By Bill Sardi
September 5, 2017
In striking contrasts, a university-based team just announced it has developed a five-dollar treatment that completely abolishes cancer in the same week news headlines hailed the Food & Drug Administration’s approval of a $475,000 immunotherapy treatment for blood cancer (leukemia).
I’m sure readers want to hear about the five-dollar cancer cure first. A university-based team set out to develop a cancer cure that could be performed in third-world countries where incomes are low, equipment unavailable and even electricity non-existent. What they came up with needs just a needle and a syringe and a steady hand.
It is called tumor ablation — the injection of ethanol (alcohol) directly into a solid tumor that causes tumor cells to dehydrate and die. It has been successfully demonstrated in pancreatic, parathyroid, liver, adrenal and other tumors. It requires no special equipment and was 100% effective at curing cancers in hamsters in the animal lab. Its only drawback, escape of ethanol into surrounding healthy tissues, has been overcome by making an ethyl cellulose substance that is highly viscous and remains in place rather than spreading to healthy tissues.
Only a 3% ethyl cellulose concentration injected at a certain rate was determined to produce optimal effect. The results were astounding. Using conventional ethanol ablation, 4 of 12 tumors regressed completely by the 7th day following treatment. The formed gel of ethanol cellulose reduced tumor volume to 13% versus 89% of their initial size with standard ethanol instillation. Eight days following injection 7 of 7 tumors had completely regressed with ethanol cellulose gel whereas 0 of 5 regressed completely with standard ethanol.
Ethyl cellulose is currently approved by the US FDA as a food additive and costs less than 50-cents a gram. Injection of 16-times less medicine (ethanol cellulose) versus plain ethanol completely abolished cancer. Curious readers can view the astounding visual images of these complete cures published in a recent edition of Scientific Reports.
A commentator at the American Council on Science & Health website says “any technological advances that result from the team’s research will have applicability not only in the development world but to the develop one, as well.” Will we ever see the day when this treatment is applied en mass? Of course, major news sources buried the five-dollar cancer cure and extolled the half-million dollar one.
Meanwhile, the FDA has approved the first immunotherapy drug for childhood leukemia. The treatment involves the drug Kymriah and will be confined to cases of unremitting acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Kymriah, called the first “living drug,” genetically alters immune cells (T-cells) to fight the disease. About 600 patients develop this form of leukemia annually. It can also be used for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma. It mobilizes the body’s own immune system.
I’ve already explained how to mimic this T-cell therapy at a pittance of the cost of Kymriah. The use of supplemental zinc to restore volume and function to the thymus gland that shrinks with advancing age is an overlooked form of immunotherapy. Thymus gland extract, available in health shops, is also available. It would cost less than $100 to purchase zinc and other vitamins to rejuvenate the immune system.
Expensive as it is, how can anyone be any less than thrilled to hear of this cure. However, T-cell therapy with Kymriah isn’t a complete cure for all. It has an 83% remission rate. It is likely to be more effective if the function of the thymus gland were restored.
What is needed are free markets in medicine
Someone once said the objective of American business is to do things “more, better and faster” than your competitors. That was certainly true when it came to transistor radios, computer printers, handwriting instruments, and a plethora of other products and services. But that isn’t the objective of American medicine.
While medical device and pharmaceutical companies have a right to capture the highest yield for their research and development investments, they don’t have the right to rig markets (buy up generic drugs when their drug patents expire), develop treatments that pander to doctors’ incomes (injection fees for $1000 injectable drugs rather than oral medications), promote newer drugs over better and safer older drugs, lobby Congress to avoid having to be price competitive in selling drugs to Medicare, and pretend they have high R&D costs that justify high-priced drugs and then gain fast FDA approval for their new medicines as orphan drugs for rare diseases and then turn them into billion dollar blockbuster drugs via off label prescription.
Shunned for decades, immunotherapy has become applied science. Modern medicine is finally delivering real cures, but only on its own terms.