Natural Cure
THROUGH THE YEARS, this magazine has closely followed the work of cancer specialist Keith I. Block, M.D., medical director of the Institute of Integrative Cancer Care in Evanston, Ill. At the institute, Dr. Block and his colleagues have developed a complementary approach to cancer care, combining cautious amounts of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery with generous amounts of dietary, supplement, mind-body, and exercise prescriptions. Their approach appears to have cured cancer in a number of patients.
Despite these successes, Block and his colleagues balk when asked exactly how many patients they've saved, saying they can't release this information before they publish their data. Their concern is legitimate: Doctors who dispense complementary cancer treatments may be censured by their peers and face regulatory scrutiny if they claim to cure cancer before they publish scientific evidence that they've done so.
Natural Health, however, believes that it's important to keep our readers aware of Block's work. From our interviews with dozens of his current and former patients, we've discovered that many of them have done extremely well under his program; it was not unusual to hear from patients that they left the institute cured of the disease. Just as much as we need to hear the breaking news of "cancer cures" in mice--like the one that landed on the front page of The New York Times earlier this year--we need to hear about Block's work on humans.
IN MAY THE NEW YORK TIMES ran a front-page story that gave cancer patients the most hope they've had in 30 years. "Within a year," the article began, "if all goes well, the first cancer patient will be injected with two new drugs that can eradicate any type of cancer, with no obvious side effects and no drug resistance ...." Harvard scientists, led by Judah Folkman, M.D., of Children's Hospital in Boston, appeared to have wrestled to the ground the most fearsome enemy of our time. Even though, as the article pointed out, they had tested the drugs on mice, Nobel Prize laureate James D. Watson, Ph.D., co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, was quoted as saying, "Judah is going to cure cancer in two years." Over the next few days, the media frenzy sent stock prices soaring for the two pharmaceutical companies that agreed to produce the drugs, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration promised to accelerate the approval process.
There is no question that this research is momentous--not because it promises a cure (a claim we've heard before about other wonder drugs) but rather because it highlights a critical shift in cancer treatment. No longer are many researchers simply looking to obliterate the tumor--an approach that has often backfired because cancer cells are remarkable at outwitting the most potent chemotherapy drugs. The new goal is to make it hard for the tumor to grow and spread. Folkman's team sought to alter the biochemical terrain, or "soil," in which the tumors were growing.
