Category Archives: Alternative Cancer Treatment

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Gene Therapy Shows ‘Unprecedented Success’ Against Blood Cancers

Gene Therapy
Gene Therapy

Advanced genetically-targeted treatments are proving to be remarkably successful against leukemia and other blood cancers. Here’s what the Associated Press had to say:

“In one of the biggest advances against leukemia and other blood cancers in many years, doctors are reporting unprecedented success by using gene therapy to transform patients’ blood cells into soldiers that seek and destroy cancer.”

In tests by six different research groups, blood cancer patients who received gene therapy showed survival rates that researchers called “stunning.” In one study, all but three of the 27 patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia achieved complete remission with targeted genetic therapy. While a few of those patients have since relapsed, the therapy success rate remains impressive.

Before undergoing genetic immunotherapy, these leukemia patients had undergone chemotherapy and stem cell or bone-marrow transplants without success. If additional tests achieve similar results, researchers believe eventual approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration may be possible.

The gene therapy that has the U.S. research community cheering involves a blood filtering process that removes T-cells from the patient’s blood, adds a targeting gene and returns the cells to the patient by transfusion. Called “a living drug” by researchers, the altered T-cells multiply in patient’s body, strengthening the patient’s immune response and ability to fight cancer.

While being heralded by traditional Western medical practitioners as “new,” Issels , an alternative cancer treatment center, has been using similar advanced genetically-targeted cancer therapies as part of our individualized integrative immunotherapy program for years. Our non-toxic autologous vaccine program employs a similar blood transfusion mechanism to boost the body’s immune system response.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

How Do T-Cells Help Fight Cancer?

T Cells
T Cells

Cancer cells appear to a well-functioning immune system as “foreign” cells. When cancer cells develop the immune system swings into action, using a dual action force to knock them out just as it does with foreign invaders. First your immune system launches innate responders like Natural Killer Cells to seek out and attack these cells (see our previous post). Your body’s first line of defense against cancer cells, viruses, bacteria and other harmful substances, Natural Killer Cells are the equivalent of the immune system’s Seal Team 6.

Adaptive responders like T-cells provide the immune system’s second wave of defense. Like an army’s occupying force, T-cells support Natural Killer Cells and other immune system “specialists” to provide your body with continuous, long-term protection.

Like Natural Killer Cells, T-Cells are a type of lymphocyte that originates in the bone marrow. T-cells eventually migrate to the thymus from which they get the “T” in their name. A specialized organ of the immune system, the thymus straddles the trachea and is located in the lower neck below the thyroid gland. In the thymus, T-cells undergo their final stage of maturation and receive their marching orders.

There are several different types of T-cells, each tasked with playing a specific role in helping with the recognition, attack and destruction of cancer cells and harmful invaders.

Issels Autologous Vaccine stimulates the formation and activation of T-cells. When used in conjunction with Issels integrative immunotherapy, autologous vaccines can strengthen and enhance your body’s immune system response to cancer cells. Visit our website to find out more.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Research

Using Thermal Therapy to Fight Cancer

Alternative Cancer Therapy
Alternative Cancer Therapy

Fever is one of the natural defensive weapons your body uses to fight infection. When bacteria, viruses, toxins or other foreign invaders cause infection, your body turns up the heat. Under the guidance of knowledgeable and experienced physicians, this powerful immune system response can be used to help fight cancer via a therapy known as Hyperthermia.

Also called Thermal Therapy or Fever Therapy, Hyperthermia is the deliberate heating of the whole body or affected parts of the body for therapeutic purposes. For many patients at Issels Alternative Cancer Treatment Centers, thermal therapy has proven to be a valuable and effective component of integrative cancer treatment.

Fever Therapy has a long history of medical use dating back centuries but fell out of favor with the traditional medical community with the rise of the pharmaceutical industry and development of fever-reducing drugs such as aspirin and acetaminophen. More recently, practitioners of western medicine have begun to realize that the body knows best.

As Discovery Fit & Health explains, “It used to be standard medical practice to knock that fever out as quickly as possible. Not so anymore. The value of fever is recognized.”

Hyperthermia is now being used to treat cancer at several university hospital centers in the U.S. and Europe; however, our founder, Dr. Josef Issels, recognized the value of invoking this powerful immune response in the treatment of cancer in the early 1950s. Trained in Dr. Issels’ effective techniques, Issels’ cancer treatment teams have extensive experience administering hyperthermia in the treatment of cancer. Visit our website to find out more about thermal therapy and our non-toxic integrated immunotherapy approach to cancer treatment.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Survivors

Amish Girl Who Fled U.S. to Avoid Chemo Is Cancer-Free After Alternative Therapy

Childhood Cancer
Childhood Cancer

That 11-year-old Sarah Hershberger is cancer-free after undergoing alternative cancer treatments is wonderful news. That Sarah and her family had to flee the country to obtain the treatment that has made her healthy and are being treated like fugitives by their own country is considered by many Americans to be a travesty of justice and a breach of personal liberty.

If Sarah were an adult, her desire to stop the chemotherapy that was making her horribly ill and pursue non-toxic alternative cancer therapies would be respected and considered her decision to make. However, because Sarah was 10 years old when she was diagnosed with leukemia, those decisions were made by her parents.

Perhaps unwilling to look beyond the limited cancer treatment options offered by traditional medicine, the hospital administering the chemotherapy sued to force Sarah to continue treatments they believed would save her life. Unwilling to subject their daughter to more unbearable pain and suffering, Sarah’s parents left the comfort and support of their family and Ohio Amish community and fled the country with their daughter to obtain the alternative treatments they were convinced would make her well. Shortly after the family went into hiding the court appointed the hospital’s attorney, who is also a nurse, Sarah’s legal guardian with the power to direct her cancer treatments. Sarah’s parents have appealed the ruling and remain in hiding, although they have reportedly returned to the U.S.

Despite the hospital’s warnings, Sarah’s grandfather reports that Sarah is doing well and the “treatments are working.” He recently told the Associated Press that “blood and imaging tests” show that Sarah is now cancer-free.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Care Tips

Cancer Care in Crisis: Are You Getting the Right Treatment?

Get Proper Treatment
Get Proper Treatment

Cancer care has become so complex that many physicians lack “core competencies in caring for patients with cancer,” warns a recent report, Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis, by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine (IOM). “Patients need to be asking, Is my doctor giving me appropriate treatment?” said cancer specialist Dr. Patricia Ganz of the University of California-Los Angeles. Gantz chaired the medical panel tasked with updating IOM’s 1999 report on the quality of U.S. cancer care. Progress has not been as great as hoped. “Barriers to achieving excellent care for all cancer patients remain daunting,” the new report notes.

Over the next two decades, an expected increase in new cancer diagnoses precipitated by the aging baby boomer generation and a predicted shortage of oncology specialists will make it more difficult to provide cancer patients with adequate care. But the growing complexity of cancer care in an age of genetic discovery is what most concerned the IOM panel.

As scientists continue to explore the genetic mechanisms of cancer tumors and the importance of the tumor microenvironment, highly individualized cancer treatments are expected to become the norm. The IOM panel expressed concern that the volume and speed of new cancer discoveries appears to be outpacing the ability of many physicians to keep up with new knowledge and apply it to patient treatment. That knowledge/treatment gap is only going to widen as cancer treatment moves away from one-size-fits all chemotherapy and radiation treatments and toward modern advanced targeted cancer therapies tailored to meet the specific individual needs of each cancer patient.

Alternative Cancer Treatment, Cancer Care Tips, Cancer Research

Scientists Are Sniffing Out Cancer’s Scent

Sniffing Out Cancer
Sniffing Out Cancer

The scent of cancer caused a national ruckus recently when a New Mexico school principal banned a mother with stage 4 breast cancer from participating in school activities with her children (see our November 18, 2013 tweets). Why? School staff complained about her smell!

The incident raised the ire of people in the woman’s own community and across the nation. Messages poured in condemning the principal’s decision and supporting the cancer patient and her family. The take-away message was that cancer patients and their families rely on and profit from the support of their families, friends and community; but the incident also piqued people’s curiosity. Does cancer affect the way a person smells?

Body odor is the natural result of the expulsion of waste products through our breath, blood, urine and skin. The way we smell can be affected by changes in body chemistry. Certain dietary practices, diseases and medications are known to cause changes in body scent. Chemotherapy appears to have been the cause of the chemical scent that created so much trouble for the New Mexico mom. But the evidence linking cancer to scent is largely experiential.

Organic chemist George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, who has spent more than 40 years studying human scent, hopes to change that. Working with an interdisciplinary team from the University of Pennsylvania, Preti is now attempting to identify the scent of cancer, specifically ovarian cancer. If Preti’s team is successful, the ability to scent cancer in its early stages before it is detectable by other methods could prove to be a powerful diagnostic tool.