It's not extremely common, so unless you're a health care professional or student, you've likely never heard or read of "choriocarcinoma." This invasive and often metastasizing cancer usually originates in the beginnings of a placenta. A choriocarcinoma starts out as all placentas do, as a tissue called "trophoblast" rapidly invading the lining of the uterus. But instead of "switching off" it's invasiveness once it's established, and turning into a mature placenta to nourish the developing infant, a the ever-invading trophoblast--now called a choriocarcinoma--just keeps invading and invading. If it isn't stopped, it will metastasize just like any other cancer--and ultimately kill it's "host."
But if it isn't common, why am I bringing it up? Especially since many of you are done having babies and raising your families? Well, according to some very recent research, it appears that this very specific type of "women's cancer" may actually hold the key to curing many other cancers--in both men and women.
In their new book, The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer, Drs. Nicholas Gonzalez and Linda Isaacs reveal that many cancers in both men and women invade surrounding tissue in the exact same way that choriocarcinomas do, using the exact same bio-chemical pathways, signaling molecules, and enzymatic processes.
In 2007, one prominent research group wrote: "Trophoblast research over the past decades has underlined the striking similarities between the proliferative, migratory and invasive properties of placental cells and those of cancer cells. This review recapitulates the numerous key molecules, proto-oncogenes, growth factors, receptors, enzymes, hormones, peptides and tumour-associated antigens (TAAs) expressed by both trophoblastic and cancer cells."
And in an even earlier publication, another group of researchers wrote: "There are striking similarities present between the behavior of invasive placental cells and that of invasive cancer cells. In this review, we propose that cellular mechanisms used by the cells of the placenta during implantation are reused by cancer cells to invade and spread within the body."
So what can we do with this information? Cure cancer, that's what! In fact, it's been done before.
As Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs report, a Scottish embryologist by the name of Dr. John Beard pioneered this cancer treatment in 1905--more than 100 years ago.
Using only microscopes and none of the "high-tech" instrumentation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Dr. Beard observed the uncanny similarities between the growth of the trophoblast (remember, that's the name for the still-developing placenta) and the growth and development of "regular" cancers. But Beard went much further than that.
He reasoned that since 99.99 percent (or more) of all human trophoblasts "switch off" their invasiveness, and morph into mature placentas, possibly the same "switch off"--whatever it might be--could be applied to "regular" cancers. Dr. Beard finally found that "off switch" in the pancreas of the developing baby.
In humans and every mammalian species he studied, the very same day the baby's pancreas first started to secrete digestive enzymes (particularly trypsinogen, trypsin, and chymotrypsin, but also amylase, lipase, elastase, and many others), the invasiveness of the trophoblast began to switch off and it rapidly changed into a mature placenta.
So Dr. Beard did the obvious thing: He injected pancreatic enzymes into animals with cancer--and found that it had a strong anti-cancer effect.
In 1911, he published a book about his observations, The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer. Having heard or read of Dr. Beard's work, many other physicians successfully treated patients with cancer using injectable pancreatic enzymes. In their new book, Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs point to several reports about these successes published between 1906 and1908, including two published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
So whatever happened to this carefully researched, successful and entirely natural cancer treatment pioneered more than a century ago? For once, it wasn't los Federales--at least, not in the beginning.
The FDA didn't get around to outlawing injectable pancreatic enzymes until 1966. As Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs explain, there were at least two other major factors that explain why Dr. Beard's cancer treatment didn't catch on.
One was tremendous opposition from "organized medicine." As is so often the case in medicine and other so-called "learned professions," "what you're not up on, you're down on." So medical journals wrote editorials against him, and numerous professors gave lectures denouncing his findings and procedures.
The other even more significant factor was the extremely variable quality of available injectable pancreatic enzyme preparations. At the time, many of them were so poor that they were worthless in cancer therapy. So the lack of results from their use were cited as "proof" that pancreatic enzymes didn't work at all.
But the naysayers weren't loud enough to get everyone to stop using this therapy. One St. Louis doctor reported success treating advanced cancer patients with injectable pancreatic enzymes in the 1920s and 1930s. And in the 1950s, Dr. Frank Shively, a surgeon practicing in Dayton, Ohio, started giving a single pancreatic enzyme--trypsin--by intravenous injection to terminal, inoperable cancer patients. By 1966, he'd given 1,305 injections of pancreatic enzymes (by then he'd also included pepsinogen, desoxyribonuclease and ribonuclease) to 193 terminal cancer patients without adverse reactions.
But by the 1960s, the cancer chemotherapy industry had really taken off. And that's when los Federales stepped in. In 1966, the FDA ordered Dr. Shively--and everyone else using this treatment--to stop giving injectable pancreatic enzymes to cancer patients. So any possible competition to the cancer chemotherapy industry from injectable pancreatic enzymes was stopped before it could get started.
Fortunately, at about the same time, a Texas orthodontist--William Donald Kelley--decided to treat his own cancer with (among other things) large doses of pancreatic digestive enzymes taken orally. As Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs explain, Dr. Kelley knew nothing of Dr. Beard, but took the enzymes because his own digestive function was so bad. The more enzymes he took, the more his cancer shrank. Combining the enzymes with individualized diet plans, multiple supplements, and detoxification procedures including coffee enemas, Dr. Kelley cured not only his own cancer, but eventually helped cure many others as well.
In the early 1980s, Dr. Gonzalez studied thousands of Dr. Kelley's records and interviewed hundreds of his patients, and found that these treatments worked in a significant number of cases.
After learning thoroughly about Dr. Kelley's approach and the success his patients had experienced, Dr. Gonzalez opened his own cancer-treatment practice in New York City using many of the same principles. Suzanne Somers' 2009 book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer and How to Prevent Getting it in the First Place features an extensive interview with Dr. Gonzalez as well as interviews with several of the cancer survivors he's successfully treated.
Let's finish by summarizing Trophoblast. All of its discussion and meticulous documentation is very important-- particularly for medical professionals--but it really all boils down to this: Very many cancers invade surrounding tissues and grow and metastasize using exactly the same mechanisms used by the precursor of the placenta (the trophoblast). And just as all the trophoblast's invasiveness is tamed and "turned off" the very same day the developing infant's pancreas begins to make digestive enzymes, pancreatic digestive enzymes can also "turn off" the growth and invasiveness of many cancers. And as the book's subtitle says, this little-known therapy may very well be "One solution to the medical enigma of our time." Thanks so much to Drs. Gonzalez and Isaacs for bringing us the complete, well-documented explanation!
---j v wright md
tahoma clinic
renton, washington