When I was seven years old, my mom pulled me out of the hospital after some very intrusive traumatic tests. They said I needed spinal surgery. With the guidance of my aunt, who was a reputable chiropractor living in another state, she took me out of the hospital and to a chiropractor who’d lived in our neighborhood for years. Within two weeks, I was well and continued to see the chiropractor for many years. I had been born with two short vertebrae in my spine, which pinched nerves causing my kidneys to fill up with infection. The chiropractor relieved the pressure and my problems disappeared.
But the doctor/surgeon was irate when he heard of this news. He yelled at my mom and told her never to bring me back to him. Rather than being happy that I escaped surgery, he was enraged that I had gone to an "alternative" practitioner.
Thank God she didn’t end up in jail, she could have today. The case of a little boy in Texas proves it. His mom and dad took him out of the hospital and wanted to choose his treatment to battle a life threatening cancer. They knew that the treatment the doctors proposed, chemotherapy, may kill him and would certainly make him feel worse, lowering the quality of his already fragile life. So they used their "freedom of choice" to find other less dangerous modes of treatment.
Their decision got them in trouble with the government. Enter hydrazine sulfate, and the legal rigamaroe which has surrounded it, as well as many other alternative cancer therapies, over the past thirty years. It has nothing to do with our little boys’ story, but everything to do with a patients’ right to choose.
Hydrazine sulfate is a compound which has been proven to stop a metabolic reaction in cancer patients which in essence feeds the tumor and starves the body. The condition is called cachexia, a general wasting of the body that strikes most cancer patients to some degree, leaving them frail and thin. Hydrazine sulfate increases the appetite and promotes a general feeling of well being. It has also been proven to lessen pain, a beneficial effect for any cancer drug. In some cases, it even reduced the size of cancer tumors.
But you can’t get hydrazine sulfate by simply going into your doctor to get a prescription for it. In fact, one must buy it from an underground source. And well meaning people who make hydrazine pills run the risk of being raided by armed law enforcement agents. The FDA even seized the title of one manufacturers house.
The war on drugs and the war on cancer drugs are one in the same. Since the drug laws of the early 1900’s were passed, Americans have seen the loss of freedom to choose which medical treatment they desire, for whatever reason. Before 1906, if one wanted to buy a drug such as codeine to cure a headache, they just went in and bought it. No doctors, no prescriptions, no big deal. And if the "cure" didn’t work, they simply quit spending their hard earned cash on the product. Cancerine Tablets, mystery cures, and patent medicines were left up to the discretion of the self medicating patient.
Since that time, many kinds of drugs have fallen under sharp governmental control. Protecting citizens from quacks, and from themselves, has become a mission of government. They claimed it was to help us all, but were things worse way back then when people could go and buy the drugs they needed? The amount of crime that revolves around drugs today is incredible compared to a hundred years ago. If things were suppose to be so much better without these dangerous drugs, why have they gotten so much worse? People are killing each other over drugs they could easily obtain only a hundred years ago.
Sadly, with all these controls and protections, the addiction incidence in America has exploded. And so has the number of people who die from cancer.
Both wars stand as constant reminders of the failure that can happen when a society gives its’ own sense of personal responsibility, and the free choice that goes with that, to a governing body.
They say that morphine is bad, yet they give it to cancer patients in huge amounts to help them have a better "quality of life." And then, when a real quality of life drug such as hydrazine sulfate comes along, it can’t get a fair trial in the booming cancer driven medical industry. Why?
In my recent study into hydrazine for an in depth article, I have come across the most astonishing trail of deceit. And Dr. Gold, director of the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute, is not the only alternative proponent who has fought this war. Many have come before him, and many more will be sure to follow. Being a lifer in the cancer research field, Gold is no fly by night doctor. His theory was originally based on a Nobel Prize winning scientists’ own theory about cancer metabolism.
And the doctor jumped through all of the right hoops. He studied hydrazine on animals first, unlike the chemist who conceived of Photofrin in an abandoned liquor store (a cancer drug which costs over $4,000 for one dose) who completely skirted the FDA by first administering the drug on humans, not animals. You can legally buy Photofrin, but not hydrazine sulfate.
Golds’ data was collected in the same way as any bonafide clinical trial. He went through the grant process, securing money from the NCI (National Cancer Institute) to do his first studies. The drug met with enthusiasm from renowned researchers inside the cancer field and the NCI itself, one calling hydrazine the “most remarkable anti cancer agent I have come across in my 45 years of experience in cancer.!
But Golds’ carefully prepared protocol was broken during the very first round of clinical trials at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Researchers did not follow the correct dosage, either under-dosing or dangerously overdosing the patients. They allowed tranquilizers, barbiturates and alcohol to be taken concurrently with the drug, a move which Gold said cut down on the efficacy of hydrazine. A few of the patients who were counted in these statistics as experiencing "no effect," were indeed already dead before the trial began.
Would standard chemotherapy have any better effect on a corpse than hydrazine sulfate? It would be advantageous here to say that one of the Board members at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where the original trails were made, is to this day a director on the Board of the worlds’ largest manufacturer of chemotherapy agents, Bristol Meyers/Squibb - and to add that hydrazine sulfate costs about $50 for an entire round of therapy, instead of the $4,000 to $5,000 commanded by many chemotherapy drugs.
Hydrazine sulfate naturally failed in those initial clinical trials. But Russian researchers, pressed by the high cost of cancer treatment in socialized medicine, felt that the drug deserved a real trial. They followed Golds’ protocol with exacting detail, and their results on 225 late stage cancer patients were conclusive. Hydrazine DID help many patients feel better, eat more, and experience less pain. The studies also showed that in some cases tumors actually decreased in size. In a very few cases, the patients were diagnosed as cancer free.
But when the head researcher of the N.N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology came to America to report his findings to American doctors, he was not allowed to speak to the American Association of Cancer Research because his report "did not receive a high enough rating." And being dependent on American money from the NCI for their own battle on cancer, the doctor was understandably quiet about being set aside. He had not only himself to think about, but thousands of sick patients as well.
Throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s, the battle over hydrazine sulfate became more pronounced. The American Cancer Society had added hydrazine to their "unproven methods" list in 1976, a fate worse than death for any cancer treatment.
But the Russians, who were at that time still under the constrictions of a communist society, continued their work on Hydrazine into the 90’s. In a study of 740 late stage cancer patients, almost half had experienced a better quality of life because of the inexpensive drug. Tumor regression was noted in just over 10 percent of the cases. These patients were "end of the roaders," and all previous treatments had failed to work.
Gold and other proponents of the drug, most notably Kathy Keeton who helped bring the word "cyberspace" into our lives through her cutting edge scientific journal OMNI Magazine, pressed the issue in the States. Gold argued that the drug was never given a fair trial, forcing the FDA and the NCI to re-evaluate it in the early 90s’. And re-evaluate it they did.
Three clinical trials. This time they did follow the correct dosage. However, they later admitted that they did allow the drugs which Gold said cut down on the effectiveness of Hydrazine Sulfate in two of the three trials. Armed with these facts, the General Accounting Office investigated the research methods used by the NCI and found the results to be questionable. What is most disconcerting is that the two investigating GAO employees who did the work claimed that the report aimed for Congress had been changed, essentially adding validity to the NCIs’ claim that these drugs did not interfere with the actions of hydrazine.
Both Hydrazine sulfate studies were flawed, and many know this to be true. However a shroud of secrecy, and a mainstream press blackout, have kept Americans basically in the dark about a drug which thousands have taken with good results.
But the Russian people enjoy the benefits of such a drug, which is now marketed under the trade name Sehydrin in that country. Canadians as well are free to take hydrazine sulfate, in a medical system which is also considered "socialized."
Furthermore, the standard toxic, expensive chemotherapy drugs on the market do not guarantee success, and promise some shocking, devastating side effects. Hydrazine sulfate was intended for concurrent use with these cytotoxins (cell toxins), however its’ clinical trials did prove that its’ greatest results came in the absence of standard chemotherapy. Work is now being done with regards to the combination of hydrzine sulfate and radiation treatments, and positive effects have again been noted.
The politics which drives the cancer industry has taken a long and winding road. When Richard Nixon first declared the war on Cancer in 1971, less people died from cancer per capita than now, in the year 2000. Since that time, regardless of the fact that the government has already spent $200 billion to fight cancer, which doesn’t nearly account for the billions we citizens spend annually, the incidence and mortality from the disease has only risen. For the year 2001, the NCI has requested $4.2 billion for cancer research, and touts some "amazing" discoveries. Such as the role on diet in cancer prevention. Yet the NCI itself predicts that in spite of all the money, effort and new discoveries, and untold more billions of dollars, that cancer incidence in the elderly will be 29 percent higher than it is now, with 25 percent more losing the battle and dying from the disease. Will Americans eat more broccoli (one of the nutritional areas of investigation by the NCI) to keep this from happening?
With the famed "baby boomer" population slated to vastly increase the number of elderly citizens in America in the nearer future, one must wonder how we are going to take care of ourselves.
The political roots surrounding cancer are complex and profoundly deep. One expert will directly contradict another, leaving the consuming public in a dazed state of confusion. The American Cancer Society clearly holds to the truth "If it sounds too good to be true, then it is," but then openly supports hazardous chemicals which break our immune systems and cause treatment related illness. And nowhere are statistics for the efficacy of chemotherapy listed or reported to the public. On the internet, one can find document after documents relating to the clinical trials and efficacy of hydrazine sulfate. But when one goes to find the same information of 5-FU, it is nowhere to be found. Documented proof of how many people are saved with chemotherapy doesn’t exist for the lay person. Furthermore, chemotherapy cancer agents are only effective in a very small percentage of cancers, that has been proven.
Jeff Kamen, an award winning American journalist who has written many thought provoking articles regarding hydrazine sulfate, and the battle to keep it under wraps, tellingly answered the riddle of why drugs like these are not available to the public. "Follow the money," he said. That is exactly what we as informed patients must do. We must educate ourselves through articles, books, and the internet itself to find out where that money is. When our doctor tells us we need chemotherapy, we must find out for ourselves the consequences of such a decision. We must go beyond one school of knowledge (conventional medicine) and into the next (alternative medicine), so that we can mix the best of both worlds to our own benefit. We must know how cancer grows, and what can make it stop. And we must pass this information and all of our experiences surrounding cancer onto the next generation, to help them prepare themselves for the future. Patients are consumers in every sense of the word.
But there is a very stiff warning which must underline any quest for truth, and that is how much knowledge can forever change ones life and the way they see things. Once a person sees the truth, there is no way back.
And some truths, like the war on cancer, are simply too big to deal with comfortably. A good place to start out is with the war itself, and to ask ourselves with sane discernment "Are we winning or losing." And if the answer is "losing," we as consumers can demonstrate our power by flexing the collective economic muscle of the wealthiest nation in the entire world.
If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at 970-498-9075, or e-mail me at motherlesschild_99@yahoo.com
Sincerely,
Andrea Bennett