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King Charles II, 1685
Curiously, his strength seemed to wane
"The king was bled to the extent of a pint from a
vein in his right arm. Next, his shoulder was cut
into and the incised area was sucked of an
additional 8oz of blood. An emetic and a purgative
were administered followed by a second purgative
followed by an enema containing antimone, sacred
bitters, rock salt, mallow leaves, violets,
beetroot, camomile flowers, fennel seeds, linseed,
cinnamon, cardamom seed, saffron, cochineal and
aloes. The king's scalp was shaved and a blister
raised. A sneezing powder of hellebore was
administered. A plaster of burgundy pitch and pigeon
dung was applied to the feet. Medicaments included
melon seeds, manna, slippery-elm, black cherry
water, lime flowers, lily of the valley, peony,
lavender, and dissolved pearls. As he grew worse,
forty drops of extract of human skull were
administered, followed by a rallying dose of
Raleigh's antidote. Finally Bezoar Stone was given.
Curiously, his Majesty's strength seemed to wane
after all these interventions and as the end of his
life seemed imminent, his doctors tried a last ditch
attempt by forcing more Raleigh's mixture, pearl
julep and ammonia down the dying King's throat.
Further treatment was rendered more difficult by the
king's death."
We can be sure that the physicians gathered around
the King's bed were all leaders in their particular
field - royalty and presidents do not settle for
anything less. But as Proust observed, with
hindsight, we can now see the hideous error of their
therapeutics. Today, the skull-drops, the ammonia
and the pigeon dung have long since disappeared from
the conventional arsenal, but what will we say in a
few years' time when we look back on the "highly
respected" cancer therapeutics of 2002? Will we dare
to venture that there is nothing new under the sun?
John Diamond, 2001
Have we really progressed much further?
"He's been poisoned, blasted, had bits lopped off
him, been in remission, felt lumps grow again, been
given shreds of hope, had hope removed." Nicci
Gerrard, Sunday Observer, 14.5.2001
Many thousands of people were touched by John
Diamond's regular Times newspaper column, giving
stark and brutal insight into living with throat
cancer. In a witty and very down-to-earth manner,
John's remarkable column explored numerous
life-with-cancer issues, including the ups and
considerably more downs in body and mind during
radiation treatment, the effects of his illness upon
the wider family, the rediscovery of everyday
wonders previously taken for granted and his
distaste for numerous cancer cliche's such as "brave
John" and "staying positive", replying, "I am not
brave. I did not choose cancer. I am just me,
dealing with it." and "Whenever somebody told me how
good a positive attitude would be for me, what they
really meant was how much easier a positive attitude
would make it for them." He was also well-known for
his castigation of almost all non-orthodox
treatments and for his willingness to submit to all
that the medical orthodoxy had to offer " a service
that even he, a conventional advocate, had variously
described as "pay-as-you-bleed" and "surgical
muggings".
For me, the most memorable images of John were
captured in the BBC's Inside Story "a television
programme that followed John during a year of
treatment, showing him clearly suffering. An
operation on John's throat caused him to lose his
voice, which as a popular broadcaster was a serious
blow. Later, through surgery and radiation
treatment, he would lose most of his tongue and with
it, all sense of taste and the ability to eat
properly - a double whammy, given that he was
married to TV super-cook Nigella Lawson.
In his extraordinary book "C: Because Cowards get
Cancer Too" (which I could not put down) he wrote:
"He who didn't realize what a boon an unimpaired
voice was, who ate his food without stopping to
think about its remarkable flavour, who was
criminally profligate with words, who took his wife
and children and friends for granted - in short, he
who didn't know he was living."
John died in March 2001, aged 47, after having
suffered dreadfully for four years, In his death, he
joined sports presenter Helen Rollason, Bill "Compo"
Owen, Ian Dury, Roy Castle, Cardinal Basil Hume,
Linda McCartney and, most recently, ex-Beatle George
Harrison, plus 152,500 others in the UK who succumb
annually to the cancer ordeal. Kate Law of the
Cancer Research Campaign said that John's story
helped to bring cancer out of the closet in Britain.
John's writings certainly brought home the ugliness
of conventional treatment. But the more informed in
the cancer debate who have read John's columns and
book will have recognised that John's writings,
brilliant though they were, did not bring out the
full story of cancer at all.
Fraught with risks and side-effects
Consider the following statement from cancer
specialist, Professor Charles Mathe, who declared:
"If I contracted cancer, I would never go to a
standard cancer treatment centre. Cancer victims who
live far from such centres have a chance."
Walter Last, writing in The Ecologist, reported
recently: "After analysing cancer survival
statistics for several decades, Dr Hardin Jones,
Professor at the University of California, concluded
"...patients are as well, or better off untreated.
Jones' disturbing assessment has never been
refuted."
Chemotherapy is an invasive and toxic treatment able
supposedly to eliminate cancer cells. Unfortunately
though, its ferocious chemistry is not able to
differentiate between the cancerous cell or the
healthy cell and surrounding healthy tissue. Put
simply, chemotherapy is an intravenously
administered poison that kills all living matter.
Repeated chemotherapy and repeated radiation
treatments kill the whole body by degrees. The
immune system is hit particularly hard by
chemotherapy and often does not recuperate enough to
adequately protect from common illnesses, which can
then lead to death. Some 67% of people who die
during cancer treatment do so through opportunistic
infections arising as a direct result of the immune
system failing because of the aggressive and toxic
nature of the drugs. What is this if it is not death
by doctoring?
Scientists based at McGill Cancer Centre sent a
questionnaire to 118 lung cancer doctors to
determine what degree of faith these practicing
cancer physicians placed in the therapies they
administered. They were asked to imagine that they
had cancer and were asked which of six current
trials they would choose. 79 doctors responded of
which 64 (81%) would not consent to be in any trial
containing Cisplatin - one of the common
chemotherapy drugs they were trialing, (currently
achieving worldwide sales of about $110,000,000 a
year) and 58 of the 79 (73%) found that all the
trials in question were unacceptable due to the
ineffectiveness of chemotherapy and its unacceptably
high degree of toxicity.
Chemotherapy - A scientific wasteland
The following extract is taken from Dr Tim O'Shea at
The Doctor Within:
A German epidemiologist from the Heidelberg/Mannheim
Tumor Clinic, Dr. Ulrich Abel has done a
comprehensive review and analysis of every major
study and clinical trial of chemotherapy ever done.
His conclusions should be read by anyone who is
about to embark on the Chemo Express. To make sure
he had reviewed everything ever published on
chemotherapy, Abel sent letters to over 350 medical
centers around the world asking them to send him
anything they had published on the subject. Abel
researched thousands of articles: it is unlikely
that anyone in the world knows more about
chemotherapy than he.
The analysis took him several years, but the results
are astounding: Abel found that the overall
worldwide success rate of chemotherapy was
"appalling" because there was simply no scientific
evidence available anywhere that chemotherapy can
"extend in any appreciable way the lives of patients
suffering from the most common organic cancers."
Abel emphasizes that chemotherapy rarely can improve
the quality of life. He describes chemotherapy as "a
scientific wasteland" and states that at least 80
percent of chemotherapy administered throughout the
world is worthless, and is akin to the "emperor's
new clothes"- neither doctor nor patient is willing
to give up on chemotherapy even though there is no
scientific evidence that it works! - Lancet 10 Aug
91 No mainstream media even mentioned this
comprehensive study: it was totally buried.
"Success of most chemotherapies is appalling." There
is no scientific evidence for its ability to extend
in any appreciable way the lives of patients
suffering from the most common organic cancer."
Chemotherapy for malignancies too advanced for
surgery, which accounts for 80% of all cancers, is a
scientific wasteland " Dr Uhlrich Abel, Stuttgart,
1990
Chemotherapy can cause cancer
An amazing admission is made on a web page supported
by the US National Cancer Institute. Giving the
reader information on the treatment of Wilm's Tumour
( a children's cancer which affects the kidney) the
site goes on to state:
When very high doses of chemotherapy are used to
kill cancer cells, these high doses can destroy the
blood-forming tissue in the bones (the bone marrow).
If very high doses of chemotherapy are needed to
treat the cancer, bone marrow may be taken from the
bones before therapy and frozen until it is needed.
Following chemotherapy, the bone marrow is given
back through a needle in a vein. This is called
autologous bone marrow reinfusion.
Radiation therapy uses x-rays or other high-energy
rays to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors.
Radiation for Wilms' tumor usually comes from a
machine outside the body (external radiation
therapy). Radiation may be used before or after
surgery and/or chemotherapy.
After several years, some patients develop another
form of cancer as a result of their treatment with
chemotherapy and radiation. Clinical trials are
ongoing to determine if lower doses of chemotherapy
and radiation can be used. " |
