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Mr Wignall, here are the plain facts about curing cancer
By Dr W S Lofters
Thursday, May 21, 2009
I had intended not to respond publicly to the article by Mark Wignall on "Cancer is a fungus", but after reading Part 2 decided that I should do so to set the record straight and because I believe Mr Wignall has some influence with the average reader.
President Thabo Mbeki held very erroneous views on the cause of AIDS and this has led his country to enormous grief. Although not as influential as Mr Mbeki, Mr Wignall may have a similar effect on some readers as Mr Mbeki had in South Africa.
Let me first begin by stating categorically that a conspiracy does not exist between doctors and pharmaceutical companies to prevent "cures", like the one being promoted by Dr Simoncini, from being made available to patients as we are all interested in huge profits. In fact, let me tell you how you can obtain Dr Simoncini's miracle drug very easily. Look in your kitchen cabinet for baking soda and if you have a container, you are well on your way to curing cancer. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. It is not even a good treatment for Candida albicans. Doctors and their loved ones also get cancer and I would not have undergone a bone marrow transplantation for my cancer, if baking soda would have done the trick.
As both a recipient of, and the prescriber of chemotherapy, I will be the first to admit that chemotherapy is not something that one enters into lightly. Chemotherapy has side effects, some of which are serious and debilitating and can sometimes cause death. Every oncologist I know explains the risks and benefits of chemotherapy before it is administered and in all institutions I know of in Canada, a consent form stating that the risks and benefits have been explained, has to be signed by the patient prior to starting chemotherapy. Why then did I and countless others pursue this avenue? The simple answer is that it works.
Chemotherapy alone can cure metastatic (cancer that has spread) choriocarcinoma, and testicular cancer (remember Lance Armstrong). It can also cure a significant number of patients with other malignancies, including Hodgkin's Disease and childhood acute leukaemia. When given as an adjunct to surgery it can prevent many patients with breast and colon cancer from dying of their disease.
What will not cure cancer is baking soda, asparagus, sour sop seeds or drink, laetrile, pycnoginol and whatever the latest "natural" remedy being marketed by "natural healers" who have found the cure doctors and Big Pharma do not want you to know about. What I should also state is that not everyone has the same experience with chemotherapy, and many patients have asked me if it was doing them any good because they had no side effects. What is also not equally known is that we often advise patients not to have chemotherapy because the benefit is likely to be less than the risks. Chemotherapy cannot cure metastatic cancer (with a few exceptions), but can improve significantly the quality of life and duration of life for many patients. I am living proof.
Most people think of cancer as one disease. It is not. There are many types of cancer which arise from different tissues and so behave, and are treated differently. Even seemingly similar cancers are not all the same. It is now recognised that there are different types of breast cancer having different prognoses, for example HER2 positive breast cancer and triple negative breast cancer. With this knowledge, patients with HER2 positive breast cancer are now being treated with a new agent, Herceptin, which has significantly improved the chances of cure after surgery. Research is now leading to personalised treatment although we are still years away from this being a reality. Therefore similar to the situation where people are treated with different blood pressure and pain medications, it would be far-fetched to think that all the different types of cancer can be treated in the same manner.
Dr Simoncini believes (and that what it is: a belief) that candida causes cancer. There are no scientific data to support his view. Cancer is caused by mutations in a person's DNA and that can lead to uncontrolled growth and spread. To learn more readers may find the following website useful:
www.cancerquest.org.
As for Dr Simoncini's claim that he has presented papers at the International Oncology Convention, I checked for the website of this organisation and it turned out to be about Dr Simoncini himself. The information at this site can be found in Mr Wignall's opening paragraphs. As usual there is a link to buy CDs. At his official website he presents a detailed and obfuscating explanation of his "theory", testimonials from patients as well as promoting his book. His Eureka moment came when he realised that psoriasis is caused by a fungus (this is not true, it is an auto-immune disease) and is incurable, so therefore if cancer is incurable it must also be caused by a fungus. By his logic AIDS is incurable, so should it not be caused by a fungus? As I have shown cancer is not incurable, so even on that score he is wrong. It should also be pointed out that Dr Simoncini can no longer practise medicine in Italy as he has been struck from the registry. In 2006 he was found guilty by an Italian court of wrongful death by his treatment, and fraud. He is appealing his conviction. He went further and set up a clinic in the Netherlands and this has now been closed by the authorities.
Lastly, while I agree that at times the various pharmaceutical companies seem to put profit before patients, where would we be without them? I have often been a vocal critic of drug companies, but without them the many diseases that are now successfully treated, allowing us to live longer and better lives, would still be the scourge of mankind. Where would we be without antibiotics and vaccines, to name but two groups of agents? Let us criticise and be sceptical, but do not mislead.
Dr W S Lofters, MBBS, FRCPC, is a Jamaican associate professor in the Department of Oncology, Queen's University, Canada.
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