If someone gets a cancer diagnosis and heads to a local oncologist’s office (let’s ignore the squamous-cell and basal cell skin cancers here, which are frequently easily resolved), they are likely to be treated with radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, and with some types of cancer, hormones. Many of these patients might be aware of many different types of treatments for cancer. But the emotional “pull” of an MD with a starched white coat and a stethoscope around their neck is often too much to resist. The patient very often will go with the most common, more often recommended conventional treatments, ”just to be sure” that they are taking a thorough or at least well-known path to getting rid of their cancer.

Radiation, chemotherapy, surgery and hormones can be useful in the treatment and the possible cure of cancer. But the treating/curing of cancer are just their short-term effects. The dirty little secret of oncology is that most common conventional cancer treatments actually cause cancer. If you take the common treatments of conventional oncology and combine them with the emotional shock of their diagnoses, you have a bag full of cancer-causing effects which is scary all by itself. There is a mixture of immediate, shorter-term and longer-term effects, but altogether they create a challenge to your health that you can’t afford to ignore. Even the American Cancer Society agrees.¹⁵

Radiation

Although X-rays were discovered in 1895, and within a few years came into common usage, very little was established about the dangers of radiation until after World War II.

Clinical use of the X-ray flourished, with little regard for potential side effects from radiation exposure. There were a few early suspicions from scientists including Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and William J. Morton, each of whom reported injuries they believed resulted from experiments with X-rays. But overall, early use of X-rays was widespread and unrestrained, even to the degree that during the 1930s and 1940s, shoe stores offered free X-rays so that customers could see the bones in their feet.¹

Cancer risk is related to the cumulative dose of radiation over one’s lifetime.²

Cumulative means that even though exposure to radiation (x-ray or CT scan, etc) might not cause any immediate adverse effects, the risk continues indefinitely. It is almost like someone’s criminal history. It stays with you for life.

If exposure is very high in a particular incident (think Chernobyl or Fukushima), the radiation directly harms and kills cells rapidly, causing radiation sickness that may be fatal. If the exposure dose is low, such as in exposure to natural sources or medical testing, it can cause damage to our DNA and can cause formation of free radicals, which are molecules that are highly reactive and are thought to cause many health conditions including cancer. While the body naturally repairs most damage of this type, some of these effects are less easily repaired. If the body cannot repair DNA damage, it can continue to progress over many years, ultimately leading to cancer.²

John Gofman

John Gofman, MD, PhD, was hired by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to scientifically determine the biological risks of radiation. He regularly pointed out how dangerous radiation really is, even in the lowest doses. The AEC grew to view him as their opponent. The AEC could never refute his research, so they finally took their second-best option – they took away his research funds, which forced him to resign and then they ignored everything he ever said.

Gofman advocated for the adoption of the “Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model” as a means of estimating actual cancer risks from low-level radiation and as the foundation of the international guidelines for radiation protection.³

In his 1996 book "Preventing Breast Cancer"⁴ Gofman claimed that exposure to medical x-rays was responsible for about 75 percent of breast cancers in the United States. This estimate has generally been confirmed by the increase in breast cancer incidence following mammography screening in the USA and in France.³

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is an important component of cancer treatment, which has side effects like vomiting, peripheral neuropathy, and numerous organ toxicity. But the most significant adverse outcomes of chemotherapy are cognitive impairment, which is mainly referred to as chemobrain or CICI (chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment). It is characterized by difficulty with language, concentrating, processing speed, learning, and memory, as it affects the hippocampus areas of the brain. Mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress are two of the major mechanisms causing chemobrain. The generation of reactive oxygen species (byproducts of oxidative phosphorylation) mainly occurs in mitochondria.¹⁶

The mitochondria are the energy producing part of every cell. Normal healthy cells metabolize fats and glucose using oxygen. This produces somewhere between 30 and 38 ATP molecules (the cellular “energy currency”) per molecule of fat or glucose. Cancer cells primarily use glycolysis to produce energy. By comparison, glycolysis uses much less oxygen, produces only 2 ATP molecules, and also creates by-products that support cancer growth.²² When mitochondria are damaged, some of them will not be able to metabolize fats/glucose using oxygen, but can only use glycolysis.⁶ This not only produces the cancer-supporting by-products, but also moves the cell much closer to the functioning pattern of a cancer cell. This is why the mitochondrial damage from chemotherapy is so significant as a cancer-causing factor.

Mitoception

Mitoception is the transfer of mitochondria from one cell to another. Studies of mitoception have provided an interesting window into how important optimally functional mitochondria are in cellular resistance to cancer.

The remodeling of Ca2+ homeostasis has been implicated as a critical event in driving malignant phenotypes, such as tumor cell proliferation, motility, and metastasis.¹⁷

Mitoception of tumor cells with normal mitochondria switch mitochondrial potential and Ca2+ entry back to normal.⁷

Let me say this is a simpler way. Putting “normal” mitochondria into a cancer cell turns that cell back into a “normal” cell.

T-Cells

T cells are a type of white blood cell called lymphocytes. They are also called T- lymphocytes. They are “trained” in your thymus gland to attack invaders, but not your own body tissues. After the age of about 20, your thymus gland slows down, and the T-cells are then mostly maintained by cell division.¹³ T-lymphocytes play an essential role in your immune system. Your immune system fights infection-causing pathogens (viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites) and harmful cells, like cancer cells.¹¹

Chemotherapy has a multi-layered effect on T-cell function. It kills T-cells, and impairs the functions of the surviving cells. But the T-cells also have mitochondria, and the mitochondria are also damaged. The energy with which they pursue these pathogens and cancer cells is highly dependent upon the function of their mitochondria.¹⁴

Prior reports in pediatric patients documented lower absolute T-cell counts in children with leukemia both at diagnosis and throughout therapy, and that chemotherapy can deplete T-cells over time. Importantly, T-cells recovered from children after chemotherapy cycles demonstrated an increased incidence of activation-induced cell death (AICD).¹⁴

Surgery

Surgery might seem like it would not do much in terms of causing cancer or promoting existing cancers, but this is not really the case.

Studies show that breast cancer metastasis (cancer that has spread from the site of the original tumor) sometimes occurs 12 to 18 months following surgery, says Robert Weinberg, PhD, the senior author of the new study, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and a member of the Whitehead Institute, which is affiliated with MIT. Given the fact that it spikes and then goes down, that means it’s highly likely to have been caused by the surgery.⁹

Weinberg and his colleagues used a mouse model of breast cancer to explore the impact of wound healing on cancer metastasis. They found that in mice with a transplanted breast cancer tumor, natural immune-system defenses, such as T-cells, kept the tumor cells in a dormant state in which they did not divide or spread. In mice with a transplanted breast cancer tumor that were healing from an induced injury, however, the tumors metastasized at a much higher rate.

“What we propose is that some of these disseminated cells are kept under control by the immune system,” Weinberg says. “What we find is, in a model of post-surgical wound-healing, it’s not the surgery itself but the subsequent wound-healing response that can act throughout the body to suppress certain kinds of immunological functions. When these immunological functions are suppressed, these disseminated cancer cells that had been under control can sally forth and generate.”

Let me make this a bit clearer. If you are recovering from a wound, your body needs to facilitate the production of new cells. If you are facing cancer, your body needs to limit the production of new cells. If your body is faced with the requirement to pursue two goals that oppose each other, then neither one will be accomplished very effectively.

An article on the quackwatch.org website, which historically has been devoted to the idea that the “medical industry does a very good job”, admits that surgery can spread cancer.

Where good clearance is not possible and the cancer is broken into, local seeding of the cancer is likely, with cells possibly also getting into the blood stream, local lymphatics, or drifting widely along tissue planes and spaces. The consequences of this would depend on the anatomical location, so it is difficult to generalize. In cases where cancer is being left behind, the spilled cells are unlikely to alter the outcome. In other cases, it may spread cancer through body cavities such as the abdomen and create additional problems for the patient.¹⁰

Hormonal Therapies

Aromatase inhibitors are used to treat estrogen-dependent cancers. Aromatase inhibitors block the enzyme aromatase, which turns other hormones into estrogen.²⁴ This reduces your estrogen levels. But if human tissue adapts to estrogen deprivation, it triggers alternative signaling pathways that can begin the onset of endocrine resistance – enabling ER self-activation and downstream cancer proliferation. This can allow the cancer to advance even in the absence of estrogen.¹⁸

One side effect of Tamoxifen is endometrial cancer.¹⁹

Ryke Geerd Hamer / GNM – Germanic New Medicine

At the University of Tubingen, Hamer earned a Masters Degree in Theology, a Degree in Radiology, and got his professional license in 1961 as Doctor of Medicine. His son Dirk was accidentally shot and later died from this accident. Shortly after his son’s death, Dr. Hamer developed testicular cancer. During his efforts to overcome this cancer, he wondered if his cancer could have been caused by the emotional shock of his son’s death. Later, Dr Hamer began a study of his cancer patients’ records and brain scans. His conclusions were that the initiating factor of almost all cancers is an emotionally destabilizing event. This reflexes back to the part of the brain that controls a part of the body. Sooner or later, if the emotion is not resolved, that body part or tissue will then develop cancer.²⁰

He wrote up his study and started to alert the medical world to his results. From that moment on, his life turned into a battle with medical authorities who could not refute his results, but vehemently rejected his ideas. He did himself no favors during this time with public pronouncements that were politically volatile and divisive. He lost medical licenses, was threatened with all kinds of sanctions, spent time in jail, and ended up leaving Germany. It was only after his death that his ideas were partially and gradually more accepted, and became the basis for “GNM” Germanic New Medicine.²⁰

The part of his ideas that I find very useful is that the root of most (but not all) cancers is a very bad or shocking emotion. For many people an internal organ cancer diagnosis fits very well into this category. Cancer is a “big fear” disease. This is not only because many people die from it, but also because much of the fear surrounds the debilitating effects of the common treatments. It is therefore possible to theorize that the emotions surrounding a cancer diagnosis can contribute to the severity of an existing cancer or even be a primary cause of cancer.

Incorrect Diagnoses

Because so many common cancer therapies can cause cancer, incorrect cancer diagnoses are a significant threat to the health and life of the patient. The patient who gets a diagnosis of cancer of an internal organ and agrees to conventional treatment, could get cancer from the treatment or even from the shock of the emotions surrounding the diagnosis. The cancer they get could be unrelated to the diagnosis, but if radiation treatments, which are localized, are used, then this misdiagnosis could more easily be the reason why the originally incorrect diagnosis eventually becomes a “self-fulfilling prophesy.”

Second Cancers

Analysis showed that 5-year survival rates with SPMs (second primary malignant neoplasms) were lower than with first disease across all age groups. However, they were substantially lower for pediatric and AYA (adolescents and young adult) patients, compared with older adults. Survival rates were 33.1 percent lower for pediatric patients, 20.2 percent lower for adolescent adults, and 8.3 percent lower for older adults.

For the most common SPMs in AYA patients, the absolute difference in 5-year survival rates were:

• 42% lower for secondary non-Hodgkin lymphoma
• 19% lower for secondary breast carcinoma
• 15% lower for secondary thyroid carcinoma
• 13% lower for secondary soft-tissue sarcoma²¹

These statistics line up about as expected with the following statements.

• Immune system function is of primary importance when preventing cancer.
• Many common conventional cancer treatments damage the immune system.
• Second cancers tend to occur in individuals who have damaged immune systems at least in part from the treatments of their first cancer.

Concluding Statement

Right after getting a cancer diagnosis, comes the decision-making point in time. Most people know very little about cancer therapies. When the fear and anxiety of a diagnosis for a life-threatening cancer takes over, they tend to follow the recommendations of the doctor in the white coat who treats cancer for a living.

It is not a good idea to make such important decisions out of ignorance. What they need to know is that almost all conventional cancer therapies can treat/cure cancer, but these same treatments can make cancer worse on an immediate basis and cause cancer at a later time. These second cancers, when they do occur, tend to be more resistant to treatment due to damage that the original cancer treatments cause to the immune system.

When the newly diagnosed consider their options, they would be well-served to be looking at not only the cancer-curing capabilities of the recommended therapies, but also the cancer-causing effects of these same therapies. They should be looking into all of the possibilities from all perspectives, before they choose their treatment path.