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Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Breast Cancer - Radiation-induced Agony and Metastases - Part 2

I have related the sad but not unusual case story of Gene in Part 1 of this three-part article. What had happened to Gene is what I have been seeing happen all too often. After chemotherapy and radiotherapy the cancer spread to the bone. I have often wondered if the treatments had anything to do with the metastasis. Not much information can be obtained from the medical literature. It appears that such question is not important? Or is it a matter of “natural course of event”? I tend to think otherwise.

Read about radiotherapy in any standard textbook and it is acknowledged that radiation itself can cause cancer. In Gene’s case, it is even acknowledged that the increased uptake of tracer seen in L3, L4 and L5 vertebrae is most likely due to DXT. Medical people use medical terms that may be hard for a layperson to understand. So the information written in a medical report often goes unnoticed or not understood. DXT is medical abbreviation for deep X-ray treatment or radiotherapy and this statement above explicitly implicates the disastrous role of radiotherapy in treating Gene’s breast cancer. It has done much harm.

Are we to believe that Gene is just one rare unfortunate victim. I don’t believe that this is so.

Dr. Richard Evans (in The Cancer Breakthrough You’ve Never Heard Of) wrote: “It is my opinion that adjuvant radiation is used more often than necessary … The long-term risks of radiation therapy have not been completely determined.” John Robbins has to say in his book (Reclaiming Our Health) “Radiation is routinely recommended for cancer patients despite the fact that there is no proven benefit to survival … Although cancer specialists know that very few cancer patients are cured by radiotherapy, they continue to recommend it widely because they consider it to be a relatively harmless procedure.”

In the booklet, Radiation Therapy and You, published by the US National Cancer Institute, the following assurances are given: “Although some normal cells are affected by the radiation, most of them appear to recover more fully from the effects of radiation than the cancer cells. Doctors carefully limit the intensity of the treatment and the area being treated so that the cancer will be affected more than the normal healthy tissues. Radiation therapy is an effective way to treat many kinds of cancer in any part of the body.”

This is the official version of the “goodness” of radiotherapy. Do you believe it? Hear what other doctors have to say about radiotherapy.

John Cairns, a professor at the Harvard University School of Public Health (in Scientific American, November 1985) said: “The majority of cancers cannot be cured by radiation because the dose of X-rays required to kill the cancer cells would also kill the patient.” John Lee et. al. (in What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer) wrote: “Radiation reduces (breast cancer) death by 13.2 percent, it increases death from other causes, mostly heart disease by 21.2 percent. The obvious conclusion is: the treatment was a success but the patient died!”

Dr. Seymour Brenner, a radiologist from Brooklyn, New York, said: “After thirty-nine years, I have see no significant progress … I see millions of people dying in five years … I am tired of watching people come to my office and plead for their lives and I have nothing to offer them.

Dr. Ralph Moss (in The Cancer Industry) wrote: “Radiation therapy appears to be of limited value in the treatment of cancer. There is little controversy over the number of patients being cured by radiotherapy – it is small … Some researchers believe that the use of radiation is not only ineffective but also is possibly harmful ... It is part of a disastrous national policy that has always downplayed the hazards of radiation, while promoting its spread to every corner of the country.

Dr. Francisco Contreras, director of the Oasis of Hope Hospital described radiation as an act of desperation. In his book, Health in the 21st Century: Will Doctors Survive? he wrote: “Radiation therapy, in which we placed so much faith a few decades ago, has proven to be another medical blunder. My brother, Dr. Ernesto Contreras Jr., an oncologist and radio-therapist said, after twenty-five years of medical practice, “It is really frustrating ... The effectiveness of the treatment against cancer is doubtful. I have treated thousands of patients … and I can’t say that more than fifteen percent of them have positive response to an orthodox treatment.”