P
Peter Moran
Guest
"Anth" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "Peter Moran" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
news:3fe0b521$0$896$61c65585@uq-127creek-reader-02.brisbane.pipenetworks.com.au...
> >
> > "Anth" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> > > Coley's Toxins went through double blind trials and are not used in
> > > mainstream despite the fact they were shown to be effective.
> > > Shame really, because people with end stage metastatic cancer with no
> > other
> > > options could benefit from them.
> >
> > Show me the money, Anth.
>
> (I'd scan the pages from the Moss The Cancer Industry but my scanner isn't
> working)
Moss is not exactly an unbiased source of information. He selects whatever
supports his case and ignores anything that doesn't.. He has been a
principal promoter of alleged conspiracies since he was sacked by Sloan
Kettering, but has never learnt anything from the fact that many of the
agents and personages in which he has invested trust have proved false, and
none have ever established reasonable validity, despite many years of
examination both within and without alternative medicine
The most recent example of his credulity regarding alternatives is when he
personally acted as escort for a group of patients going to Ireland for
so-called Cytoluminescent therapy. He strongly recommended this to
patients with advanced cancer but it later proved to be a rather shonky
quack enterprise.
>
> Here's some info from the net.
>
> In 1962, Dr. Barbara Johnston, M.D. published a double blind study on
> Coley's toxins. This study was conducted at New York University-Bellevue
> Hospital. The results were clear-cut. In the control group treated with
> fever inducing placebo, only one patient of 37 showed any signs of
> improvement. Of the 34 patients treated with Coley's toxins, 18 showed no
> improvement, 7 noted decreased pain while 9 showed such benefits as tumor
> necrosis, apparent inhibition of metastases, shrinkage of lymph nodes, and
> disappearance of tumors [12].
> [12] Johnston, Barbara, "Clinical Effects of Coley's Toxin. 1. Controlled
> Study. 2. A Seven-Year Study." Cancer Chemotherapy Reports 21:19-68,
August
> 1962.
It says "controlled". Moss says it was double-blind, but I still say this
would have been unusual even in 1962. But I admit that if a "fever inducing
placebo" was used it may have been single or double-blind (what was the
placebo? - this in itself would be somewhat odd--- such agents are rare --
2,4, dinitrophenol? ---- I can't think of any that would be safe enough to
use as a placebo- can anyone?) . It may be true, but I have seen Moss
misinterpret or misrepresent things in the past. But he is much more
reliable than Mercola, for what that is worth.
In any case, even if true, how many patients were alive and cancer free
even three months later? This in no way establishes worthwhile benefit to
Coley's toxins, when the primary object of the medical treatment of cancer
has always been to find an at least moderately reliable permanent cure.
It is an alt.med furphy that showing "any effect" translates into a
"worthwhile effect", or that medicine should have rested upon such rather
dismal results rather than looking around for something better.. The
reason chemotherapy and radiotherapy gained ground over numerous other
treatments being tried early last century is the absolutely spectacular way
in which they will cause some kinds of cancer to disappear and at rates much
higher than shown in this study.
You will never have seen this. Any doctor will have. Sure, these methods
were used in circumstances where they were found not to help much, but much
less so today. Real medicine is a constant learning experience and can
never be characterised by the past.
Having said all that, there was more optimism thirty or more years ago that
a chemical "magic bullet" for cancer was just around the corner. Treatments
that may help prolong the life of the occasional patient but which did not
work very reliably may well not have been pursued with the vigour that they
might have otherwise. Even today, in a less optimistic era, cancer
research is driven by the expectation that ever-evolving new knowledge about
cancer and newer technology such as molecular biology will supply better
answers than looking to the past.
> In 1982 at the conference held in Cologne, Germany, Mrs. Nauts reported
the
> first results of randomized trials of MBV (Coley's toxins) begun in 1976
at
> Memorial Sloan-Kettering: Advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients
receiving
> MBV had a 93 percent remission rate as opposed to 29 percent for controls
> who received chemotherapy alone [13].
>
> [13] Nauts, Helen Coley, Bacterial Products in the Treatment of Cancer:
> Past, Present and Future. Paper read at the International Colloqium on
> Bacteriology and Cancer, Clogne, Federal Republic of Germany, March 16-18,
> 1982.
I think this was from Coley's niece. The possibility of bias has to be
allowed both ways.
I believe such results would have been taken seriously by the medical
profession if the study was convincing.
Papers read at medical conferences can differ greatly in quality from those
published in the better peer-reviewed journals. That applies especially to
tightly focussed special interest group conferences such as "Bacteriology
and Cancer", where the organisers can be scratching around for papers to
fill the program. The presentations can thus be of quite poor quality, with
insufficient numbers for statistical significance, improper randomisation
and other defects. Or they may be included because they promote a
particular viewpoint rather than for their scientific worth. Such papers
are also virtually impossible to chase down so as to check what they really
showed. If, as I presume, this particular work was never published
anywhere else, it does raise doubts..
*In view of the fact that a great deal of alt.med lore is based upon old
publications that are almost impossible to check, and that the studies
themselves are often found to be misrepresented when they are checked, I
think we should be allowed to attribute lessened significance to any that
are offered as evidence WITHOUT A SOURCE FOR THE FULL TEXT.*
In support of this suggestion I advise that I am shortly putting an example
of such gross misrepresentation up on the 'Net. Hardin Jones is said to
have shown that untreated cancer patients live four times longer than
untreated. I have tracked down, with some difficulty, the 1956 paper
offered as the source of the claim .
Peter Moran
news:[email protected]...
> "Peter Moran" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>
news:3fe0b521$0$896$61c65585@uq-127creek-reader-02.brisbane.pipenetworks.com.au...
> >
> > "Anth" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> > > Coley's Toxins went through double blind trials and are not used in
> > > mainstream despite the fact they were shown to be effective.
> > > Shame really, because people with end stage metastatic cancer with no
> > other
> > > options could benefit from them.
> >
> > Show me the money, Anth.
>
> (I'd scan the pages from the Moss The Cancer Industry but my scanner isn't
> working)
Moss is not exactly an unbiased source of information. He selects whatever
supports his case and ignores anything that doesn't.. He has been a
principal promoter of alleged conspiracies since he was sacked by Sloan
Kettering, but has never learnt anything from the fact that many of the
agents and personages in which he has invested trust have proved false, and
none have ever established reasonable validity, despite many years of
examination both within and without alternative medicine
The most recent example of his credulity regarding alternatives is when he
personally acted as escort for a group of patients going to Ireland for
so-called Cytoluminescent therapy. He strongly recommended this to
patients with advanced cancer but it later proved to be a rather shonky
quack enterprise.
>
> Here's some info from the net.
>
> In 1962, Dr. Barbara Johnston, M.D. published a double blind study on
> Coley's toxins. This study was conducted at New York University-Bellevue
> Hospital. The results were clear-cut. In the control group treated with
> fever inducing placebo, only one patient of 37 showed any signs of
> improvement. Of the 34 patients treated with Coley's toxins, 18 showed no
> improvement, 7 noted decreased pain while 9 showed such benefits as tumor
> necrosis, apparent inhibition of metastases, shrinkage of lymph nodes, and
> disappearance of tumors [12].
> [12] Johnston, Barbara, "Clinical Effects of Coley's Toxin. 1. Controlled
> Study. 2. A Seven-Year Study." Cancer Chemotherapy Reports 21:19-68,
August
> 1962.
It says "controlled". Moss says it was double-blind, but I still say this
would have been unusual even in 1962. But I admit that if a "fever inducing
placebo" was used it may have been single or double-blind (what was the
placebo? - this in itself would be somewhat odd--- such agents are rare --
2,4, dinitrophenol? ---- I can't think of any that would be safe enough to
use as a placebo- can anyone?) . It may be true, but I have seen Moss
misinterpret or misrepresent things in the past. But he is much more
reliable than Mercola, for what that is worth.
In any case, even if true, how many patients were alive and cancer free
even three months later? This in no way establishes worthwhile benefit to
Coley's toxins, when the primary object of the medical treatment of cancer
has always been to find an at least moderately reliable permanent cure.
It is an alt.med furphy that showing "any effect" translates into a
"worthwhile effect", or that medicine should have rested upon such rather
dismal results rather than looking around for something better.. The
reason chemotherapy and radiotherapy gained ground over numerous other
treatments being tried early last century is the absolutely spectacular way
in which they will cause some kinds of cancer to disappear and at rates much
higher than shown in this study.
You will never have seen this. Any doctor will have. Sure, these methods
were used in circumstances where they were found not to help much, but much
less so today. Real medicine is a constant learning experience and can
never be characterised by the past.
Having said all that, there was more optimism thirty or more years ago that
a chemical "magic bullet" for cancer was just around the corner. Treatments
that may help prolong the life of the occasional patient but which did not
work very reliably may well not have been pursued with the vigour that they
might have otherwise. Even today, in a less optimistic era, cancer
research is driven by the expectation that ever-evolving new knowledge about
cancer and newer technology such as molecular biology will supply better
answers than looking to the past.
> In 1982 at the conference held in Cologne, Germany, Mrs. Nauts reported
the
> first results of randomized trials of MBV (Coley's toxins) begun in 1976
at
> Memorial Sloan-Kettering: Advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma patients
receiving
> MBV had a 93 percent remission rate as opposed to 29 percent for controls
> who received chemotherapy alone [13].
>
> [13] Nauts, Helen Coley, Bacterial Products in the Treatment of Cancer:
> Past, Present and Future. Paper read at the International Colloqium on
> Bacteriology and Cancer, Clogne, Federal Republic of Germany, March 16-18,
> 1982.
I think this was from Coley's niece. The possibility of bias has to be
allowed both ways.
I believe such results would have been taken seriously by the medical
profession if the study was convincing.
Papers read at medical conferences can differ greatly in quality from those
published in the better peer-reviewed journals. That applies especially to
tightly focussed special interest group conferences such as "Bacteriology
and Cancer", where the organisers can be scratching around for papers to
fill the program. The presentations can thus be of quite poor quality, with
insufficient numbers for statistical significance, improper randomisation
and other defects. Or they may be included because they promote a
particular viewpoint rather than for their scientific worth. Such papers
are also virtually impossible to chase down so as to check what they really
showed. If, as I presume, this particular work was never published
anywhere else, it does raise doubts..
*In view of the fact that a great deal of alt.med lore is based upon old
publications that are almost impossible to check, and that the studies
themselves are often found to be misrepresented when they are checked, I
think we should be allowed to attribute lessened significance to any that
are offered as evidence WITHOUT A SOURCE FOR THE FULL TEXT.*
In support of this suggestion I advise that I am shortly putting an example
of such gross misrepresentation up on the 'Net. Hardin Jones is said to
have shown that untreated cancer patients live four times longer than
untreated. I have tracked down, with some difficulty, the 1956 paper
offered as the source of the claim .
Peter Moran