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A New Study PROVES Vitamin C FIGHTS CANCER!

by Ralph W. Moss, PhD. | Jan 6, 2019 View Original Article Here

Ascorbic Acid Scores Big in Iowa

In late 2018, the use of intravenous high-dose ascorbic acid (vitamin C) scored a big victory when Matthew S. Alexander, MD, a surgeon at the University of Iowa Medical Center, and 15 co-authors, published two studies in the journals Radiation Research and Cancer Research.

No recent paper has excited me more than this. Forty years ago my life became intertwined with vitamin C in a most peculiar way. I was about to publish my first book, The Cancer Syndrome (renamed The Cancer Industry). I sent bound galleys of the book to many of the famous scientists in America. None of them answered.

This included Linus Pauling. Pauling was very famous. He had won an unshared Nobel Prize for Chemistry and then another solo Nobel Prize for Peace, a unique achievement. Although there was a chapter in my book about his pet project, vitamin C, I didn’t expect him to respond, after so many lesser figures had declined my request.

But then, totally unexpectedly, I got a letter in the mail (from Linus Pauling).

In it, among other things, Pauling had this to say in reference to my book:

“Everyone should know that the ‘war on cancer’ is largely a fraud, and that the National Cancer Institute [NCI] and the American Cancer Society [ACS] are derelict in their duties to the people who support them.”

I still keep this letter on my desk.

Shortly after that, Pauling and his wife came to New York City and my wife and I went to meet them at their hotel. They couldn’t have been kinder or more considerate and we spent a pleasant hour in their company.

The next time I saw him was in England. I had been invited to speak a huge cancer meeting—the Fourth International Symposium on Cancer Prevention and Detection. It was being held in the Wembley Conference Center in the Greater London area. My wife and I had arrived early and were setting up a small table from which to sell copies of The Cancer Syndrome. Pauling’s eyes lit up when he saw us. He had a most remarkable smile and a magnetic personality.

On the way back to the States we made a detour to visit with another Nobel laureate, Albert Szent-Györgyi, MD, PhD. I had gotten a commission from a magazine to write an article about his cancer work. But Szent-Györgyi was most famous for having first isolated vitamin C and explained its role in human metabolism.

Szent-Gyorgyi was another fascinating character, whom I grew to know very well indeed. Little did I know that I would spend the next eight years tracking down the fine details of his amazing life. According to the wikipedia,

“Ralph Moss, a protégé of his in the years he performed his cancer research, wrote a biography entitled: “Free Radical: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and the Battle over Vitamin C.”

So this accounts for my intense interest in all things vitamin C. Yet readers are sometimes surprised that until now I have been very hesitant to recommend vitamin C to patients. The reason for this is that while we strongly suspected that vitamin C fights cancer, until now there never have been any positive clinical trials with vitamin C.

Now we have these positive studies from the University of Iowa that show how Vitamin C fights cancer.

The first paper showed that intravenous vitamin C (IVC) made cancer cells more sensitive to the killing effects of radiation.

The second paper reported on an early clinical trial. To be clear, this was not a test of IVC as the primary treatment, but as something added to chemo and radiation. IVC was an adjunct to the standard treatment for locally advanced pancreatic cancer. So we still do not know how it would have done on its own, without those two toxic treatments.

In this trial, cancer patients received radiation and the standard chemo drug Gemzar (gemcitabine). But they also got a drip containing vitamin C. In such patients, there was less radiation damage to normal tissues. Bear in mind that these were very advanced patients with a dire prognosis. They were not being given any other “alternative” treatments than vitamin C. And they were receiving two other highly toxic treatments at the same time–radiation and chemotherapy. So this was not a test, nor was it a judgment of, any holistic program. Nonetheless, it does argue strongly that vitamin C contributes to the survival of cancer patients. In that sense, in this decades-long debate, the “alternative” side has been proven right and the “establishment” looks foolish…or worse.

Vitamin C Fights Cancer – Survival Gains

Vitamin C is found in citrus fruit and many other plants around the world. It is also given intravenously (IV) by scores of complementary doctors. Even in huge amounts it is remarkably lacking in toxicity. But what has been lacking up till now has been proof that this could increase survival. The 16 Iowa co-authors have now shown that IVC in fact increases overall survival. In this patient group, it went from an average of 12.7 months to 21.7 months, for an absolute gain of 9 months. Put another way, it increased survival by 70%.

When IVC-added treatment was compared to results in another clinical trial, the benefit was even more, for an absolute gain of 10.6 months.

In addition, progression-free survival (PFS) was also greater, for a gain of 9.1 months compared to the average patient. A gain of 9 or 10 months may not seem like much when considered in the abstract.

But remember that, in the world of complementary medicine, IVC is almost always given as part of a comprehensive holistic treatment program. So until an entire holistic program is evaluated, and compared to another treatment, we cannot state that its effects are limited. It’s like evaluating a baseball team based solely on the performance of its third baseman.

The Iowa authors call IVC:

“…an optimal agent for improving treatment of locally advanced pancreatic [cancer].”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30254147

This is another way of saying that Vitamin C fights cancer!

An NCI Grant to study how Vitamin C fights Cancer!

Meanwhile, Iowa’s Holden Cancer Center has announced that it had received a 5-year, $9.7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to test IV-C in the treatment of three kinds of cancer.

The University of Iowa team that is evaluating intravenous vitamin C
Such a thing would have been inconceivable until recently. So what has changed?
Basic research at the NIH (parent organization of the NCI) has shown that IVC functions as a “prodrug,” creating hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) at the tumor site. Although we normally think of vitamin C as an “antioxidant,” it can function as a pro-oxidant when given intravenously.

It is now universally acknowledged that in the notorious Mayo Clinic trial of the 1980s, the doctors there only gave vitamin C by mouth, and never via the much more intense and effective intravenous route. This is why they could not confirm the many positive cases presented by the two-time Nobel laureate, Linus Pauling, PhD and his medical collaborator, Ewan Cameron, MD. As NIH researchers stated in 2004:

“Only intravenous administration of vitamin C produces high plasma and urine concentrations that might have anti-tumor activity. Because efficacy of vitamin C treatment cannot be judged from clinical trials that use only oral dosing [such as the Mayo Clinic study, ed.], the role of vitamin C in cancer treatment should be reevaluated.”

But there is an amazing back story here.

The late Charles Moertel, MD, who supervised the vitamin C clinical trials at the Mayo Clinic, was known to his friends as “Dr. Debunker.” He had an extreme prejudice against all forms of alternative medicine, and its practitioners. He also supervised the ludicrously bad trial of laetrile (amygdalin or B17). His prejudice should have disqualified him from conducting a trial of vitamin C. But instead he was put in charge of it and totally screwed it up! This famous physician had to know the difference between a vitamin C pill and an infusion or the same substance, which is from 100 to 1,000 times more powerful. But he chose to give all the patients only the oral form…and then gleefully informed the world that Pauling had been proven wrong and that vitamin C was worthless in cancer.

That is why this new Iowa project is so revolutionary.

It reverses the verdict on vitamin C that was declared more than 30 years ago. It will be led by the surgeon Prof. Joseph Cullen, MD, and Prof. Douglas Spitz, PhD, of the radiation department. I have no reason to believe that these doctors are in any way prejudiced against nutritional medicine. Nevertheless, we will keep a close eye on it as it progresses.

The trial is designed “to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of adding high-dose IV vitamin C to standard cancer treatments for three of the deadliest cancers affecting the U.S. population: pancreatic cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), an aggressive type of brain cancer.” According to Prof. Cullen:

“Success in this project would suggest that adding high-dose IV vitamin C to cancer treatment protocols could be a safe, simple, and cost-effective approach to improving treatment for many kinds of cancer. If the results from our early- and mid-phase clinical trials are positive, the next step would be to test this therapy in large, stage 3 clinical trials that could lead to approval of this approach and have a powerful and lasting impact on clinical cancer care in the coming years.”

Bottom Line:

High-dose intravenous vitamin C (IV-C) has now been vindicated, after more than 30 years of rejection by the cancer establishment. We eagerly await the outcome of the Iowa clinical studies. After many years, IVC is finally coming into its own!

Living a Full Life After Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis

Monday, Sept. 3, 2018 – By Mary Shinn, Health & Topics reporter for The Durango Herald View Original Article Here

Combination of naturopathic and traditional medicine proves effective for Tom Riesing.

When it seemed likely that Durangoan Tom Riesing had pancreatic cancer in 2013, one of his doctors apologized profusely to his wife, Mindy Iris.

“He was basically shutting the door on any hope,” she said.

At the time, Iris thought to herself, “You don’t know who Tom is,” she said.

Only 26 percent of pancreatic cancer patients survive a year, according to the Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. Of all the major cancers, pancreatic has the highest mortality rate. But Riesing, 80, has not only survived four years after his diagnosis, he has thrived, his friend Jamie Matthews said.

Riesing was diagnosed with stage 2 pancreatic cancer in December 2013. Since then, he has sought the most effective blend of allopathic and naturopathic treatments, traveling to Europe for testing and Canada for hyperthermia treatments. He has also focused on having a healthy diet, taking supplements and bolstering his immune system, which is weakened during cancer treatments.

His goal is to fight the cancer until there is no evidence of disease, he said.

Riesing attributes his tenacity to seek treatment to his natural curiosity and somewhat irreverent attitude toward authority.

“Each person, will, of course, vouch for whatever they are comfortable with. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something else,” he said.

Riesing and Iris have made decisions about his cancer treatment as a team and have asked doctors about what treatments they would recommend to their own family members.

Iris describes the cancer as a dark cloud of stress that comes in and out of their lives. It first entered a year after the couple was first introduced to each other.

A mutual acquaintance introduced them through email and they connected even before they met face-to-face, Iris said.

“Tom’s a unique sort of man; he is very open, he is a great communicator,” she said.

They spent the year before his diagnosis traveling, going to music festivals and dancing, she said.

She was interested in him in part because he has re-created himself several times. He earned a doctorate degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught at Harvard Business School before working for banks on Wall Street.

After he moved to Durango in the late 1990s, he founded the Oakhaven Permaculture Center in Hesperus, which focuses on agriculture education. After the sale of the center, he started to study energy medicine, an alternative type of medicine focused on ensuring the energy in the body is in balance.

“I’ve never let myself not do something because I was too old, because that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Riesing said.

After his diagnosis, Iris said she felt depressed and hopeless. But Riesing did not go through the fear and panic many cancer patients experience, she said.

He discovered he had pancreatic cancer much earlier than many others, because the tumor closed his common bile duct, preventing digestive fluid from being released, he said.

“I turned yellow, so I knew that something was wrong,” he said.

He had the tumor removed in February 2014 at the University of Southern California and was released within five days. The minimum stay is usually six, he said.

“Within the first week I was out hiking, resuming my life,” he said.

He attributes his quick recovery to his energy medicine practice and treatments.

He knows it works because he can feel the difference it makes, but he acknowledges many people doubt the practice.

“Some people can’t deal with it because our society is built around concrete things, and energies are a subtle thing,” he said. “The only way of knowing that it’s working is that you do things because you’re feeling bad and suddenly you feel better.”

After his surgery, Riesing was treated with chemotherapy, but he sought an oncologist who would use a combination of the chemotherapy drugs gemcitabine and Abraxane, because his research showed the combination increased his chances for survival and reduced the chances the cancer cells would spread.

When he started the chemotherapy, Riesing also started to work with Stacy Mulkey, a naturopathic doctor at Namaste Health Center in Durango, who has guided his decisions.

After the chemotherapy, he went into remission for about three years, although he knew he had tumor cells circulating in his blood after having medical tests done in Switzerland.

About a year ago, doctors discovered three tumors on Riesing’s lungs. To treat them, he has undergone a combination of chemotherapy, hyperthermia treatments and high-dose vitamin C infusions – and he has responded well to all of them.

In February, Riesing started 12 weeks of a nontraditional chemotherapy regimen developed by Dr. Nick Chen at the Seattle Integrative Cancer Center. His tumors reduced in size after receiving high-dose vitamin C infusions and lower doses of chemotherapy for a longer period of time compared to traditional patients. Vitamin C severely stresses cancer cells because they don’t have the enzymes to break them down, Chen said.

Chen said he has seen other pancreatic patients have success with his combination of treatments, so he is starting clinical trials of the treatment.

“Many of our patients are living two years or more,” he said.

The treatment also has lower toxicity levels than traditional treatment, which helps Riesing and others to tolerate it better.

Riesing has also undergone hyperthermia treatment. That treatment uses high temperatures to damage and kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Hyperthermia treatments can improve the effectiveness of other treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation, Mulkey said.

“There are certain types of cancers that respond really well and better than they normally would to just chemo alone or radiation,” she said.

Riesing received localized hyperthermia treatments on his lungs at the Integrated Health Clinic in Vancouver, B.C.

He also had full-body hyperthermia treatments beneath infrared lights. The treatments require him to bake beneath the light for 4½ hours to bring his body temperature into fever range (100 degrees or higher) for 2 to 2½ hours, he said.

The high temperatures heighten the response of the immune system, in the same way a fever would, Chen said.

While Riesing’s body temperature is heightened, he stays hydrated through an IV, and a doctor monitors his vitals.

In June, he stopped his chemotherapy treatment and continued the other treatments to help determine if the hyperthermia treatments and other strategies are effective on their own, he said.

Many of the treatments Riesing has received, while effective, are not covered by Medicare, and his friend recently set up a GoFundMe page to help with his debt.

“If Tom was just doing what Medicare covered, we don’t have any question that Tom wouldn’t be alive,” Iris said.

His quest for treatment has preserved his ability to pursue his hobbies, including Nia, a mix of dance and martial arts, and to work with clients jointly with his wife, who is a massage therapist and a counselor.

While thinking about the future can make Iris nervous, Riesing is optimistic.

“I’ve never seen him beaten down by any of this,” she said.

You can read more about Riesing and Iris at agingwellwithiris.com.

Of Miracles, Strengths and Battles

January 6, 2012, By Rodika Tollefson for North Mason Life

Community leader Randy Neatherlin continues to stand up for his beliefs as he fights his own battle with cancer.

Randy Neatherlin is the first to admit he’s not always the most popular guy around. Known for his passionate testimonies at some public meetings and for his outspoken beliefs, Neatherlin has created his fair share of adversaries while running for political office or taking a stand on controversial issues, including the hotly contested Belfair sewer project.

But even some of his opponents have come back to shake his hand, and even more so in recent months.

To an outsider, it has been business as usual the past eight months for Neatherlin, who is a commissioner with the Port of Allyn and Mason County Planning Commission, as well as being active with other boards and nonprofits. He attended a dozen or more meetings a month. He helped with Habitat of Humanity fundraisers. He sold real estate as a top John L. Scott broker.

While that kind of busy schedule is not unique for the father of three young children (as well as an adult daughter), what has left his friends, associates and even some adversaries in awe is the fact that throughout those eight months, Neatherlin was fighting his own battle for life.

Last April, at age 48 he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and was advised to get his affairs in order. The esophageal cancer, which is rare in the United States, had advanced to stage four and spread to his liver and lymph nodes.

“I was supposed to be dead by June,” he said. “Even my doctor was emotional. The tumor was huge and my throat was almost closed off. The chances of survival were next to nothing, and there wasn’t a lot they could do.”

He said it felt like he was watching an episode of the television show “House.”

“You’ve been healthy all your life, and all of a sudden you’re hooked up to all these machines,” he said. “It’s so surreal.”

Asking a few of his friends to take care of his young children — including a 1-year-old — when the time comes, Neatherlin decided to seek a second opinion at the same time. With the support of his wife, Pam, who is a radiology technologist, he was determined to fight.

That fight has paid off. Neatherlin’s cancer is now in remission, and he’s traveled the entire journey without skipping a beat.

“I can’t count the number of times Randy drove himself home from chemo treatments and then attended some community meeting. When I told him I was concerned that he was sapping energy he needed to recover, he said staying involved is what he needed to get well,” said Mary Swoboda, who sent updates to his friends and supporters about his fight with cancer. “I can’t argue with his logic, obviously it worked!”

Battling on Two Fronts
Neatherlin, a Belfair resident for more than 30 years, said he’s developed somewhat of a reputation for “fixing things” and protecting people or issues since he was a student at North Mason High School.

A football player and president of the ASB, he said in those days he stood up to a group of teenage boys bullying girls. Since then, he started building many connections while also fighting for other issues. “I got to know so many people, in a sense they adopted me,” he said.

An entrepreneur even back then, Neatherlin bought his first property while still in high school. He also ran an arcade business and a mill — a business he has continued for many years, making roof shakes and shingles.

“When I look in the mirror, I’m still the shake and shingle man,” he said.

After owning a car lot in Belfair for almost a decade, Neatherlin started selling real estate nearly three years ago. He also produces television commercials after getting into the field while making video ad’s for his car lot.

He loves his work, especially being a real estate broker, but it’s his civic involvement that has become a major commitment, and may have even cost him dearly — he said the timing of the car lot fire was suspicious, since it happened while his run for state office was announced in the press and he was out of town.

“I’ve had some hard times here but I’ve survived. When you try to protect something, you’re taking someone powerful on,” he said. “One of my flaws in politics is I can’t stand certain things like others can.”

This past year, one of those things was the Belfair sewer. Neatherlin joined many other business and community leaders in protesting the rates and other issues related to the project. At those public meetings last summer, he was one of many people speaking out passionately in front of county commissioners — but outsiders had no hint that those meetings literally knocked the wind out of Neatherlin, who was undergoing weekly chemotherapy at the time.

“He hasn’t missed any (port) meetings, that’s what’s miraculous,” said fellow port commissioner Judy Scott, who has known him for many years. “He speaks his mind so he’s not always very popular, but that’s why he’s admired too because he’s willing to stand up for the community.”

Scott, who lost both her parents and her previous husband to cancer, said she knows a diagnosis usually means a death sentence, but Neatherlin refused to accept it.

“I know his faith and courage helps with survivability,” she said. “I think the faith and prayers of the people helped carry him through.”

Miraculous Recovery

Scott says even when people were going after Neatherlin for standing up for his beliefs, he has kept a positive attitude instead of becoming bitter or angry — much the same way he has gone through his journey with cancer, maintaining an upbeat attitude.

Neatherlin said his attitude goes back to his faith. He looked at all the positive things in his life instead of thinking he didn’t have much time left.

“I was sad but I looked at my life and all the things I had the opportunity to do, and a new chance at life with my (young) kids,” he said. “I’m so blessed, so it’s hard to look at God and say, ‘You haven’t given me enough.’ I looked up and said, ‘You have given me so much.'”

Neatherlin’s quest for a second opinion led him last spring to the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center in Renton, where he was introduced to Dr. Nick Chen. He’s learned about an experimental treatment Chen used successfully on pancreatic cancer and wanted to try on other types.

“Instead of treating it according to the recipe book, he wanted to make a new recipe,” Neatherlin said.

The recipe included weekly chemotherapy (a cocktail of nearly a dozen drugs) and homeopathic treatments such as vitamin D boosts.

“Because Randy’s cancer was spreading to distant organs, radiation wouldn’t have helped him,” Chen was quoted as saying in an article published in the cancer center’s newsletter. “Without innovative chemotherapy and an integrative approach, his disease would have continued to spread, becoming even more difficult to treat.”

The treatment worked rapidly. Based on Swoboda’s email updates, by June two of the tumors in his liver “have disappeared, one (was) almost nonexistent, two have shrunk to one-quarter of their original size and one has shrunk to one-third of its original size.”

By August, most of the tumors were gone except for a few small ones. In October, Swoboda reported to supporters that there was no indication of tumors in the liver and the esophagus looked good, and on Nov. 2, she followed up with the news that Neatherlin was declared cancer-free in both his throat and stomach.

Even Neatherlin’s physician who made the original diagnosis told Chen he has never seen this kind of turnaround. “His response to treatment was dramatic,” Chen said in the newsletter.

The Journey Ahead

Neatherlin is not completely off the hook. He still has to undergo monthly chemotherapy, and even a small tumor could rapidly spread again. He said if the cancer doesn’t return in the next month or so, his chances are excellent.

But he’s not dwelling on that either. Even at home, his life has not been any different. He did break down into tears, privately, just once, he admits — after having a vision of his young daughter saying she didn’t remember what her father sounded like.

One of his main reasons for sharing his story with others is the hope to bring more people to the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center and expose them to Dr. Chen’s treatments.

“This experimental program has blown things out of the water,” he said. “If it’s not a fluke, this could change everything for people with this cancer.”

As he and his medical team continue to keep a lookout for tumors, Neatherlin said he has much unfinished business, and that he’s seen a lot of beauty through his battle. “You can see God’s perfection and that there’s so many reasons behind this.” he said.
Fellow Mason County Habitat for Humanity board member and 2011 president Kelly Zoldak said Neatherlin blew her away by asking to be involved with new projects and never showing the huge toll the illness was taking on him.

“I think staying busy kept his focus off being sick. And he wants to encourage other people to be advocates for themselves.” she said. “If anyone deserves a miracle, it’s Randy. This community is better because of him.”

(c) North Mason Life

Dr. Chen and Dr. Mark Gignac Recognized

Excerpts taken from a monthly publication by Ralph W. Moss, PhD:

Dr. Chen and Dr. Mark Gignac Recognized by World Renowned Cancer Researcher Ralph W. Moss, PhD

Metronomic chemotherapy is the use of lower doses of chemotherapy than normal but on a more frequent (hyperfractionated) schedule. Its efficacy was first proposed by the great cancer scientist, Judah Folkman, in the 1990s as part of an anti-angiogenic strategy. Dr. Nick Chen*, the leading medical oncologist, at Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center, makes a persuasive case that by giving drugs metronomically (in conjunction with naturopathic post-care) he can get exceptional results in a number of different cancers. In 2008, he presented a poster at a cancer conference in Hawaii that showed remarkable results in non-small cell lung cancer. This work definitely needs to be reproduced, but it is promising. Nick Chen impressed me greatly with his intelligence and experience. Several of our clients have gone to him since then and some have had really exceptional results. This was a fitting end to a very memorable clinic tour.

Nick Chen is the rare medical oncologist who recognizes the importance of nutritional, mental and emotional health in cancer. He works closely with the two naturopaths at SCTWC, Mark Gignac**, ND, FABNO and Paul Reilly, ND, LAc, FABNO. Nick is not only board certified in oncology but has a PhD in immunology from the University of Iowa. He completed hematology fellowships at University Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and Shanghai Medical University in China.

Dr. Chen completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and a fellowship in medical oncology at Moffitt Cancer Treatment Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Florida, one of the top cancer centers in the nation. He joined CTCW in 2002. His focus in on innovative treatments for difficult-to treat cancers, such as lung cancer, metastatic melanoma, brain cancer, and relapsed lymphoma.

When it comes to integrative oncology, “I have seen the future, and it works.” Naturopathy functions in Oregon and Washington as a fully accepted and integrated part of medical care (including cancer care) in these states. As a resident of a part of the country where naturopathy is not even licensed, I cast envious eyes on the Pacific Northwest, whose residents have far greater options when it comes to the varieties of treatment they can access. I think those who fear the sky will fall if they license naturopathy should study how well it works in states such as Oregon and Washington, where naturopathy has been accepted since the1920s. *Dr. Nick Chen is now the Medical Director for Seattle Integrative Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington. **Dr. Mark Gignac is now the resident naturopath at Seattle Integrative Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington.