What you NEED to know if you’re facing cancer treatment
By Glenn S. Rothfeld, M.D.
I recently stumbled across research that sent chills down my spine.
The study, published in the june edition of JAMA oncology, unearthed a disgusting industry secret…
It revealed that participants selected for cancer drug trials seem to be purposely younger than the typical patient that would need the treatment.
In other words, Big Pharma has been caught “cherry picking”; when a drug company sets up a trial, it is INTENTIONALLY selecting healthier people to receive their drug.
The result?
The drug’s side effect profile and the survival rate is ARTIFICIALLY INFLATED!!
This is despicable and sounds like it should be illegal…
Yet it’s occurring quite frequently…and quite blatantly!
We’ll blow the lid off this disgusting practice today.
Plus, I’ll show you the three things you need to know if you or a loved one are ever in the unfortunate position of have to consider cancer treatment options.
Cancer drug trials are DELIBERATELY SKEWED
In an article about this shocking study, one of the doctors being interviewed actually admitted that this phenomenon even has a name: the “healthy volunteer effect.”
Rather ironically, the study was done by the department of radiation oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Results showed that, on average, study participants were six years younger than the typical average patient that gets the respective forms of each cancer in the “real world.”
Even more blatant “cherry picking” was uncovered when the researchers found that if a study was funded by Big Pharma, the participants’ age disparity was 6.84 years…BUT if the study was not funded by Big Pharma, the age disparity was only 4.72 years.
In fact, 10 to 20 percent of trials had a built-in age cutoff—meaning older patients were not even allowed to be in the study at all!
A seemingly brazen physician from John Hopkins is quoted as saying on the topic:
“It’s been long known by the people who design clinical trials that the group of people in the trials are different from the ones we are treating…. The people in the trial tend to be healthier than the general population, except that they have cancer. They are less likely to smoke, be overweight, to have hypertension and to have cardiovascular disease than the general population…. That doesn’t mean the study isn’t important… But it should remind oncologists to translate trial findings for the patient in front of you.”
Then he went on to say, “What I’ve been doing for years is telling patients for people in these studies, this was what the response rates were…. For you, I don’t know exactly what it will be. But I know this is the best science.”
Of course, this is NOT what most oncologists are telling their patients. And I am 100 percent sure this is NOT what the patients are walking out of the room understand to be true.
I see a fairly high number of cancer patients and we talk about the conventional and the integrative medical treatment options.
In these conversations, I have NEVER heard a patient say their oncologist warned them that the study done wasn’t applicable to their case because they are older than the study population.
What’s more, it certainly is NOT the “best science”!
3 key takeaways on your cancer treatment options
1. The first take-home message from this study is, of course, the audacity of Big Pharma to purposely “cherry pick” …
They do juuuust enough to fly under the radar, but to still see that inflated result.
It makes a chemotherapeutic drug that might be too toxic and too rough on a frailer patient seem like it’ll work out just fine.
And you should know, the margin of success versus failure in these trials is much smaller than you would think…
For instance, some of these studies on chemo agents are measured on the life expectancy—meaning that a drug was considered successful when it extended someone’s life by six months or so.
Therefore, it makes a world of difference where the test subjects’ health was when they started their chemo journey.
It’s a very convenient way to slant the outcomes in your favor by only allowing healthier subjects in your study!
2. The second takeaway is that almost all oncologists in the United States RELY on these studies to treat their patients.
They don’t usually personalize any treatment protocol; instead, it’s all based on a cookie-cutter protocol that has been determined by this crucial research.
Here’s what I mean…
Each oncologist does scans (usually a CAT scan), blood tests and biopsies to find out what TYPE of cancer a patient has and then what STAGE they’re in—i.e., has the cancer spread and/or how many body parts has it spread to.
Then, the doctor will look to the research to find the types of chemo, the dose, the length, and the frequency of the chemo.
As I said above, they don’t typically look at the mean age of the subjects in the study used to make the “protocol.”
Therefore, a patient will have NO IDEA the treatment decisions his or her doctor recommend are based on protocols TAINTED by the “healthy volunteer effect”!
It’s flat out unethical!
The reason that I am very aware of these “cancer protocols” is that many patients come to me for natural remedies to do instead of chemo, OR to use while doing chemotherapy to mitigate the side effects and improve the outcome.
Over the years, I have suggested to some patients who were having a very hard time tolerating the chemo to ask for lower dosages, only to be told their oncologists have flat out denied—or even laughed—at them for requesting a change.
The excuse?
They don’t want to veer from the protocol that they “know” works!
Think about the implications of that comment.
We’re now uncovering that the test subjects were able to handle the dosages of the chemo because they were healthier to begin with…
So the theory that these patients needed lower dosages was not only VALID—in some cases, it could have SAVED their LIVES.
See, a certain percentage of people die from the chemo, and not their cancer.
And some would have lasted a lot longer on this earth if they had forgone mainstream’s treatment, instead doing nothing, or using only natural remedies to support their body in their fight against the disease.
It’s exactly why I feel it should be LAW that every time you get a chemotherapeutic agent, you must be told the median age for study participants who got the chemo regimen you’re being recommended.
But of course, that’ll never happen.
So at a minimum, I hope you educate yourself and any loved one who might be diagnosed with cancer to ask the right questions
3. Finally, the third take-home message from this study is the truth about how chemotherapy can be absolutely brutal on the human body.
Folks, let it sink in; it is so rough and dangerous, drug companies are purposely picking healthier test subjects to withstand the perils of the treatment.
To me (and hopefully to you), this just highlights how important it is to take care of your body.
Take quality nutraceuticals.
Employ some of the tactics and therapies that I hope you have learned from reading this publication.
Not only will taking good care of your body help to prevent cancer…
Having a healthy body will make you sturdier to fight against cancer IF it were to happen!
And if you or a loved one does get unlucky and gets a cancer diagnosis, I am a HUGE believer that often, it’s a good thing to “support” their body through chemotherapy.
Certainly, I’ve treated many patients over the years with natural remedies while they are doing chemotherapy, and I feel it is crucial piece of their regimen.
In the very least, I feel failing to consider using some natural vitamin, herbal, mineral and amino acid support through chemo is short- sighted at best (and flat out deadly at worst).
Case in point, on a few different occasions in Nutrition and Healing I have discussed the amazing research coming out of the University of Iowa on the use of high dose intravenous vitamin C along with standard chemotherapy and/or radiation.
For at least two kinds of cancer (lung and brain), this approach was shown to prolong the lives of the participants on average five months longer than the standard protocol.
That shows IVC is safe to use…it doesn’t prevent the beneficial effects of chemo…and it actually IMPROVES the outcome!
Thus, if you or a loved one gets the dreaded diagnosis of cancer, please start the conversation with the oncologist about which protocol they recommend…
Find out how much you FIT or MATCH the type of patient that the protocol was tested or “proven” on…
And know that if you decide to do chemotherapy, you have options to support your body!
I urge you to try to find a colleague of mine near where you live to help you in your journey. Most of the doctors on the www.acam.org website should be versed enough in ways to support you through this battle. GR
Citations:
- bit.ly/2EMEREI JAMA Oncology, online June 3, 2019
- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-cancer-trial-subjects/without-older-subjects-cancer-drugs-trials-rely-on-atypical-patients-idUSKCN1T42HG
- https://now.uiowa.edu/2017/03/high-dose-vitamin-c-proves-safe-and-well-tolerated-brain-and-lung-cancer-trials
