[John in GR]

You have my prayers for peace and strength to you and your family for what lies ahead. What occurs will not exceed your ability to cope. See Mt. 6:25-34

John

[John in GR]

Hi Patti,

I am writing re your statement that even if things go really well we won’t have mom for more than another year.

On the one hand I sense that you and your mil are at peace re the prospect of your mother’s death. That certainly is commendable.

As to when and how your mil dies, however, that is in God’s hands. There are many, many people on this forum (myself included) who have exceeded the life expectancy that was provided at diagnosis. Personally, my plans are long term, understanding that God’s plan could be different.

The tendency is to mark time. Why bother buying tools or clothes if you’re going to be dead.

On the other hand, what if God gives your mil another 15-20 years?

It is a balance between being realistic and squeezing all you can out of the time you have been allotted.

I’m still buying tools. I hope I get to use them. In any case, I’m in God’s hands.

John

[John in GR]

I doubt if you need to worry too much about Tah. That tough old buzzard’s life goal is to vote for Hillary in 2008!!!

I’m going to have to do my best to stay with it just to balance off Tah’s vote.

John

[John in GR]

Hi Patti,

Iron overload has not been a problem for me as I have not required transfusions since diagnosis four years ago except for a one week period when I was in the hospital for Sweet’s Syndrome. Accordingly, I have not studied the subject and do not consider myself to be especially knowledgeable, but know someone who is.

My friend Marla Brown has made a wonderful recovery from aplastic anemia (AA), a close cousin of MDS. Marla, who had 175 transfusions has made great progress re resolution of her iron overload problem. I will try to get some info for you from Marla. I have great respect for Marla’s knowledge. I’m sure she can provide some good info. You can find Marla’s story and mine at http://www.geocities.com/marlakins/index.html

Jimbob, it’s exciting to me to see more and more doctors giving alternative and complementary stuff some thought and consideration. My local hematologist, who a few years ago told me he didn’t believe in “that stuff” but figured I would only waste money, a few weeks ago asked me what I was doing.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

John

[John in GR]

Dear Martin,

Are you looking to the West exclusively for treatment of your wife’s condition?? Please do not forget to investigate the thousands of years of development of Chinese and oriental medicine. My own program includes things such as mushroom tea. My story is found at http://www.geocities.com/marlakins/index.html

Best wishes,

John

[John in GR]

Hi Dawn,

I understand both sides. As a patient I don’t want to spend the rest of my days focused on MDS, but rather on living life to its fullest.

On the other hand, I also feel your frustration in wanting to help, yet realizing that not all people want your help.

The program I am on has been beneficial for me. Most folks, however, are simply not interested in following my regimen. It’s just the way it is. Even when their life depends on it, most people are unwilling to significantly change lifestyle. I don’t totally understand it, because it seems much better than being weak and sick. We all make choices, however.

If your offer of help is not welcomed, let it go and enjoy as much as possible your father’s final days.

John

[John in GR]

Hi Dawn,

I was diagnosed in May 2001 and have done very well except for a recent bout with something called Sweet’s syndrome. My story and diet appear at http://www.geocities.com/marlakins/index.html

detox, enzymes, vitamins (best thru food) and exercise. Good questions to ask. So far as I know, there are no bad side effects to what I am doing. Best wishes.
John

[John in GR]

Hi Wendy,

Your dad sounds like a typical male. Our first response to a medical situation is to deny that it’s a problem. “It’s ok. Just leave me alone and I’ll be fine. I don’t need a doctor or a hospital”. Sorry, it’s just the way we’re put together. Guy thing. We’re used to being strong and self sufficient. Hate to admit when there’s a problem we need help on.

John

[John in GR]

I found a lot of help from the book “A Grace Disguised” when I was working through the death of my brother and law partner which occurred last November. I strongly recommend it.

John

[John in GR]

Sorry about your counts, Tah. BTW have you read Michael Savage’s new book “Liberalism is a mental disorder” ???

Hope you are enjoying the beautiful weather.

Even most conventional doctors encourage increased consumption of raw fruits and veggies.
Whadduya have to lose, Tah?

John

[John in GR]

I was diagnosed May 2001 w hypocellular RA and three chromosomal abnormalities. My local hematologist told me three years. A U of Mich hematologist estimated one yr and recommended an immediate SCT. Although my sister is a match, I have declined that approach. I have followed a nutritional/alternative therapy routine. I have had monthly testing and no conventional therapy. I am still doing well, but only God holds the future. I am currently 58 years old.

John

[John in GR]

Hey that’s a great idea. I could trade my MDS for liver disease.

Tah, I’m becoming a bit concerned about you. Do you think there is a chance the thin air of Truckee might be having an adverse effect on you??

BTW Tah, my family has been waiting a long time for me to grow up. May it never completely happen.

John

[John in GR]

Tah,

You are one crazy septuagenarian. Your family has waited a very long time for you to grow up. Do you think it will ever occur??

I was stationed in Inchon, Korea during the Vietnam era. I was a US Navy officer working for Military Sealift Command. Essentially, we were acting as shipping agents for civilian ships carrying military cargo. That’s where Cheri and I met.

Anyway, I’m getting a little nervous. Since we both were in Korea working in shipping as military officers, do you think people will think we’re brothers???

BTW, kimchee is loaded with enzymes and is very healthful. I eat it regularly.

John (quack quack)

[John in GR]

Okay, I’ll bite.

I have no idea what “old family recipe” is all about. Will you enlighten???? I do agree that how one lives is most important.

I also agree that racial barriers should come down. As a matter of fact, my wife is Korean. Her connections to some asian natural health stuff has been a great help in fighted this MDS thing. I feel enriched by being able to participate in two cultures.

So you’re Lithuanian w a black wife and used to be on a board that first appointed Barbara Boxer. Hmmmm.

John

[John in GR]

This Moss Report about bacterial etiology dovetails perfectly with this vaccine concept because vaccines are used to treat bacterial infections, according to Jeff.

THE MOSS REPORTS

If you are going to fight a war it is axiomatic that you need to know your enemy. Yet even now, more than thirty years after the war on cancer was declared, the disease remains largely a mystery.

What is cancer? It may surprise you to know that scientists are far from clear on this most fundamental question. While research in the fields of molecular biology and genetics has yielded many clues concerning the way in which cancer cells grow and signal to one another, still there remains little agreement as to the exact origin – what scientists call the ‘pathogenesis’ – of cancer.

This week I begin a two-part discussion of a groundbreaking piece of research which has shown that one particular type of cancer, stomach cancer, arises not from the stomach lining cells themselves, but as a result of the influx of bone marrow-derived stem cells into the tissues of the stomach lining. The role of chronic inflammation caused by a pre-existing bacterial infection is also elucidated in this research. The model of cancer causation that emerges from this work could change our understanding of cancer on a fundamental level and has wide-ranging implications for the future of cancer research as a whole.

For thirty years I have been monitoring the field of cancer research and treatment, chronicling the advances and setbacks, the small triumphs and the many frustrations of the war on cancer.

The fruit of my long involvement in this field is The Moss Reports, a comprehensive library of more than two hundred individual reports on specific cancer diagnoses. For cancer patients, a Moss Report represents an invaluable guide and handbook for the journey ahead.

If you would like to order a Moss Report for yourself or someone you love, you can do so from our website, http://www.cancerdecisions.com, or by calling Diane at 1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367 from outside the US).

We look forward to helping you.

A NEW VIEW OF CANCER’S ORIGINS

Gastric cancer originates from bone marrow-derived cells. So states a paper published in late 2004 by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), Worcester, MA. This paper provides a radically different view of how stomach cancer comes into existence and may change the way we view the origin of many other kinds of cancer as well.

The scientists, headed by Prof. JeanMarie Houghton, MD, PhD of UMMS’s Gastroenterology Department, discovered an unexpected link between stomach cancer and a type of undifferentiated stem cell that originates in the bone marrow.

They found that an infection with Helicobacter felis (a bacterium related to infectious Helicobacter pylori in humans) leads to an influx of bone marrow-derived stem cells (BMDCs), as the body tries to repair the injury caused by the infection. Prof. Houghton and her colleagues showed that this transformation of BMDCs is the event that actually sparks malignant tumors of the stomach.

In the past, when trying to isolate the source of stomach cancer, scientists focused on damaged cells in the stomach lining. They naturally assumed that stomach cancer was caused by the transformation of normal gastric lining cells into malignant cells. And, indeed, when pathologists look at stomach cancer cells under the microscope, they see something that resembles a misshapen version of normal stomach cells.

However, Prof. Houghton and her colleagues showed that it was these BMDCs, not the stomach cells themselves, that gave rise to cancer. This was an unexpected finding, and might cause a shift in thinking about the formation and progression not only of stomach cancer, but of several other kinds of cancer as well.

“We have known for years that chronic inflammation causes cancer, yet we did not know precisely how,” said Prof. Houghton. “Tissue stem cells, which are long-lived cells within organs that act to repair and replenish cells, have long been thought of as targets for carcinogens and the source of cancer. We show that bone marrow-derived stem cells attempt to participate in repair but, under conditions of inflammation, are unable to behave normally and instead progress towards cancer. This dramatically changes the way we think about cancer. If this model applies to human cancer, we will need to revise our approaches to prevention and treatment.”

Like other stem cells, BMDCs are pleuripotent – that is, they have the ability to develop into many tissue types. To do so in a normal manner, they require the right environment and the right signals. In an infected stomach, however, the environment itself is diseased; therefore, BMDCs mutate and begin to progress towards cancer.

BMDCs have other cancer-like properties, including:

· the capacity for unlimited growth
· the ability to avoid apoptosis (programmed cell death) signals
· an altered requirement for growth factors

These properties give them a significant growth advantage, says Prof. Houghton, making them difficult to control once they have mutated.

Daring New Model

The authors propose what is a daring new model for the development of at least one major form of cancer.

First, the Helicobacter organism infects the stomach lining and establishes a chronic infection, attended by inflammation. The local immune system is unable to cope successfully. This leads to repeated cycles of injury and repair. The body finally uses up the local supply of stem cells, which normally reside in tissues to cope with just such emergencies. These are in time overwhelmed and compromised by the infection (Anderson 2001)

This exhaustion of the local “police force” calls forth a reserve of special “national guard” cells that have their base camp in the bone marrow. They are specially designed to deal with such persistent threats to health. These are the cells that Dr. Houghton has identified as the BMDC stem cells. They are drawn to, and then engraft themselves into, the beleaguered tissue. But the BMDCs, depending on environmental cues for development and differentiation, encounter an abnormal environment of conflicting growth signals. There follows a downward spiral of metaplasia (the conversion of normal to abnormal tissue); dysplasia (emergence of a precancerous growth); and finally carcinoma (frankly malignant cancer, capable of metastasizing).

Elegant Experiment

In these elegant experiments, scientists used the well established C57BL/6 mouse model of gastric cancer to test their hypothesis. In this experiment, C57BL/6 mice, which are susceptible to Helicobacter induced gastric cancer, had their native bone marrow destroyed by a lethal dose of irradiation. They were then rescued through transplantation of bone marrow from other mice.

This new bone marrow had been genetically engineered to display one of two markers: a protein which fluoresces green, or a distinctive bacterial enzyme called beta-galactosidase which appears blue when stained. No other cells in the mouse’s body would pick up this distinctive stain. Additionally, male bone marrow was transplanted into female mice allowing cells to be tracked using detection of the male specific Y- chromosome.

The stomachs of these mice were then infected with a strain of Helicobacter. After six to eight weeks, there was intense die off (apoptosis) of many of the mice’s stomach cells, and after about 20 weeks the glands lining the stomach started to stain blue. The number of such blue-staining cells increased dramatically and at one year, 90 percent of the cells within the area of the stomach where cancer forms had been replaced by blue-staining cells. Th
ese cells were abnormal, showing signs of metaplasia, dysplasia or outright cancer.

This paper, published in the influential journal Science, thus offers a new model for the origin (pathogenesis) of epithelial cancer. This is not inconsequential, for epithelial cancer is another name for carcinoma, the kind of cancer that affects any tissue covering bodily surfaces and cavities. This category includes not just stomach cancer, but breast, pancreas, colon, etc. – in other words, about 90 percent of all cancers.

Many features of cancer cells become much clearer when viewed within the context of this new model, including their undifferentiated nature; their ability for self-renewal; their resistance to programmed cell death; and their tendency to metastasize and spread quickly. These are some of the key characteristics shared by stem cells and cancer cells.

CAM Perspective

From the perspective of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), this paper is extremely provocative. Let me offer a few observations:

In their first sentence, the authors state that “the link between infection, chronic inflammation, and cancer has long been recognized.” But the theory that cancer can be caused by bacterial infection has not always been accepted so readily by medical authorities.

In fact, many of the researchers in this field suffered instances of “intellectual suppression, particularly when they developed clinical applications,” according to Prof. David Hess of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, in his excellent book, Can Bacteria Cause Cancer? (1997).

According to Prof. Hess, “This theory was supported by a rich alternative research tradition that involved at least fifty scientists and clinicians in a number of countries. Popular during the nineteenth century, the theory received continued support during the twentieth century as a minority tradition. Although the quality of the research is very uneven, some of the best of the research has been published in recognized, peer-reviewed scientific journals.” (ibid.) There were some fine scientists in this group – such as William B. Coley, MD, Virginia Livingston, MD, and Eleanor Alexander-Jackson, PhD – who provided rigorous demonstrations of the links between various bacteria and cancer.

But the medical establishment essentially banished this theory from the conventional universe of shared ideas. For instance, the concept was severely criticized by Memorial Hospital pathologist James Ewing, MD, the most influential American pathologist of his day. In the first edition of his seminal work, Neoplastic Diseases (1919), Ewing wrote:

“The parasitic [i.e., microbial] theory…appealed to the ancients, was tacitly accepted throughout the Middle Ages, was definitely argued by modern observers, and reached the height of its popularity as a scientific theory about 1895, but during the last fifteen years it has rapidly lost ground, and today few competent observers consider it a possible explanation” of cancer’s origins.

Dr. Ewing rejected outright the work of Dr. Peyton Rous of the Rockefeller Institute, who showed, as early as 1911, that sarcoma in chickens could be transmitted by a virus. It took another 55 years for Peyton Rous to finally receive his well deserved Nobel Prize in Medicine precisely for this work.

Similar skepticism greeted Dr. Barry J. Marshall of Perth, Australia, when he argued in the 1980s that Helicobacter could cause gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), dyspepsia and stomach ulcers. (It is now understood to also contribute to some forms of stomach cancers.) Marshall’s argument was repeatedly rejected out of hand. According to his wife, “The vast majority of the medical profession, not only in Australia but worldwide, considered Barry to be a quack and really were extremely dismissive for a number of years.”

It is encouraging that a younger generation of scientists now regards the causative connection between microbes and cancer as non-controversial. But it also needs stating that for many decades, all theories of bacterial involvement in cancer were suppressed and only found refuge within the precincts of the CAM movement. This resulted in damage to the reputations of many fine researchers, a wrong that still needs to be corrected in the historical record.

TO BE COMPLETED, WITH REFERENCES, NEXT WEEK

–Ralph W. Moss, PhD

John

[Author]

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