Shunning Chemotherapy
Examples of Cancer Patients Who Chose Micronutrients Over Chemo - and Won

June 14, 2006 -- Side effects from chemotherapy include hair loss, nausea, diarrhea and weakening of the immune system. This further weakening leads to many other related illnesses, including new cancers. Still, chemotherapy remains a multi-billion dollar industry.

For many Americans, a diagnosis of cancer means enduring this painful, costly treatment, which kills cells in the body indiscriminately. Healthy and unhealthy cells are equally attacked with the hope the cancer cells will be destroyed. The already compromised immune system is nearly shut down.

A growing number of people, however, are defying the opinions of medical doctors, turning away from chemotherapy altogether, and looking to micronutrients as a humane alternative. Las Vegas resident June Addams is one in those numbers. Just over two years ago, she had ultrasound and two biopsies that found she had breast cancer. The official diagnosis was invasive ductal carcinoma. There was a 3 1/2 centimeter main tumor and another one close to the arm half the size. The battle plan from her conventional doctor was 13 weeks of chemotherapy followed by a total mastectomy and removal of lymph nodes, then 13 more weeks of chemotherapy. The oncologist was frank about June's chances. She said there was a 50-50 chance of reoccurrence.

Addams says when she asked her oncologist about micronutrients, the oncologist said she would only consent to a one-a-day multivitamin. Presented with Dr. Rath’s “Victory Over Cancer” brochure, she glanced at it, handed it back with no comment, and walked out the door. Addams and her husband, Bill Jackson, took a sane, rational look at the predicament. The decision was obvious enough.

June turned her back on conventional treatment, and began a micronutrient regimen that included vitamin C, L-lysine, L-proline, Larginine and green tea extract. She modified her diet, removing as many toxins as possible from it. The battle plan was to lower the toxin load while giving the body the nutrients it so badly needed for rebuilding.

It has been over two years since the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer. There has been no surgery or chemotherapy. “It seems insane to me to butcher your body and poison it in the name of getting well,” Addams says. “I won't do it. I do not say this lightly, but we have to remember this conventional medicine once used bloodletting as therapy for ills. Someday people will be looking at chemotherapy in disbelief.”

Addams' experience mirrors three stories from a major study published in 2006, by a resarch team from Canada and the National Institutes of Health. It profiled cases where people turned away from chemotherapy in their cancer treatment and had “unexpectedly long survival times.”

The March 28 edition of Canada's leading medical journal, CMAJ, researched three cases where cancer patients had extended survival times after they rejected chemotherapy in favor of natural therapy including vitamin C.

“We found 3 well-documented cases of advanced cancers, confirmed by histopathologic review, where patients had unexpectedly long survival times after receiving highdose intravenous vitamin C therapy,” reported the study, “Intravenously administered vitamin C as cancer therapy: three cases” by Sebastian J. Padayatty, Hugh D. Riordan, Stephen M. Hewitt, Arie Katz, L. John Hoffer and Mark Levine.

The researchers are affiliated with top institutions, including the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Cancer Institute (Hewitt), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.; Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (Hoffer), McGill University, Montréal, Que.; and the Bio- Communications Research Institute (Riordan), Wichita, KS.

One 66-year-old woman was found to have cancer in 1995, and after shunning traditional treatments remains healthy today. “The patient remains in normal health 10 years after the diagnosis of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, never having received chemotherapy. Patients with untreated stage III diffuse B-cell lymphoma have a dismal prognosis. ... It appears, nonetheless, that a cure occurred in connection with intravenous vitamin C infusions.”

In another case, a 49-year old man was diagnosed with a primary bladder tumour in 1996, and remains alive a decade later.“The patient declined systemic or intravesical chemotherapy or radiotherapy and instead chose intravenous vitamin C treatment. ... Now, 9 years after diagnosis, the patient is in good health with no symptoms of recurrence or metastasis.”

The study concluded that “although they do not provide grounds for advocating intravenous vitamin C therapy as a cancer treatment, these cases increase the clinical plausibility of the notion that vitamin C administered intravenously might have effects on cancer under certain circumstances.”

These clinical results corroborate research conducted at the Dr. Rath Research Institute, which much earlier identified that vitamin C in synergy with lysine, green tea extract and other nutrients can hinder metastasis,which is responsible for 90% of deaths from cancer.

In addition, this nutrient synergy could selectively kill cancer cells, decrease tumor growth and limit angiogenesis – processes essential for development of new blood vessels that feed tumors. The advantage of synergy over individual nutrients is that the biological effects achieved are numerous. In addition, synergy does not require extremely high doses of individual components.

This research definitely opened up a new avenue in cancer research that carries real hope for winning over this disease by working with your body, not against it as is the case with chemo toxins. For Addams, shunning chemotherapy has meant she can still perform music in a duet she plays in with her husband.

“There is such a thing as quality of life,” Addams says. “I enjoy a heightened sense of well-being now. I have never had to put down my accordion because I was too sick to play it. ...

“It's your body and, thank God, it is still your choice.”

To learn more, or order a copy of Why Animals Don’t Get Heart Attacks…But People Do!, email healthnow@drrath.com.