"The War In Medicine"

  Case Study of Scientific Corruption

    Continued From Last Post.

Quackwatch

You might be interested to know exactly what the NIH, quackwatch, etc.
complained about in the Cameron/Pauling study. They complained it was not
a "double blind" study.

Now let's think about this for a moment. Suppose two groups are selected
for a study and the patients are not told which group they are in. The
first group is secretly given Vitamin C in an IV, which builds their
immune system, provides zero pain, and the patients feel fine. The second
group is secretly given chemotherapy in an IV, which destroys their
immune system, destroys their vital organs, makes them feel sick, and
causes enormous pain. Do you think the patients could figure out which
group they were in? Do you think you could do a "double blind" study with
Vitamin C versus chemotherapy? Don't be ridiculous. Within a matter of
days each group would know what kind of treatment they were on.

But it gets deeper than that. Let me quote from quackwatch, a defender of
orthodox medicine and one of the major servants of Big Pharma. See if you
can figure out what tricks of logic they are using before you read my
comments about their statement:

    "The Pauling/Cameron study was not a clinical trial in which patients
were compared to carefully matched patients chosen at random and followed
using a standardized [selection] protocol. Instead, Pauling and Cameron
attempted to reconstruct what happened to the control group by examining
their medical records. Most cancer specialists and journal editors are
extremely reluctant to accept [medical records] for evaluating the
validity of contemporary cancer therapy, primarily because bias may occur
in selecting controls."
    quackwatch.com

First of all, it is a blatant lie that medical records are not acceptable
in medical research, they are frequently used. Second, there was nothing
unethical about using a single group. These patients were going to die in
any case, it was only a matter of when and the difference at most would
only be a matter of weeks. Furthermore, by not taking chemotherapy, the
patients would be in much less pain even if they did not live as long.

There are many cancer patients who would rather have a less painful
treatment plan, even if they don't live as long. In fact many cancer
patients drop out of chemotherapy because they lose interest in a
treatment plan that makes them so sick and causes them so much pain and
misery.

But to go a little deeper, image that two cars collide in an
intersection, a red car and a green car. The red car ran a "red light"
several seconds after the light had turned red and was speeding as it
entered the intersection. The green car, which did not enter the
intersection until after the light turned green, had one tire that was
low in air pressure. Imagine the judge saying that the green car was at
fault because the air pressure in one of its tires was low. Imagine the
judge ignoring the fact that the red car ran a red light and was
speeding! Using Barrett's logic, the green car was at fault.

What Barrett's (the M.D. owner of quackwatch) site was saying was that
there was no placebo control group. In other words, when they picked the
control group, they used medical records rather than a placebo control
group. The key question is this: "if Cameron and Pauling had used a
placebo group, instead of medical records, would the psychological effect
of taking a placebo have resulted in the placebo control group living
several times longer than they did?" Barrett must that thought the answer
to that question was "yes." As already mentioned, such a study would be
impossible when comparing Vitamin C to chemotherapy, which is what
Cameron and Pauling were comparing.

But there is another problem. If a placebo group were required, what two
groups would you use? It could not be Vitamin C versus chemotherapy,
because one group must be given nothing (i.e. a placebo). But if you
compare the placebo group to the Vitamin C group (which actually would
have been acceptable if that is what you were studying), you still have
to ultimately compare the Vitamin C group to the chemotherapy group by
using medical records. Thus, you cannot get around using medical records
if you want to compare Vitamin C to chemotherapy.

The main reason for doing a double-blind study is to gauge any
psychological factor that may exist in the minds of the participants. In
other words, if both groups think they are getting the real medication
(Vitamin C in this case), then you eliminate any psychological factor.
Is it possible that in four different studies, done in three different
countries (Scotland, Canada and Japan), that a psychological factor
caused a several-fold increase in survival time? If so, why didn't both
groups in the Mayo Clinic studies survive several times longer than
expected, because both groups thought they were getting Vitamin C? Even
if the psychological theory was true, I would still give people Vitamin
C, if their psychological state of mind caused them to live several times
longer!

If fact, Barrett's argument is total nonsense. The purpose of the study
was to compare Vitamin C to chemotherapy, and that is impossible to do
using a double blind study. The real reason the two groups of studies
yielded different results was the treatment protocol, not the
psychological effect of a placebo.

Here is the important thing, quackwatch didn't even mention that there
were any differences in the treatment protocols between Pauling and
Moertel (i.e. they didn't mention that the red car had run a red light or
that it was speeding). Their focus was on the selection protocol (i.e.
the air pressure in the tires of the two cars).
Do you see how quackwatch twists the facts and uses sensationalism to
divert your attention from the most important issues. It is as if Dr.
Cameron did not know how to determine which hospital the patients were
at, what kind of cancer they had, which stage of cancer the patients were
at, and which doctors treated which patients. Let me re-quote from above:

    "These patients were then compared by Cameron and me to patients with
the same kind of cancer at the same terminal stage who were being treated
in the same hospital but by other doctors--doctors who didn't give
vitamin C, but instead just gave conventional treatments."
To quackwatch, this wasn't good enough because it didn't come to the
correct answer - use prescription drugs. The vastly different treatment
protocol used by the Mayo Clinic is more "scientific" because it leads
you to take prescription drugs. Get used to this type of propaganda, you
will see it all the time. They love to divert your attention with
irrelevant issues.

A normal, open-minded researcher, if they studied the Pauling/Cameron
studies and the three Mayo Clinic studies, would quickly look at the
selection protocol and see nothing significant to complain about. They
would then focus their attention on the treatment protocol. Since the two
groups of studies had vastly different results, it would be absolutely
obvious to the legitimate researchers that something significant was
different about their studies. By far the thing that was most significant
was the treatment protocols.

Barrett also has a page on Linus Pauling himself. The title to the
quackwatch page on Linus Pauling is titled: "The Dark Side of Linus
Pauling's Legacy." Ohhhh, it sounds like Linus Pauling joined the "Dark
Side" before he died. The article starts:

    "Linus Pauling, Ph.D., was the only person ever to win two unshared
Nobel prizes. He received these awards for chemistry in 1954 and for
peace in 1962. His recent death has stimulated many tributes to his
scientific accomplishments. His impact on the health marketplace [sic],
however, was anything but laudable."

Yes, I agree Pauling's impact on Big Pharma was not laudable. He was a
pain in their neck. He had integrity, which is something they cannot
tolerate. He also cared about people more than money, and they view
people no deeper than a "source of money to increase earnings per share."
You should realize that Vitamin C, by itself, is not a cure for cancer,
but if it can extend the life of terminal cancer patients by 5 1/2 years
or even 1 year (depending on how advanced they were when treatment
began), that gives them plenty of time to use the natural treatments that
do cure cancer. That makes Big Pharma even madder.

Later, I will talk about the "top 100" most effective alternative
treatments for cancer. Where does Vitamin C therapy fit in this list? It
is not on the list. Not even close. It's cure rate is far too low. It is
used in alternative medicine largely to extend the life of the patient so
far more effective treatments have more time to work.

The Bogus Mayo Clinic Studies on Laetrile

Largely the same people at the Mayo clinic also did two bogus studies on
laetrile therapy to discredit the tens of thousands of testimonials of
people cured by laetrile therapy. The public was beginning to believe
that laetrile actually worked. Time for damage control. Guess what, the
Mayo Clinic did not follow standard American protocol and dosages.

For example, if they had followed the standard laetrile diet, which is
virtually the same thing as a "raw food" diet, the diet alone would have
significantly extended the lives of the patients.

But in this case it was the watered-down and phony "laetrile" the NIH
provided to the Mayo Clinic that was perhaps the most bogus part of these
studies. The NIH, which funded the bogus studies, did not allow an
alternative treatment vendor to supply the laetrile for at least one of
the studies, even though they offered to supply the laetrile for free.

Copyright (c) 2003 R. Webster Kehr, all rights reserved

--------------------------

God Bless Everyone & God Bless The United States of America.

Larry Nelson
42 S. Sherwood Dr.
Belton, Tx. 76513
cancercurehere@gmail.com
Income for the 98% that fail in Their Internet Business.
http://bit.ly/Y1ko5k