Lane and Prudden believe their products work for different reasons. And neither minces any words in talking about the other. Lane is quick to criticize Prudden and his research, and Prudden is just as fast when it comes to castigating Lane. In fact, they do a better job of criticizing each other's research than the Food and Drug Administration does. With friends like these, it's a wonder that anyone believes in or buys shark or bovine cartilage.
Cartilage deserves better.
In 1972, while an associate professor of surgery at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, he prescribed an extract of bovine tracheal cartilage to a breast cancer patient whose tumor had ulcerated her skin. The tumor disappeared, and the woman lived for another 12 years, dying of other causes. This successful treatment motivated Prudden to give bovine cartilage extract to other cancer patients, and in 1985 he published the first of several scientific papers on the subject. He believes the anti-cancer ingredients are mucopolysaccharides, complex sugar molecules that stimulate the immune system to fight cancer. In the early 1970s, Harvard Medical School researcher Judah Folkman, M.D., proposed a theory that has since become closely linked to the cartilage treatment of cancer.