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To mainstream doctors, cancer is a localized disease, to be treated in a localized manner. By cutting out the tumor, irradiating it, or flooding the body with toxic (and often carcinogenic) drugs, the orthodox physician hopes to destroy the tumor and save the patient. But all too often, the cancer is still present and has metastasized (spread elsewhere). The allopathic, conventional approach, for all its high-tech trappings, is based on a primitive medical philosophy: aggressively attacking an "enemy" disease. Often, the patient is devastated in the process, while the cancer and its underlying causes remain.

One promising new therapy used by metabolic physicians involves shark cartilage. Unlike mammals, sharks have no bones. The shark's cartilaginous skeleton is the same today as it was when this fish evolved over 400 million years ago...The cartilage gives the shark immunity against carcinogens, mutagens, and pollutants. Furthermore, a substance in shark cartilage strongly inhibits the growth of new blood vessels toward solid tumors in humans, thereby starving cancer cells and shutting down tumor growth, according to scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Walters's book on alternative cancer treatments makes use of the elements found in science fiction and detective stories. Instead of soberly presenting a list of untraditional approaches to treatment, he dramatically unveils what he feels is a gigantic conspiracy to suppress the truth about noninvasive, nontoxic, unorthodox methods. He agrees with a remark he attributes to Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling: "Everyone should know that the 'war on cancer' is largely a fraud." This makes for some fascinating reading, but the science informing many of these treatments is unclear. The Rife generator, a bioelectric device that reportedly conquered terminal cancer in the 1930s, was decisively--and unfairly, argues Walter--discredited by the powers-that-were of conventional medicine. Essiac, an herbal tea reputed to cause remission in many cases of terminal cancer, and the Hoxsey Therapy, another herbal remedy linked to Native American and folk medicine, have been ignored or attacked by researchers and physicians. The many tales of miraculous cures are intriguing and seem to warrant further study, yet Walters believes that the testing of drugs and treatments on animals is not only cruel but ineffective--a view shared by few scientists. So the therapies in this book use people as guinea pigs. The reader is warned that while Walters's guide is "not intended as endorsement for any particular therapies, it does illustrate how specific therapies work and may give hope and strength to readers." The safest advice Walters gives is this: "Approach all therapies--conventional and alternative--with healthy skepticism and suspicion."
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.