July 24, 2009
What's Worse, Health Care or Cancer?
If we can set our fears aside, certain facts need to be faced. A recent European study on prostate cancer poked a hole in the need for early detection, a need that's drummed into us constantly for every type of cancer and which costs billions every year in expensive tests. The new study "indicated that saving one man's life from the disease would require screening about 1,400 men. But among those 1,400, 48 others would undergo treatments like surgery or radiation procedures that would not improve their health because the cancer was not life-threatening to begin with or because it was too far along," to quote the New York Times. The same story covered an early-detection campaign known as "Check Your Neck" aimed at thyroid cancer. Yet this rare cancer kills only 1,400 people a year, and there's no evidence that regular checkups for it save lives. The same holds true for ovarian, lung, and skin cancer. Considering all the factors, including side effects and risks of treatment, one expert in early detection gloomily declared, "There are five things that can happen as a result of screening tests, and four of them are bad."
The one good outcome, finding a fatal cancer that responds well to treatment, is what Americans pay billions and billions of dollars in the hope of achieving.
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The final fact is that American health care needs prevention more than anything else. The majority of medical costs go to treating three conditions: obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. As this society grows fatter, older, and less likely to exercise regularly, all three will rise, and yet sensible prevention would go a long way to halt or reverse that trend. A major type of diabetes, Type 2, is directly linked to obesity, so even though type 1 is incurable, maintenance and prevention would effectively fight the scourge of diabetes, not to mention the myriad secondary problems it causes.
Intent : Deepak Chopra Blog
Deepak Chopra is also active on Care2 with articles submitted and has an e-mail newsletter available for members : Care 2's Soular Energy.
Accepting Paradox
Question:
It seems like accepting paradox is the key to enlightenment and to our own peace of mind. It seems that we are both a loving God/Oneness and individual "souls". And it seems that God is the same: someone we can pray to as well as being our own ultimate identity. When Buddhists speak of "emptiness", is this what they are alluding to? Are we both individual souls and also NOT individual souls because our ultimate identity is God who is being us?
Answer:
Accepting paradox may not be the key to enlightenment, but it is a good place to start. When we can hold seemingly contradictory ideas in our mind at the same time, then we are learning to relinquish a certain ego control that life must fit our limited understanding if we are to accept it. But the truth of life is that it is full of mystery, paradox, and feels no need to conform to the limitations of our linear rationality.
The paradox of existence being both individual and universal is parallel to the idea that God is both immanent and transcendent. That might or might not relate to your question on Buddhist emptiness, depending upon who you talk to. But regardless, I think you are on the right track in recognizing that embrace paradox is a way to move beyond our conditioned controlled worldview. It does open our consciousness into an acceptance of the mystery and uncertainty of life, and that unpredictability is part of what makes life so interesting, fun, and beautiful.
Love,
Deepak
Court Orders Young Guantanamo Prisoner Freed
Judge Ellen Huvelle called the case of Mohammed Jawad a horribly long and tortured history. He was picked up in Afghanistan in 2002. No one knows how old he was, maybe as young as 12. His lawyers say he has grown five inches during his time behind bars. He was accused of throwing a grenade and wounding Americans.
A judge said Jawad's confessions were obtained through torture and threw them out. Jawad's military prosecutor, Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld became so disillusioned with the prosecution that he resigned and became a defense witness. Vandeveld wrote: There is no credible evidence or legal basis to justify Mr. Jawad's detention. He said: Holding Mr. Jawad for over six years with no resolution of his case and with no terminus in sight is something beyond a travesty.
This morning, Judge Ellen Huvelle agreed. She has clearly run out of patience with the government. When Justice Department attorney Ian Gershengorn rose to speak, Huvelle asked: Have you decided to be reasonable? Gershengorn replied: Yes, your honor. Huvelle said: It's taken a while.
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Cancer Cured For Good
The weekly injection of just 100 billionths of a gram of a harmless glyco-protein (a naturally-produced molecule with a sugar component and a protein component) activates the human immune system and cures cancer for good, according to human studies among breast cancer and colon cancer patients, producing complete remissions lasting 4 and 7 years respectively. This glyco-protein cure is totally without side effect but currently goes unused by cancer doctors.
Normal Gc protein (also called Vitamin-D binding protein) , an abundant glyco-protein found in human blood serum, becomes the molecular switch to activate macrophages when it is converted to its active form, called Gc macrophage activating factor (Gc-MAF). Gc protein is normally activated by conversion to Gc-MAF with the help of the B and T cells (bone marrow-made and thymus gland-made white blood cells). But, as researchers explain it themselves, cancer cells secrete an enzyme known as alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase (also called Nagalase) that completely blocks conversion of Gc protein to Gc-MAF, preventing tumor-cell killing by the macrophages. This is the way cancer cells escape detection and destruction, by disengaging the human immune system. This also leaves cancer patients prone to infections and many then succumb to pneumonia or other infections.
The once-weekly injection of minute amounts of Gc-MAF, just 100 nanograms (billionths of a gram), activates macrophages and allows the immune system to pursue cancer cells with vigor, sufficient to produce total long-term cures in humans.
Nobuto Yamamoto, director of the Division of Cancer Immunology and Molecular Biology, Socrates Institute for Therapeutic Immunology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says this is “probably the most potent macrophage activating factor ever discovered.”
Once a sufficient number of activated macrophages are produced, another Gc-MAF injection is not needed for a week because macrophages have a half-life of about six days. After 16-22 weekly doses of Gc-MAF the amount of Nagalase enzyme fell to levels found in healthy people, which serves as evidence tumors have been completely eliminated. The treatment was fool-proof - - - it worked in 100% of 16 breast cancer patients and there were no recurrent tumors over a period of 4 years, says a report in the January 15 issue of the International Journal of Cancer. [International Journal Cancer.2008 January15; 122(2):461-7]
In another startling follow-up report by Dr. Yamamoto and colleagues, published in the upcoming July issue of Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy, Gc-MAF therapy totally abolished tumors in 8 colon cancer patients who had already undergone surgery but still exhibited circulating cancer cells (metastases). After 32-50 weekly injections, ”all colorectal cancer patients exhibited healthy control levels of the serum Nagalase activity, indicating eradication of metastatic tumor cells,”said researchers, an effect that lasted 7 years with no indication of cancer recurrence either by enzyme activity or CT scans, said researchers. [Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy Volume 57, Number 7 / July 2008] Published in an early online edition of this journal, this confirming report has received no attention by the new media so far, despite its striking importance.
Gc-MAF treatment for cancer has been agonizingly slow to develop. Dr. Yamamoto first described this immuno-therapy in 1993. [The Journal of Immunology, 1993 151 (5); 2794-2802]
In a similar animal experiment published in 2003, researchers in Germany, Japan and the United States collaborated to successfully demonstrate that after they had injected macrophage activating factor (Gc-MAF) into tumor-bearing mice, it totally eradicated tumors. [Neoplasia 2003 January; 5(1): 32–40]
In 1997 Dr. Yamamoto injected GcMAF protein into tumor-bearing mice, with the same startling results. A single enzyme injection doubled the survival of these mice and just four enzyme injections increased survival by 6-fold. [Cancer Research 1997 Jun 1; 57(11):2187-92]
In 1996 Dr. Yamamoto reported that all 52 cancer patients he had studied carried elevated blood plasma levels of the immune inactivating alpha-N-acetylgalactosaminidase enzyme (Nagalase), whereas healthy humans had very low levels of this enzyme. [Cancer Research 1996 Jun 15; 56(12):2827-31]
In the early 1990s, Dr. Yamamoto first described how the human immune system is disengaged by enzymes secreted from cancer cells, even filing a patent on the proposed therapy. [US Patent 5326749, July 1994; Cancer Research 1996 June 15; 56: 2827-31]
Activated Gc protein has been used in humans at much higher doses without side effect. This Gc macrophage activating factor (Gc-MAF) has been shown to be effective against a variety of cancers including breast, prostate, stomach, liver, lung, uterus, ovary, brain, skin, head/neck cancer, and leukemia.
Although GcMAF is also called Vitamin-D binding protein, the activation of macrophages does not require Vitamin D.
It cannot be said the Gc-MAF cancer cure has gone unheralded. Reuters News covered this developing story in January. But the news story still did not receive top billing nor did it fully elucidate the importance of the discovery, actually made years ago, that the human body is capable of abolishing cancer once its immune system is properly activated.
GcMAF is a naturally made molecule and is not patentable, though its manufacturing process is patent protected. There is no evidence of any current effort to commercialize this therapy or put it into practice. Should such an effective treatment for cancer come into common practice, the income stream from health-insurance plans for every oncology office and cancer center in the world Would likely be reduced to the point of financial insolvency and hundreds of thousands of jobs would be eliminated.
The National Cancer Institute estimates cancer care in the U.S. costs ~$72 billion annually (2004). Furthermore, about $55 billion of cancer drugs are used annually, none which have not significantly improved survival rates throughout the history of their use. If a typical cancer patient had to undergo 30 GcMAF injections at a cost of $150 per injection, that would cost ~$4500, not counting doctor’s office visits and follow-up testing. For comparison, gene-targeted cancer drugs range from $13,000 to $100,000 in cost per year and produce only marginal improvements in survival (weeks to months). [Targeted Oncology 2007 April, 2 (2); 113-19]
Up to this point, the National Cancer Institute is totally silent on this discovery and there is no evidence the cancer care industry plans to quickly mobilize to use this otherwise harmless treatment.
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Addendum: Sadly, the treatment you have just read about is not available anywhere. Its inventor is attempting to patent a version of it to profiteer off of it even though there is no need to improve upon the GcMAF molecule - - it worked without failure to completely cure four different types of cancer with no long-term remissions and without side effect. While GcMAF is produced by every healthy adult, there are no centers available to extract it from blood samples and inject it into patients with malignancies. Hopefully, someday, doctors will write protocols to do this and submit them to institutional review boards so GcMAF treatment can be performed on an experimental basis. GcMAF is a naturally-made molecule that cannot be patented. This article was written to reveal that there are proven cancer cures that go unused. Of interest, not one oncologist has requested information about GcMAF since this article was written, while I have been barraged with inquires from cancer patients, their families and some interested physicians who are not cancer doctors. -Bill Sardi
Reported Cases of Lyme Disease on the Rise
Residents fearful of a disease that has lingering effects and is not fully understood.
By Aaron Stern/The Almanac
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Growing up in Potomac, Molly Hamilton used to love going to the C&O Canal National Historical Park to walk along the towpath. Now a mother of four raising her children in her hometown, Hamilton is loathe to visit the canal and even watching her children play outdoors makes her uncomfortable.
"I don’t even want to go outside anymore. I look at my [backyard] playground with fear," said Hamilton. Two years ago Hamilton was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and her fondness of the outdoors, bred in childhood, gave way to suspicion and fear. She still doesn’t know how she got it and after countless hours of personal research into the subject Hamilton is unsatisfied with the prevention tactics and information put forth by public health agencies, convinced it isn’t as simple as being bitten by an infected tick.
Hamilton isn’t alone in her fear and her skepticism, and many of the 150 or so people who showed up to the Potomac Community Center on Thursday, July 23 for a public forum on Lyme disease organized by state Del. Susan Lee (D-16) expressed similar frustration at the toll the disease has taken on their lives and the lack of public awareness surrounding the disease.
Lee asked those in attendance at Thursday’s meeting to raise their hands if they had been personally impacted by the bacterial disease; nearly every audience member held a hand high.
CONFIRMED CASES of Lyme disease rose from 85 to 475 in Maryland from 2006 to 2007, and according to statistics from the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that number may have jumped again last year. The number of confirmed Lyme cases in Montgomery County in 2008 was 314 and the suspected cases was 239, making a possible total of 553, though health officials at Thursday’s forum warned that that jump may be due in part to increased reporting.
The reasons for the spike in reported Lyme’s cases is due at least in part to the increasing suburbanization of land that was once reserved for agricultural purposes and the subsequent displacement of deer, said Bill Hamilton, a wildlife ecologist for the Montgomery County Parks Department. That ever-rising population of that displaced deer population comes in more regular contact with humans and deer can easily shed Lyme-carrying ticks in backyards when they come to graze on shrubbery, Hamilton said.
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection transmitted by infected black-legged ticks that attach themselves to the skin for at least 24 hours, according to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. A gradually expanding rash that often looks like a bulls eye-shaped bruise occurs on the site of the bite in 70 to 80 percent of cases, though many at Thursday’s meeting said that those who get that rash are fortunate because the earlier Lyme’s is treated the better the results. The disease often goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for long periods of time when that telltale rash does not appear.
Early symptoms of Lyme disease include fever, headache and fatigue and if untreated can result in the loss of muscle tone on one or both sides of the face, severe headaches, joing stiffness, shooting pains, hear palpitations, and dizziness as the disease begins to affect neurological functions. The disease is treated through antibiotics and the earlier the diagnosis the more successful the treatment and the fewer the long term effects, officials said.
THE BEST WAY to prevent contracting Lyme’s is to wear long sleeved clothing and insect repellent when outdoors, officials said, and thoroughly checking the body — and for parents to check their children — for ticks after being outdoors.
Antibiotic treatments are successful, but there is still no cure or vaccine for Lyme disease and many at Thursday’s meeting said they were skeptical about the extent of information offered by public agencies. Health officials countered by saying that the numbers will decline as the public is educated on the causes and prevention tactics to combat Lyme’s.
Two years after her diagnosis, Hamilton said she still feels the lingering effects of extreme fatigue and that between antibiotics, probiotics and vitamin supplements she takes about 35 pills each day. The fatigue makes it hard for her to do more than the bare minimum it takes to run her custom plate business out of her home, and it makes her fearful for her children when they go outside.
Health officials though said that with the proper amount of precaution and education residents shouldn’t be afraid.
"Don’t feel like you have to be a prisoner," said Marilyn Piety of the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services. "Do feel like you have to take precautions. And take them."
America's Most Polluted Beaches
Testing the Waters 2009 Report
Number of reported beaches is down from 24,000 in 2006 to 20,000 : money for testing is running out.
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