Thursday, March 4, 2010

Prostate cancer tests could be of questionable value - my thoughts

I am a firm believer in prevention and preventative care and have always preached that finding problems early, especially in the musculoskeletal system and someones structure can help them live a better functional and less pain filled life.  Much of the research bears this out.  Lately, some of the holy grail tests to catch and treat cancers have been under attack using statistics as the attack tool.  Today, the Star Ledger reported that regular prostate screenings and PSA tests in younger populations was not only not preventative but also lead to procedures with harmful side effects with minimal benefit to the patient (http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/prostate_cancer_tests_could_be.html).  A few months ago, routine mammograms and Pap smears were also attacked by the American Cancer Society  for similar reasons.

Many people will be up in arms about this especially women who have been trained and accustomed to the preventative rituals that modern medicine promised them would increase the likelihood they would live longer.

Could it be the medical preventative paradigm is crumbling before our eyes?  It may appear that way but many people will swear that those screenings and preventative surgeries saved their lives.  In many cases, perhaps they did.  In other cases, people endured horrible procedures with horrible end results.

In my opinion, cancer is something that we have yet to understand which is likely why screening procedures are not as helpful as we would like.  Some cancers such as breast can be very fast growing and screenings cannot save the life it claims it can.  I believe that we need to understand what cancer really is before you propose to cut out what you do not really fully comprehend.  For now, removal and treatment of cancerous tissues is the way it is done.  In some circles, it is believed that cancer has a common thread - Candida albicans which is present when cancer is.  One doctor, an oncologist from Italy went against the grain and claimed that Candida gets into the cells, and causes them to look and act differently even though candida can be treated with bicarbonate and he claims he has repeatedly reduced tumors safely using it and was chastised by his profession for his approach.  What a cost effective way to treat cancer (if it works).  Another school of thought is that cancers have increased in our society because of certain foods we no longer have in our diet.  That nutrient is laetrille (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4312930190281243507) which is no longer a staple in our diets and whose reputation had been hurt by organizations that were drug based.  You can find this in apple pits, apricot pits and has evidence that it works. I have personally stopped throwing away apple cores and eating them instead as well as papaya seeds.  What could it hurt, but the question is could it prevent and keep your body cancer free (http://cancertutor.com/Cancer/Laetrile.html)?

The big question I always ask myself is what would the big institutions and high cost cancer centers have to lose if it were found out that this is the common link to cancer. My guess is hundreds of millions of dollars and they have a financial stake in seeing that the problem is complicated and the cost is high. Perhaps, a cure or a low cost dietary preventative change is not in their long term financial interest, eh?

Maybe this is one instance when government would be a good place for research for a cure should be done, rather than in for profit drug based entities whose sole purpose for the research is to turn a profit on their investment.  This is food for thought (literally) but I believe if it really were that simple, health care costs would drop unbelieveably and there would be fallout as large institutions went under since we no longer needed their services.

I also guess that if the problem is indeed dietary and not a disease in the way we think it is, although diseases can be caused by a lack of nutrition (eg: scurvy), could this change be shown to lower cancer rates in a 10 year period markedly?  Maybe our government should begin a campaign to explore such a program, instead of scaring the public with the heavy handed politics of swine flue epidemics that never really materialize but affect certain people with inoculations and their side effects (http://diseases-viruses.suite101.com/article.cfm/side_effects_of_swine_flu_vaccine).

Times are changing and maybe our research of cancer, our understanding of it and our treatment of it needs to change as well to make screening for it safer and truly preventative.  It would also give attorneys less work to do.