This kind of product is among the many used in desperation
by those who choose to retain their cancers and treat it
with the "alternatives". When ulceration of the cancer
inevitably ensues the patient can temporarily maintain the
belief that the cancer is being extruded from the body.
Alt.med has a habit of following on behind and picking up
all the leavings of scientific medicine. Escharotics
(tissue destroying agents) such as this are among the most
retro and ridiculous of these. Various such ointments were
tried endlessly on cancers before the advent of surgery
that could completely remove cancers with an adequate
margin of normal tissue.
It doesn't seem to be generally known that an inch or even
two clearance of apparently normal tissue is needed to avoid
recurrence of some cancers, because of possible unseen
lymphatic or other vascular extensions or other
inconspicuous local spread.
A cancer operation is thus never a matter of just cutting
out anything that looks like cancer. The surgeon doesn't
want to see any exposed cancer at all. He/she uses visual
clues, feel, and sometimes a little guess work and on-the-spot-
tissue examination to determine the extent of the operation.
In some instances, such as bowel cancer, the need to remove
possibly involved lymph nodes determines the amount of
normal organ removed (because lymphatic drainage follows the
arterial supply).
Escharotics would certainly occasionally work for
superficial skin cancers, as would also nitric acid or
caustic soda, but the problem is getting the right amount of
tissue destruction.
Peter Moran.