Cancer Therapy

1. Cancer Therapy

1.1 Cancer Chemotherapy

The concept of curing cancer by the administration of a drug is erroneous. It is the outgrowth of the development of drugs to “cure” infections based on the false concept of invasion by bacteria.

The difference between a normal cell and cancer cell is not comparable to the difference between a bacterium and the host, and the drugs that affect cancer cells also affect normal cells in the same host. It is therefore apparent that treatment of malignant diseases which are disseminated, such as metastatic cancer, leukemia, lymphomas, or any other widespread cancer, would, under the theory, require an agent capable of diffusing throughout the body in uniform concentrations.

The treatment of cancer by drugs is called the chemotherapy of cancer. The outstanding shortcoming of such methods is the failure of the drugs to destroy the cancer cells specifically without simultaneously seriously damaging the host.

Cancer chemotherapy has been under intensive development during the past 25 years. Physicians claim that this drug therapy has resulted in “cures”—occurring in mostly uncommon tumors—but apply the theory in treating common ones in the hope of “curing” all types of cancer. The entire concept is false since the body can never be poisoned into health. Symptoms may be suppressed, and where the disease was in the sixth stage (induration) there may be some false signs of “cure.” But such illusionary recoveries never result in a state of health. As with all diseases, suppression of one symptom results in a worsened condition that may reappear in the same location or elsewhere. Thus, drug therapy during the tumorous sixth stage could hasten cancer.

1.1.1 Principles of Therapy

Cancer chemotherapy rests on the pretense that anti-tumor drugs are more efficient in killing tumor cells during DNA synthesis and active division; that is, they are more active against cycling than against noncycling cells. Some tumors are said to be “cured” by drugs because the majority of their cells, at any given moment, are making DNA and dividing (i.e., have a large growth fraction). When a drug reaches the tumor, the great majority of the cells in these phases of the cell cycle die. When the tumor is young, most of its cells are making DNA; as it ages, the growth fraction decreases, growth is slowed, and drug sensitivity is reduced. The “curable” tumors are said to be those that are in the early stages while their cells are in the growth fraction.

Nonresponsive tumors are said to be those that are old and have low-growth fractions. They are then given combined systemic chemotherapy with surgery and radiation. These are said to be effective means of removing the old portions of the tumor. Under this theory, chemotherapy kills the two categories of tumor cells left behind following local removal—the microscopic nests of cells in the tissue planes adjacent to the primary tumor left outside the surgical margin, and clinically in apparent distant metastases. Both categories of cells are in the infancy of their growth cycle and are highly susceptible to drugs given after surgery. However, old, large tumors are more likely to contain so-called “drug-resistant cells” because the large number of cells divisions is accompanied by the development of so-called drug-resistant mutants, especially if the cells have been exposed to chemotherapeutic agents.

Normal tissues that have a high percentage of cells synthesizing DNA, such as the hair roots, hematopoietic tissues, and the various GI epithelia from mouth to rectum, are also destroyed by chemotherapy.

The body creates 10,000,000 new blood cells per second. It has some 25 trillion blood cells, and their average life expectancy is about thirty days, so the body is constantly renewing itself with new cells. This means that at any given time, cells are in the state of division. Since chemotherapeutic drugs are systemic poisons, every cell and tissue of the entire body is affected. There is some damage and destruction done to trillions of healthy cells from this therapy.

In addition to killing cells during DNA synthesis or during physical mitosis, most drugs have a variable secondary killing capacity for cells in other stages of the cell cycle. A combination of drugs are given to eradicate cells in these stages of the cell cycle and it is given more intensively and for relatively long durations. Thus, more normal healthy cells are killed along with cancer cells.

In a 1981 article in In These Times, Ellen Cantarow states that the drugs that “cure” the rarest kinds of cancer, and which still are given for the common sorts, are themselves highly toxic to bone marrow, lungs, kidneys, heart and stomach. They cause horrible nausea, and they erode the lining of the mouth and throat. One of the ironies of treatment is that it is carcinogenic in itself.

The large American cancer institutions don’t advertise such facts. Nor do they tell you that “surviving” beyond the magic five-year mark laid down as the finish line for a “cure” may mean having your hair fall out, your body mutilated, and being in pain and depression.

The American cancer establishment is bound up tightly in the multinational industrial complex. For instance, some dozen of the overseers of the world’s largest private cancer center, Sloan-Kettering, are affiliated with companies like Exxon, American Cyanamid, Texaco, and Union Carbide, all major petro-chemical corporations responsible for spewing billions of tons of carcinogenic chemicals into the air we breathe, the earth in which we plant our fruits and vegetables, and the water we drink.

1.2 Chemotherapeutic Agents

The chemical agents used in the treatment of cancer have a wide variety of biological effects on cells. They can have a direct effect upon the DNA of the cell nucleus, or they can interfere in the transfer of information from the DNA to the messenger RNA with the subsequent alteration of protein synthesis by the cell. They can chemically interfere with the mitotic processes of cells. They can interfere with the formation of hormones which are essential to the life of the cancer cell. In general, there are four major classes of drugs which are useful in blocking the synthesis of particular proteins or enzymes. These are (1) the alkylating agents, (2) the antimetabolites, (3) the steroid hormones, and (4) miscellaneous compounds with specific blocking effects.