From: jad@ckuxb.att.com (John A Dinardo)
Subject: Part III, CHEMOTHERAPY: Deadly Treatment Yields Lively Profits
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Keywords: the politics and the profits of the cancer industry
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:17:38 GMT

        I made the following transcript from a tape recording 
        of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station
               WBAI-FM (99.5)
               505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
               New York, NY 10018       (212) 279-0707

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
                        (continuation)
RALPH MOSS:
Scientists are also capable of committing fraud. I saw it happen.
The testing on laetrile that was done at Memorial Sloan Kettering
was RIDDLED with errors. I was told, in the Public Affairs
Department, to lie about the results that were being achieved with
that substance, and also with hydrazine sulfate which is a valuable
substance for controlling the wasting syndrome in cancer. And I
witnessed the hundred year cover-up of Coley's toxins in the
treatment of cancer, which was a very effective immune stimulant
that had been used in 1891 and 1892 by Dr. Coley.

This is an inherent pattern. The fact is that there really is an
"old boys' network" in science. And if you don't write your paper
in exactly the way that the paper has to be written, the paper will
be rejected. Rarely is help going to be given to an independent
scientist to make the paper come out in a way that the paper should
come out.

I had a very weird experience that I've never talked about, Gary,
in connection with this. I was called by an editor at the Journal
of the American Medical Association last year, and was asked to
write an article for a certain section of JAMA, which is like the
premier Establishment medical journal. Of course, all my friends
said it never would happen and that it never would be published,
but I spent two weeks writing this article. And it was supposed to
be on sort of an alternative view of the cancer field. I sent the
article in, at their request, on the date that they asked me to
send it in. Then I didn't hear from them. So I kept calling back,
and I couldn't get an answer. I kept calling back.  And finally,
I got the editor on the phone, and he said to me:
"We probably are going to reject the article."  And I said: "Why is
that?"  He said: "Because it contains non-peer reviewed citations."
And I said: "Well what are the non-peer reviewed citations -- the
non-peer reviewed articles?"  He said: "The New York Times."
I had cited the New York Times, and these are the grounds they gave
me for rejecting the article. Now, mind you, this is an article
that they asked for. And then they kill the article because I quoted
from the New York Times in an article that was not meant to be a
scientific paper. It was a report on the status of unconventional
cancer treatments. And there were plenty of citations to peer
reviewed medical journals in the article. But this struck me as so
absurd when you think: What chance does a person who is outside the
Establishment have when they're NOT asked to do an article -- when
they try to submit an article to the JAMA?  They're laughed out of
the field. I mean, there is just simply no peer review for people
who have no peers! When you're doing research that is innovative,
that is something new, that goes against the dominant paradigm in
science, who is going to judge you?

Take the case, for instance, of Mr. Gaston Neisans in Canada whom,
I'm sure, you've talked a lot about, who is proposing the existence
of a microorganism that is outside the realm of the normal viruses
and bacteria. Who is going to accept an article like that in a
major medical journal?  Who would you send that to in order to get
confirmation of the validity of the work?  He's the man who
discovered it!

And so, the peer review system, which has its virtues because it
can weed out error within the dominant paradigm .... but when you
get somebody who's changing or shifting that paradigm, then the
peer review system itself breaks down. And it often tends to become
a closed circle of people who are all friends, who know one another,
are colleagues who are basically working on the same dirt pile and
deriving their income from that dirt pile.

So, I think that there are all of these problems with peer review,
and it becomes very difficult for the outsider to ever break in and
get anywhere.

GARY NULL:
Ralph, I'd like you to take us into an understanding of what happens
when you have the same group of people who have run a multi-billion
dollar a year industry in cancer, then take it upon themselves,
without challenge ..... the very same manufacturing companies and
peer review groups, and the same magazines, the same experts who
appear on Capitol Hill who have this notion that all we need is
more money. And even right now, the absurdity that if three billion
dollars is spent, it's not enough. When, if we were simply
redirecting the nature of our research and treatments and looking
at what does exist, three billion would be MORE than enough.

RALPH MOSS:
Well, I think that the struggle really will come down to a question
of Congress, and making Congress aware of what a rip-off this is.
It is not a lack of money. The problem really is the stifling of
the non-toxic approaches to [treating] cancer. That really is the
problem. And the fact that this is money-driven -- the fact that
this is profit-driven -- this all has to be exposed.

We've made some inroads, I think, in the last couple of years, in
terms of educating the public and educating Congress about this. In
1985, as you remember, the long arm of the U.S. Cancer Establishment
shut down Dr. Burton's immuno-augmentative therapy clinic in the
Bahamas. And, out of that, the patients at that clinic did not roll
over and play dead the way that the [U.S.] Government expected.
They organized into the IAT Patients Association which is now
called People Against Cancer. They marched on Washington and got
over forty U.S. Congresspeople to sign a letter to the Office of
Technology Assessment to investigate immuno-augmentative therapy,
as well as other forms of non-toxic cancer treatment.

Well as you remember, this was a massive struggle because the
Office of Technology Assessment, the O.T.A., was very much
prejudiced against alternative therapy from the start. They had the
usual set of quack-buster mentality. And it only was because of a
really tremendous outpouring from the Public that they were forced,
in the end, to alter their conclusions and to recommend that the
National Cancer Institute actively pursue research into
unconventional non-toxic cancer treatments. 

N.C.I. did nothing. They had been completely unresponsive. But what
came out of that was that Senator Harkin, who is the head of the
Appropriations Committee in the Senate that oversees the National
Institutes of Health budget, which includes N.C.I., has become very
responsive to our message. And he put an appropriation of two
million dollars into the N.I.H. budget this year for an Office of
Alternative Medicine. And so, on June 17th and 18th of this year,
this office, which is now being called the Ad Hoc Committe on
Unconventional Medical Practices, met in Bethesda [Maryland] at the
campus of the N.I.H. It really was quite an extraordinary meeting.
It was the first time in history that the N.I.H. has been open and
friendly towards practitioners of alternative ideas in medicine.
Nobody showed up, as far as I know, from the National Cancer
Institute. One person came from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
and contributed very little.
                       (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

      If you agree that this story deserves broad public attention,
      please assist in its dissemination by posting it to other
      bulletin boards, and by posting hardcopies in public places,
      both on and off campus.

      John DiNardo
        

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