It is given at first once a day for several days, then twice a day, then three or four times daily, depending on the patient's response and the physician's judgment. On such a regimen, many terminal and semiterminal patients have derived considerable benefit, although patients in the early stages of the disease derive the most benefit from the treatment. Some less common types of cancer also benefit. In the instances in which these agents have been doing good, hydrazine sulfate should be used in conjunction with them. However and especially with those cases on toxic drugs in instances in which the drugs have been doing no evident good, it is probably best to withdraw such drugs and use hydrazine sulfate alone.
Many alternative therapists disagree.
They see hydrazine sulfate as mainly an adjunctive treatment, albeit a potentially powerful one. Critics have made much of the fact that hydrazine sulfate, a common industrial chemical, is found in such products as rocket fuel, insecticides, and rust-prevention agents. For medical purposes, however, the salt is refined, purified, and used in reagent-equivalent grades. Given to patients in minuscule amounts, it occasionally produces mild, transient side effects such as nausea, dizziness, itching of the skin, drowsiness, and euphoria, but such side effects are minimal, especially when compared with the devastating effects of standard chemotherapy. A very small percentage of patients undergoing long-term, high dosage hydrazine sulfate therapy experience pain or temporary numbness in their extremities, but this condition is quickly controlled by reducing the dosage and administering vitamin B6.