Original subtitles

We interrupt the regular program schedule to bring you President Nixon State of the

Union Message from the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra 100 million dollars to launch an

intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer and I will ask

later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used.

The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the

atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease.

With 100 words, Richard Nixon effectively declares war on cancer.

A national cancer program is birthed.

Its director will report to the president himself and it has appropriated $1.

6 billion for its first three years alone.

The American Cancer Society is instrumental in getting the bill passed

and launches its own star-studded campaign.

Send a check to the American Cancer Society.

It's great to be alive.

With a massive coordinated effort, the United States, which little more than

two years earlier had put a man on the moon, would

someday soon conquer the most feared disease here at home.

So Thomas has been here for two weeks, going

on three weeks now, and he's doing very well.

Our home is in Tucson, and when Donna and I made the decision that there was going

to be no radiation or chemo used on Thomas, the doctor decided to start handiness.

As a result, he told our attorney that because we had chosen that to speak to him

directly enough to go with convention therapy, that it left him no choice but to

file charges against us with child protective services for medical and

neglect, child abuse and child neglect, which he did.

It is the consent form to do radiation that we did at the University Medical

Center, and when we initially did it, the doctor filled everything out,

and then he went on to explain that possible side effects would be hair loss,

skin redness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting and loose BMs.

And that's where he stopped.

He said, go ahead and sign it.

And I thought, well, gosh, if that's all we're

dealing with, maybe it's not as bad as I thought.

So I had signed it and he left the room.

About ten minutes later, he came back and said, oh, by the way, dad, I forgot.

He took it out of my hand and put it with the others and put the carbons back.

He'll also have fluid in the middle ear, hearing loss, hypothyroidism, spinal

growth deficit, possible loss of IQ, memory loss, secondary tumors,

hypopotuitarism, low level hormones, and radiation

necrosis, which is where the brain turns hard.

And that's when I knew we were in trouble.

If your child was dying of cancer, wouldn't you want the best treatment

available, I know why my husband was put to six cycles of chemotherapy and we were

told up front, it's probably we have no effect.

The biggest cover up in the cancer industry is that the industry is based on

wealth, not health.

In this matter of life and death, some say the federal

government is making matters worse, much worse.

And here you are pleading for the life of a person and they're

talking about the integrity of their bureaucratic process.

The couple's battle for alternative treatment is at the

center of a national debate over medical freedom of choice.

These guys are part of a club and believe me, that club

has nothing to do with protecting the American people.

Why are people terrified when they hear the word cancer?

Because they know it doesn't work.

They know that what we're doing in this

country and in the western world doesn't work.

The image of cancer as a fearful disease is a well-deserved image, I think,

in the American mind.

And it's never been surpassed.

It's always been number one in terms of the disease

that the people in this country fear the most.

The word strikes terror in people's hearts.

And we know from our current situation that when people are terrorized,

when they're afraid, then they'll do almost anything to survive.

September of 99, Thomas was experiencing flu-like symptoms.

And after about three weeks, I had said to Donna, this doesn't make sense.

So I had called my personal physician and she

took a look in one of his eyes with a flashlight.

And she said he needs to see his doctor right now.

Donna comes out and screams my name and then drops to the ground.

She said her boy is time.

Since the war on cancer began in 1971, more than 14,800,000 Americans have died

from some form of the disease.

1,500 die every day.

That's 565,000 men, women, and children in 2009 alone.

More people will die from cancer in this country in the next three years than all

the American soldiers who died fighting since the American Revolution.

From 1920 to the present time, we have made little

or no progress in the treatment of adult cancers.

So a person who gets prostate cancer or breast cancer today

will live as long as a person who got it in 1920, no big change.

With all the radiation therapy that we began in the 10s and 20s, combination

chemotherapy in the 60s, immunotherapy that began in the 70s, pet scans,

MRI scans, you name it, billions and billions and billions of research dollars

that we've thrown into this whole area of cancer research and treatment,

little or no significant progress in the treatment of adult cancers.

In the early 1900s, pneumonia was the number one cause of death.

People were terrified of pneumonia, because even though some survived, most did not.

Now, when we have cancers, the number one cause of death, because we treat pneumonia

now successfully with antibiotics, and no one's afraid of pneumonia.

But with cancer, the treatment we have, the majority, overwhelming majority die.

Nothing we've done in a century has substantially reduced the death rate of

various cancers relative to the population density.

We are a total failure.

The question is there are so many different ways to pursue this,

and no one knows what the right one is.

So, we try lots of things, and any time human beings try lots of things,

a lot of them are not going to work, but some of them will.

And we've had some successes, for example,

testicular cancer, what Lance Armstrong had.

When I was training as a medical student in an intern, that was uniformly fatal.

Now, many of those men, are long term survivors, so in certain cases,

lymphoma is Hodgkin's disease, testicular cancer.

There have been major breakthroughs that

have made huge differences to people's lives.

Unfortunately, the more common cancers, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate

cancer, lung cancer, those cancers are not as

susceptible to our treatments at this point.

Cancer itself is a very complex disease.

There are more than 200 different types of

diseases that all come under the rubric cancer.

Malignant, out of control, cell growth, that's what cancer

is, and there are many different forms of it, unfortunately.

Cancer, in its various forms, has confounded humanity for centuries.

An Egyptian papyrus from 1550 BC, describes cancer as

a tumor against the gods, for which there's no cure.

Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, who lives in 400 BC,

notices a tumor's nasty ability to spread out as if it has tentacles and names the

disease Carcanoma, the Greek word for Crab.

But he has no idea how to treat it.

More than 2,000 years later in 1884, William Holstead, a surgeon at Johns

Hopkins, performs the first radical mastectomy.

But he thought that cancer cells just spread by, sort of, marching in a straight

line, and therefore, if you had a breast cancer here, then you had to remove all

the tissue around it, and not thinking that cancer

cells could get in the blood circulate around.

And the radical mastectomy stuck around for 75 years,

even though it was based on biology that was defective.

Dr. Holstead probably, if he had lived long

enough, would have changed it, but he didn't.

And then ushered in the paradigm that we need to search and destroy cancer cells.

So that's the paradigm that we've lived with for over 100 years.

Now, we add to that chemotherapy, we add to that radiation therapy,

with the intent of killing the cancer cell.

They kept telling me you're a prime candidate, it's all contained,

we'll just take out the lung, and, you know, but I just kind of like my lung.

I didn't want to lose it.

In March 2007, 70-year-old Gloria La Barge is diagnosed with mesophiliaoma,

a form of cancer in which malignant cells are found in the

protective sac that covers most of the body's internal organs.

To the best of her knowledge, she has never been exposed to asbestos,

the most common cause of the disease, prognosis for survival, eight to 18 months.

After taking the lung out, they would do chemo and radiation, just to make sure

that they got it all, but they never know whether they've gotten it all or not.

That's the scary part, and you go through all of that, and you never know.

You absolutely never know.

Conventional medicine doesn't know how to treat cancer.

They treat cancer at the symptoms of it.

They don't treat the underlying condition of it.

Doctors, we'll look at the lump or the bump, and they say there is the cancer.

That's defined as the cancer.

And so, then they will treat the lump or the bump.

They will do whatever they can to get it to go away.

They will burn it away, they will cut it out, or they'll try to poison it.

And if they can succeed in getting rid of that lump or bump, then they say,

aha, we got rid of the cancer.

Thomas is laying in bed now because they're done looking at him.

And the doctor walks in and said, Mr. and Mrs. Navarro, your son has a brain tumor.

It's always fatal.

We're going to be doing surgery tomorrow morning, and turn around and let the room.

On September 19, 1999, Thomas undergoes brain surgery.

The biopsy of this tumor leads to a diagnosis of meduloblastoma cancer.

Jim and Donna are told that without immediate treatment, the condition will

recur in nine months.

Right away, I did not want to do chemotherapy and radiation.

I knew what would happen to Thomas.

Once he had chemo and radiation, his quality of life would be non-existent.

I mean, with radiation alone, if you have an average child with an average IQ of

100, they lose 4 IQ points per year accumulative.

So, in five years, you have a mentally handicapped child.

And then you have all the other side effects.

Because as a radiation to the brain, you have hypopotuitarism, hypothyroidism,

spinal growth deficit, loss of hearing, blindness.

Why would you want to put a four-year-old child through

that, and then in five to ten years have a recurrent cancer?

So, I was dead against it.

First specific evidence that radiation is carcinogenic dates back to the 90s.

Carcinomas of the hands and other radiation injuries commonly

afflicted the operators of unshielded x-ray machines.

The extreme penetrability of hard x-rays and gamma

rays makes them carcinogenic to all parts of the body.

Whatever the kind of radiation, its effects depend upon the dosage,

the length of exposure, and the individual susceptibility to cancer.

Well, you see, radiation is the treatment, which is over 100 years old.

And obviously, it was created at the time when the knowledge of cancer was just

minimal, which was microscopic.

And obviously, radiation is causing a lot of destruction in the body.

Everybody knows about it.

For majority of patients, the medical profession thought that this was

irrelevant because they realized that this patient will be dead anyway in another two

or three years, or maybe even a year later, so this means that chronic adverse

reaction for radiation didn't matter because this patient would not live long enough.

We had surgery and we had radiotherapy, but we

had very little beyond that until about the 1960s.

And it was realized around that time that the reason why surgery and radiotherapy

were not succeeding is that there were cells that got

out of the surgical field and the radiation field.

And circulated around, and eventually these metastases killed patients,

and so that you needed something else, chemotherapy.

Ironically, it's an event in World War II that gives

rise to the premier weapon in the war on cancer.

On December 2, 1943, the German Luftwaffe launched a devastating air raid on the

Allied Navy's stationed in Baudi, Italy.

Among the U.S.

vessels destroyed is the John Harvey, which

carries a secret cargo of 2,000 mustard gas bombs.

Several hundred of the attack survivors are exposed to the poison gas,

and what doctors discover in treating them is startling.

The blood counts just disappeared and they died from bone marrow failure,

and lymph nodes in all the tops you couldn't even find them.

And so he thought that maybe these would work against cancers of those organs led

to the development of nitrogen mustard.

The first trials to see whether this would work were done, of course, in animals.

Dr. Gilman, who was really one of the founders of toxicology and pharmacology,

selected this one mouse that had a huge tumor, and injected it with poison gas

equivalent, and saw that the tumor shrank,

and the mouse was able to move and look party.

Then they stopped giving it the poison gas, and the tumor came back.

They gave the poison gas again, and the mouse recovered again,

and they thought this is amazing.

Now, in fact, he reports in his memoirs that, subsequently, they did the same work

with other mice, and they never got as good a result.

So if they'd picked the wrong mouse in the first place, we might never have been

embarked on using chemotherapy in this way.

In the late 1960s, a team led by Vincent de Vida pioneers the use of combination

chemotherapies to successfully treat Hodgkin's disease.

Similar treatments are used to dramatically reduce

the mortality of certain childhood leukemias.

When that happened, the people who were health advocates thought that we had

reached a point where some massive effort would now allow us to go over the top and

cure the majority of patients with cancer.

We would not want to raise false hopes by simply the signing of an act.

But we can say this, that for those who have cancer and who are looking for

success in this field, they at least can have the assurance that everything that

can be done by government, everything that can be done by voluntary agencies,

in this great, powerful, rich country, now will be done.

And so, the war on cancer begins, and with it comes an explosion in the use

of chemotherapy.

Overwhelming evidence of a new weapon against the cancer, finding chemotherapy

with radiation, increases survival by as much as 50%.

Billy's drug alimpeda, when taken with chemo, may extend the lives.

Tamoxifen, newly approved by the FDA, to reduce breast cancer risk by as much as 50%.

When I was a drug chemist, one of my first jobs was to design a Tamoxifen derivative.

Any time you have to design a derivative of an existing

drug, that means there's something wrong with the drug.

And what we found in the lab was that Tamoxifen was actually causing cancer.

The chemist that I was working with, my superiors, etc., just said,

you know, it's a billion-dollar industry, and Tamoxifen is not coming off the market.

And if we can design a safer derivative, great, but if

we can't, Tamoxifen is going to remain on the market.

Multiple studies in the 1990s show that while Tamoxifen reduces the incidence of

breast cancer, it more than doubles the occurrence of uterine cancer.

Doctors often tell women, well, even if you get uterine cancer,

we'll be on top of it, and that just requires a simple little hysterectomy anyway.

But it's only used for five years.

Why?

And that's because after five years, the risk increases of developing breast

cancer caused by the Tamoxifen.

Tamoxifen has generated more than $6 billion in sales for its maker,

AstraZeneca, and is part of an industry worth some $70 billion a year.

One shot is $7,500, and a pill is one pill, $300.

The stem cell transplant went through, combined with

the radiation, combined with all the chemotherapy.

Prior to that, we understand was over a million dollars.

Ray Lamy is diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1980 at the age of 36.

Since then, he has suffered through battles with non-Hutchkins lymphoma,

Indolemphoma, and now aggressive lymphoma.

I just read in the paper the other day, the average cancer patient between the

time they're diagnosed and the time that they die is $350,000 in medical expenses.

So that's big business, and it is big business.

Heavy trading today in the biopharma sector, after thousands of stock moving

and potentially treatment changing, cancer drug studies came out overnight.

Bristol wants Imclone primarily for its blockbuster cancer drug, Herbitux,

which racked up nearly $425 million in sales in the last quarter.

Our Cancer Center was the first in the region to offer no valley-shaped beam

robotic radiation therapy.

They're also testing this drug in combination

with other cancer drugs for other tumors as well.

So it's about expanding the use of Herbitux to make

it an even bigger blockbuster than it already is.

You have doctors spending three years learning how to do chemotherapy radiation.

You have special radio oncology.

You have cancer surgeons.

You have cancer oncology.

So you have this entire industry built on the paradigm of purging the body.

Even though we find that that doesn't work, that

industry is not going to just pack up and go away.

Once we knew what the oncologists and the radiologists wanted, the treatment that

they wanted for Thomas, we sat down and we made

the decision that we were not going to do that.

And then, of course, we had opposition with the doctors.

Right away, we were medical neglect.

And it's like we're not neglecting our child.

We just want the best for our child.

You know that this poison they're putting in you can cause other tumors,

can cause other cancers.

And what is it doing to your body?

Your body is taking your beating.

Very difficult.

The first time I got chemotherapy.

It's hard.

It's hard.

We are suffering now from the fact that we started out on the wrong foot,

we stayed on the wrong foot for 100 years, and we are paying the price.

Chemotherapy and radiation therapy are not specific.

They kill anything in its way.

The reason why people lose their hair, the reason why people get nauseated and

vomit is because chemotherapy kills any actively dividing cell.

So irrespective of normal or not.

And if you think of it, it's like going in and doing an aerate, dropping bombs on a

village to get rid of a pocket of rebels that are housed in a small area.

If you contract almost any cancer, you're likely to die at about the same

time, whether you take chemo agents or not.

Now, there are some exceptions, but by and large, that is the rule.

And despite that, the FDA, the oncologists in the world, cancer societies,

all favor, reliance upon this treatment modality that's brutal.

And then they die at roughly the same time they would have had they done nothing,

and they would have felt a lot better having done nothing.

One day I was actually at work, having lunch with a close colleague,

and had he called me up, and said she was very concerned.

And I even joked that you had cancer throughout your body.

It turned out to be our worst nightmare, come true, so she had the diagnosis in

September, it was actually September 4th of all four.

After Patty Bernhard is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she undergoes chemotherapy

every month for the next three years, and would try every drug made available to her.

Sis Platinum, Taxol, Taxoteer, Gemsar.

You know, when we would talk about the treatments with our oncologist and the

pain that the treatments actually caused and the resulting sickness afterwards,

there was no pain relief, no pain killer, no mind altering substance that could even

take away the pain.

And what we went to our doctor and said, you know, that, you know, this is

unbelievable how much this hurts her.

He said, well, I'm showering your organs with poison, it's going to hurt.

Well, the person on chemotherapy, the idea is where we're going to kill the

cancer cells just before we kill the patient, and if

we can draw that fine line, then we're successful.

So, in my view, this is primitive medicine.

I think someday people will look back at this period of history, and they'll laugh

at it just the way we look back at the way they used to bleed patients.

Whoa, you're on a full year!

That one...

The oncologist was like, well, I can understand why you won't want to do

radiation, but you have to do chemotherapy.

And he'd already told us chemotherapy won't work.

We're doing good.

We're doing good.

And we were telling we wanted to get a second opinion, and they're like,

it doesn't matter how many second opinions you get, whether it's from California to

New York, all the treatments are going to be the same.

We all run off the same game plan, and it's like, that's ridiculous.

There's got to be different therapies out there.

How's it going?

Welcome to Houston.

Thank you.

So, if I was going, you look like growing again.

Pretty good?

Yeah, very good.

Looks like you maintain your weight very well.

Are you exercising?

Yes.

So, what are you doing?

I work out two weights, two cardio.

I see.

I'm trying to go through some classes as well.

Everything's going very well.

It's almost 20 years.

It's been a long time.

You don't have any science and symptoms of the tumor?

In 1985, four-year-old Paul Michaels is diagnosed with

a cancerous brain tumor the size of a tennis ball.

After surgery, Paul's mother questions their

doctor about the side effects of radiation.

We were sitting at a table like this, and he said, regardless what you do,

radiation or not, he's going to die.

And he was four, but he wasn't stupid.

He was a bright little four-year-old.

And I thought, oh, please make him not have heard that.

And that night when I put him to bed, Paul said to me, man, if I die,

will you go with me?

And I told him I would.

And I think I would have.

In 1987, Mary K.

brings Paul to the Brzezinski clinic in Houston, Texas.

And six years later, the boy who was supposed to be dead by age nine is

cancer-free and the subject of a CBS news special.

That is the same tumor we just saw in that report.

It's a tiny dot.

Yes.

Do you have any question in your mind if he saved your life?

I know he did.

Today, Paul Michaels is a 29-year-old nursing

student who is, by all appearances, cured of cancer.

He is one of thousands of patients who have been treated by renowned Polish-born

doctor, Stanislaw Brzezinski, who flees communist Eastern Europe for the United

States in 1970 and does postdoctoral work at Baylor University

before opening his own cancer clinic in Houston, Texas.

It is here that he pioneers anti-neoplastons.

These non-toxic peptides and amino acid derivatives

are synthesized to act like molecular switches.

Turning on tumor-suppressant genes and turning

off the oncogenes responsible for cancer growth.

In the early 1980s, under the watchful eye of the FDA, Brzezinski and his treatment

are confined to the state of Texas.

And patients who are told that they have no good options with traditional therapies

flock to his clinic.

A bone marrow transplant was prescribed for me and it didn't offer me a cure at all.

And in fact, they were going to bring me as

close to death as possible and then rescue me.

The doctor who pioneered this technique said you will receive as much radiation as

people that were less than one mile from ground zero at Hiroshima.

And Dr. Brzezinski said to me, I think I can help you.

Three weeks after going on the IV, it disappeared.

Totally gone.

It was a miracle.

And every CAT scan that I had from starting

Dr. Brzezinski's treatment showed reduction.

But in 1995, Mary Jo Siegel, Paul Michaels, and hundreds of other patients

being treated by Brzezinski, are told that they may no longer be able to use

anti-neoplastons.

Well, one branch of the FDA is approving Brzezinski for phase two clinical trials.

Another is targeting him for prosecution.

They were out to destroy him.

They were serious about this.

The US Attorney was going to put him away for life, I mean, for 300 years.

It just always amazed me that the FDA could

spend so much time doing something like this.

That's so... it's wrong.

It's just morally wrong.

FDA go away, FDA go away, FDA go away, FDA go away, let us say another day.

We met with senators.

We met with, you know, different legislative bodies, committees,

subcommittees, commerce committee.

Dr. Brzezinski saved my life.

And for that, he is facing 300 years in a federal penitentiary.

All of them very supportive, but all feeling very

helpless about anything that they could do with the FDA.

I just remember what Paul said.

Do you remember what you said?

He said, I feel like I'm in a war against cancer and

the government is taking away the only weapon I have.

And it was like...

There's virtually no one the FDA has to account to.

Congress performs an abysmal job of oversight.

They might hold hearings, chastise the FDA commissioner, but

there's no consequence for bad acts by the FDA commissioner.

The courts rarely second-guess the judgment of the agency.

They have broadly deferential standards of review.

And the American people are left helpless.

You don't know their names.

They don't run for election.

They don't change with administrations.

They're not Democrats.

They're not Republicans.

They are professional bureaucrats that hold all the power.

When the FDA begins in the late 19th century as a division within the

Department of Agriculture, it has no regulatory power and is so small that its

first chief, a flamboyant chemist named Harvey Washington Wiley, sometimes takes

drugs himself to see if they make him sick and files reports with his findings.

The department's power grows steadily, however.

And by the 1930s, the freshly named Food and Drug Administration is regulating the

safety and marketing of all new drugs in the U.S., many leading drug companies

oppose the oversight.

But finally, the drug industry began to view

regulation as a way to reduce competition.

But how did that transition take place?

Well, it was a drug-calfolidamide that was given to pregnant women in Europe and that

resulted in rather extraordinary deformities.

This horrified the world and a opportunity was seized at that point by the proponents

of greater drug regulation.

The fear of a thalidomide tragedy in the U .S.

leads to the signing in 1962 of the key-fawver Harris amendment and with it,

the powers of the FDA are revolutionized.

Now in addition to proving that their products are safe, drug manufacturers are

required to supply to the FDA substantial

evidence that the drugs are effective as well.

You read the Food and Drug Laws, they're very flexible.

The FDA's interpretation of those rules is very rigid.

As FDA started adopting regulations to determine what constituted substantial

evidence to approve a drug and started to create all these Byzantine requirements.

They were creating this infrastructure to protect

incumbent drug companies from competition.

The largest players had the money to pay for the process, new entrants did not.

This means that immediately small pharmaceutical companies were eliminated.

Inventors, likely, past their disappeared completely because the doctors were

severely punished by trying to use something innovative.

Aspring, for example, would not be approved today by the Food and Drug

Administration because it caused adenomas and mice in the lungs.

I would like to loosen up on the regulations and ways that allowed cancer

centers, for example, to develop drugs without

having to go back to the FDA every time you sneeze.

And what is the upshot of that?

The upshot of that is it costs on average about $1.6 billion for a single drug to be

approved in the United States.

That game can only be played by the largest monopolies on earth.

So, if you invent a drug, you discover an agent that has therapeutic utility and in

the scientific community out there, you can largely kiss that drug goodbye.

We have an extraordinary story for you of a cancer doctor whose patients say he's

performing miracles, but the government wants to close him down.

Friday, the Food and Drug Administration raided the doctor's

office, seizing patients' files and other documents.

Initially, I was not of interest at the FDA because I think

pharmaceutical companies were not interested what I had.

I think the biggest problem began when pharmaceutical companies and the

government realized that I have something very valuable which can get rid of cancer

in a number of people and the cancer which was incurable by any other means.

The Texas State Attorney at the behest of the FDA wants to

strip Brazinski of his medical license and shut down his clinic.

We are here today because Dr. Brazinski has for 16 years been unwilling or unable

to comply with the requirements of the law.

Testifying at the pretrial hearing is Georgetown University Doctor Nicholas

Petronas, who reviewed seven of Brazinski's cases for the National Cancer Institute.

He testifies that anti-neoplastons are the most

effective treatment for brain tumors I have ever seen.

Spontan calls MM.

If my son goes off the treatment, there is no doubt in

my mind that his tumor would grow and that he would die.

The tumors will grow, they will use the vision,

they will be paralyzed and they will die.

Because there is nothing in the world which can be used to save this patient's life.

You intend to continue doing just what you have been doing

until somebody is able to stop you, is that not true?

I am going to do what the law will allow me to do, Mr. Harkam.

I do what that is necessary to bring my medicines to a proverb in the United

States and everywhere in the world and bring you

to justice for causing the deaths of 200 patients.

And they will come back here to hunt you until you are dead.

Are you threatening me, Dr. Birchinski?

I'm not threatening you, but that's what I'm going to have in the future.

Well, I think that's something that will be remains to be seen.

At the trial, several months later, the FDA brings 75 counts against Dr.

Birchinski.

Not one of them is related to the safety or efficacy of anti-neoplastons.

The charges were essentially shipping a medicine across state lines.

Give me a break.

I mean, that's a lot, a capital crime.

It's ridiculous.

And it wasn't even true.

But this is a very, very tight monopoly.

Despite spending 13 years and an estimated $8 million

prosecuting him, Birchinski is acquitted of all charges.

With the jury form and stating, I think this was a government witch hunt.

I couldn't find any victims.

Hi!

I'm so happy!

Oh, God!

Patients like Mary Jo Siegel and Paul Michaels are

permitted to stay on anti-neoplaston treatments.

But as former FDA chief counsel Peter Barton Hut has said, if you beat the FDA

in court, you have an angry FDA that is willing to slit your throat.

So while the government cannot strip Dr. Birchinski of his medical license,

they can dramatically change the rules governing admittance to his clinic.

In a cramped Houston hotel room, four-year-old

Thomas Navarro is dying of brain cancer.

And his desperate parents find themselves cut up in a larger fight between a

controversial Houston doctor and the federal government.

You researched other families that had boys that had medial blastoma,

that had not gone through chemo and radiation, and sought out Dr.

Birchinski, and was treated by them, how come you didn't get in?

And my answer is always this.

Well, they got in before the FDA got involved.

And once the FDA started seeing that he was having success with treating cancer,

then they were like, okay, we got to set up all

these protocols for all these different cancers.

So we can limit him what he can do.

And then once the patient is terminally ill, no hope, then we'll give him the

patient to see what he can do then.

And of course, they're sending him up to fail.

The American Cancer Society does the Navarro's no favors by placing

antineoplastons on the unproven methods list.

This compendium is considered a blacklist by many in the medical establishment.

No insurance company will cover treatments listed here, and it is used to brand Dr.

Birchinski as a quack.

The American Cancer Society should have been funding Birchinski.

I mean, his data was clearly provocative, but

they got on board to put him out of business.

You're the American Cancer Society, don't you want?

Cancer to be prevented in America?

Instead, they end up on the side of the government, arguing that the information

should be censored, suppressed, never allowed to reach the American consumer.

Well, that speaks volumes, I think.

And then you have to ask yourself, who does the American Cancer Society represent?

Well, the answer with all nonprofit organizations is

defined by where their financial support comes from.

The American Cancer Society is one of the world's wealthiest nonprofit organizations.

It has assets including land, cars and cash, totaling more than $2 billion.

In order to finance this operation, the ACS has established a long history of

partnerships with deep-pocketed corporations.

What cigarette do you smoke, Dr.?

Tens of thousands of doctors in all branches of medicine

in all parts of the country were asked that question.

What cigarette do you smoke, Dr.?

The brand-named most was camel.

Yes, surveys show more doctors' smoke camels than any other cigarette.

Smoke camels, the cigarette so many doctors enjoy.

I was stunned to learn that the first director of the American Cancer Society,

Clarence Cook Little, resigned from that position in 1954 to become the scientific

director of the Tobacco Industry Research Council.

The Cancer Society itself had board members at the time who worked

hand-in-glove with the tobacco industry advertising firms and they were running

the Cancer Society like a massive advertising campaign,

a tradition that hasn't changed in that regard.

$27,000 for the Hurburon World.

First Cancer Awareness Month was actually

initiated by the company that makes Tomoxifen.

The devices for mammograms are made by General Electric.

And General Electric is in a relationship with

the people behind breast cancer awareness month.

So, there's a huge, huge industry that has been invested in breast cancer.

Although the goal is noble.

To me, it's obscene that these companies are using the symbol of the pink ribbon

for commercial purposes only.

Very few dollars ever make it to really help women.

This is the business.

American Cancer Society is a business of getting donations.

And what I say to people when they give money to these agencies you are

perpetuating the failure because if the American Cancer Society actually found a

cure for cancer in their bylaws, it said they must disband.

If cancer were really cured, really tomorrow, would that put the ACS out of business?

I don't know, in a funny way, the entire healthcare system, the entire system of

research in healthcare is based on a model where

we're trying to put ourselves out of business.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I think that's fine.

I don't think it's likely to happen in my lifetime anyway.

The problem with American Cancer Society is that I think

they are an impediment to advances in cancer therapy.

In 1928, a Greek-American researcher named George Papandicolo using funding from the

American Cancer Society shows that you can take a few cells from the opening of the

cervix, swab them and determine under a microscope

whether cancer has already occurred or is about to occur.

If caught early enough, the cancer can be prevented

but the Papandicolo test is not put to use.

There were fights going on between pathologists and surgeons about whether it

was ever proper for a test to be done in a doctor's

office and then sent outside for someone else to read.

Though originally funded by the ACS, the Society changes course and aligns

itself with physicians and surgeons who argue that

the test is a threat to the practice of medicine.

For 29 years, the low-cost test is kept under wraps while women are treated with

high-dose radiation or have their cervixes surgically removed.

Prior to the pap smear being used, women were

dying at very high rates of cervix cancer.

Once the pap smear was finally put into place, not until the 1960s, deaths and

cases of cervix cancer fell like a rocket, unbelievably.

Today, the pap smear is performed by physicians and technicians alike.

It has reduced the incidence of cervix cancer by 40%, and ironically,

the ACS touts its introduction as proof of

its pivotal role in the treatment of cancer.

If you look at the history of cancer therapeutics, it's like Gettysburg.

It's just scattered with bodies of all the people who have tried to bring effective

new treatments to the market and have been shot down.

Throughout the century, promising cures and therapies are met harshly by the AMA,

the FDA, and the ACS.

Scientists, including the likes of Nobel laureates, Linus Pauling, and Otto

Warburg, are considered traitorous and their work labeled as quackery.

In the 1950s, Benedict Fitzgerald, special counsel for the Interstate

Commerce Committee, is enlisted to investigate allegations

of conspiracy on the part of the medical establishment.

In 1953, Fitzgerald's report is submitted to the United States Senate, stating,

My investigation to date should convince this committee that a conspiracy does exist.

Public and private funds have been thrown around like confetti at a county fair to

close up and destroy clinics, hospitals, and scientific research labs which do not

conform to the viewpoint of medical associations.

The report is buried.

Fitzgerald reassigned.

And today, the battle to suppress innovation rages on.

Canadian research team has come up with DCA.

They believe it's a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers.

You heard that right.

The real story is...

you can't have it.

Not because it's unsafe, but because your blood's going to shoot out your eyes

because it doesn't make any money.

DCA isn't owned by any pharmaceutical company.

There's no patent on it.

So on one hand, it could become a very inexpensive new treatment for cancer.

On the other, drug companies won't be interested in

funding studies for a drug that won't make them a profit.

And in the US, the FDA has shut down all sites selling the drug.

How do you take something that costs pennies a day and fit it into a system

that at the end of the process is supposed to generate a drug that's going to make

two or four billion dollars a year for you?

Can't be done.

Back in the early to mid-80s, I was in the laboratory and we worked on an immune

therapy and I thought this would be very applicable for

children with bone cancer that spreads to the lungs.

Because the cancer Dr. Kleinerman is investigating only affects a thousand

children a year, no pharmaceutical company will finance the trials necessary to get

FDA approval.

But through a grant, the trials are designed and funded.

The results are remarkable and the breakthrough cure seems imminent.

Well, the FDA and look in the design said we don't like the design and we don't

think it should have been designed this way.

But okay, we did it and the data's there and the data's been submitted for

publications to one of the top oncology journals.

But it doesn't look like it's going to be

accepted as the pivotal trial to get licensing.

This is children's lives.

As we argue back and forth between what should be done, our patients are losing

valuable time.

Time they don't have.

Dr. Kleinerman's clinical trials in the late 80s and

early 90s were funded through a grant from the NCI.

She was one of the fortunate researchers to get a piece

of the institute's nearly $4 billion annual budget.

The scientists at the University of Alberta haven't been so lucky.

There's even an idea that's way off the map and you put it in a grant and say,

I want to test this, you know, throw it away.

There's a tendency for the people at the National Institute of Healthy FDA and AMA,

the whole works, to not be that interested in trying to look at possible changes in

our healthcare system in terms of better treatments for disease.

The problem isn't quack, quack, quack.

The core problem is money.

The core problem is patents.

The core problem is who is going to control this

cure or this treatment at the end of the day.

And if it isn't the quote-unquote right people, if it isn't the big corporations,

it just isn't going to happen.

Not only does this paradigm not work and people suffer and die as they have the

entire century, but this paradigm blocks out true discoveries.

This paradigm persecutes those who actually can help.

The day I got a call from a father named Thomas Navarro and the FDA has refused to

allow him to do what he thinks is best for his son and they

placed a whole matter on clinical hold while his son dies.

I've written a letter to Donna Shalella, the key to which is the statement it

should be the right of every responsible American citizen to seek the medical care

of their choice without government bureaucracies standing in the way.

And one of the things we were exposing was the fact that the FDA has never approved

the use of radiation or chemo for using on children.

The fact that if you read the pharmaceutical inserts on the

chemotherapies that it says right on there from the manufacturer has not been proven

safe or effective for pediatric application.

So my question is, if the guys that make it say gosh, we don't know if it works and

we don't know if it's safe but we'll put you in prison if you don't do it.

What's that all about?

It's insane.

Now the parents are getting some support from unlikely sources.

Two of the men who are running against each other for president.

Enter the politicians, first Republican Alan Keyes, now Texas Governor George W.

Bush, urging the FDA to reconsider arguing it's

the family's choice, not the federal governments.

Parents are absolutely worried to death about radiation and what it means to the

boy and I would hope the FDA would reconsider.

Even though we were out there pushing our opinion and our right, the FDA is so

powerful they still were standing up and saying no.

Good morning Dr. Hany, my name is Jim Navarro,

and you're probably very aware of who I am.

I'd like to know, first of all, why is a parent?

I don't have the right to treat my child.

For five and a half months we've been here in a

hotel waiting, still challenging the decision.

Why can't you allow my son an opportunity to a non-leafle, non-toxic modality first?

I think that I would say to you that the kind of therapy that is being offered in

traditional settings that has a proven efficacy is what the physicians that you

saw in Arizona and over at the MD Anderson in Houston, and many oncologists who treat

this disease in this country would be recommending to you.

As for that reason, because there is standard therapy available that we are

saying that is what should be done before experimental therapy is tried.

Standard of care simply means we've used this for decades on

a post and no one's opposed us because we've imprisoned them.

And anyone that dares speak against us, we throw in jail.

And they will also threaten to take all your children away, and then bargain with

you and say, okay, we will give you back these other children.

We just want to have this one and treat them.

And what are you supposed to do as a parent?

In April of 2000, Jim and Donna take Thomas and his brother

Patrick to Mexico in an effort to avoid persecution.

Stahl for time to get into the Brzezinski

clinic and try an alternative non-toxic therapy.

Realistically, for the FDA to allow it, I don't know that they will allow it.

I think what it's going to take is a congressional order to get them to stand down.

It's not about whether or not they want to allow it because they don't.

It flies in the face of what they're doing.

It disrupts their covenant with the pharmaceutical companies.

So they're not going to go for it.

You have right to choose in the entire commercial market except for medicine.

And it's interesting.

Your right to choose in cancer is truncated the most.

You'll find that when conventional medicine is not working, that is the

therapy that receives the most attention and the most protection

by the FDA and the AMA and the other conventional guys.

You know, people will go to Mexico to get treatment for broken leg.

We've arranged with Dr. Prior to meet at Chipsa

Hospital and go through our catheterization today.

I'll do whatever I have to do in order to keep

myself alive because I've got too much to lose.

It is.

That's not even a question in my mind.

The catheter is just a route of administration that

just facilitates how easily this can go for it.

I attempted to have a catheter placed in my chest back in Delray Beach.

And that was not going to be possible because

they had to know why it was being placed there.

What was going to be injected.

And once they were to know what was going to

be injected, they would not approve of it.

The doctor was putting his license on the line.

The illegal therapy Gloria wants to use is a combination of sodium bicarbonate and

leotril, also known as vitamin B17 or amygdalen.

It is derived from the kernel of an apricot and its benefits

in treating cancer have been touted for generations.

There are certain places around the world that traditionally don't have cancer.

In Hunza, a man's wealth was measured by the number of apricot trees he owned.

They didn't have money.

It was a primitive society.

And they didn't have cancer either.

And then you have the Wilcombe Babas and the Hopi

and the Navajo Indians and the Aboriginal Eskimos.

These little pockets, these little cultures around

the world that traditionally did not have cancer.

In every case, when you study the natural food to those

people, it's very rich in this amygdalen substance.

Leotril comes to prominence in the U.S.

in the 1970s.

It is legal in 17 states, but is easiest to find in Tijuana, Mexico, where cancer

patients from all walks of life come in search of a cure.

The president had a cancer confined to the wall of his colon or bowel.

After undergoing colon surgery in 1985, president Ronald Reagan is told by his

doctors that there is a chance cancer cells will spread to his liver or other organs.

In the early 80s, I was invited to train with Dr. Vera Allison in Nevada.

We got a call.

Secret service said we want you to intervene and be by

proxy president Reagan's primary care metabolic doctor.

He wants and Nancy wants his wife to use leotril therapy.

Two decades before Ronald Reagan is diagnosed with cancer, a future Oregon

senator named Mark Hatfield meets Dr. Allison when she treats his mother for cancer.

Mark Hatfield never forgot that.

Having befriended Reagan, obviously, he suggested, well, there's a little gal

in Nevada and we need to hook you up with her.

For 13 months, we took care of president Reagan, and the way we did that,

the government hired a private doctor.

So each day, he would hook up the IV lines according to Dr. Allison's instructions.

Occasionally, President Reagan would fly to Mexico on state business, but what he

was down here, he was meeting Dr. Ernesto Contreras and getting IV therapy, leotril.

And he never had one bit of chemo or radiation.

So we had a president who lived to his 90s, used

only metabolic therapy in addition to surgery.

And he survived.

Leotril, however, is not the only drug that finds its way to Mexico.

Remember what happened with tamoxifen?

It was the middle 80s.

I started to use tamoxifen, and it was not allowed in the United States.

And the patients were coming to use tamoxifen here.

And what we hear from doctors in the States is, oh, you are going with this?

Quack guys are giving you something that does not work.

Who brought tamoxifen to Mexico?

Where are these pharmaceuticals?

Why?

Because they couldn't put it out in the States sooner.

The same happened with flutamide, for prostate cancer, ulexin.

It was first here in Mexico.

It was not allowed in the United States.

And doctor in the States is, that's not a good product.

Once they prove that it was an effective medicine, then they pass it after.

So alternative medicine at the end is something

that perhaps the pharmaceutical needs.

This is so non-invasive and so powerful and so simple.

I would suggest that by Christmas time, we are

going to have a wonderful time to celebrate.

And be with their family.

And have good news.

And have this really, really controlled and pretty much out of her system.

Well, there are people who say patients should be

able to get access to experimental drugs on demand.

I have a fatal disease.

I want what I want.

Give it to me.

I'm an American.

I have the right to have that.

The problem with that is, we will never learn whether it worked or not.

If we just simply give it to anybody who wants it.

We've got to make sure we understand the disease

as best as we can at the molecular level.

Match that in a group with how the disease responds

and know whether or not we've really made any progress.

The worst thing that can happen is for us to

approve something that actually is worthless.

Sure, there are frauds out there.

And those frauds can be identified and prosecuted.

And they should be.

But there are many, many brilliant doctors who provide alternatives.

When the FDA approved treatment is utterly unsuccessful.

In June 2000, Jim Navarro with the help of Congressman Dan Burton is able to persuade

Congress to hold hearings on the Thomas Navarro Patience Rights Act which will

allow informed patients to choose their own therapy.

On behalf of Committee, I want to welcome you all here today.

Mr. Navarro, it's nice having you back with us.

Why don't you tell us how your son is doing and what's transpired since we last met.

As we speak, Thomas is in therapy outside the United States.

And in spite of the events of the last almost nine months, he's doing quite well

and defeating his illness.

Mr. Chairman, you asked, can an unapproved therapy believe to be less toxic,

be tried prior to a curative therapy that has known serious adverse events?

The answer is no.

The conventional therapies for medial blasphemy is one of the true success

stories of pediatric oncology in that it allows a curative potential in over a 75%

of patients that are interim to just real briefly because I saw some of the children

that were cured by this treatment.

I saw them.

They were mentally retarded.

They couldn't talk.

They couldn't speak.

The cancer supposedly was cured, but the child was a vegetable.

Now I'm not sure that that's what those parents envisioned

when they went through the conventional treatment.

Number one, Thomas Navarro did not qualify for the protocol because it was

specifically stated that patients must have had an attemptive curative therapy.

Meaning chemotherapy and radiation because of the treatment.

Ignoring the requests of Chairman Burton, Dr. Pazdour refuses to listen to the

testimony of other expert witnesses or Jim Navarro.

Hello, Dr. Navarro.

Can I just show you something really good?

As a man of common sense, I'm sure you'll agree.

You've seen my son, Thomas.

This is his new best friend, Liam.

After two months of chemo therapy, it triggered him in my

reaction to him or throughout his head and broke his jaw.

May I show you the audience?

Sure.

This is Thomas using alternative therapy.

And this is Liam, conventional therapy, two months for him.

Which would you choose?

Who decides?

You have to admit that this is a cesspool.

I mean, the FDA is not some pristine, beautiful

palace where everything is crystalline.

Everyone is spicken span.

The only thing that people are allowed to see, I see a big sign.

And the sign says, FDA, we defend the public health.

And of all the lies that are perpetuated to

the American public, that one's the biggest.

We have a serious problem in our whole federal government.

It's tremendously important for the members of the

Congress to be sure that they don't antagonize in any way.

The people who give them the money.

Because they need that money for their next campaign.

So, we have a government that is beholden primarily to the special interest money

that they get from special interest and their

lobbyists rather than the people of our country.

And the industry that spends the most money on

lobbying of any is a pharmaceutical industry.

And it's money that pushes the whole system so that it's the money that the

pharmaceutical companies give in political contributions to members of Congress.

And it is the movement of people from the pharmaceutical industry to the FDA and

back and forth where it's the money that these people make that moves the system.

So, it's not the individuals.

It's the system that corrupts the whole thing.

We initially got excellent response from both sides of the aisle.

But then when we introduced the bill and it went to committee, the bill was

basically beat down by Henry Waxman out of LA.

He was married to a sister of a former commissioner of the FDA.

So, you knew which side of the bread he was buttered on.

So, there's one, two, three, four.

Yes, he said yes.

There.

When Thomas's tumors recur in July of 2000, the

Navarro's have no choice but to return to the states.

Thomas will undergo surgery in New York to remove the tumors.

And according to standard protocol, received 10 days of high dose chemotherapy.

Then we had a CAT scan done on 1st of November.

And it still showed the tumor growing a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit.

And at this point, the tumor was getting so large that I said, you know,

we just can't continue this.

Because I was beginning to experience a

pressure in my chest and started this dry cough.

So, consequently, we started a chemotherapy

program, which is the last thing I wanted to do.

This mesothenialma is a very resistant cancer.

And so, my sense is that the layatrial in the

sodium macarbonate were just not strong enough.

And so, I have no regrets.

Not at all.

As it corrupted what we really want for individual

patients needs, we have to support their wishes.

And we do the best we can without being dogmatic.

We're learning year after year on how to integrate both safe and small doses of

conventional care with maximum natural therapy approaches.

Mesothelialyoma is really one of the hardest cancers to overcome.

And so, it becomes a team effort from the family's point of view and the doctor

team, all that contributing to this success of this person's quality of life.

Good morning.

My name is Gloria LaBarge.

I have a 945 with Dr. Clostin.

It's important for us as classically trained physicians to realize the

limitations of the treatments that we have and

the costs in terms of side effects that they have.

But it's also important for us to acknowledge that there are, for example,

Chinese herbal remedies that have been around for thousands of years.

And the reason that they're still used is because they have some benefit.

On colleges throughout the country are open to prescribing alternative treatments

if they can be shown to be safe and effective.

But they risk losing their licenses or even being thrown in

jail in the absence of data from approved clinical trials.

The Office of Alternative Medicine was supposed to solve that problem.

In 1992, it was one of the few people who was asked to set

up the first office of alternative medicine at the NIH.

We did that with centers Harkin and Hatch, and a few others.

But those dollars, the dollars that are assigned to them by way of the Senate,

has to go through the approval process of the NIH.

The report language on that bill was that it was to quote,

investigate and validate alternative treatments for disease.

Well, NIH would have no part of any investigation

or validation of alternative treatments.

And in the eight years that I served on the advisory

committee, our advisory committee was of one mind.

We wanted them to do what the legislation said,

investigate and validate these alternative treatments.

They wouldn't do it.

It's a red headed stepchild, and always will be.

After being tumor-free for several months, Thomas' cancer resurfaces on his spine.

And the Navarro's make a last desperate plea

to gain admittance to the Brzezinski clinic.

When Syracuse did an MRI on him, the doctor came out and shook his head and

said, we stopped counting tumors at 50.

You need to take him home.

Or by the chemotherapy.

The tumors are being caused by the chemotherapy.

This is Chairman Burton.

I need to talk to Dr. Pasdura right away.

Does he have an assistant?

This is the assistant?

Have an assistant?

No, I want to talk to him now.

This is Chairman Burton.

Can you find him?

I love this universe.

You're going to be fired if I don't talk to you

pretty quick, because I'll call Tommy Thompson.

You want me to call the secretary?

If I don't talk to him in the next five minutes, and you tell him I said that,

I will call Tommy Thompson.

Well, you get a hold of me in five minutes.

I just get so tired of these.

You would say it is safe to head to Houston, because I'll put them on a jet today.

I'll get a hold of Pasdura now, because he has no clue.

Thank you so much.

Press it.

Press it.

Here you go.

On April 28, 2001, the Navarro's 18 month battle to

get Thomas into the Brzezinski clinic finally ends.

Okay, let's get off.

It's almost a miracle that the Thomas is still alive at this moment.

On the other hand, when he was waiting for the permission, his disease progressed,

and he was very close to death.

Dr. Brzezinski said he did not hold out much hope, but he was going to give it a try.

Did you see it?

Hi, how are you doing?

In the spine, we see pretty much the same situation.

It's pretty good.

Of course, we need to measure this exactly to find out what's the difference.

We're going to have some normal tissue, which is occurring inside.

It's in turn six on the fifth.

That's a big day per year.

It's a third stage.

Yes, it's Thomas's birthday.

If you would treat him two years ago, today he'd be cured, I believe.

A lot of people don't realize that with chemotherapy, after you're done with the

treatment, the chemotherapy lies dormant in your

fat cells, and then a year later re-emerges.

So you have that cellular breakdown all over again, you lose your hair,

you have all your organs and everything start breaking down.

Give you what?

Do you want me to turn you, or do you want to check them out?

Then be patient.

I can't do too much at the same time.

Turn me.

I did turn you.

This one.

You were that way, sweetie.

This way, now.

Do you want to go back the other way?

Okay.

You okay?

Yes, all right.

You turn me.

I did turn you.

This way, now.

This way, right?

Turn me.

I love you.

You want water?

Yes.

Statistically speaking, Ray Lamy was cured of cancer three times.

That's because he survived five years past his

initial diagnosis of bladder cancer in 1980.

Five years past his 1981 diagnosis of kidney cancer and five years past his 2003

diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which was treated with combination chemotherapy.

But he spent the last three years of his life battling ever more aggressive forms

of the disease.

And on July 21st, 2009, he died from lymphoma at the age of 64.

Despite vigorously pursuing treatments in both the complimentary and conventional

worlds of cancer therapy, Gloria Labarge succumbed to mesothelioma in July, 2008.

Our oncologist conceded that the first line treatments were no longer effective.

He went to a vastine and it just...it really did nothing.

It seemed like, you know, the disease was bulletproof at this point.

You know, it would just be a matter of time and

making her comfortable until she would pass.

We didn't know how long that would be, but the disease was so intense inside of

her that it turned out to be less than a month.

He was inhibited like five times.

He was put on a respirator to breathe form.

And on his fifth time, we're like, what do you want to do?

Do you want to fight?

Or do you want to go home?

He goes, I want to go home.

In November 2001, two years after his diagnosis, the Navarro's are told Thomas

only has a few days left to live.

Do you want to go home?

Yeah.

Do you miss Daddy?

One, two, three.

You're home, baby.

How you doing?

We glad you're home, buddy.

Me too.

So then we had to make the decision to let him go, and it was very difficult.

But he fought so hard and so did we.

His death certificate reads, respiratory

arrest due to chronic toxicity of chemotherapy.

That says it all.

Yeah.

It says it all.

Cancer equals chemotherapy.

That's hard to eradicate that from your mind.

So when you have a cancer, are you going to really jeopardize yourself in your mind

by not taking chemotherapy?

It's yourself now.

You have to come in and deal with your own demons about that.

That's hard to do.

One in two men and one in every three women in the

United States will get cancer in their lifetime.

But there is hope.

What we have to do is learn how to prevent it,

and we have to learn how to treat it better.

Now, can we prevent it?

The answer is yes.

Why?

Because risk factors that we're talking about are controllable.

Only 6 to 7, maybe 10% of all cancers are related to genetics.

We can't, in any individual case, be sure of preventing cancer.

But we know a lot more and we've known a lot

more for a long time about the causes of cancer.

I think there's no question that diet has something to do with cancer.

There's no question.

If you look at the migratory studies from Japan to the Hawaii to the United States,

and look at breast cancer, you see, you know, optics and breast cancer.

And the biggest change is the western diet versus the Japanese diet.

Part of the problem, a big part of the problem, is

the economic incentives are not there for prevention.

We are taught to treat in medical school, and we are paid to treat in practice.

We don't get taught prevention, and we don't get paid to prevent.

So the whole system is kind of topsy-turvy.

Prevention alone, however, will not win the war on cancer.

What are our standards for success?

Does a tumor have to shrink?

Well, the tumor doesn't have to shrink.

In diabetes, the pancreas doesn't get better, but we treat people with insulin,

and we turn a disease that would be fatal if

we didn't treat it into a chronic disease.

That's what we need to do with cancer, perhaps.

First, can we turn a tumor into just a lump?

We've had, since 1971, a very long period of time to see that the current methods of

doing things are not working.

Chemotherapy has long ago reached its limits, surgery and radiation,

although they become technically more refined.

They only really work when you can get the tumor early and remove it, but the ancient

Egyptians knew that.

So you need something more effective.

The therapies which are addressing what is causing cancer, especially the changes in

genetic makeup in the cancer, are now taken over.

We are striving toward the individualization of cancer treatment,

where you would take a tumor, take an individual, characterize them molecularly,

and tailor your therapy accordingly.

That's not what the FDA system is built to look at.

So we're going to have to step back and look at it all over again.

How are we really going to characterize patients'

diseases and the response to the treatments we have?

That's a big issue now.

I personally think that the war on cancer would move a lot faster, and would have

moved a lot faster if the FDA was moving along with

it instead of looking at as sort of an adversary.

The laws aren't being made by the elected representatives.

They're being made by the bureaucrats.

They're insulated by law.

We have to force Congress to change.

Our desire now that we've had this time since our son's passing, and we're not

whole yet, we'll never be whole, but now that we've healed to the point

where we can take the hits, we want to reintroduce his bill and this time drive

it through to law so that people have the right to choose their doctors.

There isn't a doctor, for example, in Italy, who claims that cancer is caused

by a fungus, and if you eliminate the fungus you eliminate the problem.

I don't know if he's right or wrong, and I don't pretend to know.

But it seems to me, for God's sakes, we ought to find out.

Because it seems to me it's significantly important for us to find out what is the

real problem here that we should not close

the door to looking at those sorts of things.

How should we meet this challenge?

How can we truly open the doors and set free the full genius of our people?

One has to assume given the state of science and the tools we have at our

disposal, there isn't anything we can't do.

Patients should have a right to choose, doctors should be free to innovate.

That's the way Madison moves forward.

If you could detach research from the financial agenda, then scientists could do

their work without consideration of where this

is going to lead in terms of profitability.

And then I think you'd see the brilliance come out.

People said we went to the moon.

Why can't we do that with cancer?

And the answer is, when we went to the moon, we pretty much understood the

physics and the aviation, the avionics of what it took.

It was a question of whether we had to where with all to spend the money and put

in the technology to get the man to the moon and back, which we were willing to do.

We are now very early in the same process with cancer, but we're way early.

We're still defining the rules of the game.

Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records, a new

technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy and save lives.

It will launch a new effort to conquer a disease that has touched the life of

nearly every American, including me, by seeking a cure for cancer in our time.