Cancer Decisions - Free Newsletter

HERE AT THE MOSS REPORTS

Many of my clients have asked me to address the increasing role of so-called "targeted" drugs such as Avastin and Herceptin in the treatment of cancer. These agents – heralded as the "smart bombs" of cancer therapeutics – have been the source of much excitement in the medical press and mainstream media. Words such as "miracle," "breakthrough," and "astonishingly effective" have been used to describe them.

But are they really as revolutionary as the enthusiastic language of these commentators would have us believe?

My reports "Herceptin – or Deceptin?" and "Avastin – Your Money or Your Life" offer a clear-eyed assessment of what these drugs can – and cannot – do for the cancer patient.

Majid Ali, M.D., author of The Principles and Practice of Integrative Medicine, and formerly chief pathologist of Holy Name Hospital, Teaneck, NJ, says of these reports:

"Individuals with cancer suffer twice: first with fear and suffering caused by their disease and second from the ravages of a malignant system that forces toxic drugs of dubious value on frightened and gullible people.

"Dr. Moss has devoted his extraordinary energy and his rare depth of perspective to offer much needed information so that individuals with cancer can make informed decisions. His articles on Herceptin and Avastin are but two examples of his labor of love. I honor his work and wish him decades of continued service to humankind."

These and the other useful reports in our Current Topics series (listed below) can be purchased and downloaded for $9.95 each, directly from our Web site, www.cancerdecisions.com:

Herceptin – or Deceptin? (An evaluation of the use of Herceptin in breast cancer)
Avastin – Your Money or Your Life (A clear-eyed look at the 'targeted' drug Avastin)
Do Antioxidants and Chemotherapy Conflict?
Mammography, Biopsy and the Diagnosis of Breast Cancer
The Politics of Hope: Andrew von Eschenbach and the Decline of the National Cancer Institute
The Mexican Cancer Clinics in the Era of Evidence-Based Medicine

Also available from our Web site are the widely praised Moss Reports. These reports are an invaluable source of information on the currently available conventional and alternative treatments for over 200 individual cancer diagnoses. For the cancer patient, a Moss Report offers a truly comprehensive resource, including extensive information on a wide variety of topics such as clinical trials, how to evaluate foreign cancer clinic protocols, and how to choose foods for maximum nutritional benefit during treatment and recovery.

For those who have already purchased a Moss Report, a phone consultation can be enormously helpful in narrowing down the options and arriving at a coherent treatment strategy. A recent phone consultation client wrote:

"The telephone consult with Dr Moss was extremely valuable, informative, and provided several optional courses of action for me to take at this stage of my disease process. Dr Moss was open, helpful, friendly, and backed up his comments with scientific evidence that seemed to be at his fingertips. The support people that were present all took part in the phone consult and Dr Moss had no difficulty sharing and explaining things to them. I am now able to directly reach him through his personal email if I want any more information. A very satisfying experience, and well worth the expense." — JF

If you are a Moss Report client and would like to schedule a phone consultation, please call 1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367 from outside the US) or send an email to: Jacquie@cancerdecisions.com.

We look forward to helping you.

SUBVERTING THE SCIENCE OF EPIDEMIOLOGY – PART I

Epidemiology is the branch of medicine that studies the causes, distribution and prevention of diseases within various populations. It is to epidemiologists that the medical profession, lawmakers and the shapers of public policy turn when they need clarification of the underlying factors that trigger or predispose to disease. Epidemiology has been responsible for some of the most crucial and life-saving advances in public health.

However, the very importance of epidemiology makes it a prime target for the industrial giants whose products or manufacturing techniques are under suspicion as possibly contributing to diseases such as cancer. If they are to escape the imposition of restrictive controls or outright bans on their products, it is in their interest to minimize the impact of any potentially damaging epidemiological evidence.

This phenomenon was discussed in a paper titled "Secret ties to industry and conflicting interests in cancer research," published last month in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The authors of the paper documented several instances of leading epidemiologists secretly acting as paid consultants to industry over extended periods during which those industries were under intense scrutiny as potential contributors to the incidence of cancer.

For example, the paper cites the case of Sir Richard Doll, one of the most famous epidemiologists and cancer researchers in the world, who died last year. One could hardly imagine a more eminent career. In 1950, Doll was one of the first to point out the clear link between cigarette smoking and the alarming rise in lung cancer. "The risk of developing the disease increases in proportion to the amount smoked," he wrote. "It may be 50 times as great among those who smoke 25 or more cigarettes a day as among non-smokers." This was a revolutionary thesis at the time. But, like his US colleague and contemporary, Ernst Wynder, Doll not only directed his efforts toward making the medical profession aware of the lethal effects of smoking, he also made use of the media to explain the connection to the public. Through his groundbreaking work on tobacco and lung cancer Doll became a foundational figure in modern epidemiology and public health.

Before and after World War II, Doll was an influential member of the Socialist Medical Society, and made a name for himself as someone who was not afraid to indict industry for its contribution to the growing incidence of cancer. In 1954 he warned that, besides smoking, exposure to nickel, asbestos, gas production tars, and radioactivity were other major causes of cancer. In the following year, he published a landmark report warning about high cancer rates in asbestos workers. In 1967, he further warned that an "immense" number of substances were known to cause cancer, and that prevention was a better strategy than cure. Until the late sixties, he was still considered a political radical.

However, as the years passed, Doll mysteriously and sometimes drastically changed these views. According to Samuel S. Epstein, MD, Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois, Chicago, the one-time maverick eventually emerged as a major defender of corporate industry interests. Using the immense prestige of his position, Doll was able to trivialize and dismiss numerous industrial causes of cancer, while focusing public and political attention on smoking as the prime offender.

Doll also published several influential papers that called into question other possible environmental causes of cancer. One of these was "The causes of cancer: quantitative estimates of avoidable risks of cancer in the United States today," published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1981, which he co-authored with his close colleague, Professor Richard Peto. Another paper, "Effects of exposure to vinyl chloride: an assessment of the evidence," was written by Doll alone. These and other publications massively downplayed the risks of environmental carcinogens in the food, air, water and workplace.

Doll's star continued to rise throughout his long life. Although he never received a Nobel Prize, he was inducted into the Royal Society in 1966, was appointed Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University in 1969, and received a knighthood in 1971. Oxford named a building after him while he was still living. When he died in July 2005, at the age of 92, he was lauded as a founder of British cancer science.

But Doll's reputation has now begun to fray, if not unravel entirely. The publication of the paper "Secret ties to industry and conflicting interests in cancer research" in the American Journal Industrial Medicine reveals that there was a hidden side to Doll's public career. Over a period of many years, Doll was secretly retained as a paid consultant by several giant international chemical companies at the same time that he was acting as an ostensibly impartial scientific expert to investigate and report on suspected links between these companies' products and the development of cancer.

For example, the industrial giant Monsanto paid Doll $1,500 per day as a consultant over a period of years during the 1980s. At that time, Monsanto was at the center of an intense debate concerning the carcinogenicity of its product, Agent Orange, the notorious defoliant that was widely used during the Vietnam war. Doll testified to an Australian Royal Commission investigating the claims of servicemen who were exposed to Agent Orange that there was no evidence to suggest that this product was carcinogenic. Yet in his publications and statements he consistently failed to disclose that he was a paid consultant for Monsanto.

With the full weight of Doll's iconic reputation behind the denial of any connection between Agent Orange and cancer, the Royal Commission concluded that the defoliant did not in fact represent a health hazard. Monsanto was thus able to escape responsibility for causing untold numbers of cancers both among servicemen and the indigenous Vietnamese population. Without Doll's help, it is doubtful if this egregious cover-up could have taken place.

Similarly, Doll was hired as a paid consultant throughout the 1990s by other major industrial companies including Dow Chemical, and Turner and Newall, manufacturers of the carcinogen asbestos. During this period he similarly gave testimony and depositions as an expert witness on behalf of chemical industry giants in a number of cases, including one brought by the families of deceased workers who claimed that their loved ones' brain cancers had been triggered by exposure to vinyl chloride. Once again, Doll failed to disclose his paid consultancy status, and neglected to declare any conflict of interest, while testifying to the effect that there was no evidence whatever that vinyl chloride contributed to brain cancer.

Again, his towering reputation won the day, even though a decade earlier, in 1979, vinyl chloride had already been recognized and classified as a Grade I human carcinogen.

The secret of Doll's financial entanglement with industry was finally brought to light by lawyers who cross-examined him on the evidence he had given on behalf of Dow and others, and drew attention to his failure to disclose these connections. In response to lawyers' questions about his lack of acknowledgement of financial interest, Doll disingenuously replied that he did not know that he should disclose these sources of income.

According to his present-day defenders, the money in question was passed along to Green College, a medical college that Doll helped found at Oxford. But this is a weak defense, since accepting honoraria of this size certainly makes one beholden to the giver, regardless of how altruistically such money is spent. Another argument raised in Doll's defense was that he did this consulting work before formal disclosure of commercial interests had become mandatory. But the principle that one should disclose one's financial and other biases was certainly widely accepted in the world of science long before it became a formal requirement of publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

According to his friend and close associate Richard Peto, Doll felt that it was necessary to co-operate with companies in order to gain access to data that could prove their products to be dangerous. Yet this explanation of Doll's behavior flies in the face of the evidence. True, Doll started out as a critic of industry, a position that took him to the pinnacles of the medical establishment. Once there, however, he became increasingly cozy with those he had formerly criticized and wound up as their defender. Far from speaking out on the hazards of industrial pollution, as Prof. Peto claims, Doll's persuasive words and unassailable professional reputation were used to downplay the dangers of chemical companies' products and manufacturing processes.

To be concluded, with references, next week.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

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IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER

The news and other items in this newsletter are intended for informational purposes only. Nothing in this newsletter is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice.