Good For You

Finally the old guard is catching up with alternative medicine.  In a recent New York Times article (Oct 26, 2009), Dr. Barnett Kramer associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health said, “The old view is that cancer is a linear process.  A cell acquired a mutation, and little by little it acquired more and more mutations. Mutations are not supposed to revert spontaneously.”

So, Dr. Kramer said, the image was “an arrow that moved in one direction.” But now, he added, it is becoming increasingly clear that cancers require more than mutations to progress. They need the cooperation of surrounding cells and even, he said, “the whole organism, the person,” whose immune system or hormone levels, for example, can squelch or fuel a tumor.

Cancer, Dr. Kramer said, is a dynamic process.

THE MIRACLE is not so miraculous?

After years of denying the efficacy of alternative medicine and treatment, medical researchers are finally admitting that there is growing evidence that cancers can go backward or stop. They are now being forced to reassess their notions of what cancer is and how it develops.

Both in breast cancer and testicular cancer, it would have been better if the tiny tumors were never found and left alone because they may just stop growing on their own or disappear altogether.

Heavy food for thought.