Article 15879 of alt.conspiracy: Xref: cbnewsl alt.conspiracy:15879 alt.activism:33954 alt.individualism:13177 alt.censorship:10572 talk.politics.misc:111402 misc.headlines:29754 soc.culture.usa:8646 sci.med:38132 sci.research:2874 Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa,sci.med,sci.research Path: cbnewsl!jad From: jad@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (John DiNardo) Subject: Part I, CHEMOTHERAPY: Deadly Cancer Treatment Yields Lively Profits Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Distribution: na Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1992 13:01:54 GMT Message-ID: <1992Sep21.130154.1792@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> Followup-To: alt.conspiracy Keywords: chemotherapy and the politics and profit of the CANCER INDUSTRY Lines: 163 I made the following transcript from a tape recording of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio station WBAI-FM (99.5) 505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl. New York, NY 10018 (212) 279-0707 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GARY NULL: Last night I did a free workshop -- Franco Pentoni and myself. He talked about one kind of home-based business. I spent an hour and eight minutes talking about things people could do from their homes: self-empowerment, all kinds of different projects, because a lot of people out there are having a tough time making ends meet. I really appreciate the very positive response I got from the lecture I did last night on anger and taming the beast within -- how to turn anger into something constructive. And that's exactly what we're doing today. We're taking issues that HAVE caused people to be concerned and angry -- and, instead of turning it into rage, which can be self-destructive, turning it into something positive: public awareness. And hopefully, from public awareness -- focusing enough attention on it -- we can get legislative action or legal action to correct some of these injustices. Now, the continuation of our series on Hidden Agendas. I've been spending almost twenty years investigating the politics of cancer, along with Bob Houston and Peter Barry Chowka, and many others: Ralph Moss, Dan Greenberg. There have been many individuals who have tried to focus attention on WHY, in a country that claims that it is open to new ideas -- claims that it is willing to fund research in innovative ways to look for an answer to both the cause and treatment for this deadly legacy -- that reality is different from the rhetoric. And indeed, it has been a closed shop. And the media has been woefully inadequate in covering both sides of the issue fairly and objectively. My concern is that the very organizations, the institutions, the individuals who are conducting the war on cancer are now the people who are conducting the war on AIDS. To give us an insider's view of what has happened in that war is Dr. Ralph Moss. He is a researcher in the area of cancer politics, and is the author of CANCER INDUSTRY. Welcome to our program Dr. Moss. RALPH MOSS: Thank you, Gary. GARY NULL: Ralph, let's begin at the top. I'm concerned about the fact that chemotherapy has been used as the primary way of treating cancer and -- with the exception of two forms of relatively rare cancers and with Hodgkins Disease -- that chemotherapy has NOT been the magic panacea that it was promised to be. In point of fact, the latest research, which is a major twenty-five-year retrospective study and analysis shows that it has been a complete failure for all major forms of cancer. In spite of that information, which was NOT widely publicized in any mainstream media, cancer chemotherapy continues to be used, even when it's not indicated. That is to be the subject of part of the issue on which I'd like you to focus: WHY chemotherapy? WHY the way we're fighting the war? And now we're looking at the very same tools used in fighting cancer that are now being used in fighting AIDS. And here we're offering highly toxic, immune-suppressive agents to people who have, by definition, an immune-suppressed system. There seems to be something both illogical and unreasonable in that equation. RALPH MOSS: I couldn't agree more. I think we need to emphasize that, for a few rare kinds of cancer, chemotherapy has been very effective. And that's for some of the childhood cancers and, as you say, for some of the blood and lymphatic cancers. But what has happened now is that chemotherapy has been extended -- it's reach has been extended to many, many patients who have solid tumors. And I think that any objective analysis would show that it does not extend the life span of those people, nor does it improve their quality of life. What it does do, in some cases, is shrink the tumor temporarily. And then, after a certain period of time, the tumor comes back and often it comes back more aggressively than it did before, because just by the laws of population genetics, you've killed off the less malignant cells -- the less resistant cells, let's say -- and left the more resistant ones. And so, what happens is that the person with cancer goes to the doctor -- goes to the oncologist -- and is obviously in a very frightened and desperate state. And the doctor says: "Well, we get a fifty percent response, using chemotherapy, to this cancer." What this means is a fifty percent temporary shrinkage of the tumor. But the patient, often being very desperate, doesn't hear it that way. When they hear the word "response" they think "cure". And unfortunately, that is not the case. This is a shell game of major proportions, Gary. And if you could get the patients to simply ask the question: "Doctor, what do you mean by `a response'?" they would find out that it could mean a six-month or a three-month or even a one-month shrinkage of the tumor, and the tumor will then come back as aggressively or more aggressively than before, then I think that very few people would fall for this. But they are falling for it in increasing numbers simply because they don't know what questions to ask. GARY NULL: Alright. Could you give us an idea of who the people are -- the faces behind the cancer-AIDS community? What interconnections do they have? And how tight an "old boys' network" is it? DR. MOSS: Well, it's very tight. As you know, I worked at Memorial Sloan- Kettering [in New York City], and so a lot of my research has focused on that center, which is the largest private center in the world for cancer research and treatment. What my research has shown is that many of the top directors (what they call "overseers") at Memorial Sloan-Kettering are also top directors at drug companies. For instance, Richard Furlow, who is the president of Bristol-Myers- Squibb and Director of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association, is a top official of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Richard Gelb, who is the Chairman of the Board of Bristol-Myers-Squibb, is a Vice-Chairman of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. James D. Robinson, a Director of Bristol-Myers-Squibb, is on the board, another Vice-President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Center, Paul Marx, is a Director of Pfizer [Pharmaceuticals]. And others [officials of Memorial Sloan-Kettering] are Directors of Bio-Technology General, Life Technologies, and Merck [Pharmaceuticals], and so forth. And so what happens, in effect, is that you have sort of a closed circle of people who are, on the one hand, directors of the world's largest cancer center. On the other hand, they are either officers or directors of the very companies that are producing the drugs which are used and advocated by these centers. This is not unique, by the way, to Memorial Sloan-Kettering. We see other kinds of deals being worked at Dana Farber Cancer Center and at other cancer centers around the country. There are many, many ways that the drug industry influences the direction of cancer research, and of AIDS research. You have to look at it from an economic point of view. The kinds of substances that you have been talking about [advocating] for twenty-five years and that I've been talking about for many years are basically natural substances. Most of them are nutritional in origin, or plant or animal in origin. By their very nature, these are very difficult, if not impossible to patent. So if you want to patent a substance, you'd better look to the synthetic drugs -- the chemicals. And these chemicals, by their very nature, are foreign to the human body. They're novel compounds that have never been adapted to in the long years of evolution. And so, consequently, they're highly TOXIC. Those are the drugs that are patentable -- that are profitable. (to be continued) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Someone close to you may now, or in the future, be fighting for their life against cancer, the dreaded scourge of modern societies. They will then need to exercise their RIGHT to explore the untold side of the cancer story -- the side which the drug INDUSTRY, the medical INDUSTRY and the mass-media INDUSTRY would not want cancer victims to know about. Please post the articles of this series to other bulletin boards, as well as posting hardcopies in public places, both on and off campus. And ask your librarian to borrow for you (through the nationwide inter-library loan network) THIRD OPINION, by John Fink, 1992 edition, a directory of cancer treatment clinics throughout the world, many of which do not treat cancer by poisoning the patient. John DiNardo