Defeat Cancer (7 page)

Doing detoxification therapies along with antineoplaston treatments isn’t necessary, because antineoplastons stimulate the elimination of cancer waste products through the kidneys (most cancer toxins are ultimately processed through the kidneys) so they are rapidly removed from the body. Hence, patients don’t suffer from toxin-induced die-off reactions.

Many of our patients with most types of cancer have experienced positive results whenever we give them the right combination of gene-targeted medications. We keep a long list of the various cancers our patients have had and the response rate that we have achieved with each of them. Overall, we have an up to 60 percent response rate for many types of advanced cancers, meaning, patients’ tumors have disappeared or substantially decreased. This response rate applies to all common types of cancer: breast, prostate, liver, colon, lung, and others. Some cancers have a higher response rate than others, but overall, our success rate is anywhere from 40-60 percent. These statistics represent, in their majority, people who were initially given a terminal diagnosis and who came to us after conventional treatments failed them. For certain types of brain tumors, we have an over 60 percent partial or complete response rate. For malignant melanoma, we have an objective response rate of around 40 percent. In breast cancer, approximately 60 percent of our patients have an objective response rate. (“Objective” here means that patients’ response to the treatment was complete, partial, mixed, or improved.) These terms are defined in greater detail on the “Comparison of Responses in (the) Most Common Cancers” chart at the end of this chapter. Perhaps
one-third of our patients who have other types of cancer have a complete remission of their tumors.

In general, we have many long-term survivors because we have been using antineoplastons for a long time and have been able to track our patients over the years. Again, these are all people who once had incurable cancers and the worst types of malignancies, which historically, nobody has been able to cure. But we have been able to cure many of them, and what I mean by cure is that they have been tumor-free, for five, ten, even twenty years. They lead normal lives and nobody can tell that they ever had a cancer that was supposed to kill them within a few months.

My work represents the first time in medical history that a treatment has been able to consistently cure untreatable, inoperable tumors. Take for instance, inoperative, malignant gliomas, which are located in the brainstem. Normally, patients with this cancer are given three months to live, but we have one patient who had this malignancy and who is still alive, twenty-three years later, and who remains in perfect health. Such people took antineoplastons for a normal period of time; say, a year, or a year and a half, before they got healed and forgot about their cancers. They are now graduating from college, having families, working, and leading happy, normal lives.

I have been practicing medicine for 44 years, and I have been doing antineoplaston treatment for 34 years. We have patients who have followed up with us 27 years after having received treatment from us, and who are still doing well today. To have this kind of thing happen isn’t unusual for us.

I employ 130 people at my clinic, two of whom are among the country’s top oncologists and previous faculty members of leading medical schools in the United States, so I don’t perform this type of work by myself. The main building of our clinic is 100,000 square feet and an additional 50,000 square foot building includes large
research and pharmaceutical facilities which are inspected by the FDA. It’s not a small doctor’s office, but more like 21 medical offices in one. I have personally trained every doctor who works here with me.

To learn how to do this kind of targeted gene therapy requires a lot of training, but any doctor who wants to learn it can join us and work at our clinic. We guide doctors in their training and they then take that newfound knowledge back home with them to their clinics.

The idea of antineoplastons is catching on, but so far, only oncologists who are the most up-to-date on cancer treatments know about them. Bernadine Healy, MD, in her article, “Breaking Cancer’s Gene Code” (US News and World Report, Oct. 23, 2008), estimates that it will take about 30 years to convince the majority of them about the benefits of using combinations of gene-targeted medications. This is unfortunate, but there are a number of prominent oncologists who are starting to embrace the idea and who are interested in our work because they see the good results that we get at our clinic. We have to convert them one by one.

We have trained many doctors from other countries, as well. For instance, doctors from Japan travel here, learn how to do the treatments, and then go back home. Sometimes we send our doctors to other countries to train people. One clinic in Japan that treats patients based on our methods has done clinical trials on its patients and found that their over five-year survival rate for advanced colon cancer with liver metastasis has increased to 62 percent using antineoplaston therapy, compared to a 34 percent survival rate using traditional chemotherapy. Antineoplaston therapy is expanding into many countries as I continue to invite doctors from all over the world to come to our clinic, so that we can teach them how to do what we do, and they can learn from us.

I really hope that antineoplaston treatment will become popular because it can save the lives of many, and also save a lot of money for the entire United States. Current conventional treatments are expensive and patients are all given the same, standard regimens for their cancers, but these regimens only work for a small number of people. Before prescribing treatments for advanced cancers, doctors should do tests to determine whether a particular treatment would be appropriate for their patients. Patients might spend less than a thousand dollars to do some testing (ie: to determine whether a specific chemotherapeutic drug would affect their cancer), but then they (patients, insurance companies, etc.) would save thousands of dollars per month in treatments because chemotherapy medications are very expensive.

Doctors must take the time to figure out what treatments will work for their patients, because otherwise, we as a community will continue to spend trillions of dollars for nothing and patients will continue to suffer the effects of ill-prescribed medications. Doctors must direct their resources through the proper channels and identify the patients that would truly benefit from different medications. If they could do this, then more people would have access to medical care, and the overall price tag of treatment would be much lower. In the future, I believe that all doctors will be tailoring their treatments to the individual patient, instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach to medicine. Also, I think treatments will be designed through the computer, and that technology will be able to identify the medications that turn off bad genes, as well as those that will turn on good ones.

Most oncologists work like robots. They give all of their patients the same treatment, but this isn’t beneficial, because every patient is unique and has different needs. Early stage cancer patients may be able to avoid chemotherapy if genetic testing supports that they not do it. But it’s difficult to make blanket statements about the effectiveness
of different approaches to cancer because what works for one patient may not work for another.

Oncologists have been trained to believe that radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery are the only ways to treat cancer. If they realized there is another universe out there consisting of treatments that work on the genes, they might want to do them, but most of them don’t even think much about these alternative treatments. They use the same, standard treatments for everyone and see their patients respond to those treatments for short periods of time before they pass away. It’s a very depressing practice. Most of them don’t have the slightest idea of what I do. If they do, and they try this different approach, they are sometimes portrayed as quacks or charlatans. Once they learn the truth, however, then progress can begin to happen. I believe that we just need to bring the right knowledge to them, but we must often convert them one by one.

Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery may have a place in cancer treatment. If, for instance, a patient has a tumor that’s pressing up against the vertebrae and there is an immediate risk of fracturing the vertebrae, then radiation may be appropriate. Small doses of chemotherapy may work quite well in combination with gene targeted therapy, but as a single modality for advanced cancer, chemotherapy’s effects are only temporary. If we are talking about patients with metastatic disease, its effects are short-lived and it leaves people with a lot of toxicity.

Most of our patients have already done chemotherapy and other conventional treatments and failed them all, so they don’t usually do such treatments during gene-targeted therapy. If they haven’t yet tried it, and would like to have chemotherapy in addition to gene-targeted therapy, anyway, then we can incorporate that into their treatment plans. We would prescribe lower doses of antineoplastons, because they work synergistically with chemotherapy. In most cases, though, our patients’ options are limited and their
decision is simple because by the time they get to us, they have usually already had radiation and chemotherapy and failed both kinds of treatment.

Some gene-targeted therapies have side effects which are associated with a rapid response to the treatment. If people respond to their medications rapidly, for instance, they may get a skin rash. It’s not an allergic reaction, but simply a rash that’s associated with a fast response to the treatment. Fortunately, we have invented a special cream which can decrease such reactions, so that patients are able to continue their treatments without interruption. Other patients might experience an increase in blood pressure, which we also associate as being a rapid response to the treatment, so we may put them on a diet and medications to decrease their blood pressure. Such a diet might be low in sodium, with lots of fish oil and sardines, for example. We do this so that all of our patients can continue their therapies without interruption. Most patients don’t experience any side effects from what we do, though. Any medication can cause adverse reactions, but these can be avoided by starting patients on a low dose of the medication and/or by giving them a different medication if they have a poor tolerance to the first one.

Stress has a lot to do with the body’s ability to heal. It’s very important for patients to have strong supportive care from their families, but unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. For example, we have situations where family members subtly give off the impression that they are waiting for the person with cancer to pass away. Whenever this atmosphere is present, it’s difficult for that person to get good results from his or her treatment. I might see, for example, a wealthy, 75 year-old gentleman, with a young, beautiful 27 year-old wife who is obviously waiting for him to die so that she can take his money. Of course, we don’t see this scenario often, but it happens, especially in families where prominent people with a lot of
money marry younger women. Initially, the wives give off the impression that they want to save their husbands, but after a few weeks, we realize that they really just want to let them go. In most cases, though, our patients receive great support from their friends and family members.

The best way for family and friends to support their loved ones is to provide them with the same amount of care that they normally would during any other life situation. For example, they might help them to fight depression, or stay with them in Houston when they come here for two or three weeks to do treatment. Such support helps people with cancer to attain the best possible results from their treatments.

One of the biggest roadblocks to healing is being able to effectively educate patients about their treatments. If we can’t do that, then they won’t get great treatment results. For example, people with advanced cancers need to understand that we can’t usually get rid of their cancers with just a single anti-cancer medication. We need to use a combination of medications and we may need to adjust and perhaps even change those medications after a couple of months. If patients try to save money because they think, “Why should I take four meds when I can take one?” and they then decide to take only one medication, their cancers may respond for awhile to that medication, but eventually, it will be insufficient and their cancers will progress.

We have patients that visit us from all over the world. Sometimes their oncologists are supportive of the treatments that they do with us, and at other times, they aren’t. If the oncologists aren’t supportive, they may do things like tell their patients to take only one of the medications which we have prescribed them, instead of all four. If patients do this, then they won’t get a good response to the
treatment; even if they were initially responding to our protocol, they will stop progressing. This kind of thing tends to happen in Canada, where patients don’t have as much medical freedom as in other countries and doctors tend to discourage them from taking all of the medications we have prescribed. This can be an obstacle to our patients’ healing, which is why it’s very important for us to educate them. We have three seminars every week to educate both patients and doctors about our treatments so that they know why we must use different combinations of medications. If we can educate them, and they follow through with their treatment plans, then we get very good results.