The war on cancer

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Dec, 2004 by Ralph W. Moss

I regularly attend the annual meetings of both the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the Cancer Control Society (CCS). Both are venerable institutions--ASCO now in its 40th year, CCS in its 32nd. Both events attract numerous participants to major venues--ASCO 2004 had a record 28,000 attendees while the much smaller CCS 2004 had 1,200 this year. Each meeting featured numerous presentations on the latest developments in cancer prevention and treatment, with informative displays from companies involved in the field. But there the similarities end. In fact, the two events are so divergent that, like Klingons and Kardassians, they seem to hail from different quadrants of the Galaxy.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

For over three decades, under the leadership of Ms. Lorraine Rosenthal and her colleagues, the CCS has been a source of hard-to-find information on alternative treatments. Its annual convention has functioned as a showcase for many new ideas in the CAM approach to cancer. I have spoken at the CCS meetings several times since 1980.

CCS 2004 featured about 50 lectures on various topics of immediate interest to patients, including the use of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and herbs against cancer. There were quite a few presentations concerning environmental hazards. Dr. Doris Rapp and Burton Goldberg gave impassioned pleas for environmental sanity.

A few of the presentations might conceivably have bridged the two worlds. Patrick Quillen, PhD, gave an enlightening presentation on nutritional support during cancer treatment. Lance Morris, NMD, spoke about hyaluronic acid, vitamin C and cancer, a subject that was also addressed at the 2003 ASCO meeting (Abstract #3023). But there were also talks on concepts that would be unknown to most ASCO participants--"prolotherapy," "diabesity," "vitamin L," etc. By and large, the topics discussed at the two meetings rarely overlap.

South of the Border

The CCS meeting provided insights into the cancer clinics south of the border. There were speeches by clinic directors, booths manned by clinic personnel, and (a few days later) a bus tour of the most prominent clinics, hosted by CCS vice-president Frank Coustineau.

On each of the days of the CCS meeting there were about two dozen presentations. The clinic spokespersons included Charlotte Gerson, founder of the Gerson Institute, who spoke about the work of Baja Nutricare; Bill Fry and Geronimo Rubio, MD, presenting the protocols of the American Metabolic Institute; Francisco Contreras, MD, who reminisced about 41 years of metabolic therapy at the Oasis of Hope Hospital; Kurt Donsbach, DC, who spoke about his work at the Santa Monica Hospital; Gilberto Alvarez, MD of the Stella Maris facility in Tijuana--and that was all on the first day!

On the second day Mike Culbert and Rodrigo Rodriquez, MD, spoke about complementary therapies at International BioCare and on Monday, Ferre Akbarpour, MD, spoke about her work at the Orange County Immune Institute in Huntington Beach, California, one of the few US clinics represented. Les Breitman, MD spoke about Insulin Potentiation Therapy (IPT), a treatment that is also given at an outpatient facility in Tijuana. The oldest-established Mexican clinic, the Bio-Medical Center, was not represented, but there were a number of presentations on the Hoxsey herbal method practiced there.

New Ideas

Laetrile--still the bete noir of ASCO-oriented oncologists--was favorably covered, as it has been at most earlier CCS meetings. But there were also interesting presentations on Chinese medicine. Tsu-Tsair Chi, NMD, spoke on the use of Chinese herbs for cancer. There was also a speech on the Tien Hsien herbal liquid and displays on electroacupuncture as well as Chinese pulse diagnosis.

Perhaps the most controversial presentations on this year's agenda were those dealing with the compound Poly-MVA, several of which cast the palladium-containing compound as a seemingly miraculous treatment for cancer. Tony Martinez, MD, of the "Hope4Cancer" clinic gave an impassioned talk on his work with Poly-MVA. He showed slides of a huge melanoma of the foot of one of his current patients. A few days later, in Tijuana, I had the pleasure of meeting the individual attached to that foot. In his hometown he had been presented with radical amputation as his sole treatment choice--but opted instead for unorthodox medical treatment in Mexico. According to both patient and doctor, the tumor had already diminished in size since the patient began treatment just a week earlier. It will be interesting to follow this gentleman's case.

Shortage of Good Ideas

On the whole, it is a pity that more people who are seriously interested in the treatment of cancer do not attend both the ASCO and CCS meetings. Each group has something to offer the other. The orthodox ASCO is very strong in its methodology for testing new treatments. Working in concert with the mainstream medical establishment, ASCO has refined a way of determining whether or not a particular approach is really effective (i.e., a series of standardized tests culminating in a randomized controlled trial).