Chapter Twelve
A STATISTICAL COMPARISON

The inherent weaknesses of all cancer statistics; the need for statistical comparisons in spite of those weaknesses; a comparison of the results obtained by orthodox and Laetrile physicians; and the consequences of consensus medicine.

A substantial part of the resources of the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute is spent on gathering statistics.

Each year the records of thousands of physicians and hospitals are combed through to produce cancer statistics by geography, age, sex, site, extent, type of treatment, and length of survival.

It is a mammoth task consuming hundreds of thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars. This activity is about as important to victory over cancer as is a body count in time of war. The experts know all about who has cancer but nothing about how to cure it.

Unlike the proponents of orthodox medicine who publish reams of statistics on just about everything, the proponents of vitamin therapy are extremely reluctant to speak in these terms. At first this may appear as a lack of confidence on their part or, even worse, as an indication that they really don't have any solid evidence to back up their claims. Their reluctance, however, is well-founded.

The first reason is that, in order to have statistics from which meaningful comparisons can be made, there has to be a control group. In other words, it would be necessary for those who believe in vitamin therapy to accept cancer patients but then not to treat some of them or to treat them with orthodox therapies. This, of course, to the physicians involved would be tantamount to murder, and they could not participate in it.

These men have already witnessed the tragic results of orthodox therapies on patients who come to them as a last resort. To ask these physicians to assign some of their patients to a continuation of those treatments would be like asking them to place a hot poker on human flesh to see if it would cause burns and pain. And yet, not to set up such control groups would leave an opening for the claim that, if the patient recovers, it could be due to other causes such as "spontaneous regression" or "delayed response of the orthodox treatments."

Another fact is that, even if control groups were to be set up, it would be impossible to make sure that they were meaningful. There are so many variables in such factors as location of cancer, degree of metastasis, dietary background, hereditary characteristics, emotional state, age, sex, general health, medical history, environment, and so on. Almost any of these variables could be claimed as reasons for invalidating the statistics.

Whenever the proponents of vitamin therapy have attempted to offer surveys of their clinical results, the proponents of orthodox medicine have condemned them because their studies did not have adequate control groups, or that their results could be explained by some other factors, or that their follow-up records were inadequate. In most cases, these have been legitimate objections.

But exactly these same weaknesses are present in most of the statistical studies of orthodox medicine as well. The primary difference is that orthodox studies are presumed to be accurate and, therefore, seldom challenged.

The truth of the matter is that, because of the many variables previously mentioned, there is no field of medicine in which statistics are more confusing and meaningless than in the field of cancer. In fact, there are many times when pathologists will disagree among themselves as to whether or not a particular tissue even is cancer.

So it is not just the nutritional therapist whose statistics are open to challenge. But it is only the nutritional therapist who, generally speaking, honestly recognizes these problems and, consequently, is reluctant to speak in terms of hard numbers or ratios. Dr. Krebs, for example, repeatedly has refused to quote statistics because he thinks they are meaningless from a scientific point of view and cannot prove the reality of his theory. Anyone who insists on numbers, he says, reveals his lack of understanding of the scientific concept involved.

It would be like trying to prove the value of oxygen by collecting case histories of people who claim that breathing saved their lives. Of course, it saved their lives. But anyone who didn't believe it could find a hundred plausible explanations as to why something other than oxygen was responsible for their being alive.

Dr. Richardson also advised strongly against using statistics, and then added: But this is a vitamin and enzyme deficiency disease. We dare not talk about five-year survivals when we are really talking about 100% survival with prophylaxis [prevention]. When you start killing people with radiomimetic insults to their bodies - you're talking about radiation deaths, not deaths from cancer.

There are several other reasons for not using their false and misleading yardstick. One is that this yardstick is not applied to vitamin deficiency diseases. Later on when B17 is accepted ... we may appear the fool by having cheapened our presentation by acquiescing in the use of the yardstick.

Anyone who begins to see the vitamin aspect soon realizes that it is like measuring water and steel with the same clumsy apparatus.(1)

The reluctance to deal in statistics on the part of proponents of vitamin therapy is based upon a respect for scientific truth. In spite of this, the public clamors for a statistical comparison, and few people will take the trouble to study the problems deeply enough to understand why such comparisons are not to be trusted. The result is that orthodox medicine, with its mountains of statistical charts and tables, easily wins the race for public opinion, while the nutrition oriented doctors are condemned as quacks, charlatans, and murderers.

Let us make it an honest race. Without defending the value of such statistics, let us at least see what they tell us, such as they are. Let us acknowledge that one should view all cancer statistics with reservation, but let us give the nutritional therapists the same right to use them that their critics have enjoyed.

The statistics of the American Cancer Society indicate that, at present rates, cancer will strike two out of every three families. Of every five deaths from all causes, one is from cancer. Of every five persons who get cancer, two will be saved and three will die.(2)

1. Letter from John Richardson, M.D., to G. Edward Griffin, December 2,1972; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.
2. All data taken from Cancer Facts and Figures - 1996, ACS, p. 1. Also California Cancer Facts & Figures - -1997', ACS, p. 3.
 

Two out of five, therefore, represents an ACS "cure rate" of approximately forty percent.

These figures are heavily weighted to present the most favorable picture possible. As mentioned previously, they include the relatively non-fatal cancers such as skin cancer, and they do not include those patients who die from cancer before they have completed their prescribed course of treatment - which is a substantial number - and they do not include the multitude of deaths from the complications of cancer treatment, such as heart failure and pneumonia.

Now let us attempt to break this down into three categories:

• METASTATIC OR "TERMINAL" - Those whose cancer has spread to two or more distant locations, who have not responded to surgery, radiation, or drugs, and who have been told by their doctor that there no longer is any hope.
   

• PRIMARY - Those whose cancer is confined to a single area with perhaps a few adjacent lymph nodes involved. It has been detected before metastasis to a distant location and appears sufficiently limited or slow-growing to offer some hope of successful control by orthodox treatments. Skin cancer is not included in this category.
   

• PRESENTLY HEALTHY - Those who are in reasonably good health and who have no clinical cancer or symptoms.

Admittedly, these categories are not absolute. They are rightly subject to all the criticisms of any such statistical categorization.

The first two are especially dependent upon the subjective evaluation of the physician, since no one can point out a clear dividing line between them. But, whatever errors might be generated by these problems will work randomly and equally on behalf of both orthodox and nutritional therapies. Neither group will have an advantage.

The chances of a metastatic (terminal) cancer patient surviving five years after the point at which he has been classified as such are so small as to defy statistical statement. Most physicians will say that there isn't one chance out of ten-thousand. Some will say one out of a thousand. Let's not quibble. We shall use the more favorable figure which is one-tenth of one percent.

When it comes to "primary" cancers, it is difficult to know what figures to use. An unofficial poll conducted by the author and directed to a random group of Southern California doctors, produced an "opinion" of approximately fifteen percent long-term survival in this category. The American Cancer Society was unable to produce either statistics or opinion. But a letter was received from the National Cancer Institute which claims that "regional spread" (the same category as "primary") cancer patients can anticipate a five-year survival of a whopping twenty-eight percent! (1)

Frankly, that is difficult to believe, even allowing for all the built-in enhancement factors. But, following our practice of taking these statistics as we find them, let us accept this one also, even if it is with a very large grain of salt.

For those who are presently healthy with no cancer at all, we return to the American Cancer Society's statement that one out of three (33%) Americans will get cancer and that, of those, 40% will survive five years. That means that 60% will die.

Out of 100 people who are "presently healthy," 33 will develop cancer and 13 of those will survive 5 years or longer. Add those 13 to the 67 who will not develop cancer in the first place, and we see that 80 of the original 100 will survive under orthodox therapy. That's an average survival rate of 80%.

Now let's turn to the record of Laetrile therapy. Almost all of the patients who seek Laetrile do so only after they have moved into the metastasized or "terminal" category. The fact that most of them do not survive five years after beginning vitamin and enzyme therapy is not surprising. What is surprising is that any of them should be saved at that stage.

Yet, Drs. Contreras, Richardson, and Binzel have all reported that approximately 15% of their patients have survived five years or longer. Fifteen percent, of course, is not good. But, considering that less than one-tenth of one percent survive under orthodox therapy, that record is truly amazing.

Those whose cancer has not yet metastasized to secondary locations and who, therefore, fall into the localized or "primary" category can look forward to approximately an 80% long-term survival in response to Laetrile therapy.

Doctors Richardson and Binzel have found the response to be as high as eighty-five percent, providing the vital organs have not been too badly damaged by surgical, X-ray, or chemical intervention during prior treatment.(2)

1. Letter from Marvin A. Schneiderman, Ph.D., Associate Scientific Director for Demography, NCI, to G. Edward Griffin, dated March 21, 1973. See Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.
2. 80% survival was reported by the McNaughton Foundation in its IND-6734 application for Phase-One testing of Laetrile. See Cancer News Journal, Jan./Apr., 1971, p. 12. Dr. Richardson's data are contained in his letter to the author, Dec. 2, 1972; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit. Dr. Binzel's record was published in his book Alive and Well, op. cit.

Of those who presently are healthy with no clinical cancer at all, close to one-hundred percent can expect to be free from cancer as long as they routinely obtain adequate amounts of vitamin B17, and presuming they are not subject to some rare pancreas malfunction or subjected to an unnatural exposure to carcinogenic agents such as massive radiation.

Fortunately, the "control group" for this category already has been provided through the existence of the Hunzakuts, the Abkhazians, the Eskimos, the Hopi and Navajo Indians, and other similar populations around the world.

Putting the two groups of statistics together, here is the story they tell:

It bears repeating that all cancer statistics are subject to a host of unseen and undefined premises and are useful only for the most general reference purpose.

These, in particular, because they attempt to present a composite picture, can be misleading when it comes to applying them to any particular person with a particular condition. The data that go into these figures vary with age, sex, cancer location, and degree of malignancy. Also, the categories are somewhat arbitrary when it comes to separating moderately spread cancers from those that are far advanced, for often there is a gray area between the two.

Nevertheless, for those who simply must have statistics, these are as accurate as any such tabulation can be and, especially considering that they have given the proponents of orthodox treatments every conceivable advantage, they tell an impressive story that cannot be brushed aside.

As physicians become aware of these facts and begin to experiment with the nutritional approach to cancer therapy, they soon find themselves the victims of something called consensus medicine. Consensus medicine is the tangible result of the belief that doctors need to be policed in order to prevent them from injuring or cheating their patients, and that the best people to police doctors are other doctors acting through professional organizations, hospital staffs, and government agencies.

The result of this seemingly proper arrangement is that, no matter how useless or even harmful current practices may be, consensus medicine demands that they be used by every physician. Regardless of how many patients are lost, the doctor's professional standing is upheld, because those who pass judgment through "peer review" are using the same treatments and getting the same tragic results.

On the other hand, if a doctor deviates from this pattern and dares to apply nutrition as the basis of his treatment, even if he attains a high degree of success, he is condemned as a quack. He loses his hospital privileges, is denied malpractice insurance, and even becomes subject to arrest.

The result of this is that many physicians are just as afraid of cancer as their patients - afraid that they may miss a diagnosis or cause a month delay before surgery. They may know in their own mind that the extra month really makes little difference in the survival of the patient, but they know it will make a great difference in their reputations. It requires great courage for a doctor not to operate or not to recommend radiation or drugs.

This is especially true if he knows that, if the patient dies anyway, relatives of the deceased could easily institute a malpractice suit against him on the grounds that he did not do all that he could have done. And, in light of the present abysmal ignorance about the true nature of cancer, it would be next to impossible for the doctor to convince either the judge or the jury that the patient would have died anyway, even without the "benefit" of surgery, radiation, or drugs.

This is especially true if a spokesman for the American Cancer Society were called to the witness stand and unleashed the "statistic" of a million-and-a-half who, supposedly, are now alive only because of such treatments.

And so the physician cannot follow his own judgment or his conscience. He gets into far more trouble by prescribing a few non-toxic vitamins than by prescribing the most radical surgery or violent chemical poisons. All but the very brave toe the line.

That is consensus medicine.

Consensus or no consensus, statistics or no statistics - cancer is a disease for which orthodox medicine does not have either a cure or control worthy of being called such. And the rate of cancer deaths continues to climb every year in spite of billions of dollars and millions of man-hours spent annually in search for even a clue.

It is ironic that those who have failed to find the answer themselves spend so much of their time and energy condemning and harassing others who merely want the freedom to be able to choose an alternate approach.

Dr. Krebs often commented that using a Chinese prayer wheel would produce just as good or possibly better results than orthodox treatment. And that was not said in jest. To those of us in the West, the use of such a device would be viewed as the same as no treatment at all. But no treatment at all would at least spare us the deadly side-effects of radiation and chemical poisoning.

In that sense, the medical results of a prayer wheel would compare quite favorably to those produced at the Mayo Clinic.

"Cancer," said Dr. Krebs, "is properly described as one of the last outposts of mysticism in medical science."

He was referring to the great wall of ignorance and vested interest that still prevents large numbers of present-day scientists from objectively viewing the evidence around them.

If they did so, many of them would have to admit that they have been wrong.

It is a humbling experience for a man who has spent a lifetime learning complex surgical procedures, concocting elaborate chemical structures, or mastering monster ray machines to accept in the end that during all these years the answer was right under his nose - not as the product of his intelligence or technical skills - but in the form of a simple food factor found in the lowly apple seed. So he persists in his quest for the complex answer.

Just as we are amused today at the primitive medical practices of history - the trepanning of skulls, the bloodletting, the medicinal elixirs of dog hair, goose grease, or lizard blood - future generations will look back at our own era and cringe at the senseless cutting, burning, and poisoning that now passes for medical science.

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