More Insanity from Oncologists

– Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The New York Times recently ran a story entitled, “Hot Chemotherapy Bath: Patients See Hope, Critics Hold Doubts.” It states, “The therapy, which couples extensive abdominal surgery with blasts of heated chemotherapy to the abdominal cavity and its organs, was once a niche procedure used mainly against rare cancers of the appendix.” Most academic medical centers shunned it. More recently, as competition for patients and treatments intensifies, an increasing number of the nation’s leading medical centers have been offering the costly—and controversial—therapy to patients with the more common colorectal or ovarian cancers. And some hospitals are even publicizing the treatment as a hot “chemo bath.”

Hot is the appropriate word for this procedure called Hipec (Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy) since the chemo chemicals are highly toxic and poisonous to human tissues. Eight percent who got the surgery in early tests died from the treatment itself with Dr. Sugarbaker stating, “It’s maximally invasive.” Hospitals love their poisons so much that they just do not have the brainpower to think of what would be much safer and probably much more effective.

The Times quoted Dr. David P. Ryan, clinical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center as saying, “We’re practicing this technique that has almost no basis in science,” noting that the therapy is merely the latest example of one that “catches on” with little evidence that it really works.

No matter how grueling and invasive this aggressive procedure is, patients are led to believe that for certain cancers it offers their best hope for survival: “It’s throwing everything but the kitchen sink at cancer,” said Gloria Borges, a 29-year-old Los Angeles lawyer who had her colon cancer treated with this procedure.

Researchers surveyed 1,339 oncology nurses and found that nearly 17 percent said their skin or eyes had been exposed to the drugs. In the United States, about 84 percent of chemotherapy is delivered in outpatient clinics. Accidental chemotherapy exposure can harm the nervous and reproductive systems and increase the risk of blood cancers, according to the study authors, from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. These outcomes would be no different from the deliberate saturation of tissues during these hot chemotherapy baths.

Sodium Bicarbonate Irrigation during Cancer Surgery

For those of you who wonder if there really is a treatment or process by which cancer can be correctly dealt with, you will be more than impressed with the work of Dr. Tullio Simoncini in Italy. He uses sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) irrigation both before and following the surgical removal of a large tumor.[1] Sodium bicarbonate can be used instead of surgery if the tumors are not large. Or, during surgery, it can be injected via IVs and catheters. It can be taken orally, applied transdermally, or put in large quantities into one’s bath. It can also be nebulized directly into the lungs.

I was so impressed by Simoncini and his work a few years ago I ended up writing the first full medical review on the subject of using sodium bicarbonate, not only for cancer but also for a full range of acute and chronic disorders. My personal work and writings teach people how to use bicarbonate at home, both orally and transdermally. When used in conjunction with a full protocol, great health effects are routinely achieved. Even when serious intervention is called for, patients still have to continue treatments after surgery, once back in the comfort of their own home.

Several physicians have reported less than spectacular results from using the Simoncini methods. It seems few have been able to replicate the great understanding and experience that Simoncini carries into his clinical work. In Rome he has a team of doctors who work with him using his methods successfully though he continues to be attacked for his revolutionary work.

Utilizing sodium bicarbonate when dealing with cancer does not depend on the Simoncini theory that cancer is a fungus but it sure helps to understand how fungus infections are commonly involved with cancer. And one does not have to fly to Rome or undergo expensive IVs or have catheters put in because one can do the sodium bicarbonate treatments through heavy oral and transdermally via medical baths.

The current controversy over sodium bicarbonate and its use in oncology might be relatively new but baking soda has a long history of helping people get through the worst medical conditions. Sodium bicarbonate can save the day when nothing else can. The only other substance about which we can say the same is magnesium chloride, which when injected will save a person during cardiac arrest and pull one out of a stroke if given soon enough. Though not used in emergency medicine cannabinoid medicine can also save the day even in late stage cancers when doctors simply give up using their chemo poisons, which is exactly what they are—poison.

The cost of the surgery plus the Hipec heated treatment, including hospitalization, ranges from $20,000 to more than $100,000, doctors said. While Medicare and insurers generally pay for the operation, the Hipec treatment may not be covered. But doctors added it may be if it is described merely as chemotherapy. Some patients, like Ms. Borges, who is a fitness devotee, recover well and say the procedure staved off a death sentence. But this surgery/treatment is described as a very “heavy” treatment with recovery taking up to 3-6 months and adverse effects often occurring due to the chemotherapy agent Mitomycin[2] that is used in the bath.

Basic scientific research sustains the views and use of sodium bicarbonate in cancer treatment. Dr. Julian Whitaker and Mark McCarty write, “The degree to which pH is depressed in tumors—as mirrored by their lactate levels—tends to correlate with prognosis, the more acidic tumors being associated with poorer outcome. In part, this phenomenon may reflect the fact that tumor acidity is serving as a marker for HIF-1 activation, which works in a variety of complementary ways to boost tumor capacity for invasion, metastasis, angiogenesis, and chemo-resistance. However, there is increasing evidence that extracellular acidity per se contributes to the aggressiveness of cancer cells, boosting extracellular proteolytic activities, expression of pro-angiogenic factors, and metastatic capacity.”

Medical scientists already know that bicarbonate-induced extracellular alkalinization leads to significant improvements in the therapeutic effectiveness of certain chemo agents. A number of studies have shown that the extracellular pH in cancers is typically lower than that in normal tissue and that an acidic pH promotes invasive tumor growth in primary and metastatic cancers. The external pH of solid tumors is acidic as a consequence of increased metabolism of glucose and poor perfusion. Acid pH has been shown to stimulate tumor cell invasion and metastasis in vitro and in cells before tail vein injection in vivo.

Genes directly experience external pH.

Researchers have investigated the very reasonable assumption that increased systemic concentrations of pH buffers would lead to reduced intratumoral and peritumoral acidosis and, as a result, inhibit malignant growth. It has been shown that increased serum concentrations of the sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) can be achieved via oral intake.[3] These researchers found that consequent reduction of tumor acid concentrations significantly reduces tumor growth and invasion without altering the pH of blood or normal tissues.[4]

Oral NaHCO3 selectively increased the pH of tumors and reduced the formation of spontaneous metastases in mouse models of metastatic breast cancer. NaHCO3 therapy also reduced the rate of lymph node involvement and significantly reduced the formation of hepatic metastases. Acid pH was shown to increase the release of active cathepsin B, an important matrix remodeling protease.[5]

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has shown that the pH of MCF-7 human breast cancer xenografts can be effectively and significantly raised with sodium bicarbonate in drinking water.[6]

Conclusion

The toxicity of chemotherapy drugs is widely known and their side effects are widely feared.  Chemotherapy poisons make your hair fall out, cause muscle wasting, nausea, and vomiting and overall health deterioration. This essay protests the insanity of using chemotherapy and nowhere is that insanity in greater presence as when oncologists prescribe chemotherapy drugs to pregnant women whose fetuses get poisoned along with them.

So do we really need Hipec baths, with all of its associated dangers and side effects? And do we really need chemotherapy at all when safer alternatives are available? Perhaps oncologists should pay more attention to simpler solutions, but that is against their paradigm so not much chance of that. How can expensive doctors and expensive medicine offer inexpensive, simple and totally safe solutions like sodium bicarbonate, magnesium, iodine or even cannabinoid medicine for the treatment of cancer?