Intravenous Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) Have you ever felt thorough satisfaction and sputtering anger at the very same moment?
That's how I felt when I read a recent Asbury Park Press (APP) article about the use of intravenous ascorbic acid (IAA) in the treatment of cancer.
I'll start with the thoroughly satisfying part. And then we'll take off the gloves.
I've been collecting IAA/cancer case studies this year. In several e-Alerts I've told you about patients (with prostate cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, and lymphoma) who were all successfully treated with IAA or a combination of IAA and conventional treatments.
So when I saw this APP headline: "Cherry Hill Woman with Cancer Pursues Alternative Treatment," I hoped to find another IAA success story - and I did.
CASE STUDY ABSTRACT - Donna Gudauskas, 51, of Cherry Hill, NJ, was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2005
- Ms. Gudauskas' doctors recommended surgery to remove a tumor, followed by two sessions of intensive chemotherapy (the sessions would last an astounding 96 hours each and would be separated by a two-week break), with radiation treatments to be administered during the chemo sessions
- Although Ms. Gudauskas' cancer was early stage, her doctors explained that the rigorous chemo and radiation treatments were necessary to keep the tumor from permeating the intestinal wall
- When Ms. Gudauskas was told that side effects might include a shut down of her kidneys and immune system, with the possibility that a colostomy bag might be necessary due to damage from the chemo, she agreed to the surgery, but decided to research alternative options for further treatment
- Ms. Gudauskas found an alternative health care specialist in Cherry Hill who administers IAA, and in February 2006 she began receiving weekly IAA doses along with supplements and weekly acupuncture sessions
- Side effects: Ms. Gudauskas told the APP that after IAA sessions she sometimes has a "tight stomach" and often "smells like a bottle of vitamins"
- Six months later, a colonoscopy revealed that the cancer had not returned
As I noted above, this is thoroughly satisfying news. I'll continue to follow Ms. Gudauskas' case for further updates.
When an alternative health care success story gets media attention, the coverage is often "balanced" by a conventional medicine spokesperson who delivers the obligatory message that many alternative treatments are untested and may lead us down a dark, forbidding path.
Toward the end of the Asbury Park Press article, reporter Shawn Rhea offers some observations about IAA from Dr. Generosa Grana, who is the director of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. Dr. Grana notes that "such unproven treatments" give false hope to cancer patients. She adds that IAA treatment could actually be dangerous (as if radiation and chemo are not!), and points out that there are no studies that support IAA therapy for cancer treatment.
Is Dr. Grana truly unaware of existing IAA research, or has she simply decided to ignore it? Either way, her dismissive attitude angered me. (I know, I should probably be used to this sort of thing by now, but I'm not.)
Granted, there aren't a lot of studies that support IAA therapy, but they're out there. And you can be sure that if the vast majority of research funds weren't devoted to the testing of synthetic drugs, there would be many more IAA/cancer trials completed and published by now.
I give high marks to Shawn Rhea for supplying details about a 1971 IAA clinical trial that involved 50 terminally ill cancer patients, and a similar trial in Scotland a few years later. Both studies found that IAA extended the expected life spans of the subjects. (No "false hope" there.)
The APP article also points out that the National Institutes of Health has launched several trials to test IAA on cancers such as leukemia and multiple myeloma. And as I noted in the e-Alert "Diamonds in the Rough" (7/3/06), an upcoming University of Kansas trial will test IAA on 30 patients with ovarian cancer, and McGill University is mounting a similar trial.
In addition to this existing and upcoming research, we have successful case studies that are beginning to mount up. Happily, we can add Donna Gudauskas' case to a growing list that, sooner or later, mainstream medicine will find impossible to ignore. Sources:
"Cherry Hill Woman with Cancer Pursues Alternative Treatment" Shawn Rhea, Asbury Park Press, 10/8/06, app.com |
