David Hoffman, FNIMH, AHG
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 So far, nci has screened 176,000 extracts from 41,000 plant samples collected from 25 countries. The University of Illinois obtains samples from Southeast Asia, the Missouri Botanical Garden collects in
Africa, and the New York Botanical Garden gathers plants from Central and South America. Each center collects 1,200 samples per year, and different plant parts constitute discrete samples. |
| Of 25,000 screens of both synthetic and natural materials conducted annually by the nci, only 8 to 12 compounds will be selected for preclinical testing, and only 6 to 8 of these will actually enter clinical trials.20
THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION AND HERBAL MEDICINE
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes that herbalism is common to all cultures of the world and actively promotes the development of what it calls traditional medicine. The Traditional Medicine Program was established by the WHO in 1977. The WHO Resolution EB63.R4 of that year expressed the following idea:
. . . |
Bill Sardi
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 Of nearly 8,900 nci grant proposals awarded last year, 92% didn't even mention the word metastasis.
So pharma companies, quite naturally, don't concentrate on solving the problem of metastasis (the thing that kills people); they focus on devising drugs that shrink tumors (the things that don't).
The second problem is even bigger: Clinical trials are focused on the wrong goal—on doing "proper" science rather than saving lives.
Economic influence like this is probably what prompts political pressure on the FDA to eventually approve drugs so that investors can get their money back. |
Devra Davis
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 Using statistical evidence on cancer rates, Hueper began to amass more evidence at the nci that validated his little sketch from 1950: environmental exposure to synthetic dyes well outside the workplace affected cancer patterns in the community. He was forced to withdraw papers from consideration under threat of legal action.
There is one matter on which it is important to fault Hueper. His single-minded focus on chemical hazards led him to minimize the dangers of cigarette smoking. In his autobiography, he explained that he had never doubted these dangers. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| If you, the juror, consider that most of academic research seeks to maintain an ethical standard by keeping a small percentage of their research funding from private and public donors (including NIH, nci, and charitable organizations) separate from corporate-controlled research, the picture remains fuzzy.
For example, with the above issue regarding Rezulin, suppose only 10% of university funding for diabetes research did come from Warner Lambert. |
Devra Davis
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| Finally the ACS and nci had a champion who spoke the four-letter word that few had dared to utter: cure. Sometimes personal enthusiasms, even for scientists, are hard to hold in check. Haunted by what had happened to his young wife, Strax became an ardent advocate for mammography He believed it had to work. He likened the failure to get a mammogram to walking into a busy street without looking both ways. A woman who ignored the risk of breast cancer faced disaster. |
Bottom Line Health
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| For a breast cancer risk assessment tool, — visit the National Cancer Institute Web site, http://bcra.nci.nih.gov.
Acrylamide Role in Breast Cancer Refuted
Breast cancer is not linked to acrylamide, commonly found in potato chips, bread, coffee, cereal and other fried, baked or roasted high-carbohydrate foods. Acrylamide is currently classified as a probable human carcinogen because, in high doses, it has been found to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Recentfinding: Women who consumed large amounts of foods that contain acrylamide did not increase their risk of developing breast cancer. |
| For more information on cancer genetics, go to the Web site of the National Cancer Institute at www.nci.nih.gov/cancerinfo/preven tion-genetics-causes/genetics.
Vaccines Help 40% of Cancer Patients
Michael Morse, MD, associate professor of medicine, division of medical oncology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, and editor of Handbook of Cancer Vaccines. Humana. He has published more than 150 scientific papers, book chapters and abstracts on immunotherapy and has developed several cancer vaccinations. |
Devra Davis
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| At first, nobody really saw the report beyond the nci division we submitted it to. We had documented how paltry the efforts had been to control the disease, how much had been missed, and how smoking had been swept under the table. Then the reaction started. All the people Devra interviewed who were still alive got copies and started talking about what everybody else had said.
"The next year in Congress, Ben Byrd, the president of the American Cancer Society, denounced our report because it made the ACS look bad. They deserved to look bad. |
| Chest-x-ray equivalency based on nci estimates in this table a Unadjusted: refers to using the same settings as adults b Adjusted: refers to using settings adjusted for body weight
Source: Society for Pediatric Radiology and National Cancer Institute, "Radiation & Pediatric Computed Tomograp Providers," Summer 2002, http: / / www. cancer, gov / cancer topics / causes / radiation-r isks-pediatric-CT. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 In fact, one report published in nci Cancer Weekly by Michiaki Murakoshi, who led a team of biochemists at Japan's Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, contends that alpha-carotene may be more powerful than beta-carotene in inhibiting processes that may lead to tumor growth. |
Simon Mills and Kerry Bone
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 In its intensive programme from 1955, screening plant extracts for anticancer activity, the nci found less than four extracts in every thousand tested containing compounds that demonstrated efficacy. Of the approximately 114 000 extracts studied, 11 000 exhibited anti-tumour activity in the P338 prescreen but of these only 500 demonstrated such activity in panel testing and only 26 proceeded to secondary testing. Of the plant isolates that reached this stage, most were alkaloids or terpenoids, with a few from plants used in traditional medicine (e.g. |
| The anticancer benefits of the alkaloids vinblastine and vincristine from the Madagascar periwinkle, Catharantheus roseus, were identified separately from the nci programme. Other plant isolates from traditional remedies have been identified as having antitu-mour effects in vitro and in vivo in other research programmes. |
Devra Davis
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| Researchers at the nci have reported that when a woman moves to the United States from other countries where the risk of breast cancer is lower, something happens to change her chances of developing the disease. Within a single generation, her risk increases to that of a woman who was born in this country. The more Asian American grandparents a woman has who were born in America, the greater the chance that she will develop breast cancer.17
What about personal care products popular in the black community that can contain hormone-mimicking agents? |
Bill Sardi
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| The nci said "These results are simply more good news for people with colorectal cancer." [ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, Hollywood, Fla., Jan. 27-29, 2005]
In the pivotal Phase III study, the addition of Avastin to chemotherapy (irinotecan/5-fluorouracil/leucovorin) significantly extended survival by, on average, 4.7 months (20.3 months versus 15.6 months) for people with previously untreated metastatic colorectal cancer. [New England Journal of Medicine 350: 2335-2342, 2004] But this was at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. |
| In 1998, the nci stated that the nation had "turned the corner" in the war on cancer. The American Cancer Society hired Schandwick International, a public relations firm, to help draft the National Cancer Control Act. Schandwick International also represents the R. J Reynolds Tobacco Co.
Breast cancer in Japan is four times lower than it is in the U.S. When Japanese women move to the U.S., they or their daughters eventually acquire the disease at North American rates. Source: Scientific American, January 1994
More falsehoods and deceptions
Dr. Gabriella M. |
| NCI grants going back to 1972 deal with metastasis.
Cancer by the Numbers
180 Upper limit of median lifespan in days for those diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer
12. |
E. Richard Brown
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 By 1977 the NCI's annual budget had grown to $815 million— three and a half times the pre-"war" level.87
Neither the National Cancer Institute nor the American Cancer Society has shown much interest in investigating the environmental contribution to cancer. A committee of the NCI's National Advisory Cancer Board expressed its "astonishment" that the National Cancer Program allocated only 10 percent of its budget to this area. In 1975 the nci expanded its environmental carcinogens program to $100 million, an impressive sum except that it is only 17 percent of the NCI's budget for the year. |
Bill Sardi
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| I think this is a turning point in biomedical research and I think it is a turning point for medicine, "said Anna Barker, deputy head of the nci. In fact, it is tragic that no one confronts these health authorities on the misleading statements they continue to make.
Read the opening paragraph of this scathing report by Gardiner Harris in the New York Times:
"Despite promising discoveries and multibillion-dollar investments, cancer research is quietly undergoing a crisis. |
E. Richard Brown
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| A committee of the NCI's National Advisory Cancer Board expressed its "astonishment" that the National Cancer Program allocated only 10 percent of its budget to this area. In 1975 the nci expanded its environmental carcinogens program to $100 million, an impressive sum except that it is only 17 percent of the NCI's budget for the year. This miserly proportion devoted to environmental causes of cancer seems especially ironic because nci director Frank J. Rauscher, Jr. |
Bill Sardi
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| According to statements by the nci, "nanotech is a technology with major potential to drive new generations of cancer diagnostics and therapeutic products."
Technology employs structures or devices that are so small they are only the size of atoms or molecules. Following are some of the new technology that Eschenbach and others say will revolutionize cancer care.
Quantum Dots dramatically improves clinical diagnostic tests for early cancer detection. These tiny particles glow and act as markers on cells and genes, enabling doctors to visualize cancer when present or impending. |
Simon Mills and Kerry Bone
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| In a major review of traditional treatments for 'tumours', under the aforementioned nci programme, researchers at the University of Illinois listed several thousand remedies from around the world.15'1617 Allowing for semantic confusion about what 'tumours' may have meant in early societies (widely encountered 'tumours' for example, are likely to have included faecal impaction, the result of other digestive obstructions or simple lymphadenopathies), it is still notable how many of the remedies listed could be classified as eliminatives. |
| The chemical groups suggested by the nci as conveying some of this activity include allyl sulfides in garlic and onions, phytates in grains and legumes, lycopene, limonoids, glucarates and related terpenes, carotenes and flavonoids in citrus, lignans in linseed2 and soya, isoflavones in soya, saponins in legumes, indoles, isoth-iacyanates and dithiolthione in cruciferous vegetables, ellagic acid in grapes and other fruit, phthalides and polyacetylenes in umbelliferous vegetables. |
| Japanese pharmaceutical company as an antitumour agent, based on the new nci screening protocols utilizing human cancer cell lines. NFD, administered in 100 mg tablets containing 1.5 mg active ingredient, was found to be an excellent antitumour agent against a wide range of cancers with minimal side effects.37
Other investigations into naphthoquinones were carried out in Japan by Hakura and co-workers. Most naphthoquinones tested, with the exceptions of lapachol and lawsone, showed mutagenicity and cytotoxicity for Ames Salmonella tester strains. |
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II
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 A few years ago, the director of the nci, the oldest of the NIH institutes, described prevention as "efforts to directly prevent and/or inhibit malignant transformation, to identify, characterize and manipulate factors that might be effective in achieving that inhibition and attempts to promote preventative measures."18 This so-called prevention is all about manipulation of isolated chemicals. "Identifying, characterizing and manipulating factors" is a not-so-secret code for drug discovery.
Considered from another perspective, the nci (of the NIH), in 1999, had a budget of $2.93 billion. |
Simon Mills and Kerry Bone
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| The inclusion of Zingiber (ginger) in cases judged to be in need of circulatory stimulation seems to be supported by its status in the nci rankings. The use of Glycyrrhiza (licorice) to modulate a prescription is similarly justified. European medicine also features the specific use of an extract of mistletoe extract (notably a product Iscador) as a non-toxic stimulant of endogenous defences. There are many published studies on this treatment but no substantial controlled clinical trials; nevertheless, it is very widely used as an adjunct to other therapy and has strong professional support. |
Devra Davis
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| Unhappy with the efforts under way by the nci and others in China, five major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, Chevron-Texaco, ConocoPhillips and Shell, are betting $27 million that they will be able to "contradict earlier claims that link low- and mid-levels of benzene to cancers and other diseases from exposure to benzene. |
Gary Null
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| These extraordinary statistics are said to be due to the aging population, which according to the nci is the "cancer population." In fact, for the over-seventy-five age group the cancer rate will more than double. By 2050, more than 1.1 million people seventy-five and older will be diagnosed each year, up from about 400,000 today. In 1999 the nci statisticians estimated 8.9 million people were living with cancer in the United States at the beginning of 1999. About 60 percent of those were sixty-five or older.
To us Power Agers, these should be fighting words. |
| You may also be interested in what the nci considers cancer "prevention." The following list is as it appears, and in the order it appears, on the nci Web site as preventive measures for breast cancer.32 Be aware that every twelve seconds a woman dies of breast cancer.
1. Tamoxifen for Prevention of Breast Cancer: Tamoxifen is a drug that blocks the effect of estrogen on breast cancer cells. A large study has shown that tamoxifen lowers the risk of getting breast cancer in women who are at elevated risk of getting breast cancer. |
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II
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| Considered from another perspective, the nci (of the NIH), in 1999, had a budget of $2.93 billion.19 In a "major" 5-A-Day dietary program, it was spending $500,000 to $1 million to educate the public to consume five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day.18 This is only three hundredths of one percent (0.0256%) of its budget. That's $2.56 for every $10,000! If it calls this a major campaign, I pity its minor campaigns. |
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