Alternative Cancer Treatments
Alternative
Cancer Treatments
Jake Ames, MD, HMD & Douglas G. Mitchell, Ph.D.,
D.Univ.
A strategy to survive metastatic cancer
This
treatment plan is for patients whose prior treatment e.g. surgery, has failed
and they now face the daunting prospect of treating cancer which has
metastasized (spread). The program
comprises multiple treatment steps. Patients are recommended to begin with step
1. Get this firmly in place and take it for a while. Then add Step 2 treatments
and then later treatments. Each added step should raise the efficacy of the
treatment process and increase the probability of long-term survival.
Why is
this treatment plan needed?
Because
once surgery has failed, patients are, with some exceptions, only offered
“helper “ treatments. They need “potentially curative” treatments.
A “helper
treatment” is one which is likely to extend survival but not for very long. A
good “helper treatment” can roughly double life expectancy. This is useful, but
not enough for most patients.
A “potentially
curative” treatment is one, which is capable of completely removing evidence of
cancer resulting in many years survival.
With some exceptions, patients are only offered “helper treatments”,
which help to varying degrees. This includes chemotherapy, radiotherapy,
immunotherapy, sono-photodynamic therapy, hormone treatments, plus non-toxic
treatments such as correcting vitamins D and K and other deficiencies, and improving
general health.
What is
the treatment plan?
It is
based on eight non-toxic “potentially curative” therapies plus a number of
non-toxic “helper therapies.”
Non-toxic
to avoid damage to the patient’s health. The problems with toxic treatments are
they are unpleasant, degrade our immune systems, and may cause both short term
and long term side effects. They need to have impressive benefits to overcome
these disadvantages. Most do not have such benefits and can be replaced by
better and safer treatments.
“Potentially
curative”, not because they guarantee a cure. No physician in his right mind
will guarantee a cure. These treatments have reasonable prospects of producing
long-term survival and cures for a number of patients.
Another
major goal is to avoid added pain and to reduce existing cancer pain, without
adding to it with toxic treatments. This is a big, big issue, much underestimated
by the cancer industry.
Background
Surgery
is the top treatment offered by the cancer industry. It will cure people 50-60%
of the time. The “cured” patients are typically free from their current cancer
for 20+ years. Otherwise, and apart from surgery, the cancer industry only
occasionally offers curative treatments. They have nothing curative for the
common solid tumours. Morgan et al, for example, showed that cytotoxic
treatments (chemotherapy) in the U.S. only increased the number of patients
achieving five-year survival by 2.1%. This is a minor benefit, often
accompanied by very unpleasant and health degrading side effects. There are,
however, large individual variations. For example, the median (a type of
average) survival for a cancer may be 10 months. Some people are lucky and
survive 20 months, others are unlucky and toxic treatment shortens their life
by 5 months.
Immunotherapy
is a much-publicized high profit treatment. So far, it is certainly useful for
melanoma where it can extend life by years. Reports for other cancers are less
optimistic. It is not curative.
When
choosing treatments, patients need to allow for survivorship bias. Longer-term
survivors are here to testify to their treatment efficacy. The short-term
survivors are no longer here to complain about their treatment.
People
with metastatic cancer can approach the illness in three ways:
a. Just get the treatment recommended by
their oncologist, and do nothing more.
b. Seek out the best available treatment.
This could be a top clinic some distance away, or added treatments such as a
better diet. Lamont et al found that
people who travelled longer distances to their cancer clinic tripled their
survival time. The longer distance reflects their decision to improve the
quality of their treatment. The extra survival is huge by cancer standards and
matches the best of our “helper” treatments.
c. Seek out hopefully higher quality
treatments using non-standard and unapproved methods. A good pathway here is to
first note the oncologists’ treatment recommendations. Then check their
performance e.g. by consulting the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s web site,
www.cancer.gov. Then, decide if the proposed treatment is adequate. For example, standard treatment for small
cell lung cancer results in a median survival of about 10 months. If this is
not good enough, they can seek out alternative approaches. Many clinics sell
alternative therapies and it is very difficult to choose a top class treatment
protocol.
Alternative treatments
It is
fairly easy to find what I call “helper” treatments. These will extend life,
some much more than chemotherapy and radiation therapy. They are not, however,
curative. They extend life rather than provide long-term survival.
There
are “potentially curative” therapies, but they are hard to find, and it is hard
to find expert guidance. They are generally low cost and therefore locked out
by regulators. No one will spend many millions of dollars and many years to get
regulatory approval, when anyone can sell their products. Also, it is difficult
or impossible for doctors to recommend such products. They are under huge
pressure to prescribe standard treatments.
This treatment plan is based on the use of several treatments, which are
known to cure a significant number of people. The information comes from
research articles, reports from people using or researching these treatments
and from relevant books. The program has so far been used by a small group of
patients. Some have late stage cancers. Results so far have been outstanding,
and
would doubtless be better had we begun some program components much earlier.
There
are three steps (eventually) four steps, with each step divided into four
parts:
CURE. A
treatment known to cure a significant number of patients.
HELPER.
Treatments which extend life and which are likely to assist CURE treatments
BASICS.
Lifestyle strategies, which should be followed by everyone with or without
cancer.
DIAGNOSTICS.
Clinical tests to identify factors, which are likely to reduce the
effectiveness of the treatment, process e.g. nutritional deficiencies.
There
also additional stand-alone treatments, which patients can optionally do. They
are presented as optional treatments because the total possible treatment plan
takes many hours per day with moderate costs. Patients need to balance time
spent improving outcomes against time spent enjoying their lives.
How many
treatment steps do I need?
We don’t
know. There may be big individual differences in response depending on the type
and stage of cancer, the amount of treatments carried out, plus individual
differences.
A
general guideline is that late stage patients must very aggressively treat the
cancer. They need to spend a lot of time doing everything they can do, and can
afford. With a short life expectancy, get a comprehensive, aggressive set of
treatments so they can eliminate the cancer quickly.
Early
stage patients may well need less treatment. A few of our protocols are
essential, but we cannot guarantee that this is enough. More protocols are
safer.
What do
the regulators say about this program?
They
don’t and they won’t. For two reasons:
a. No one is going to fund the work needed to
get regulatory approval for products that can’t be patented. Most of our
treatments can’t be patented.
b. Multi-step programs have extreme
difficulty getting past the regulators. They are too complex for regulators to
handle. Such programs are automatically locked out. This is unfortunate because
people with cancer should always be doing multiple treatments. Not less than 6
treatments.
c. The regulators prefer controlled trials. X
patients get the therapy being tested, and X matched patients get a placebo.
Even if the treated group do much better than the control, regulators will want
to know how much benefit is due to component 1, how much to 2, etc. These are very
hard questions to answer. They would do far better by counting “miracles”. If a
significant fraction of patients achieve improbably good results (“miracles”)
then that treatment has value. This applies no matter what anyone thinks of the
treatment. Results count, theories don’t necessarily count.
© 2017 Copyright Jake Ames & Douglas G. Mitchell All Rights
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