis. You must evaluate the necesssity of hte x-ray.

For example, if you break your arm, you may want to get it x-rayed so they can figure out how to treat the problem.

If you break your big toe, you might want to pass on the x-ray seeing as the treatment for it, whether its broken or not, will be the same regardless.

People just need to think, X-rays serve a very good purpose but you don't want to be getting x-rays for every little thing. You want to be smart about it.

Oncologists have to TREAT the DISEASE the patient CURRENTLY has and NOT WORRY about what MAY DEVELOP as a result of treatment hence why high frequency radiation is used to bombard cancer. Our techniques have gotten better, we are more accurate and less damaging to surrounding tissues than we were 40 years ago. The point remains though, a physician can't not treat the patient who is dying of cancer for fear of MAYBE giving the patient cancer through treatment because the patient WILL DIE if you don't treat them.

Its like someone who is laying on the ground, DYING because they are no longer breathing, and your doctor won't perform CPR because he's afraid of breaking the patient's ribs!

As for all these alternative treatments.. its really silly. I'll explain this as simple as I can:

Each time a carcinogen such as benzopyrene which is an active chemical carcinogen in cigerette smoke is exposed to, say, a lung cell, it alters the cell leading to changes in the cells intracellular workings and extracellular appearance. The extracellular alterations are absolutely crucial because it is how the immune system recognizes what is SELF and what is FOREIGN.

This is ALSO how medicines such as antibiotics descriminate between eurkaryotic cells (such as yourself) and prokaryotic cells (bacteria). They recognize certain structural motifs present on extracellular surface of cells. This is why they can kill bacteria without harming our bodies, they are very specific!

Now the problem with carcinogens (not viruses but chemical and other environmental carcinogens) is that each time they mutate the cells DNA it produces an alteration in the cell surface that is DIFFERENT. That means that each time benzopyrene is exposed to a lung cell, it will alter the cells surface DIFFERENTLY DESPITE THE FACT THAT ITS THE SAME COMPOUND, BENZOYPYRENE, EACH TIME! A chemical carcinogen NEVER alters a cell's extracellular proteins (known as tumor antigens) the same way twice, despite the fact that its the exact same chemical each time.

This makes it almost IMPOSSIBLE to treat cancer in a SPECIFIC method (such as with a pill like an antibiotic or food source that will target only the cancer cell) as oppossed to the broad approaches of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Imagine trying to hit a target with a drug, but each time your target changes and you miss it!

This is the problem with carcinogen caused cancers (viruses are different due to how they act but i wont go into details of that). So an "ALTERNATIVE THERAPY" that "CURES" cancer is really misleading and honestly, a flat out lie.

Each patient with lung cancer, if you were to use a specific drug to treat it, may work at first for one patient (while not working at all for the others) but won't eliminate the cancer entirely as each cancerous lung cell is altered slightly different at its cell surface and so the drug will only recognize the cancer lung cells it was designed for while completely missing all the others that may exist in the patient at the time. Not to mention this drug probably won't work for any other patient. However, all cancer cells, regardless of their alterations to their appearances, divide rapidly! If we can't target cancer cells specifically, then we can still use their strengths against them in hopes of eliminating them.

This is why our chemo therapy drugs have the same affect as radiation (losing hair, throwing up, immunity supression etc..) because they all target very broad factors (such as the ability to rapidly divide) that are promoted in cancer cells instead of altered (like structural surfaces used by drugs to target specific cells) but because of this method of approach, you also kill the normal healthy cells of your body that also rapidly divide (stomach cells, hair cells, immune cells...)

Also, about chemotherapy, we often times see in cancer patients that the drug works initially but afterwards it stops working. A drug resistant clone develops and becomes the majority population of cancer cells. This is mostly due to gene amplification and less because of how the drug is targeting the cancer cells but nonetheless, worth mentioning.

The idea that physicians and scientists are hiding the cure or not interested in "alternative" methods besides what we currently use is absolutely hog wash. People are just ignorant to how complicated the human body is, the cells that make them up and the diseases that plague this magnificent piece of machinery.

cjwood:
it is up to the individual experiencing the cancer, to decide whether they feel the risk of exposure to radiation outweighs the benefit.  we have to use wisdom and go to God to help us make the decisions right for us.

my cancer was discovered by mammogram.  each year i have a digital mammogram.  technology has changed dramatically even in the 13 years since i had my 8 wks radiation treatment.  many strides have been made to protect the patient, as well as the technician.

it is ALL of God.

claudia

lilitalienboi16:

--- Quote from: GodISGracious on October 28, 2013, 10:46:06 PM ---
Thanks so much for sharing all of this Alex. Must have taken a good chunk of your time.

It doesn't appear in my experience that radiation or chemo cure that many, likely due to the factor you presented; the constant cellular alterations. Do you have any ballpark statistics on what the success rate with these treatments are? Seems from my experience that cancer almost always returns  :-X. Gratefully Claudia you've done well.

Still I have to wonder if I would ever put my body through what my loved ones have had to just to succumb after so much suffering.

Thanks again dear brother.

God bless

--- End quote ---

Yes, for reasons you've just explained, cancer cells are often times considered by scientists to be the ultimate form of evolution. They essentially have maximized their capabilities to divide and never die. They don't die because they turn off genes that are involved in their regulation such as genes responsible for growth factors, cell division and apoptosis (essentially cell suicide when a cell realizes it is no longer functioning properly).

I can provide to you some information that correlates with your question from my notes. Hopefully that should give you an idea on statistics, if they are not presented here.

We know more about this disease than we did 40 years ago.

What we know now is still not a enough. There is much to be learned

Reasons for optimism
Much progress made in past 40 years

Example: 2/3 of all children with cancer will live now. That did not occur 40 years ago.
Example: Individuals with testicular cancer stand a much better chance at recovery than they did 40 years ago.

All over the country, at major cancer centers there are celebrations of 5 and 10 year survivals.
We still use as a yard stick for success, 5 years of survival
40 years ago we would not have these celebrations. Cancer was a death sentence.

What ever optimism we have, it’s guarded optimism

There are still many cancers that are refractory to our best efforts at treating them
These are some of the big cancers
Lung cancer
Colon cancer
Breast cancer

We’ve made a lot of progress in particular cancers. Unfortunately much of that progress has been in cancers that are somewhat rarer than others.

A lot of the benefits and advances we’ve seen can be attributed to Richard Nixon.

In the 1970’s, Richard Nixon ramrodded thru congress a bill called The National Cancer Act
This bill declared war on cancer which no one thought of doing before and in order to win a war you need money and resources.
Nixon proposed to tunnel as much money into understanding and treating the disease

Biological secrets are very difficult to uncover

The thinking was that cancer was a relatively simple disease. There was a mechanism that stopped working properly. So all we had to do was come up with a single treatment that fixed the mechanism.

One problem, One treatment
This was given the name as the Magic Bullet Approach.

Within 10 years of the National Cancer Act it was declared a failure.
We didn't have the answer but we began to realize that cancer is a much more complex problem than we ever thought before.
Even though the war on cancer was declared lost, if we look back from our vantage point, looking back 40 years ago, a different picture emerges.

That early infusion of money into research has begun to finally bear fruit.
Yes, we’ve dispelled the early theories of how simple the problem was going to be. Today we know that cancer is a multifactor complex disease entity. It’s not a single step event
We know that that very complexity offers us opportunities to intervene with therapies at different stages of the disease.

A list of basic facts of the disease: 

Cancer is the number 2 cause of death in the united states
Cancer takes ~1 life every minute
~525,000 people every year die because of this dease
Somewhat less than half the people who get this disease will die from this disease
That's only a 4 % increase in survival over 40 years ago

Most improvements in treatment of this disease have not come from new and innovative therapies rather by refinement of the standard therapies that have been with us for a long time
Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy

Since there is not universal health care, most of the new and innovative strategies are not available to everybody on equal bases.
We are around 18th on the list of how old our people get to live. There are 3rd world countries where people live longer than people in the united states.

Back 40 years ago, our thinking of this disease and its causes was simplistic in nature.
We thought there were two causes for this disease
Viruses
Anything else
Today we know that cancer is a disease of the genes, not all genes, but a handful

Some treatments 40 years ago would seem crude by todays standards

Women with breast cancer today will very often keep their breasts
Men with prostate or testicular cancer will retain sexual function
Laryngeal cancer today can be treated with pinpoint radiation and very often the individual will retain the ability to speak where as 40 years ago the larynx would be removed.
People with bone cancer will very often retain their limbs which was not the case 40 years ago
40 years ago, cancer was a death sentence. There was a fatalistic attitude. Oncologist were physicians that dealt with dying people
Oncologist today are physicians that are developing therapies that are geared towards survival      

Early 1970’s there were roughly 100 board certified oncologist in the entire country
Today there are around 7,500 board certified oncologists

Back in the 1970’s there were 3 cancer treatment centers in the united states
Today there are will over 100 across the country

Mortality rates for childhood cancers have dropped over 40 percent since the 1970’s
Consequence of some potent chemo therapy that was developed and particular drugs

Back in the 1970s, testicular cancer had a mortality rate of about 25%
Today about 92% will survive
Due to new forms of chemo therapy and category of drugs called cisplatin drugs

Increase in the number of adults that have survived with both leukemia’s and lymphomas

Much success with cancers that have been diagnosed early on because of better methods of diagnosis

One such example is prostate cancer
There has been a 75% increase in the detection of prostate cancer now compared to 40 years ago.
Varous types of imaging devices have come into common use like CAT scans and MRI’s
Allows us to detect tumors earlier and in some cases can be tied into treatment because with precise imaging devices for certain types of tumors you can pinpoint such therapies such as radiation therapy.
This allows you not to damage normal tissue

One major problem with radiation and chemo therapy is the fact that a lot of normal tissue gets destroyed. SO much so that it creates all the various side effects and in some cases is life threatening.

Despite these kinds of advances, still there are those cancers that continue to be problematic and they are amongst those that are most frequent:
Colorectal cancer
Lung cancer
Liver cancer
Breast cancer
Prostate cancer

25-45 percent of all cancer deaths can be eliminated by avoiding tobacco products

Some Statistics:

25% of patients that have a particular form of lung cancer called Small cell lung cancer, 60% of patients that have colorectal cancers, and 40% of women who have premenopausal breast cancer do not get the best possible treatments

Half of all breast cancer patients who should get whats called ajumen therapy which is a combination of different kinds of therapies do not get such

5 year survival rate for African American women who get breast cancer is about 38%

Comparable 5 year survival rate for Caucasian women is 55%

Finding the best treatment and paying for it are miles apart

There are means of cancer prevention that are available to everybody on equal bases.

Cigarette smoking and tobacco use account for 25-40% of all cancer deaths in this country
Of the 120,000 people who will have lung cancer this year, 80% of them are smokers
This associates a risk factor, cigarette and tobacco smoke with the onset of the disease.
Theres also a causal relationship between uv exposure and skin cancer.
3 kinds of skin cancer
Melanoma is life threatening
Squamous, carable 99% of the time

There also seems to be an association with dietary fat and several kinds of cancer particularly colorectal and stomach cancers

This association is not yet as strong as for cig smoke and UV exposure

How frequently does cancer occur?
1 out of 3 Americans will develop cancer at some point during their lives
Cancer will claim the life of 1 out of 4 Americans
~510,000 Americans died of cancer in 1990
in 1989 that was 500,000
in 1988 that was 490,000
in 1987 that was 480,000
in 1986 that was 470,000
More recently, apart from the fact that death rates continued to increase thru 1991 then they began leveling off thru 1994 and then they started dropping around 1.1% every year thru 1998.

What are the common kinds of cancer?

There are over 100 different kinds of cancer
Important for treatment, prevention and prognosis
One of the worst cancers from the point of way of survival time is pancreatic cancer. The 5 year survival time for patients is under 4%. That means about 400 people will survive in this country.

Most frequent cancers in the united states handout

All 11 constitute 80% of all cancers in the US
The top 4 are 50% of all cancers in US

The first 3 (long, colorectal and breast) constitute 50% of all cancer deaths

Non-melanoma skin cancer is the most common cancer in the united states

There are well over 700,000 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer
The vast majority of these are readily curable

Melanoma on the other hand is very lethal and has a mortality rate of 30%
Basal and squamous cancers rarely cause problems

Death of cancer handout

Observation 1: death from stomach cancer has decreased

Why? Because of dietary changes. Prior to refrigeration, meats had to be pickled. Refrigeration allowed the ability to have fresh fruit and vegetables.
The incident of stomach cancer is 8 times higher in japan than here because they heavily consumed pickled and conserved meats

Observation 2: lung cancer has increased considerably from the 1930’s

Why? Because of cigarette smoking which increased from the 1930’s

Observation 3: breast cancer stayed the same

Observation 4: death from uterine cancer has gone down

Why? Because of pap smears. 1920’s George Papanikolas developed the Pap smear which is the simplest test ever developed for a disease.
What happens is during a routine exam, a scarping of cells is taken from the cervix and examined microscopically

There are just as many cases of uterine cancer today compared to 50/60 years ago. It’s just that now we find them early and cure people of it.
We discover about 50,000 cases of uterine cancer and cure it.

On the other hand there are far fewer cases of stomach cancer because of refrigeration and dietary expertise we have now

What does the data suggest regarding the difference between stomach cancer rates in the united states and japan?
It tells us that because of the difference in diet and those heavily processed and preserved foods that are so much more in use there than here suggests that there are environmental factors that separate cancer rates between populations

Despite all the progress that we have made with respect to colorectal disease, by the time it is discovered very often, 50% of these patients have had metastasis develop and will die of their disease
The 5 year survival rate of breast cancer is 80%, lung cancer is 15% and pancreatic cancer is 3-4%

The low percentage of pancreatic cancer still means that several thousand people will survive



These are some of the statistics I have. I hope its beneficial to you and help gives you an idea of the battle against cancer as it currently stands in the US and a little of its history.

Its been a pleasure to share some of my school work with you all. Like I said, I'm very passionate about medicine and biology! :)

Blessings to you as well sister.
Alex

loretta:

--- Quote from: cjwood on October 28, 2013, 05:01:46 PM ---my cancer was discovered by mammogram.  each year i have a digital mammogram.  technology has changed dramatically even in the 13 years since i had my 8 wks radiation treatment.  many strides have been made to protect the patient, as well as the technician.[/quote

I hope that's true.  Just recently I was zapped twice for a dental OPJ as the technician didn't get it right the first time :(

Happy for you Claudia, that you're keeping well. :)

For lay people, medicine is really hard to understand and often we rely solely upon the advice of our personal physician, whom we trust next to God.   ;D ;D 
--- End quote ---

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