One is the invasion of the tumor into the vital organs, with the destruction of the organs' functions the most common cause of cancer death in the public's mind. In reality, however, this accounts for only about 23 percent of the country's half-million annual cancer deaths. The other devastating effect of cancer is cachexia, the terrible wasting away of the body, with its attendant weight loss and debilitation. In cancer, as in AIDS, patients succumb to the accompanying illnesses, which they would otherwise survive if not for the wasting syndrome. They die of something else pneumonia, failure of one or another organs.
Cachexia accelerates that process of infection and the building-up of metabolic poisons.
It causes death a lot faster than the tumor would, were it not for the cachexia. Halting the wasting syndrome instead of directly attacking the cancer cells with poison was Dr. Gold's plan of attack. In the interest of treating the totality of malignant disease, each of these processes warrants intervention. Cancer cells gobble up sugar ten to fifteen times more than normal cells do. The sugar consumed by the cancer cells is generated mainly from the liver, which converts lactic acid into glucose.