Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts' recent announcement that she had been diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) -- a group of conditions in which the cells in the bone marrow are damaged -- certainly came as a shock to her fans. Just five years before she had, as she has said, "beaten breast cancer" and openly discussed her experience. What's more appalling, though, is the fact that her treatment for breast cancer, presumably involving chemotherapy and radiation, are both risk factors for MDS. In other words, the medical treatment she received to "beat" breast cancer may well be responsible for the life-threatening condition she now faces.
To those of us in the medical field, this comes as no surprise. The list of drugs that can cause MDS is long -- including mechlorethamine, or nitrogen mustard, etoposide, teniposide, chlorambucil cyclophosphamide, and doxorubicin, all of which are commonly-used chemotherapeutic agents. Ionizing radiation, which may also be a part of breast cancer treatment, increases the risk for MDS. Most people, however, don't realize that cancer treatments can be as devastating and potentially deadly as the cancer itself. As actor Cynthia Nixon so aptly put it in the powerful Broadway revival of Wit, the play by Margaret Edson portraying the journey of a woman suffering from advanced ovarian cancer: "My treatment imperils my health."
Why is it that our current methods of cancer treatment consist of so many toxic drugs and radiation therapy that are capable of increasing our risk for developing second cancers? Is this the best that we can offer cancer patients in 2012?
Think of it: More than 40 years after the war on cancer was declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971, we are not much closer to preventing the disease. The National Cancer Institute has spent some $90 billion on research and treatment during that time. When have Americans ever waged such a long, drawn-out and costly war, with no end in sight?
The evidence is clear: The system designed to study, diagnose and treat cancer in the United States is broken, and it is in urgent need of reform.
The solution, I believe, lies in a critical restatement of our mission. Prevention of cancer should be a national goal. A recent study in Science Translational Medicine reported that at least 50 percent of all cancer cases are preventable. Smoking and obesity are responsible for a little over one-half of all cancers. The effect of diet, nutritional sources and physical activity levels require much more attention and public health advocacy. Environmental exposures have been inadequately investigated as cancer agents. In the case of MDS, at least 13 cancer risk factors, including organic chemicals (such as benzene, toluene, xylene), heavy metals, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, exhaust gases and petroleum and diesel derivatives, are listed by the National Cancer Institute.
Is there a commitment to explore these agents and determine their exact threat to our health? Unfortunately, there is a much greater emphasis, and a much more substantial financial investment, in cancer treatment than cancer prevention. The NCI's budget reflects this in its funding of basic science ($2 billion) and treatment ($1.3 billion), while dedicating only $232 million in funding altogether to prevention.
It is time for a bold new approach to the "cancer culture" as we know it. If our cancer treatment puts us at risk for the development of a second cancer, there is something fundamentally flawed about that approach. "Above all, do no harm" should always be our guiding principle in the treatment of any disease, and especially in the case of cancer. Research dedicated to effective new screening tools for cancer, and new methods of treating cancer early, before it has a chance to spread, are needed now.
Those of us who have experienced cancer as patients or as the caregivers of friends and family afflicted with cancer understand the overwhelming challenge it presents. While we cannot completely repair the physical and emotional damage inflicted by cancer, we should have higher expectations for the results of treatment.
Government leaders, researchers, physicians, the pharmaceutical industry, cancer advocates, and many other stakeholders all have a key role in promoting a safer, healthier environment, better nutrition, increased physical activity, and a new emphasis on prevention in cancer research. Working together, we will make significant strides in creating a world without cancer.
Robin Roberts has my best wishes for a full recovery to good health. I am among the many who are hoping and praying that she will win this new battle with an insidious invader. As a breast cancer survivor who has fought to remain an active participant in life, she deserves no less.
Margaret I. Cuomo, M.D., is a board-certified radiologist, much of whose practice was dedicated to the diagnosis of cancer and AIDS. She is the author of the forthcoming book A World Without Cancer (Rodale; October 2012).
For more by Margaret I. Cuomo, M.D., click here.
For more on cancer, click here.
Chava Tombosky: We Got This: A Story of Hope and Courage in the Face of Cancer
Barron H. Lerner: Another Tricky Case of Celebrity Illness: Robin Roberts
Estelle Underwood: Benefits of Exercise During and After Cancer Treatment
http://steingraber.com/
http://www.livingdownstream.com/
Documentary (& books) by ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D.
http://search.huffingtonpost.com/search?q=sandra+steingraber&s_it=header_form_v1
I found her article Canadian Bylaws; American Lawn Flags to be of special interest. I've also read from other sources that the amount of chemicals in Canada is much less than here. We can definitely do better here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandra-steingraber/canadian-bylaws-american_b_569231.html
I’ve don't understand why the American Cancer Society has never provided public information about the Anti-malignin Antibody Serum (AMAS) blood test. The AMAS test has had FDA approval & it's also covered by Medicare. The accuracy rate is 95% with a proven track record for over 30 years. The AMAS can detect cancer months or even years earlier than any other cancer screening test. I know there are cancers that are frighteningly fast, but I’ve read the most common cancers start out slowly & can take even a few years to form a detectable tumor. For a lot of people this AMAS test can detect cancer months & even years sooner than any other test. At the time of my cancer diagnosis this AMAS test had more than a 20 year proven track record. My very earliest possible cancer detection with a mammogram still had severe consequences. I really believe that I would have been able to discover my cancer a lot sooner if I had known (& used) the AMAS blood test as part of my annual physical exam. If caught earlier with the AMAS there would have been a strong possibility that my cancer issue could have been resolved without a mastectomy & the (declined) chemo recommendation.
In my reading after my breast cancer diagnosis I found information about scientific studies finding significant environmental chemicals in breast milk. The scientists tested breast milk before & then again after breastfeeding. The amount of chemicals was much lower after breastfeeding. For me this provided a direct linkage between environmental chemicals and breast health. Breastfeeding is cleansing, but it's downloading a chemical load into the baby. This could very likely be the reason why women who don't have children are at a higher risk of breast cancer. This seems to me to be much more significant than the conventional wisdom that women who don't have children are at a higher cancer risk simply because they've had more hormonal exposure by having more menstrual cycles. That does sound like a contributing factor, but I have always found it to be an inadequate explanation. Many of these environmental chemicals mimic estrogen. What seems most important is that these chemicals are also very likely to be in all breasts all the time whether lactating or not. I think this also possibly helps explain why some families seem to have higher rates of cancer. For me this is a good enough explanation of why breast cancer rates are so high until some future independent major research studies would indicate otherwise.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/12/paraben-chemical-linked-to-breast-cancer_n_1202144.html
I don't have patience with the idea that we just need more surgery, more chemo, & more radiation.
I couldn't find any science-based medical procedures for eliminating chemicals from the body. When I was looking into this I could only find 2 sources that had information about combining body burden testing with detox methods. One them involved participants in an Ayurveda Panchakarma program. They did the body burden testing before the participants started the program & then again afterwards. There was significant reduction in chemical body burden levels..
The only other similar source was in a book, Hormone Deception.
http://www.amazon.com/Hormone-Deception-Lindsey-Berkson/dp/1453741275/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341035465&sr=1-1&keywords=hormone+deception
The author did the body burden testing. Then if I remember right she went to some kind of special naturopathic center for an extended detox before having the body burden testing again.
I appreciated that Orac is more balanced in his perspective on environmental chemicals than I would have expected. I think I have a much greater outrage combined with both fear & helplessness. Science made these chemicals, but it seems like science has done damn little to protect the public from them.
It seems inconceivable to me that we haven't been using the precautionary principle. I know there have been some advances & some improvements in cancer research. But after decades of spending gazillion dollars on chemo, radiation & surgery couldn't some of the money be redirected? One of things I wanted most after my cancer diagnosis was body burden testing. Why couldn't research go into making body burden testing more affordable & available to the general public? Eleven years ago it would have cost $5,000 coupled with a trip out of state. I couldn't do that. Even if I could have it would have only tested a small fraction of the environmental chemicals, but any testing is better than none. I don't know what's available now, but I doubt it's any better.
I don't think I have the option of genuine cancer prevention without having affordable body burden testing, a safe effective proven way to eliminate chemicals from body tissues, and the right not to be exposed to more chemicals. This is what the American Cancer Society should be working on.
I calculated the additional healthcare costs associated with gadolinium based contrasting agents. Of every dose at least 1% stays in the body, except if you had the linear kind which I did, it is 4 times that amount. Keep in mind that my career was in finance and as a former Federal auditor for the DHHS/OIG. When faced with numbers like these it is easy for the insurance companies to get on board in stopping these products from causing harm by refusing to pay for them.
Additional Healthcare Costs due to Gadolinium Based Contrasting Agents
GBCAs administered doses (est) 300,000,000
Injury rate 10%
Average lifetime additional healthcare costs* $250,000
Total healthcare costs $7,500,000,000,000
In Trillions ($000,000,000,000,000) $7.5T
*Those diagnosed with NSF will be higher, over $1M per case
I'm skeptical that a genuine drug cure for cancer will ever be found. Sort of like how there is no genuine drug cure for obesity. Surgery & drugs also get done for obesity, but that still isn't the same as a cure. I don't think the American Cancer Society is suppressing a genuine drug cure for cancer, but I agree with you that they are not serving the public interest well.
Maybe eventually you will be right. Maybe insurance companies could possibly learn that holistic medicine can be effective while also being less expensive. Plus they wouldn't have to be liable for catastrophic complications that can arise years later. Cancer treatments costs are so insanely out of control. The cost savings for insurers could be huge. This does seem like a more likely avenue for change than from the the American Cancer Society.
http://www.chemicalbodyburden.org/
The subject of environmental chemicals in regards to cancer is too immense & too time consuming for me to do that well, but I still wanted to discuss some of my thoughts, ideas & experiences with cancer prevention. One of the things I strongly wanted to bring up was radiation from CT scans. His article covered my concerns. I have thought for years that it should be routine for radiation exposure amounts from any medical test to be routinely charted in patients records so lifetime exposures can be known. I think patients should be routinely told the radiation levels before their appointment.
http://www.preventcancer.com/
http://bcaction.org/
http://www.abihm.org/
http://whatstheharm.net/alternativemedicine.html
The American Cancer Society website has some excellent patient-centered pages about breast cancer prevention,breast cancer diagnoses and treatment options:
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/index
Reading the commentary here really strongly brought to my mind the parallel of the physician who pioneered the concept of hand washing to prevent infections. A lot of the physicians of his day did their best to discredit & destroy him. They also caused a lot of suffering & death for patients by opposing him. Just because something can be simple, gentle, and non-toxic doesn't make it invalid.
Why should it be radical to entertain the idea that cancer treatment could possibly be treated with non toxic means? Cancer rates are so high that it seems totally illogical not to consider switching focus to prevention. The amount of human suffering alleviated would be immense. I really don't understand the resistance for change to prevention & for exploring non-toxic cancer treatments by medical professionals.
If we had an effective emphasis on prevention there is no way AstraZeneca should be allowed to fund & control the informational content of Breast Cancer Month the way it has for years. Why should the manufacturer of tamoxifen & other oncology drugs be allowed to determine cancer policy? Every single oncology drug recommended to me was either made by AstraZeneca or Novartis who both have also profited from the manufacture of pesticides & other environmental chemicals. Only 10% of the 80,000 to 100,000 chemicals in use today have any safety testing at all. I think AstraZeneca has too much conflict of interest anyway to be involved in Breast Cancer Month They profit from breast cancer treatment, but not from prevention.
It's seems to be surprisingly common for other drug companies to be also manufacturing a variety of industrial chemicals. I think that's a conflict of interest that should not be tolerated.
What if there is just one kind of cancer? Maybe all these classifications simply represent metabolic differences that occur when the cancer originates in different body locations. What if cancer in the very beginning stages is a healing process? What if the purpose of cancer is actually a good thing, but we just don't know how to work with it? Maybe cancer is a single disease, but expresses itself differently based on where it originates?
Back to my hand washing analogy. This is from Wikipedia about some of the rationale doctors used against hand washing. Then they thought the high rates of fever was a multitude of diseases because it damaged so many parts of the body, but it was caused by just one infection. Maybe we are making a similar mistake with cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
"The findings from autopsies of deceased women also showed a confusing multitude of various physical signs, which emphasized the belief that puerperal fever was not one, but many different, yet unidentified, diseases. Semmelweis's main finding — that all instances of puerperal fever could be traced back to only one single cause: lack of cleanliness — was simply unacceptable".
"Just because something can be simple, gentle, and non-toxic doesn't make it invalid."
Have you got any citations from articles published in peer reviewed journals, to back up your statement? Websites that hawk *alternative* cancer treatments, don't count...nor do the websites of crank alternative medicine *practitioners*.
"Cancer rates are so high that it seems totally illogical not to consider switching focus to prevention. The amount of human suffering alleviated would be immense. I really don't understand the resistance for change to prevention & for exploring non-toxic cancer treatments by medical professionals."
Which doctors do you use, who don't emphasize prevention strategies to decrease the risk of certain cancers and other serious diseases and disorders? If your own doctors do not stress prevention, you should be thinking about changing physicians.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/cancer-survivors-long-term-care-challenge_n_1571826.html
For me it was particularly interesting that “A survey of 1,072 primary care doctors (PCP), which include internists and family practitioners, showed that 94 percent of them were unaware of the long-term side effects of four of the most commonly used chemotherapy drugs used to treat breast and prostate cancer.”
“The survey results also showed that about a third of the oncologists surveyed were unable to identify long-term side effects that occur after chemotherapy.”
But the real question is why are we using these corrosively toxic treatments? Why aren’t we looking for a better way?
The fact that she has worked has worked extensively on her book long before Robin Robert's MDS diagnosis would seem to me to be a testament for Dr. Cuomo's strong commitment for her work with cancer as both a radiologist and author. I would be very surprised if Robin Robert's diagnosis really has much or anything at all to do with the content of her book.
She has not worked as a diagnostic radiologist in years and has never worked as an oncologist. Pure and blatant sensationalism and self-promoting.
Have you no empathy for Robin Roberts' situation, marbeth?
http://healthimpactnews.com/2012/merck-is-sued-by-former-virologist-employees-for-deliberately-falsifying-mumps-vaccine-efficacy-studies/
This blog is about cancer, not your personal demons and your personal conspiracy theories.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/25/simplistic-criticisms-of-cancer-therapy/
Orac, by the way, really walks the walk. He is a breast-cancer surgeon with a research career in cancer biology.
But then, as part of the establishment, does he really want to see cancer cured? Oh, you bet he does -- like so many of us, he's lost loved ones (human and animal) to this terrible disease, and having read his posts for years, it's obvoius that he would be delighted to see this awful scourge defeated.