Posts Tagged ‘alternative medicine’

Benefits of mainstream medicine vs. alternative medicine debated in latest Underground Knowledge group poll

Posted: February 14, 2016 in Underground Knowledge
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Do you mostly use Mainstream Medicine or Alternative Medicine for your health? We put that question to members of our Underground Knowledge discussion group on Goodreads.com – and results to date show that many see merit in combining the two.

 

 

Interim poll results show that 36% of respondents mostly use mainstream medicine for their health; 35% use both mainstream and alternative; and 29% mostly use alternative medicine.

For clarity sake, we define mainstream medicine as a system in which medical doctors and other healthcare professionals (such as nurses, pharmacists, and therapists) treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation, or surgery. Also called allopathic medicine, orthodox medicine, and Western medicine.

We define alternative medicine, also known as Complementary Medicine, as natural or traditional or native remedies. We also list the following examples of well-known alternative therapies: Acupressure, Acupuncture, Ayurvedic Medicine (more than 5,000 years old), Biofeedback, Bach Flower Remedies, Colon Therapy/Colonics, Chinese (Oriental) Medicine, Chiropractic, Osteopathy, Cupping (ancient Chinese medical technique), Craniosacral Therapy, Ear Candling, Electropathy, Fasting Therapy, Herbalism (one of most popular health systems worldwide), Hydrotherapy, Iridology, Magnetotherapy, Massage Therapy, Naturopathic Medicine, Vitamin Therapy, Yoga.

 

A random selection of poll respondents’ comments follow:

I mostly use alternative medicine but use all medical systems (including Western medicine), although avoid Big Pharma’s drugs like the plague and would only agree to surgery as a last resort.

The confusion about alternative medicine is that this one is efficient in certain areas and problems, but it is hard to identify the real cause of the healing when the healing process involves many substances, rituals, dancings, or massages in certain areas combined. And when you do not know the causes or how the system works, it is easy to invent and believe that there are chakras, body energies, magnetism and all sort of crap.

I’m not quite sure why we have to be fully for one or the other… Can we really make a decision or judgment based on such a vague premise? Much of Western medicine is great and much is not… the same goes for alternative medicine. It is impossible to stand for the entire array of medicine produced by western medicine or by the alternative route.

Biofeedack (a medicine I’ve also used with success) is generally listed as “complimentary medicine” or alternative, not generally used in mainstream medicine. It’s also often mocked by skeptics, as per this and other similar listings for biofeedback on skeptics forums: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/med…

Ironically, when someone will explain exactly how certain alternative medicine methods work, these will no longer be “alternative”, but “mainstream” (scientific). Until then, those who use alternative medicine are nothing more than voluntary guinea pigs.

…need to include the fact that what is often being called “science” to support a fair percentage of Western medicine is of course biased research funded by Big Pharma that aims for a specific outcome. And some of it is even anti-science in that it is not open to all possibilities (e.g. research that reveals this patented drug is not the best way to treat a specific illness will often be thrown out).

I wouldn’t personally say all elements of mainstream medicine must be scientifically proven. There’s lots of evidence of peer reviewed medical journals throwing out some studies and favoring others that fit their agenda. Pharma funds studies and makes sure the methods of testing and collecting evidence are biased. So sometimes science is proven and other times it’s fake science propping up medicines and practices.    

Each time in my life that I have been laid low and very ill it has been the alternative medicines / therapies which have given me back my life. I have gone to them out of frustration about our standard treatments.

 

Poll ends March 1.

 

To view all comments, or better still to have YOUR say, go to: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/142309-underground-knowledge—a-discussion-group?type=group

 

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Readers reminded how dangerous hospitals can be

Posted: February 6, 2016 in Medical Industrial Complex
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In our book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures, we remind readers that hospitals can be dangerous places.

We draw attention to this disturbing state of affairs in a chapter titled “Medical tests you may not need and procedures that may kill you.” (See our blog of December 28). And we refer to an article the Huffington Post  ran on April 3, 2013. Quoting the Institute of Medicine, it reports, “100,000 people die every year due to medical error — more deaths than from car accidents, diabetes, and pneumonia. Far more patients are victims of medical error”.

The report also quotes “a stunning” 2011 Health Affairs article in which researchers apparently discovered that medical errors occurred in one-third of all hospitalized patients. “A separate study of Medicare patients found that one in seven people in the hospital experience at least one unintended harm”.

Further excerpts follow from Medical Industrial Complex:

The Huffington Post  report identifies the following as “the 10 common medical errors that can occur in the hospital”: Misdiagnosis, unnecessary treatment, unnecessary tests and deadly procedures, medication mistakes, ‘never events’ (events that should never happen), uncoordinated care, infections (from hospital to patient), not-so-accidental ‘accidents,’ missed warning signs and premature discharge (from hospital).

According to the report, misdiagnosis is the most common type of medical error in a hospital; $700 billion is spent every year on unnecessary tests and treatments; medication mistakes affect 1.5 million Americans annually; ‘never events’ (such as scissors being left in patients’ bodies) happen all too often; hospital-acquired infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control, affect 1.7 million people annually and cause nearly 100,000 deaths every year; and malfunctioning medical devices cause tens of thousands of “accidents” in hospitals every year.

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“Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.” -Hippocrates

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Choosing Wisely, that worthy medical initiative referred to earlier, reports that “three out of four US physicians say the frequency with which doctors order unnecessary medical tests and procedures is a serious problem for America’s health care system—but just as many say that the average physician orders unnecessary medical tests and procedures at least once a week”.

If that admission (by US physicians) has been accurately reported – as appears to be the case given Choosing Wisely’s impressive credentials and reputation for accuracy – then that raises alarm bells. We suspect the estimates are very conservative and the actual incidence of doctors going overboard on medical tests is even higher. Possibly much higher.

T.B.C.

 

Medical Industrial Complex  is Bk #3 in The Underground Knowledge Series  and is available exclusively via Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

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‘Medical Industrial Complex’ highlights medical tests that may kill you

Posted: December 28, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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In a chapter titled “Medical tests you may not need and procedures that may kill you” in our book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures, we quote a Reuters  report that provides an insight into how the medical system, or machine, works.

 

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

 

An excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex  follows: 

The above-mentioned Reuters report (dated July 1, 2013) advises that one-third of people with heart disease have their cholesterol levels checked more often than guidelines recommend, and reports that research suggests such extra testing may be a waste of time and money if it doesn’t lead to improvements in patients’ health.

More about those over-the-top cholesterol-level checks later in this chapter. Meantime, that Reuters report got us thinking…

How many medical tests and hospital procedures are unnecessary?

An exhaustive search of published medical documents, mainstream media releases and medical websites reveals the answer to that question is: far, far too many.

Even the medical profession, it seems, admits many medical procedures are unnecessary or over-used; an article dated March 5, 2013 on the well-respected Scientific American site states that the routine use of 130 different medical screenings, tests and treatments are often unnecessary and should be scaled back; that’s according to 25 medical specialty organizations whose findings are reported on in the article.

The writer quotes a 2012 report by America’s Institute of Medicine, which estimated that “in 2009 some $750 billion, or about 30 percent of all health spending, was wasted on unnecessary services and other issues, such as excessive administrative costs and fraud”.

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“Fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class – Hope your surgery went well!” –Simone Elkeles, bestselling author of Rules of Attraction

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Many of the services deemed unnecessary appear on lists released by Choosing Wisely, an initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation aimed at reducing needless medical interventions that waste money and can actually do more harm than good.

The Scientific American article reports that some of the items on the lists are familiar, giving as one example the recommendation that patients should avoid scheduling non-medically indicated labor inductions or cesarean sections before 39 weeks. It states other items are designed to reduce the use of expensive and often unnecessary imaging tests, such as early use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography scan (CT) scans for complaints that will likely go away on their own.

The report continues, “Other list items may surprise patients. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that women 30 to 65 years old who are not at high risk for cervical cancer skip the annual pap smears; the research shows that conducting screenings every three years works just as well”.

Professor Virginia Moyer, chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, is quoted as saying that mammography use is responsible for around one fifth of the cases of over-diagnosis of breast cancer. “Sometimes a screening leads to a false positive, after which additional tests can expose patients to unnecessary radiation or even biopsies, which carry their own risks,” she says.

“Moyer points out that women have gotten mastectomies to treat small, nonaggressive cancers that were never going to affect them. ‘That’s a huge harm,’ she says. ‘Yet it can be difficult to convince people that it’s okay to simply live with a cancer’.”

In an article dated June 27, 2013, the Huffington Post lists four medical tests you may not need. Quoting a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, it claims that 28% of primary care physicians admit to over-treating patients, including by ordering potentially unwarranted tests as a precaution against malpractice suits. “Unfortunately, excessive screening can open the door to unnecessary surgeries and medications — not to mention needless anxiety”.

The four tests Huffington Post readers are invited to reconsider (with the reporter’s abridged comments in quotes) are:

  • Electrocardiogram, or ECG, to detect heart abnormalities that can indicate cardiovascular disease – “There’s no evidence that an ECG will reduce your risk of having a heart attack, according to…the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force”.
  • Upper endoscopy to diagnose conditions like gastroesophageal reflux disease – “ ‘You could be better off… trying proton pump inhibitors for four to eight weeks,’ says Amir Qaseem, MD, PhD, director of clinical policy at the American College of Physicians”.
  • Imaging (MRI, CT scans) for lower back pain to pinpoint the source of your discomfort – “MRIs not only don’t improve recovery, but can increase a patient’s likelihood of having surgery as much as eightfold…(and) may increase your risk for cancer”.
  • Bone mineral density scan to screen for osteoporosis – “If the test reveals mild bone loss, you may be prescribed osteoporosis medication, even though evidence suggests it would have little effect…You could be better off…waiting until you’re 65 (before being screened)”.

T.B.C.

 

Medical Industrial Complex  is Bk #3 in The Underground Knowledge Series  and is available exclusively via Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

 

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Cancer remains the big killer, but what’s being done about it? (Part 4)

Posted: December 13, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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In MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures, we highlight alternative cancer treatments, but we also warn readers that the natural health sector has attracted its share of quacks, too, so all claims of cures should be treated with a degree of skepticism until proven.

 

 

Following on from our recent (November 27) post on this subject, here’s another excerpt from a chapter titled “Finding (hiding) a cure for cancer” lifted from Medical Industrial Complex:

However, automatically riding roughshod over claims of natural cures, especially where those claims are supported by glowing and apparently bona-fide testimonials, is no more the answer than gullibly believing them all.

There are those who may argue that Big Pharma could also make money out of cures for cancer and that it would be a lot easier than suppressing cures. To counter that, many independent medical researchers say long-term or ongoing cancer treatments, like chemotherapy, would be far more profitable than delivering single-visit cures. It has been estimated that the average cancer patient spends tens of thousands of dollars on standard treatments with some even spending hundreds of thousands.

To quote the natural health website Mercola.com once more, “There is so much you can do to lower your risk for cancer”.

The site lists its “12 top cancer prevention strategies”. These include:

  • Food preparation – “Eat at least one-third of your food raw.”
  • Carbohydrates and sugar – “Reduce or eliminate processed foods, sugar/fructose and grain-based foods.”
  • Protein and fat – “Consider reducing your protein levels to one gram per kilogram of lean body weight.”
  • GMOs – “Avoid genetically engineered foods.”
  • Animal-based Omega-3 fats – “Normalize your ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fats by taking a high-quality krill oil.”
  • Natural probiotics – “Optimize your gut flora…add naturally fermented food to your diet.”
  • Exercise – “Make regular exercise a priority…lowers insulin levels.”
  • Vitamin D – “Decrease your risk of cancer by more than half simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with appropriate sun exposure.”
  • Sleep – “Make sure you are getting enough restorative sleep.”
  • Exposure to toxins – “Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins.”
  • Exposure to radiation – “Limit your exposure and protect yourself from radiation produced by cell phones, towers, base stations, and Wi-Fi stations.”
  • Stress management – “Stress from all causes is a major contributor to disease.”

If you have cancer or know anyone who has been diagnosed with the disease, Massimo Mazzucco’s 2010 documentary film Cancer: The Forbidden Cures is a good starting place for those searching for natural cures.

Of course, always consult with your doctor first. (And in case you’re wondering, this is a disclaimer we had to include for legal reasons).

Again, Big Pharma’s repeat customers are sick people. From a financial perspective, cured people are of little use.

As the cancer industry alone is a multi-trillion dollar industry for Big Pharma, it seems believable that if any cure was to be suppressed for financial gain it would be a cancer cure.

 

Medical Industrial Complex  is available exclusively on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

 

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

 

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Cancer remains the big killer, but what’s being done about it? (Part 3)

Posted: November 27, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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In MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures, we focus on alternative methods for treating cancer – natural healing methods which do not involve mainstream medicine’s patented (and highly profitable) chemo and radiation therapies.

 

 

Following on from our recent (November 15) post on this subject, here’s another excerpt from a chapter titled “Finding (hiding) a cure for cancer” lifted from Medical Industrial Complex:

One who believes olive leaf extract can fight or even prevent cancer is a UK gentleman who is a member of our ‘Underground Knowledge’ discussion group on Goodreads.com. He speaks from some experience as he claims he battled back to full fitness after being hospitalized for four months with a rare condition. He’s convinced his recovery was down to olive leaf extract, which he took in conjunction with hemp oil and Vitamin D.

Our own investigation into the merits of using olive leaf extract to combat cancer proved productive. Among the many papers published on the subject, a report by health writer Danica Collins on the UndergroundHealthReporter.com site claims that “The phytochemical known as oleuropein found in olive leaf extract has been shown to eliminate cancer tumors in 9 to 12 days”.

Collins says, “It’s no wonder that people who live in the Mediterranean area — who consume 20 times more olive oil than Americans — have half the incidences of cancer than the U.S. Both the olive leaf and olive fruit have active polyphenol properties, but in the processing of the fruit and oil, many are removed.

“Even so, olive oil contains enough polyphenols that deliver many healthful benefits. It is the olive leaf, however, that is prized for its anti-tumor, anti-microbial and anti-viral properties. And it’s not just cancer that olive leaf extract has been shown to treat successfully”.

She concludes, “Clinical tests conducted by the New York University School of Medicine showed that olive leaf extract is able to change the pathways of HIV-type infections as well, and may even reverse these conditions”.

Collins also refers to a book titled Olive Leaf Extract, by Dr. Morton Walker who, she says, recommends using olive leaf extract for its miraculous effects on more than 125 infectious and chronic diseases. (We couldn’t obtain a copy of this book before our own book went to press, but it sounds interesting).

The health benefits of olive leaf extract are also extoled in an article published by Fox News on January 23, 2013. It confirms that “Olive leaf is an especially good source of the anti-cancer compounds apigenin and luteolin, and is a source of the anti-malarial agent cinchonine. And oleuropein has also shown protective capabilities against breast cancer”.

The article continues, “Olive leaf extract also acts as an anti-inflammatory. Like oxidation, inflammation is a key factor in chronic and degenerative diseases. Animal studies additionally suggest that olive leaf extract may protect against nerve damage, and may be of value in cases of stroke”.

The popular science-based natural health advocacy organization Natural News, led by activist-turned-scientist Mike Adams, lists on its website “The top seven natural cures for cancer that got buried by the FDA, AMA, CDC.” Detailed case studies supporting each “cure” are included in an article dated October 24, 2013 on the organization’s NaturalNews.com site.

One of the above-mentioned case studies in particular is worth highlighting. It involves the alleged payoff of a cancer researcher to cease work on natural cures and retire in Mexico.

According to the article, the researcher, one Raymond Rife, “discovered the most promising cure for curing ‘hopeless’ cancer cases.” He also designed and developed cutting edge microscopes and helium plasma lamps to support his research.

No surprises Rife was resented by Big Pharma and Western medicine elitists in the medical community.

The article outlines a timeline showing Rife’s demise as follows:

“The AMA (American Medical Association) visits all doctors involved with Rife warning them: ‘Those who don’t stop using the Frequency Instruments lose their medical license.’ Doctors immediately turn in their Rife Machines for fear of indictment”. And (the following year) “the AMA pays (Rife’s associate Dr. Arthur) Kendall over $200,000 to stop working on cancer cures and retire in Mexico”.

Dr. Kendall, incidentally, reportedly died of “unknown causes” five years later, and two years after that, according to the same article, Rife “turns to alcohol, eventually needing rehabilitation”.

The list of other supposed cancer cures said to have been suppressed is long enough to fill a whole book. These range from Cannabidiol, the little-known medical compound found in Marijuana, to a treatment that involves ingesting nothing other than regular household baking soda.

In 2009 Hollywood celebrity and cancer survivor Suzanne Somers wrote about natural cancer cures in her book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer and How To Prevent Getting it in the First Place.

The synopsis for the book mentions that “Somers interviews doctors who are successfully using the most innovative cancer treatments—treatments that build up the body rather than tear it down.”

Knockout also outlines an array of effective, alternative treatment options from doctors all over the United States. Treatments that do not involve chemotherapy or radiation and which primarily focus on building up the immune system.

The book’s synopsis also mentions the “stunning testimonials from inspirational survivors using alternative treatments”.

In a 2010 interview she gave on News Max TV, Somers spoke about her personal experience beating cancer and the wider research she conducted on alternative cures while writing Knockout.

“I would talk to these (alternative) doctors, interview them, and I would say to each of them ‘it’s all well and good for you to tell me this, but I need to talk to your patients’. They opened up their patients to me. I talked to Stage Four lung cancer, liver cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors – all these people living these normal, healthy lives having not been degraded by harsh chemicals. And I realized that there is another way that none of us know about.”

The other way, of course, includes alternative, natural healing methods which do not involve the Medical Industrial Complex’s patented (and highly profitable) chemo and radiation therapies.

TBC

 

Medical Industrial Complex  is available exclusively on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

 

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

 

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Cancer remains the big killer, but what’s being done about it? (Part 2)

Posted: November 15, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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In our book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures, we emphasise that mainstream medicine should not be so quick to dismiss claims of alternative treatments and cures for cancer.

Following on from our recent (November 4) post on this emotional subject, here’s another excerpt from a chapter titled “Finding (hiding) a cure for cancer” lifted from Medical Industrial Complex:

The American Cancer Society is even more conservative in its stance on alternative cancer treatments. AMC’s website states that complementary or alternative cancer therapies are harder to evaluate than mainstream treatment.

Image result for american cancer society logo

AMC states, “One big concern is that, with alternative treatments, the delay in mainstream treatment can allow the cancer to grow and spread to other parts of the body. Another is that some complementary and alternative therapies have been reported to cause serious problems or even deaths. Even so, most of these problems are not reported to the FDA by the patient or family, so no one else hears about them.

“We do know that certain vitamins and minerals can increase the risk of cancer or other illnesses, especially if too much is taken. But when it happens to one person, it is very easy to miss any link between the illness and the supplement. Large groups of people must be studied to find out about a small increase in risk”.

The AMC report continues, “There are those who think that treatments derived from folk remedies that have been used for thousands of years must work…just because a treatment method has been used a long time does not mean that it works…

“When scientific studies are not done, it is hard to tell what is caused by the illness and what is caused by the treatment. Herbal treatments that are given for illnesses that go away on their own may be given credit for curing the person. Or the treatment might make the person feel better for a short time but have no effect in the long run”.

All good points, but it doesn’t remotely change the cold, hard fact that cancer patients working within the mainstream medical system continue to succumb to the deadly disease in frightening and ever-increasing numbers. Or that no cure for cancer appears to be on the horizon within mainstream Western medicine.

What follows is a sample of alternative cancer cure theories we’ve unearthed as a result of conducting our own research.

In the 1920’s, Canadian nurse Rene Caisse developed a natural concoction of herbs called Essiac. Nurse Caisse claimed it could cure cancer and she garnered many testimonials from satisfied patients said to be cancer-free after taking the product. Laboratory tests did not confirm Essiac offered any benefits whatsoever, but conspiracy theorists argue the lab tests were rigged and that Big Pharma flexed its muscle to shut Caisse down.

Rene Caisse

Nurse Rene Caisse…shut down.

In the 1940’s, German-born American physician Max Gerson (1881-1959) developed a nutrition-based cancer treatment called Gerson Therapy.

After repeatedly claiming his therapy cured cancer, Doctor Gerson had his medical license suspended and he died while still under suspension. Although now a maligned and mostly forgotten cancer treatment in America, it remains popular in Mexico where there are Gerson clinics in operation, treating local and foreign cancer patients.

In the 1950’s, American coal miner Harry Hoxsey promoted his family’s century-old herbal recipe, which he touted as a cancer cure. He set up clinics in 17 states around America before all were closed down by the FDA. Hoxsey made a rare documentary film in 1957 called You Don’t Have to Die, which detailed his cure and covered the patients he treated with it. There’s a more recent documentary titled Hoxsey: How Healing Becomes a Crime, which chronicles his battles with what the docomakers refer to as organized medicine.

In the 1980’s, Italian medical doctor, chemist and pharmacologist Luigi di Bella (1912-2003) claimed to have developed a cure for cancer known as Di Bella Therapy. The formula was a combination of vitamins, drugs and hormones.

Luigi di Bella at work.

The American Cancer Society says on its website that numerous studies showed Di Bella Therapy “may have had a negative effect compared to the outcome for similar patients receiving standard treatment”. However, there are some alternative medical researchers who believe Di Bella therapy was a legitimate cancer cure that was permanently quashed by the medical establishment.

Despite the extremely negative press garnered in Italy and the rest of the world there are, or were, cancer patients who swore by Di Bella Therapy and gave testimonials. For example, on the website BeatingCancerCenter.org  is the following statement: “For about three years, the patient has been following the Di Bella therapy without side effects, improving the quality of life and going back to work.”

Luigi di Bella himself consistently stated that pharmaceutical companies were conspiring against him.

T.B.C.

Medical Industrial Complex  is available exclusively on Amazon. To check it out go to: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

 

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Cancer remains the big killer, but what’s being done about it? (Part 1)

Posted: November 4, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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It’s common knowledge that cancer, along with cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and chronic lung diseases, is one of the biggest natural killers. Nearly two million Americans are diagnosed with cancer annually, according to some estimates, and as many as 20,000 cancer patients are reportedly dying worldwide every day.

In a chapter titled “Finding (hiding) a cure for cancer,” we address this killer disease in our book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures, and we look at what mainstream medicine is doing about it and, more importantly, what alternative treatments are available.

An excerpt from the book follows:

According to Mercola.com, which promotes itself as the world’s No.1 natural health site, “One person out of three will be hit with a cancer diagnosis at some time in their lives.” Subscribers are urged to understand that cancer is big business.

In an article dated August 3, 2013, Mercola.com states, “The cancer industry is spending virtually nothing of its multi-billion dollar resources on effective prevention strategies, such as dietary guidelines, exercise and obesity education. Instead, it pours its money into treating cancer, not preventing or curing it. Why would they shoot their cash cow? If they can keep the well-oiled Cancer Machine running, they will continue to make massive profits on chemotherapy drugs, radiotherapy, diagnostic procedures and surgeries.

“The typical cancer patient spends $50,000 fighting the disease. Chemotherapy drugs are among the most expensive of all treatments, many ranging from $3,000 to $7,000 for a one-month supply”.

The article concludes, “In spite of the enormous amounts of money funneled into cancer research today, two out of three cancer patients will be dead within five years after receiving all or part of the standard cancer treatment trinity—surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.”

There’s no doubt, in the last few decades hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent internationally on cancer research. In the US alone, since President Nixon launched his ‘War on Cancer’ program in 1971, tens of billions in government funding have been granted to cancer researchers.

And when a cancer cure is finally found it will save millions of lives and will be the medical discovery of the era.

However, there are theories out there which suggest there has already been a cure, or many cures, discovered for cancer. These popular theories suggest the Medical Industrial Complex have a huge financial incentive to suppress cures so they can continue to provide their own costly treatments for cancer patients.

If true, that would be a callous and unforgiveable business model, unnecessarily costing countless lives.

Of course, many if not most known (proclaimed) alternative cancer treatments are noticeably lacking in suitable testing methodology and well conducted clinical trials, and test results often haven’t demonstrated significant efficacy; nor have results been published, or published in appropriate publications at least.

According to Wikipedia, “A 2006 systematic review of 214 articles covering 198 clinical trials of alternative cancer treatments concluded that almost none conducted dose-ranging studies, which are necessary to ensure that the patients are being given a useful amount of the treatment. These kinds of treatments appear and vanish frequently, and have throughout history”.

The medical establishment has identified and branded as ineffective numerous alternative therapies to treat and prevent cancer. These include: homeopathy, naturopathy, herbalism, holistic medicine and aromatherapy.

Similarly, many other treatments have been put down by the establishment. To name but a few, these include light therapy and other energy-based treatments, fasting and other diet-based treatments, cannabis and other plant-based treatments, colon cleansing and other physical procedures, and faith healing and other such spiritual measures.

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“The cancer industry world wide is estimated at a 200 billion dollar a year industry. There are many in various associated positions within that industry who would be without a job if that cash flow dried up suddenly with the news that there are cheaper, less harmful, and more efficacious remedies available. Big Pharmacy would virtually vanish.” –Paul Fassa. Article excerpt from Natural News, September 24, 2009.

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There’s no disputing that the alternative (cancer treatment) route is littered with examples of pseudo-science, snake oil salesmen, bogus cures and failures; nor is there any disputing that in recent decades medical science has made major inroads into treating and removing cancers. You only need to look at the advances made in chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and the refinement of surgical techniques, to understand that.

However, officially at least, a cure for cancer still eludes Mankind and cancer sufferers continue to die by the millions every year.

For that reason alone, mainstream medicine should not be so quick to dismiss claims of alternative treatments and cures. After all, there are many case studies that support the theory that there has already been a cure, or many cures, discovered for cancer.

Even that respected American non-profit medical practice and research group the Mayo Clinic pays lip service at least to alternative cancer treatments. On its website, beneath the warning “Many alternative cancer treatments are unproved and some may even be dangerous,” the clinic lists “10 alternative cancer treatments that are generally safe” and “have shown some promise in helping people with cancer”.

Those alternative treatments (with the Mayo Clinic’s abbreviated comments added) include:

  • Acupuncture – “May be helpful in relieving nausea caused by chemotherapy.”
  • Aromatherapy – “May be helpful in relieving nausea, pain and stress.”
  • Exercise – “May help people with cancer live longer and improve…quality of life.”
  • Hypnotherapy – “May be helpful for people…who are experiencing anxiety, pain and stress.”
  • Massage – “Can be helpful in relieving pain.”
  • Meditation – “May help…by relieving anxiety and stress.”
  • Music therapy – “May help relieve pain and control nausea and vomiting.”
  • Relaxation techniques – “May be helpful in relieving anxiety and fatigue.”
  • Tai chi – “May help relieve stress.”
  • Yoga – “May provide some stress relief…improve sleep and reduce fatigue.”

Hardly earth-shattering stuff. However, it’s a concession at least that there is a place within mainstream medicine – no matter how small – for alternative treatments in combating cancer.

TBC…

 

Medical Industrial Complex  is available exclusively on Amazon. To check it out go to: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

 

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Cures already ‘out there’ for many so-called incurable illnesses?

Posted: October 11, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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There seems to be more than enough evidence to support the claim that at least some scientific breakthroughs are suppressed.

We explored this in our first non-fiction book The Orphan Conspiracies, and again in our recently published MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures.

A relevant excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex follows:

We cite a January 2014 New York Times  article reporting that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) uses secret technology to remotely input and alter data on computers worldwide – even when targeted PC’s or laptops are not connected to the Internet. We point out that this suppressed technology, which uses radio frequencies to spy on computers, only came to the public’s attention due to leaked NSA documents from former agency contractor-turned whistleblower Edward Snowden.

This begs the question: Is it a regular occurrence for governments, intelligence agencies and the military to withhold scientific breakthroughs from the public?

If so, how many other suppressed inventions exist in the world’s ironclad vaults of power?

Replace the word inventions with cures and you will see what we, in our roundabout way, are driving at.

There have been numerous reports of scientific inventions that never saw the light of day even though they were perfected and ready to go on the market. Rumors of these radical inventions date back to the post-Industrial Revolution period in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and have persisted right up to and including the present day.

Unfortunately, it appears this also happens within modern medicine where cures for various illnesses mysteriously vanish or are quashed by the medical establishment.

The basic concept or theory we explore in this chapter is that there are already cures for many so-called incurable illnesses. However, they are often unpatentable (aka unprofitable or unmonitizable) and therefore blocked by multinational drug companies.

In other instances, these cures are sometimes not suppressed for financial reasons but rather for intellectual ones: such cures contradict medical academia and these cures, which are often radical and seem non-scientific, “do not compute” with what official science says. But a term one American banker-turned author coined seems relevant in this regard: “Scientific fact, until next revision”. Meaning what seems to contradict science today, may make sense tomorrow, for science is perpetually evolving.

This suppression theory supports the assertion that Big Pharma needs sick people to prosper. Patients, not healthy people, are their customers. If everybody was cured of a particular illness or disease, pharmaceutical companies would lose 100% of their revenue on the products they sell for that ailment.

What all this means is because modern medicine is so heavily intertwined with the financial profits culture, it’s a sickness industry more than it is a health industry.

There are numerous examples we could cite to support this. One of the most disturbing examples came to our attention in the form of a CTV News report dated November 29, 2012. Headed ‘Cure for cancer found in Canada – Pharmaceutical companies turn their backs,’ the televised report highlights the successful treatment of rats and mice given human cancers in a Canadian laboratory.

The drug used was DCA – described by the researchers involved as “an unpatentable old drug” used to treat rare inherited diseases. Those same researchers were very excited, and confident, about its potential for curing cancer in humans and were keen to secure the interest of pharmaceutical companies to take the drug to the next step.

DCA’s affordability – described as costing “just pennies a dose” – no doubt accounted for some of the researchers’ enthusiasm. Here, at last, was a potential cancer cure that wouldn’t cost patients the earth.

Now here’s the rub. Because this cheap, unpatentable, old drug “doesn’t fit the business plans” of the pharmaceutical companies, they ain’t interested in progressing it. In other words, Big Pharma can see no profit in developing and marketing a pennies-a-dose drug – even if it has the likely potential of saving many, many lives.

At the time of proofing this book, the CTV report on this disgusting state of affairs is still on YouTube and is well worth viewing.

Of course, there are two sides to every story, and, in the interests of balance, we must relay one YouTube viewer’s comment on this report.

He (name withheld) says: “Even if it was true that Big Pharma doesn’t want a cure for cancer, you don’t need Big Pharma to get a drug out there. There are plenty of non-profit and research institutions that have the money to fund this and have no incentive for a profit. This video is too one-sided to make a judgement…If you dig deeper into this you’ll find that clinical trials into humans were conducted in 2009 and did not yield the same results (as) in rats. The attack on Big Pharma is normally done by people who have no knowledge of the pharma industry and all the costs associated to create one drug”.

Naïve or fair comment? You decide.

Personally, we’d be guided by former pharmacist Denis Toovey’s comment in the foreword to Medical Industrial Complex: “There is no hiding the huge influence drug companies have on the practice of medicine which has stalled finding real cures.” That from a professional who spent 40 years in the pharmaceutical industry…

TBC

You have been reading an excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex. The book is available exclusively via Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

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Natural medicine versus the synthesized, patented alternatives peddled by Big Pharma

Posted: October 8, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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How many plants are being unnecessarily synthesized and sold over the counter as wonder drugs to an unsuspecting public? We ask that question in our book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures.

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

The basis of many a drug or medicine, of course, is a plant or plants. These plants range from herbs, flowers, roots and leaves to common and uncommon weeds.

According to one (unconfirmed) source, there are 120 or more important drugs currently in use that have been sourced from plants. These drugs include the likes of morphine, camphor, papain, hesperidin, quinine, codein, ephedrine, strychnine and thymol.

The plant chemical quinine is another example of a plant that has been synthesized by lab technicians; the resulting chemical drug is used to treat malaria – just as the natural extract from the bark of the tree it originally came from was once used.

The following excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex addresses this very issue:

Remember, the pharmaceutical companies cannot patent anything that occurs organically in nature. So there’s no incentive for them to harvest, develop and sell herbs, leaves or any other plants. Far more profitable to synthesize or copy those plants, patent the resulting drugs and medicines, and then sell them.

What if those patented drugs and medicines are less effective in the treatment of diseases and illnesses than the actual plants they are derived from? Think of the cost-savings – not to mention the health benefits to be gained by ingesting or applying natural substances as opposed to toxic chemicals.

Has that occurred to anyone else?

It occurred to us during our research for this book when someone very close to us – let’s call him Mr X – sought treatment for the very common solar keratosis, or sunspots, at a local skin clinic. Mr X was attracted by the clinic’s advertised use of a new drug, Picato, which is an extract of milkweed – also known as radium weed and cancer weed.

Said to work considerably faster than other topical medications, dosing is completed in just two to three days (compared to two to four weeks for competitive products). As you can imagine, the skin’s reaction to such a powerful medication is quite dramatic. Users suffer drastic reddening of the skin and often painful blisters.

Turns out the Picato treatment is very expensive – and quite toxic. Like the better known and more widely used Efudex treatment (for sunspots), Picato is potentially harmful to the liver and therefore the recommended dosage per treatment is wisely limited.

The logic put forward by the skin specialists concerned is the alternative (to Picato or Efudex) could be fatal. They refer of course to deadly melanoma or skin cancer.

That logic’s hard to argue with. But Mr X wondered why he couldn’t simply use milkweed to treat his sunspots. So he did some research.

Turns out milkweed in its natural form is very effective for treating sunspots and potential skin cancers. Users simply break the stem of the plant and apply the milky sap to the skin.

Of course, plants can be toxic, too, and milkweed’s no exception – depending on the variety. For starters, like Picato and Efudex, it must not come into contact with the eyes.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) warns that “Milkweed may be toxic when taken internally.” On its website, USDA reports that Native Americans used milkweed as a food source, and several tribes used the sap to remove warts, for ringworm, and for bee stings.

However, it was a Daily Mail article that clinched it for Mr X. Dated January 26, 2011, the article quotes scientists who claimed that the sap from milkweed “can ‘kill’ certain types of cancer cells” and that “it works on non-melanoma skin cancers”.

The article states, “For the first time a team of scientists in Australia has carried out a clinical study of sap from Euphorbia peplus (milkweed), which is related to Euphorbia plants grown in gardens in the UK…The study of 36 patients with a total of 48 non-melanoma lesions” found that “After only one month 41 of 48 cancers had completely gone”.

Mr X now treats his sunspots with milkweed, which he grows in his garden. Last we heard he’s still alive and well!

That said, the Mr X case study was hardly scientific and therefore should not be used as a blueprint for managing the treatment of sunspots should you have any. As always, our advice must be: Consult your doctor first.

However, it does illustrate the point we were trying to make – that we suspect there are plants, vitamins (à la Vitamin C) and minerals out there that are safer, more effective and a whole heap cheaper than the toxic, synthesized alternatives being developed and marketed by the pharmaceutical companies.

If we are even half right then we’d suggest that would mean natural medicine and alternative treatments are worth exploring, right?

 

You have been reading an excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex. The book is available via Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

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Taking on Big C with Vitamin C

Posted: September 28, 2015 in Medical Industrial Complex
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It seems mainstream medicine won’t accept that high doses of Vitamin C may be an effective anticancer agent – this despite the fact that there have been some incredible success stories of late. We explore this in our book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures.

MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures (The Underground Knowledge Series Book 3)

The following excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex  includes a couple of examples, which, to our eyes at least, warrant the medical authorities taking a closer look at the use of Vitamin C to combat cancer:

On October 12, 2014, Television New Zealand’s ‘Sunday’ current affairs program advised viewers that ground breaking research at Otago University had revealed Vitamin C may be a useful tool in cancer treatment.

The report states, “Professor Margreet Vissers has told the Sunday Programme Vitamin C is unlikely to provide a miracle cure. However it could be used alongside other therapies. ‘We think Vitamin C is potentially another tool in the toolbox of anti-cancer treatments.’

“Lab tests at Otago showed tumours with higher levels of Vitamin C were less aggressive and slower to grow than ones with lower levels of the vitamin. A number of doctors around the country have been running centres which offer the treatment to patients as an alternative or a complement to chemotherapy and radio therapy. They are using high level doses of Vitamin C by intravenous infusion to attack the tumours”.

Vissers also says, “What we want to find out…is if we increase the amount of Vitamin C is that going to slow the tumour growth as well? We suspect it will”.

On May 6, 2014, under the heading ‘Taking on Big C with Vitamin C,’ the New Zealand newspaper The Northern Advocate reported on the incredible case of policeman Anton Kuraia, a family man and cancer patient “who was given only weeks to live” after unsuccessful chemotherapy.

The article reads, “The medical experts described it as ‘wall to wall’ cancer and after two months of intensive chemotherapy there was little improvement. Anton Kuraia was sent home from hospital with weeks to live and told he would slip into a coma and die.

“The 43-year-old Whangarei policeman and father of three was left shattered and broken. ‘I remember asking my oncology doctor if there was anything I could do, anything at all. But it was made clear that there were no other options and that certain death would be upon me’.”

The article continues, “Anton got on the internet and googled vitamin C”.

Anton is quoted as saying, “I naturally looked into high dose vitamin C, therapies and supplements on the other side of the pharmaceutical fence. Why is it that we call everything that isn’t conventional medicine ‘alternative’? When you reflect on the simple methodology of alternatives you soon discover that the term ‘naturals’ is a clearer description. Naturals support, detoxify and gently encourage the body to create an environment in which cancer struggles to survive.”

Apparently, Anton’s diet was given a major overhaul, with sugar being a definite no-go food.

“Fresh vegetable and fruit smoothies became the order of the day as he followed a blood type diet. The high dose liquid form of vitamin C is 90g of clear liquid taken intravenously to bypass the gut…The sessions cost $200 each.

“After 10 weeks of healthy eating and infusions – two weeks longer than experts had predicted he would live – Anton was feeling better and agreed to have a bone marrow biopsy. The results revealed the cancer had dwindled to less than one per cent. The cancer was in complete remission”.

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“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.” –Norman Cousins, Author of Anatomy of an Illness

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It’s abundantly clear not everyone agrees that Vitamin C may be an effective anticancer agent. On its website, the American Cancer Society states, “Clinical trials of high doses vitamin C as a treatment for cancer have not shown any benefit.” And it warns, “High doses of vitamin C can cause side effects in some people”.

To be fair, high doses of anything can cause side effects – even death – if consumers overdo it. (Try eating a truckload of apples and see how you feel).

However, the American Cancer Society’s point is taken: high doses of Vitamin C can cause side effects and, it seems, the jury’s still out on the effectiveness, or otherwise, of this vitamin as an anticancer agent.

The society does acknowledge that “Some claim that the vitamin can prevent a variety of cancers from developing, including lung, prostate, bladder, breast, cervical, intestinal, esophageal, stomach, pancreatic, and salivary gland cancers, as well as leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Vitamin C is also said to prevent tumors from spreading, help the body heal after cancer surgery, enhance the effects of certain anti-cancer drugs, and reduce the toxic effects of other drugs used in chemotherapy”.

And while the society acknowledges that “people with higher blood levels of vitamin C tend to have a lesser risk of developing cancer than do people with lower levels,” it categorically states, “Studies that observed large groups or people and clinical trials of vitamin C supplements have not shown the same strong protective effects against cancer”.

The American Cancer Society also quotes a 2000 National Academy of Sciences report as saying, “There is not enough evidence to support claims that taking high doses of antioxidants (such as vitamins C and E, selenium, and beta carotene) can prevent chronic diseases”.

Certainly, some doctors recommend high doses of vitamin C supplements to protect patients against, and to treat, the common cold. However, it does seem that few doctors are prepared to accept that high doses of Vitamin C may be an effective anticancer agent.

TBC…

You have been reading an excerpt from Medical Industrial Complex. This top rating book is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

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