Colorectal Cancer - Letters to the Editor

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, April, 2002

Editor:

I must commend Ralph Moss, PhD for his reports in your journal on what the orthodox medical establishment is doing or not getting done in new ways to treat cancer. I read his reports and then read them the second time.

I would like to comment on his report in your January 2002 issue on radiation treatment for rectal cancer. It is not a good story that Dr. Moss tells. There was no increase in survival at all and much that will cause devastating problems. I see that I have written on the subject of colon cancer in your August/September 2001 issue, but I have left something important unsaid.

Rectal and colon cancer are usually lumped together as one form of cancer listed as colorectal cancer. The point that I did not make is that we will this year have about 55,000 deaths from colorectal cancer. There could be no such deaths or very few such deaths among us.

William Grant, PhD had a report in the TLfDP in the July 1999 issue. He casts some doubt on whether fiber in diet is preventing colorectal cancer. In his letter he had an interesting chart. It showed a marked increase in colon cancer as calories from animal food increased. He showed over 200 deaths per 100,000 from colon cancer if diet was largely from animal food but near zero if all food in the diet was in vegetable calories.

I have mentioned it before but there was an editorial in The Lancet in the April 27, 1974 issue with the title "Beware of the Ox." In this editorial it was said that colon cancer is proportional to beef in diet. There is no place in the world, the editor said, where there is little beef in diet and a high incidence of colon cancer. As this is being typed, there is a news flash on CNN TV saying that red meat in diet increases the risk of both colon and stomach cancer by a factor of three. It is likely that red meat other than beef in general, is a major cause of colorectal cancer.

There was a report in The Lancet for January 13, 1990 that 15,000 Indians living in Scotland were almost free from colorectal cancer. They were living among the population of Scotland which had the most beef in diet of any place in the world along with the highest incidence of colorectal cancer any place in the world.

I suggested to Burkitt that it was the absence of red meat in the Ugandian diet both in the black and the Indian populations, that was causing them to be free from colorectal cancer. He stayed with his concept that fiber in diet was preventing colorectal cancer.

I think it likely that if we would all become strict vegetarians, we might be free from colorectal cancer. It could be that we can still live on a high meat diet and at the same time, greatly reduce the risk of death from colorectal cancer.

In my letter in the Aug/Sept. issue of the TL[florin]DP I told of Drs. Frank and Cedric Garland of the University of California. For many years it has been their teaching that vitamin D tends to prevent both colorectal and breast cancer. I have told of a trial they ran in Maryland and reported on in The Lancet in the November 18, 1989 issue. In this study a population of 26,000 was followed for eight years. What was found was that the 20% of this population with the lowest vitamin Din blood had a risk of colorectal cancer that was 80% greater than the 20% of the part of the population with the highest vitamin D in blood. This study was done in a population with much red meat in diet. The implication of this study was that one can have a lot of red meat in diet and still be at a low risk of colorectal cancer if one has high vitamin D in blood. The Garlands feel that calcium plays a part with vitamin D in the prevention of colorectal cancer.

There has been a trial underway conducted by our National Institutes of Health of 32,000 postmenopausal women. Half are given a supplement of calcium and vitamin D. What will be followed are colorectal cancer, breast cancer and bone fractures. This trial has been underway for eight years and the results will be published in 2003. I venture that there will be some exciting results.

It is suggested here that in our big meat-eating population, there can be a great reduction in colorectal cancer if in general, a supplement of vitamin D and calcium is taken. How much calcium and vitamin D that should be taken I do not know. I take 1,000 iu of vitamin D and 500 mg of calcium citrate.

Now let us say that one eats a lot of red meat, takes no supplement of vitamin D and calcium and develops colorectal cancer. There is still hope for a long survival and a long cancer-free life thereafter.

Cimetidine, trade name Tagamet, is a wonderful anticancer drug. Smith Klein Beechman at one time had a patent on cimetidine and this drug firm did much of the work to find the anticancer effect of cimetidine. Yet when the patent expired on cimetidine, this drug firm stopped fostering cimetidine for cancer treatment.

Cimetidine inhibits T suppressor cells. It also inhibits histamine which is immunosuppressive. Cimetidine also causes cancer cell killing lymphocytes to infiltrate malignant tumors.