CHEMOTHERAPY - Cancer Cells and Chemotherapy

Cancerous tumors are characterized by cell division, which is no longer controlled as it is in normal tissue.   "Normal" cells stop dividing when they come into contact with like cells, a mechanism known as contact inhibition.  Cancerous cells lose this ability.  Pictures of cancer cells show that cancerous 

cells lose the ability to stop dividing when they contact similar cells.

Cancer cells no longer have the normal checks and balances in place that control and limit cell division.  The process of cell division, whether normal or cancerous cells, is through the cell cycle.  The cell cycle goes from the resting phase, through active growing phases, and then to mitosis (division).

The ability of chemotherapy to kill cancer cells depends on its ability to halt cell division.  Usually, cancer drugs work by damaging the RNA or DNA that tells the cell how to copy itself in division.  If the cancer cells are unable to divide, they die.  The faster that cancer cells divide, the more likely it is that chemotherapy will kill the cells, causing the tumor to shrink.  They also induce cell suicide (self-death or apoptosis).

Chemotherapy drugs that kill cancer cells only when they are dividing are called cell-cycle specific.  Chemotherapy drugs that kill cancer cells when they are at rest are called cell-cycle non-specific.  The scheduling of chemotherapy is set based on the type of cells, rate at which they divide, and the time at which a given drug is likely to be effective.  This is why chemotherapy is typically given in cycles.

Chemotherapy is most effective at killing cells that are rapidly dividing.  Unfortunately, chemotherapy does not know the difference between cancer cells and the normal cells. The "normal" cells will grow back and be healthy but in the meantime, side effects occur.  The "normal" cells most commonly affected by chemotherapy are the blood cells, the cells in the mouth, stomach and bowel, and the hair follicles; resulting in low blood counts, mouth sores, nausea, diarrhea, and/or hair loss. Different drugs may affect different parts of the body.

Chemotherapy (anti-neoplastic drugs) is divided into five classes based on how they work to kill cancer.  Although these drugs are divided into groups, there is some overlap among some of the specific drugs.  Further sections discuss several different types of chemotherapy in the effort to further explain these important procedures.

Source: http://chemocare.com/chemotherapy/what-is-chemotherapy/cancer-cells-chemotherapy.aspx#.VDL76GeSz84

CHEMOTHERAPY - Did chemo kill my mother faster than the cancer?

by Elisa620 on Sat Jul 07, 2012 06:23 PM

My dear mother passed away Sept. 23, 2011 from bile duct cancer just shy of 7 months after diagnosis. She was just 67 years old and lived a very active and healthy life style. You never would have known she was even sick. She was complaining about an uncomfortable dull pain under her right rib cage. Her internal medicine doc said "it's probably just your gall bladder". He ordered a CT scan which showed it was much more serious than "just her gall bladder". She had stage IV cancer and told she had 4 to 6 months to live. She was initially told she had adenocarcinoma of unknown origin, and was told it was slow growing.

Four months later when she was so jaundice she was orange and was told it was cholangiocarcinoma. So, They had her on wrong chemo for 4 months (carboplatin and taxol) and then gemzar. After gemzar, she needed blood transfusion after blood transfusion, platelettes, and could barely stand up. How does a supposedly slow growing cancer turn an active pre-school teacher into a weak shell of the person she was in 5 months?

My question is did the chemo kill my mother sooner than if she had done nothing but palliative care? Why don't doctors tell patient's that the chemo won't help and may be more harmful than helpful?

I watched my mother suffer through so much and am angry that she could have been enjoying the short time she had left to live instead of enduring the horrible effects of chemo and the false hope that it would save her life.

Source: http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,67035,0.htm

CHEMOTHERAPY - Chemotherapy KILLS people

I had the displeasure of hearing that my sister's brother-in-law died yesterday. He is yet another victim of the horrific so-called Medical system in America that is really more about profits than health. Jim died the same way my cousin Tommy died recently from being diagnosed with a "spot on their lung" while only having minor flu-like symptoms to being dead within a few Hell-suffering months after they radiated and chemoed them to DEATH.

Yes this is anecdotal, however I have heard lots of other stories from people outside my family, my state and my concern. Oh, and I read things other than AMA-sanctioned books. One of my neighbors died a couple of weeks ago. He was 49 and had been diagnosed with colon cancer last July. He went through the typical chemo/radiation treatments and declined quickly. His wife was so shocked and upset during this process she did some research. She passed along this information she received from JOHNS HOPKINS regarding cancer. 

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up 
    in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors 
    tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after 
    treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells 
    because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.


3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will 
    be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional 
    deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle 
    factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including 
    supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also 
    destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow,
    gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver,
    kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages
    healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor 
    size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not 
    result in more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and 
    radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, 
    hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and 
    complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and
      become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause 
      cancer cells to spread to other sites. (boldface mine)

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not 
      feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.

This is consistent with what the holistic practitioners have been saying for a long time. The "good" foods are obvious and the "cancer foods" are too, but if You need a list I'll provide that.

I'm posting this for the open-minded folks at DU who might find themselves or a loved one in this situation.

Of course there will be some people who have gone through chemo and live healthy lives now. I am happy for them and hope they continue to be well.

However, the USA's Medical Industry is quick to put cancer patients on the DEATH treatment before anything else. And that is wrong. People diagnosed with cancer need to build up their immune system, not kill it. And apparently Johns Hopkins is now admitting that.

Be well.

Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2999678

CHEMOTHERAPY - FACT: Chemotherapy KILLS More People Than It “Cures”

Many people who “die from cancer” really die from the chemotherapy long before they would have actually died from the cancer itself.

Chemotherapy has always been developed from toxic poisonous chemicals, right?

So, there has always been a fine line between administering a “therapeutic dose” and killing the cancer patient. Many doctors step over that line.

But don’t take it from me!

Here’s what Dr. Allen Levin says about this topic: “Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon, or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade, yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors.”

In his book, The Topic of Cancer: When the Killing Has to Stop, Dick Richards cites a number of autopsy studies which have shown that cancer patients actually died from conventional treatments before the tumor had a chance to kill them.

Just think about it…

To put it plainly, the treatment kills them before the cancer kills them. As a matter of fact, the chemotherapy drug 5FU is sometimes referred to by doctors as “5 feet under” because of its deadly side effects.

For most adult cancers, the typical best case scenario is that the “Big 3” buys a little time. In a worst case scenario, you will die from the treatment rather than the disease.

In his book, When Healing Becomes a Crime, Kenny Ausubel notes that in a trial on a chemotherapy drug tested for leukemia, a whopping 42% of the patients died directly from the toxicity of the chemotherapy drug!

Here are the facts. In 1942, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center quietly began to treat breast cancer with these mustard gas derivatives. No one was cured. Chemotherapy trials were also conducted at Yale around 1943 where 160 patients were treated. Again, no one was cured.

According to Dr. John Diamond, M.D., “A study of over 10,000 patients shows clearly that chemo’s supposedly strong track record with Hodgkin’s disease (lymphoma) is actually a lie. Patients who underwent chemo were 14 times more likely to develop leukemia and 6 times more likely to develop cancers of the bones, joints, and soft tissues than those patients who did not undergo chemotherapy.”

Dr. Glenn Warner, who died in 2000, was one of the most highly qualified cancer specialists in the United States. He used alternative treatments on his cancer patients with great success. On the treatment of cancer in this country he said: “We have a multi-billion dollar industry that is killing people, right and left, just for financial gain. Their idea of research is to see whether two doses of this poison is better than three doses of that poison.”

Dr. Alan C. Nixon, past president of the American Chemical Society writes, “As a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incomprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good.”  And according to Dr. Charles Mathe, French cancer specialist, “…if I contracted cancer, I would never go to a standard cancer treatment centre. Only cancer victims who live far from such centres have a chance.”

Yet, day after day, year after year, the Cancer Industry continues to put these toxic chemicals into the bodies of cancer patients. And the patients let them do it, even volunteering for new “guinea pig” studies, simply because someone with a degree from a school of disease (also known as medical school) told them it was their “only option.” It costs lots of money for them to poison the body of cancer patients, and the patients gladly pay it. Sadly, some people will spend six figures a year poisoning their bodies because their “doctor told them to do it.”

The truth is that there are many effective natural cancer treatments that don’t require a barbaric procedure like chemotherapy.

Source: http://healthwars.co/286/cancer/chemotherapy-kills-more-people-than-it-cures/

CANCER - Chemotherapy Kills: Must Read

Treating cancer is BIG business in America -- in fact, it's a $200 billion a year business. Yet 98 percent of conventional cancer treatments not only FAIL miserably, but are also almost guaranteed to make cancer patients sicker.

What's worse: The powers are suppressing natural cancer cures that could help tens of thousands of people get well and live cancer free with little or no dependence on drugs, surgery and chemotherapy.

The treatment of cancer in the U.S. is one of the most bald-faced cover-ups in medical history. Enough is enough! You deserve to know the truth about the criminality of oncologists and about the dangers of chemotherapy, conventional cancer treatments and the cancer "business."

Chemotherapy kills more than cancer.

Want proof?
Did you know that 9 out of 10 oncologists would refuse chemotherapy if they had cancer? That's up to 91% -- a huge percentage that clearly shines a light on the truth: chemotherapy kills. Conventional oncologists are not only allowing this to happen, but they're also bullying many patients into chemotherapy and surgery right after their diagnoses.

Why would that large percentage of oncologists - the ones telling so many patients to get chemotherapy - refuse to do it themselves?

Because they know it's not just ineffective, but extremely toxic. Regardless, 75% of cancer patients are directed to receive chemotherapy.

Not shocked enough yet?
A rigorous review of chemotherapy revealed that it fails for 98% of people. And when chemotherapy was tested against no treatment, no treatment proved the better option. What's more is only two to four percent of cancers respond well to chemotherapy.

In a German study of women over age 80 with breast cancer, those who received no treatment lived 11 months longer on average than those who received conventional cancer treatments.

A 14-year study by two oncologists in Australia reported in the film "A Shocking Look at Cancer Studies" that conventional treatment such as chemotherapy for all of our major cancers is totally ineffective -- far below a 10% success rate.

Chemotherapy is a barbaric and pointless procedure. It attacks and kills not just cancer, but also all the living, healthy cells in the body and completely cripples the body's immune system.

While this extreme treatment has been called effective against testicular cancers and lymphocytic leukemia, in many cases it's hard to tell which the supposed "therapy" will kill first -- the cancer or the patient. In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to say most people, who die from cancer, actually die from cancer TREATMENTS.

Mammograms do more damage than good (and preventive mastectomies are pointless) The $4 billion-a-year mammogram industry urges women to rely on these x-ray tests to "protect" their health. However, what they don't tell you is mammograms are a highly unnecessary and harmful treatment. In fact, mammograms harm ten women for every one the procedure helps.

A study by researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Center in Demark reviewed both the benefits and negative effects of seven breast cancer screening programs on 500,000 women.

For every 2,000 women who received mammograms over a 10-year period, only one would have her life prolonged, but ten would be harmed. This is because mammograms can actually INCREASE a woman's risk of developing breast cancer by as much as 3% a year by irradiating the breast cells and triggering breast cancer.

Modern cancer treatments = the "Dark Ages" of medicineIn the documentary, Cancer is Curable, available on NaturalNews (http://premium.naturalnews.tv/CANCER_is_curable_NOW__NN.htm),  one alternative cancer treatment expert says someday people will look back and wonder "what kind of Neanderthals we were" for practicing surgery, radiation and chemotherapy (or cut, burn and poison). He also calls the conventional approach to cancer treatment "medieval."

Statistics show that there is no proof preventive mastectomy -- removal of the whole breast -- extends the life of breast cancer patients, yet oncologists go right on doing it on a regular basis. Preventative mastectomies are pointless procedures, and many patients are led to believe they have cancer due to false positive cancer screenings. This means they are pressured into having breasts removed for no reason whatsoever. The women undergoing these treatments are scarred for life.

CT scans, or computed tomographies, are a common testing procedure for most cancer types, but the irony is that this CT scan radiation is highly dangerous and can lead to cancer itself. 

The radiation from a CT scan actually has been shown to cause a substantial amount of cancer. A recent report published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the radiation from current CT-scan use (estimated at more than 62 million CT scans per year in the US) may cause as many as 1 in 50 future cases of cancer. This is nothing to be taken lightly. Radiation from medical devices is a huge and under-estimated contribution to the growing incidence of breast and other forms of cancer.

According to an article in Time Health, other studies prove doctors are performing too many unwarranted CT scans, exposing a countless amount of patients to cancer-causing radiation. Many mammograms are also miscalibrated, so they end up churning out far too much radiation to be safe. If a woman begins getting routine mammograms at age 40, then by age 60 it is almost certain she will have breast cancer.

It's no wonder so many women end up with this form of cancer - they begin getting frequent screenings starting in middle age at the urging of doctors everywhere. The health and cancer industries know about the connection between CT scan radiation and mammograms and cancer statistics, yet they keep pushing patients to perform these "preventive" procedures. The outrageous truth is frequent mammograms purposely bring repeat business to the corrupt cancer industry by creating cancer tumors over time.

Speaking of lies, virtually NONE of Komen's donation money goes toward funding actual cancer research. Up to 95% of the donation money at Komen goes to provide "free mammograms" to African American women and low income women - after all, they wouldn't want them to be left out from all this unnecessary radiation. Better ensure they get cancer, as well. Komen's money is almost entirely contributed toward doing more mammograms and pumping more radiation into women.

There is actually a little-known test for breast cancer that exists, and this method yields no false positive or negatives: a saliva test. Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston discovered that women with breast cancer carry different proteins than women with no cancer; this can be tested by a saliva test so simple a dentist could do it.

Big Pharma lies to convince us that their so-called cancer "cures" workOncologists and Big Pharma use clever tricks to promote their cancer treatments such as using relative numbers to supposedly prove the effectiveness of their cancer treatments. For example, if you or a loved one has breast cancer, doctors will likely recommend the drug Tamoxifen. They'll tell you it reduces the chances of breast cancer recurring by 49%, which sounds fairly impressive.

However, based on absolute numbers, Tamoxifen reduces the risk of breast cancer returning by 1.6% -- 30 times less than advertised. Relative numbers instead of cold, hard statistics are often used by oncologists because relative numbers can be manipulated in many ways. Any relative statistic that allows the percentages to be spun in a false positive light could be used in these situations.

Perhaps you have heard through the major media that treating early stage breast cancer creates a 91% cure rate over five years. This statement is absolutely ridiculous -- you could get the same cure rate by doing nothing at all (breast cancer is a very slow growing cancer).

The point is: Don't be fooled by ambiguous "relative" numbers. Get the real facts!

Drug companies pay oncologists to promote (expensive) ineffective and toxic cancer drugs. Most oncologists don't make their money by treating patients, but by selling cancer drugs. In fact, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, as much as 75% of the average oncologist's earnings come from selling chemotherapy drugs in his or her office -- and at a substantially marked-up price.

Pharmaceutical companies not only hire charismatic people to charm doctors, exaggerate drug benefits and underplay side effects, but they also pay oncologists kickbacks to push their drugs. For example, Astra Zeneca, Inc. had to pay $280 million in civil penalties and $63 million in criminal penalties to the federal government after it paid kickbacks to doctors for promoting its prostate cancer drug.

Many oncologists are criminals and bullies, not doctors Oncologists not only bully patients into taking the destructive route of chemotherapy, toxic drugs and surgery, but they also don't tell their patients the whole truth about the danger of these treatments, other available options, cancer survival statistics, and much more. An innumerable number of cancer patients have suffered needless at the hands of these so-called doctors, who are often really corrupt and immoral human beings that could care less about the healing process of their patients. Many of these shameless oncologists deserve to be arrested and prosecuted immediately for the crimes they commit, yet they keep on sending patients down the same treacherous and painful road that has resulted in too many deaths to keep track of.

More and more patients are waking up to the truth about cancer treatment and educating themselves on the power of whole food nutrition and supplements -- they are choosing doctors that educate and heal them rather than bully them into surgery and chemotherapy.

The staggering documentary Cancer is Curable mentioned earlier interviews doctors who tell you how patients are often pressured by conventional oncologists; sometimes they're even hustled onto the operating table the day after their diagnosis -- without having any of their other choices explained to them.

What's worse is that no matter how effective a treatment could be, conventional patients are still being killed by the food they are fed in hospitals. All the doctors in Cancer is Curable unanimously explain that sugar is the No. 1 killer for every cancer patient -- and although every medical doctor should know that fact, they still continue to give their patients tootsie rolls and candies in the chemotherapy room.

Many oncologists are also telling their cancer patients to stop taking antioxidant supplements while they're undergoing treatment. Why? Because they're saying there is a possibility that antioxidants could be lowering the effectiveness of cancer treatments like radiation treatment and chemotherapy.

In spite of what you might have been told or led to believe, chemo is hardly the exact science that it pretends to be. And yet, on the mere hunch that antioxidants could be protecting the cancer cells that chemotherapy seeks to destroy, oncologists feel justified in telling their patients to forfeit antioxidant supplements.

There are a ridiculous number of false positives in cancer screenings. Among 1,087 individuals participating in a cancer screening trial who received a battery of tests for prostate, ovarian, colorectal and lung cancer, 43 % had at least one false positive test result, according to a study published in an issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (http://www.newmaterials.com/Customisation/News/Research & Development) That's almost half of the patients who were tested!

One of the obvious downfalls of this is the needlessly expensive medical care costs associated with false positive cancer screenings. Considering the high cost of testing and treatments, the economic consequences of false-positive screening results are significant. Let's not neglect to mention the pointless emotional and physical suffering inflicted upon thousands of patients who are led to believe they have cancer.

In the study mentioned above, men that specifically were given a false positive result for either prostate, lung or colorectal cancer averaged almost $2,000 in additional medical care expenditures compared to men with all negative screens. More than half -- or 51% -- of the men in the study had at least one false positive test.

The lesson to take home from all this .These cancer cover-ups and myths are just a few basic examples of how corrupt and dishonest the cancer industry really is. This especially pertains to the oncologists, who are treating patients regardless of knowing the disturbing truth about the procedures, testing and treatment processes they so frequently push upon their patients.

While not all oncologists should be placed into the same category, a large majority of these criminal "doctors" should be held accountable and properly punished for the needless struggle they are inflicting upon thousands of cancer sufferers. If you know anyone who is being pushed into chemotherapy and other deadly and unnecessary "treatments," share the truth with them today and you could save a life.

Fortunately, more and more people are waking up to these cancer lies and are looking into safer and more effective alternative treatment protocols and therapies.

Source: http://www.cureyourowncancer.org/chemo-kills.html