Posts Tagged ‘immune system’
I have a patent for creating HIV/AIDS Virus: Dr. Robert Gallo
In April 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo filed a United States patent application for his invention, the HIV/AIDS Virus.
Normally, when a patent is filed and approved, as Dr. Gallo’s was, anyone who uses the product or invention owes a royalty payment to the inventor. Thus, holding the intellectual property laws to their fullest interpretations, one must only wonder why Dr. Gallo has yet to file a lawsuit seeking to recover damages from the usage of his invention?
As odd as this scenario may sound, it bears need for additional scrutiny.
The scientific evidence is complete and compelling, the AIDS Virus is a designer bi-product of the U.S. Special Virus program.
The Special Virus program was a federal virus development program that persisted in the United States from 1962 until 1978.
The U.S. Special Virus was then added as ‘compliment’ to vaccine inoculations in Africa and Manhattan.
Shortly thereafter the world was overwhelmed with mass infections of a human retrovirus that differed from any known human disease, it was highly contagious and more importantly, it could kill.
A review of the Special Virus Flow Chart (“research logic”) reveals the United States was seeking a ‘virus particle’ that would negatively impact the defense mechanisms of the immune system.
The program sought to modify the genome of the virus particle in which to splice in an animal “wasting disease” called “Visna”.
According to the Proceedings of the United States of America, AIDS is an evolutionary, laboratory development of the peculiar Visna Virus, first detected in Icelandic sheep.
Recently, American and world scientists confirm with 100% certainty the laboratory genesis of AIDS.
This fact is further underscored when one reviews the ‘multiply-spliced’ nature of the HIV ‘tat’ gene and Dr. Gallo’s 1971 Special Virus paper, “Reverse Transcriptase of Type-C virus Particles of Human Origin”.
Dr. Gallo’s 1971 Special Virus paper is identical to his 1984 announcement of AIDS.
Upon further review the record reveals that he filed his patent on AIDS, before he made the announcement with Secretary Heckler. Earlier this year, Dr. Gallo conceded his role as a ‘Project Officer’ for the federal virus development program, the Special Virus.
The Flow Chart of the program and the 15 progress reports are irrefutable evidence of the United States’ secret plan to cull world populations via the unleashing of a stealth biological microorganism that would ‘waste’ humanity.
In light of this true genesis of the world’s most divesting biological scourge, it is the United States that owes ‘royal’ payments to the innocent victims.
Each and every victim of AIDS is deserving of a formal apology and a sense of economic closure for an invention of death and despair, perpetrated by the United States.
The eyes of the world are upon the General Accounting Office’s Health Care Team, under the direction of William J. Scanlon.
Between 1964 and 1978, the secret federal virus program spent $550 million dollars of taxpayer money to invent AIDS. It is now necessary to spend whatever it takes to dismantle an invention that has led to the greatest crime against humanity in the history of the world.
Note 1: Roger Hajjar responded
Discovery is not equal to developing! Wallow! The disease had start spreading and Luc Montagnier identified, discovered the cause! and developed a test to identify it.
Max Gallo got samples from Montagnier before he publishes and jumped on the opportunity to try to get a share of the bounty coming from the test…
HIV is a strain from a virus that was know to infect monkeys in africa. It mutated and started infecting humans.
Note 2: Origin of AIDS
The origin of AIDS and HIV has puzzled scientists ever since the illness first came to light in the early 1980s.
For over 20 years it has been the subject of fierce debate and the cause of countless arguments, with everything from a promiscuous flight attendant to a suspect vaccine programme being blamed. So what is the truth?
Just where did AIDS come from?
The first recognised cases of AIDS occurred in the USA in the early 1980s.
A number of gay men in New York and California suddenly began to develop rare opportunistic infections and cancers that seemed stubbornly resistant to any treatment. At this time, AIDS did not yet have a name, but it quickly became obvious that all the men were suffering from a common syndrome.
The discovery of HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, was made soon after. While some were initially resistant to acknowledge the connection (and indeed some remain so today), there is now clear evidence to prove that HIV causes AIDS.
So, in order to find the source of AIDS, it is necessary to look for the origin of HIV, and find out how, when and where HIV first began to cause disease in humans. How?
What type of virus is HIV?HIV is a lentivirus, and like all viruses of this type, it attacks the immune system. Lentiviruses are in turn part of a larger group of viruses known as retroviruses.
The name ‘lentivirus’ literally means ‘slow virus’ because they take such a long time to produce any adverse effects in the body. They have been found in a number of different animals, including cats, sheep, horses and cattle.
However, the most interesting lentivirus in terms of the investigation into the origins of HIV is the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) that affects monkeys, which is believed to be at least 32,000 years old.
1. So did HIV come from an SIV?It is now generally accepted that HIV is a descendant of a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus because certain strains of SIVs bear a very close resemblance to HIV-1 and HIV-2, the two types of HIV.HIV-2 for example corresponds to SIVsm, a strain of the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus found in the sooty mangabey (also known as the White-collared monkey), which is indigenous to western Africa.
The more virulent, pandemic strain of HIV, namely HIV-1, was until recently more difficult to place. Until 1999, the closest counterpart that had been identified was SIVcpz, the SIV found in chimpanzees. However, this virus still had certain significant differences from HIV.What happened in 1999?
In February 1999 a group of researchers from the University of Alabama 2 announced that they had found a type of SIVcpz that was almost identical to HIV-1. This particular strain was identified in a frozen sample taken from a captive member of the sub-group of chimpanzees known as Pan troglodytes troglodytes ( P. t. troglodytes), which were once common in west-central Africa.
The researchers (led by Paul Sharp of Nottingham University and Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama) made the discovery during the course of a 10-year long study into the origins of the virus. They claimed that this sample proved that chimpanzees were the source of HIV-1, and that the virus had at some point crossed species from chimps to humans.Their final findings were published two years later in Nature magazine 3.
In this article, they concluded that wild chimps had been infected simultaneously with two different simian immunodeficiency viruses which had “viral sex” to form a third virus that could be passed on to other chimps and, more significantly, was capable of infecting humans and causing AIDS.
These two different viruses were traced back to a SIV that infected red-capped mangabeys and one found in greater spot-nosed monkeys. They believe that the hybridisation took place inside chimps that had become infected with both strains of SIV after they hunted and killed the two smaller species of monkey.
They also concluded that all three ‘groups’ of HIV-1 – namely Group M, N and O (see our strains and subtypes page for more information on these) – came from the SIV found in P. t. troglodytes, and that each group represented a separate crossover ‘event’ from chimps to humans.How could HIV have crossed species?
It has been known for a long time that certain viruses can pass between species. Indeed, the very fact that chimpanzees obtained SIV from two other species of primate shows just how easily this crossover can occur. As animals ourselves, we are just as susceptible. When a viral transfer between animals and humans takes place, it is known as zoonosis.
Below are some of the most common theories about how this ‘zoonosis’ took place, and how SIV became HIV in humans:
The ‘hunter’ theory. The most commonly accepted theory is that of the ‘hunter’. In this scenario, SIVcpz was transferred to humans as a result of chimps being killed and eaten or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on the hunter. Normally the hunter’s body would have fought off SIV, but on a few occasions it adapted itself within its new human host and became HIV-1.
The fact that there were several different early strains of HIV, each with a slightly different genetic make-up (the most common of which was HIV-1 group M), would support this theory: every time it passed from a chimpanzee to a man, it would have developed in a slightly different way within his body, and thus produced a slightly different strain.“Retroviral transfer from primates to hunters is still occurring even today”
An article published in The Lancet in 2004 4, also shows how retroviral transfer from primates to hunters is still occurring even today. In a sample of 1099 individuals in Cameroon , they discovered (10%) were infected with SFV (Simian Foamy Virus), an illness which, like SIV, was previously thought only to infect primates.
All these infections were believed to have been acquired through the butchering and consumption of monkey and ape meat. Discoveries such as this have led to calls for an outright ban on bushmeat hunting to prevent simian viruses being passed to humans.
The oral polio vaccine (OPV) theorySome other rather controversial theories have contended that HIV was transferred iatrogenically (i.e. via medical interventions). One particularly well-publicised idea is that polio vaccines played a role in the transfer.
In his book, The River, the journalist Edward Hooper suggests that HIV can be traced to the testing of an oral polio vaccine called Chat, given to about a million people in the Belgian Congo, Ruanda and Urundi in the late 1950s.
To be reproduced, live polio vaccine needs to be cultivated in living tissue, and Hooper’s belief is that Chat was grown in kidney cells taken from local chimps infected with SIVcmz. This, he claims, would have resulted in the contamination of the vaccine with chimp SIV, and a large number of people subsequently becoming infected with HIV-1.
5. Many people have contested Hooper’s theories and insist that local chimps were not infected with a strain of SIVcmz that is closely linked to HIV. Furthermore, the oral administration of the vaccine would seem insufficient to cause infection in most people (SIV/HIV needs to get directly into the bloodstream to cause infection – the lining of the mouth and throat generally act as good barriers to the virus).
6. In February 2000 the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia (one of the original manufacturers of the Chat vaccine) announced that it had discovered in its stores a phial of polio vaccine that had been used as part of the program. The vaccine was subsequently analysed and in April 2001 it was announced that no trace had been found of either HIV or chimpanzee SIV.
7. A second analysis confirmed that only macaque monkey kidney cells, which cannot be infected with SIV or HIV, were used to make Chat. 8 While this is just one phial of many, it means that the OPV theory remains unproven.The fact that the OPV theory accounts for just one (group M) of several different groups of HIV also suggests that transferral must have happened in other ways too, as does the fact that HIV seems to have existed in humans before the vaccine trials were ever carried out.
More about when HIV came into being can be found below.The contaminated needle theoryThis is an extension of the original ‘hunter’ theory.
In the 1950s, the use of disposable plastic syringes became commonplace around the world as a cheap, sterile way to administer medicines. However, to African healthcare professionals working on inoculation and other medical programmes, the huge quantities of syringes needed would have been very costly. It is therefore likely that one single syringe would have been used to inject multiple patients without any sterilisation in between.
This would rapidly have transferred any viral particles (within a hunter’s blood for example) from one person to another, creating huge potential for the virus to mutate and replicate in each new individual it entered, even if the SIV within the original person infected had not yet converted to HIV.
The colonialism theory. The colonialism or ‘Heart of Darkness’ theory, is one of the more recent theories to have entered into the debate. It is again based on the basic ‘hunter’ premise, but more thoroughly explains how this original infection could have led to an epidemic. It was first proposed in 2000 by Jim Moore, an American specialist in primate behaviour, who published his findings in the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses.
9. During the late 19th and early 20th century, much of Africa was ruled by colonial forces. In areas such as French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo, colonial rule was particularly harsh and many Africans were forced into labour camps where sanitation was poor, food was scarce and physical demands were extreme.
These factors alone would have been sufficient to create poor health in anyone, so SIV could easily have infiltrated the labour force and taken advantage of their weakened immune systems to become HIV.
A stray and perhaps sick chimpanzee with SIV would have made a welcome extra source of food for the workers. “SIV could easily have infiltrated the labour force and taken advantage of their weakened immune systems”
Moore also believes that many of the labourers would have been inoculated with unsterile needles against diseases such as smallpox (to keep them alive and working), and that many of the camps actively employed prostitutes to keep the workers happy, creating numerous possibilities for onward transmission.
A large number of labourers would have died before they even developed the first symptoms of AIDS, and those that did get sick would not have stood out as any different in an already disease-ridden population. Even if they had been identified, all evidence (including medical records) that the camps existed was destroyed to cover up the fact that a staggering 50% of the local population were wiped out there.
One final factor Moore uses to support his theory, is the fact that the labour camps were set up around the time that HIV was first believed to have passed into humans – the early part of the 20th century.
The conspiracy theory. Some believe that HIV is a ‘conspiracy’ or that it is ‘man-made’. A recent survey carried out in the US for example, identified a significant number of African Americans who believe HIV was manufactured as part of a biological warfare programme, designed to wipe out large numbers of black and homosexual people.
10. Many say this was done under the auspices of the US federal ‘Special Cancer Virus Program’ (SCVP), possibly with the help of the CIA. Linked in to this theory is the belief that the virus was spread (either deliberately or inadvertently) to thousands of people all over the world through the smallpox inoculation programme, or to gay men through Hepatitis B vaccine trials.
While none of these theories can be definitively disproved, the evidence given to back them up is usually based upon supposition and speculation, and ignores the clear link between SIV and HIV or the fact that the virus has been identified in people as far back as 1959.
When?
During the last few years it has become possible not only to determine whether HIV is present in a blood or plasma sample, but also to determine the particular subtype of the virus. Studying the subtype of virus of some of the earliest known instances of HIV infection can help to provide clues about the time it first appeared in humans and its subsequent evolution.
Four of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:
A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
11. A lymph node sample taken in 1960 from an adult female, also from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
12. HIV found in tissue samples from an American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.
13. HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.
14. A 1998 analysis of the plasma sample from 1959 suggested that HIV-1 was introduced into humans around the 1940s or the early 1950s.
15. In January 2000, the results of a new study 16 suggested that the first case of HIV-1 infection occurred around 1931 in West Africa. This estimate (which had a 15 year margin of error) was based on a complex computer model of HIV’s evolution.
However, a study in 2008 17 dated the origin of HIV to between 1884 and 1924, much earlier than previous estimates. The researchers compared the viral sequence from 1959 (the oldest known HIV-1 specimen) to the newly discovered sequence from 1960.
They found a significant genetic difference between them, demonstrating diversification of HIV-1 occurred long before the AIDS pandemic was recognised.
The authors suggest a long history of the virus in Africa and call Kinshasa the “epicentre of the HIV/AIDS pandemic” in Central Africa.
They propose the early spread of HIV was concurrent with the development of colonial cities, in which crowding of people increased opportunities for HIV transmission. If accurate, these findings imply that HIV existed before many scenarios (such as the OPV and conspiracy theories) suggest.
What about HIV-2?
When did that get passed to humans? Until recently, the origins of the HIV-2 virus had remained relatively unexplored. HIV-2 is thought to come from the SIV in Sooty Mangabeys rather than chimpanzees, but the crossover to humans is believed to have happened in a similar way (i.e. through the butchering and consumption of monkey meat).
It is far rarer, significantly less infectious and progresses more slowly to AIDS than HIV-1. As a result, it infects far fewer people, and is mainly confined to a few countries in West Africa.
In May 2003, a group of Belgian researchers published a report 18 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
By analysing samples of the two different subtypes of HIV-2 (A and B) taken from infected individuals and SIV samples taken from sooty mangabeys, Dr Vandamme concluded that subtype A had passed into humans around 1940 and subtype B in 1945 (plus or minus 16 years or so).
Her team of researchers also discovered that the virus had originated in Guinea-Bissau and that its spread was most likely precipitated by the independence war that took place in the country between 1963 and 1974 (Guinea-Bissau is a former Portuguese colony). Her theory was backed up by the fact that the first European cases of HIV-2 were discovered among Portuguese veterans of the war, many of whom had received blood transfusions or unsterile injections following injury, or had possibly had relationships with local women.
Where?
The question of exactly where the transfer of HIV to humans took place, and where the ‘epidemic’ officially first developed has always been controversial. Some have suggested that it is dangerous to even try to find out, as AIDS has frequently been blamed on an innocent person or group of individuals in the past.
However, scientists remain keen to find the true origin of HIV, as most agree it is important to understand the virus and its epidemiology in order to fight it. So did it definitely come from Africa?
Given the evidence we have already looked at, it seems highly likely that Africa was indeed the continent where the transfer of HIV to humans first occurred (monkeys from Asia and South America have never been found to have SIVs that could cause HIV in humans).
In May 2006, the same group of researchers who first identified the Pan troglodytes troglodytes strain of SIVcpz, announced that they had narrowed down the location of this particular strain to wild chimpanzees found in the forests of Southern Cameroon 19.
By analysing 599 samples of chimp droppings (P. T. troglodytes are a highly endangered and thus protected species that cannot be killed or captured for testing), the researchers were able to obtain 34 specimens that reacted to a standard HIV DNA test, 12 of which gave results that were virtually indistinguishable from the reactions created by human HIV.
The researchers therefore concluded that the chimpanzees found in this area were highly likely the origin of both the pandemic Group M of HIV-1 and of the far rarer Group N. The exact origins of Group O however remain unknown.
HIV Group N principally affects people living in South-central Cameroon, so it is not difficult to see how this outbreak started. Group M, the group that has caused the worldwide pandemic, was however first identified in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It is not entirely clear how it transferred from Cameroon to Kinshasa, but the most likely explanation is that an infected individual travelled south down the Sangha river that runs through Southern Cameroon to the River Congo and then on to Kinshasa, where the Group M epidemic probably began.
Just as we do not know exactly who spread the virus from Cameroon to Kinshasa, how the virus spread from Africa to America is also not entirely clear.
However, recent evidence suggests that the virus may have arrived via the Caribbean island of Haiti.
Why is Haiti significant?
The AIDS epidemic in Haiti first came to light in the early 1980s, at around the same time that cases in the USA were being uncovered. Following the discovery of a number of Haitians with Kaposi’s Sarcoma and other AIDS-related conditions, medical journals and books began to claim that AIDS had come from Haiti, and that Haitians were responsible for the AIDS epidemic in the United States.
These claims, which were often founded on dubious evidence, fuelled pre-existing racism in the US and many Haitians suffered severe discrimination and stigma as a result. A large number of Haitian immigrants living in the US lost their jobs and were evicted from their homes as Haitians were added to homosexuals, haemophiliacs and heroin users to make the ‘Four-H Club’ of groups at high risk of AIDS.
20. The emotionally-charged culture of blame and prejudice that surrounded HIV and AIDS in the early years meant that it soon became politically difficult to present epidemiological findings in a neutral and objective way. For many years the link between Haiti and the US epidemic was therefore dropped as a subject. “Tracing HIV’s origins remains a politically sensitive exercise ”
In March 2007 however, it returned to the public eye at the Fourteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Los Angeles. A group of international scientists presented data based on complex genetic analysis of 122 early samples of HIV-1, group M, subtype B (the most common strain found in the USA and in Haiti) showing that the strain had probably been brought to Haiti from Africa by a single person in around 1966; a time when many Haitians would have been returning from working in the Congo.
21. Genetic analysis then showed that subtype B spread slowly from person to person on the island, before being transferred to the US, again probably by a single individual, at some point between 1969 and 1972. A paper published in October 2007 by Worobey and colleagues gave a 99.7% certainty that HIV subtype B originated in Haiti before passing to the US.
22. It is possible that HIV had entered the US several times before subtype B took a firm hold (which would explain the infection of the St. Louis teenager in the early to mid-1960s), but it was the late 1960s / early 1970s transfer that is believed to be responsible for the widespread epidemic seen in the US today.
Once the virus had established itself in the gay community, it would have spread fairly rapidly (anal intercourse carries a very high transmission risk), with transmission occurring within and between the US and Haiti, and internationally, until the original route taken by the virus was largely obscured.
Dr Michael Worobey, lead researcher in the study, claimed that his data was not intended to place any blame on Haiti, or on Central Africans, and stressed that none of the people who first transmitted HIV would have been aware they were infected. His work still received strong protests from one Haitian delegate at the CROI conference however, demonstrating the extent to which tracing HIV’s origins remains a politically sensitive exercise.What caused the epidemic to spread so suddenly?
There are a number of factors that may have contributed to the sudden spread of HIV, most of which occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century.Travel International travel contributed to the rapid spread of HIV around the world.
Both national and international travel undoubtedly had a major role in the initial spread of HIV. In the US, international travel by young men making the most of the gay sexual revolution of the late 70s and early 80s would certainly have played a large part in taking the virus worldwide. In Africa, the virus would probably have been spread along truck routes and between towns and cities within the continent itself.
However, it is quite conceivable that some of the early outbreaks in African nations were not started by Africans infected with the ‘original’ virus at all, but by people visiting from overseas where the epidemic had been growing too. The process of transmission in a global pandemic is simply too complex to blame on any one group or individual.
Much was made in the early years of the epidemic of a so-called ‘Patient Zero’ who was the basis of a complex “transmission scenario” compiled by Dr. William Darrow and colleagues at the Centre for Disease Control in the US. This epidemiological study showed how ‘Patient O’ (mistakenly identified in the press as ‘Patient Zero’) had given HIV to multiple partners, who then in turn transmitted it to others and rapidly spread the virus to locations all over the world.
A journalist, Randy Shilts, subsequently wrote a book 23 based on Darrow’s findings, which named Patient Zero as a gay Canadian flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas. For several years, Dugas was vilified as a ‘mass spreader’ of HIV and the original source of the HIV epidemic among gay men.
However, four years after the publication of Shilts’ article, Dr. Darrow repudiated his study, admitting its methods were flawed and that Shilts’ had misrepresented its conclusions.While Gaetan Dugas was a real person who did eventually die of AIDS, the Patient Zero story was not much more than myth and scaremongering.
HIV in the US was to a large degree initially spread by gay men, but this occurred on a huge scale over many years, probably a long time before Dugas even began to travel.The blood industry Screening blood for HIV is essential for safe blood supplies
As blood transfusions became a routine part of medical practice, an industry to meet this increased demand for blood began to develop rapidly. In some countries such as the USA, donors were paid to give blood, a policy that often attracted those most desperate for cash; among them intravenous drug users.
In the early stages of the epidemic, doctors were unaware of how easily HIV could be spread and blood donations remained unscreened. This blood was then sent worldwide, and unfortunately most people who received infected donations went on to become HIV positive themselves.In the late 1960’s haemophiliacs also began to benefit from the blood clotting properties of a product called Factor VIII.
However, to produce this coagulant, blood from hundreds of individual donors had to be pooled. This meant that a single donation of HIV+ blood could contaminate a huge batch of Factor VIII. This put thousands of haemophiliacs all over the world at risk of HIV, and many subsequently became infected with the virus.
Drug use. The 1970s saw an increase in the availability of heroin following the Vietnam War and other conflicts in the Middle East, which helped stimulate a growth in intravenous drug use. As a result of sharing unsterilised needles and syringes, HIV was passed on among injecting drug users (IDUs).
Due to this repeated practice many IDUs continue to be infected with HIV.
Conclusions
It is likely that we will never know who the first person was to be infected with HIV, or exactly how it spread from that initial person. Scientists investigating the possibilities often become very attached to their individual ‘pet’ theories and insist that theirs is the only true answer, but the spread of AIDS could quite conceivably have been induced by a combination of many different events.
Whether through injections, travel, wars, colonial practices or genetic engineering, the realities of the 20th century have undoubtedly had a major role to play. Nevertheless, perhaps a more pressing concern for scientists today should not be how the AIDS epidemic originated, but how those it affects can be treated, how the further spread of HIV can be prevented and how the world can change to ensure a similar pandemic never occurs again
– See more at: http://www.avert.org/origin-hiv-aids.htm#sthash.MCcuPxlX.dpuf
This “Happy Cell”
“What is the truest form of human happiness?” Steven Cole asks.
It’s a question he’s been considering for most of his career—but Cole is an immunologist, not a philosopher. To him, this question isn’t rhetoric or a thought experiment. It’s science—measureable and finite.
What a Happy Cell Looks Like
Cole, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, has spent several decades investigating the connection between our emotional and biological selves.
“The old thinking was that our bodies were stable biological entities, fundamentally separate from the external world,” he says. “But the new thinking is that there is much more permeability and fluidity.”
His latest project is the examination of happiness in biological terms.
“There’s an intrinsic connection between our direct experience of happiness and the perception of that experience in our bodies, as represented by changes in our biologic mechanisms. We’ve found that happiness can remodel our cellular composition,” he explains.
Specifically, Cole and his team of researchers at UCLA have found that happiness seems to alter the function of immune cells. “It’s no question that the mind and immune system are intrinsically linked,” he says. “Our body is a literal product of our environment.”
As he explains, the immune system has two primary functions: to fight infection and to cause inflammation.
The first function, known as the antiviral response, is generally considered positive because it helps ward off external threats, like viruses, that might otherwise harm the body.
The second function, known as the inflammatory response, is less positive because its efforts is to keep healthy immune cells circulating in the body can also cause tissue damage.
Cole has found that the balance of these two functions of the immune system may change based on life experiences.
His work has shown that negative experiences like a new cancer diagnosis, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and low socioeconomic status may cause changes to someone’s immunologic profile.
“Over the past 15 years, our work has shown us that diverse social and psychological experiences that cause a sense of threat or uncertainty can evoke a similar response in our immune cells,” he says.
Listening to him explain his work is part philosophy lesson, part cellular-biology lesson, a scientific discourse on la dolce vita.
“We’re beginning to understand that life experiences like chronic stress, loneliness, and social isolation negatively affect our immunologic profile. This gives us a sense of how not to live—but more importantly, it also tells us something about how to live, because there are concrete things we can do to actively promote a positive change in our immunology,” he says. “The biology of happiness is in our hands.”
But how exactly do our immune cells register this abstract concept of happiness? The answer depends on how “happiness” is defined.
“There are two distinct forms of happiness, hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness, and our bodies respond differently to each type,” Cole explains.
“Hedonic happiness is the elevated mood we experience after an external life event, like buying a new home,” while eudaimonic happiness “is our sense of purpose and direction in life, our involvement in something bigger than ourselves.”
Of the two, eudaimonic happiness in particular is associated with a better-functioning immune system, according to Cole.
To determine this effect, Cole and a team of researchers from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, asked 80 healthy adults to fill out questionnaires about their well-being. The researchers then analyzed the volunteers’ answers to assess their levels of eudaimonic and hedonic happiness, and took blood samples to study the functioning of their immune cells.
They found that a high score of eudaimonic happiness, more than a high score of hedonic happiness, was correlated with a better genetic expression profile, meaning the immune cells showed high rates of the antiviral response and low rates of the inflammatory response.
The researchers posited that though both types of happiness may look similar on the outside, the corresponding genetic expression profiles are quite different. “When we asked people how happy they felt, both [the high eudaimonic and high hedonic] groups seemed about the same,”Cole says.
“But when we looked at the cellular and molecular level, it looks like people with high levels of eudaimonic happiness are better off, immunologically speaking.”
“We already know ways to achieve hedonic happiness, but how can we live our lives to evoke a eudaimonic experience in our immune system?” he continues.
One way is through mind-body practices, like meditation, which “have been shown to cultivate positive and happy immune cells,” he says.
Research has linked meditation to reduced negative inflammatory activity, increased positive antiviral response, improved function of specific strains of immune cells, and higher antibody production.
But perhaps the most striking theory posed of meditation is that it could alter genetic material.
In recent years, a new field of study, known as mind-body genomics, has emerged.
Among the most well-known researchers in this area are Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleague, psychiatrist Elissa Epel.
Through a series of studies, the two found that meditation could affect the ends of DNA known as the telomeres, which act as protective caps for genes. The longer the telomere, the greater the protection conferred for the DNA strand, and the longer that cell can survive.
And telomeres, like immune cells, seem to respond to emotional cues.
Negative external conditions like chronic stress that reduce eudaimonic happiness may shorten telomere length, while stress-reducing activities like meditation may help to maintain it.
“Telomeres are affected by many things, but they are directly affected by stress. So we can see how improvements in our mental health, through the practice of meditation, might be linked to improvements in our telomeres,” Epel explains. “They offer us a window and some insight into how we are living, and help us appreciate how what we do today can affect our health tomorrow.”
As the field of mind-body genomics matures, the focus is moving towards gaining a better understanding of not only how DNA could be structurally changed by meditation, but also whether meditation can alter DNA functionally, through changes in how genes are expressed.
In one recent study, for example, meditation was linked to enhanced expression of genes associated with insulin secretion, telomere structure, and cellular energy and function, and decreased expression of genes linked to inflammation and stress.
What’s more, blood samples collected during the study found that experienced meditators showed changes in their genetic activity after just one meditation session.
With 21,000 genes in the human genome, Cole, Epel, and other researchers have just scratched the surface of the connection between our emotional and biological selves.
“We are an ever-changing conglomeration of cells very much influenced by our experience of the world around us,” Cole says. “At the rate we’re going, we have more data than we can make sense of. It’s this process that helps us get closer to understanding the black box. Who knows? Maybe in the future we may be able to sequence our own genes.” Epel agrees: “We don’t yet have the technology to monitor our telomeres, but it’s coming.”
In the meantime, though, the lessons of mind-body genomics still apply. “The experience you have today will influence your body composition for the next 80 days, because that’s how long most cellular processes hang around,” Cole says. “So plan your day accordingly.”
Note: And I thought that memory is confined in brain cells and nerves only
Chemotherapy: No longer toxic?
The End of Toxic Chemo and Radiation
Chemotherapy and radiation, as presently practiced, attacks both cancer cells and healthy cells, which is why chemotherapy and radiation are terrible to endure.
The essence of chemotherapy is to use chemicals strong enough to kill cancer cells. This is a good idea as long as the chemo agents do not harm the host, meaning they do not harm us. That is not the case!
Biochemists discovered a long time ago that cancer cells grow at a much faster rate than regular cells, so if a chemical can be injected that only kills fast-growing cells (cytotoxic), cancer cells and tumors will be killed.
The problem is that cancer cells are not the only fast growing cells in the body. When there is cellular rejuvenation occurring, it will get hit with chemo including hair, mouth, digestive tract, and our all-important white blood cells. Like radiation therapy, the loss of white blood cells is the part of chemo that doctors are most concerned about when administering it.
The immune system is toasted, yet this is considered acceptable collateral damage. For this oncologists put themselves in an extraordinarily weak position that history will not remember them fondly for.
Oncologists have it wrong in their choice of rays for radiation therapy and chemicals chosen for chemotherapy. They chose the heavy killing nuclear type of radiation that causes cancer as opposed to the intense life-generating kind of radiation (near and far infrared and Bioresonance frequencies) that offers healing.
Their choice of chemicals that destroy life and health instead of those that bring immune strength and healing will brand the present generations of oncologists in a way that they will not enjoy.
The Biomat, which I love to use, increases the generation of heat shock proteins. Pharmaceutical companies are trying to increase with nasty vaccines!
Basic medical science agrees on the value of heat shock proteins. The interplay between the immune system and cancer, and specifically, the role of heat shock proteins in viral infections and tumorogenesis has been studied proving the case for the use of infrared in the treatment of cancer.
How we generate them can be either safe or dangerous, depending on which types of treatments and doctors one follows. Why did they not choose medicinals and the type of radiation that targets the enemy cancer cells while leaving our healthy cells alone?
Why not since it is very possible to strengthen the immune system with the right natural chemo and radiation if one chooses the right medicinals and the right kind of radiation? 
In my new book Anti-Inflammatory Oxygen Therapy, I introduce oxygen itself as the ultimate chemotherapy. Pharmaceutical scientists would not ever have thought of this freebie though it does cost money to concentrate it to the levels necessary to annihilate cancer cells.
With oxygen, doctors can blast cancer cells to smithereens and patients can do it in the comfort of their own homes. There are plenty of substances like cannabinoids and selenium that scientists have studied which shrink tumors reducing a person’s chances of dying from cancer.
These nutritional medicines are not toxic like the mustard gas derived chemotherapy, which still sets the standard for barbarism in the field of oncology.
The medicines in my Natural Allopathic Protocol present a more intelligent form of chemotherapy and radiation. The protocol surrounds and flanks oxygen delivered (made safe with CO2 medicine) at concentrations 5 times higher than a hyperbaric chamber.
You will be reading a lot about oxygen in the next two weeks as I finish the new book. This oxygen will roll over the bodies of cancer cells like an army of panzer divisions loaded with Tiger tanks. The throw weight of the Anti-Inflammatory Oxygen Therapy system is enormous.
Oxygen supplied in large quantities for short duration is completely safe because more than enough carbon dioxide is created in the process when the patient exercises for the 15-minutes a day, which is the time necessary to do Anti-Inflammatory Oxygen Therapy each day. Life is very sweet indeed, when we get enough oxygen.
In the book I introduce a new way of injecting massive amounts of oxygen into the cells, which will profoundly affect them. In fifteen minutes, one can blow the cells doors down, allowing them to detoxify as they gulp down high levels of oxygen. I have discovered a technique that offers much higher therapeutic results than these expensive, inconvenient hyperbaric chambers and can be done in your bedroom.
A person needs an oxygen concentrator, exercise bicycle or rebounder and a new mask kit with a reservoir that stores up enough O2, before you even begin to use it, to supply the correct amount of oxygen needed for one fifteen minute session. It offers a trip to cellular heaven. This therapy is like putting out a candle flame with your fingers.
In the first 15 minute session (or let’s say first four sessions) the inflammation in the capillaries will begin to be snubbed out and their toxins will be cleared. Oxygen will rush into the cells bringing the energy and the physiological processes necessary to heal. Oxygen is all around us but hardly anyone gets enough.
It is a paradox that few understand. But it is the reason that sodium bicarbonate is such a wonderful medicine. It gives one instant access to more oxygen because the bicarbonates/CO2 dilate the blood vessels ensuring more blood and oxygen get delivered. (Tomorrow I will publish ‘Carpet Bombing Cancer with Invincible Oxygen’, which is a chapter of the book.)
Chemotherapy: High Rate of Failure 
It is well known that chemotherapy drugs have a high rate of failure. This was brought out a long time ago in the January 10, 2002 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, where it was noted that 20 years of clinical trials using chemotherapy on advanced lung cancer have yielded survival improvement of only 2 months.
This editorial pointed out that while new chemotherapy regimens appear to be improving survival, when these same regimens are tested on a wider range of cancer patients, the results have been disappointing.
In other words, oncologists at a single institution may obtain a 40% to 50% response rate in a tightly controlled study, but when these same chemotherapy drugs are administered in the real world setting, response rates decline to only 17% to 27%. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy as they are practiced now are highly toxic treatments aimed at killing cancer cells.
The problem is these therapies create cancer stem cells and that means instead of treating cancer they are causing cancer. Fox News and many others have published the news about the undesirable effect of helping to create cancer stem cells—cells that researchers say are particularly adept at generating new tumors and are especially resistant to treatment.
The medical media is saying that this might help explain why late-stage cancers are often resistant to both radiation therapy and chemotherapy. We know that cancer stem cells give rise to new tumors.
These stem cells are ultimately responsible for the recurrence of cancer or the dangerous spreading of it throughout the body. Scientists also have found that cancer stem cells are more likely than other cancer cells to survive chemotherapies and radiation therapies, probably because their “stemness” allows them to self-replenish by repairing their damaged DNA and removing toxins.
“Radiotherapy has been a standard treatment for cancer for so long, so we were quite surprised that it could induce stemness,” said study researcher Dr. Chiang Li of Harvard Medical School in Boston.
An amazing statement considering these doctors have all along been playing around with super-toxic chemotherapy poisons and radioactive death-inducing rays—and now they are surprised that this is the mechanism of death?
The New York Times writes, “When it comes to taming tumors, the strategy has always been fairly straightforward. Remove the offending and abnormal growth by any means, in the most effective way possible. And the standard treatments used today reflect this single-minded approach — surgery physically cuts out malignant lesions, chemotherapy agents dissolve them from within, and radiation seeks and destroys abnormally dividing cells.”
You Don’t Want Brutal Treatments That Don’t Work The New York Times believes that, “these interventions can be just as brutal on the patient as they are on a tumor.” The entire field of oncology is vulnerable to attack not only because of the brutality of its treatments but also because new and better options are coming to the surface.
The main point, besides the cruel wrongness of present approaches, is that mainstream approaches to cancer DO NOT WORK FOR LATE STAGE CANCER.
Dr. Ulrich Abel, who poured over thousands of cancer studies, published a shocking report in 1990 stating that chemotherapy has done nothing for 80% of all cancers; that 80% of chemotherapy administered was worthless. Ulrich Abel was a German epidemiologist and biostatistician.
In the 80s, he contacted over 350 medical centers around the world requesting them to furnish him with anything they had published on the subject of cancer. Dr. Abel’s report and subsequent book (Chemotherapy of Advanced Epithelial Cancer, Stuttgart: Hippokrates Verlag GmbH, 1990) described chemotherapy as a “scientific wasteland” and that neither physician nor patient were willing to give it up even though there was no scientific evidence that it worked.
Everyone knows someone who has died of cancer, chemotherapy and radiation but oncologists like to hide the fact that patients die from the chemo and radiation before they would die from the cancer. Abel’s research led him to a sober and unprejudiced analysis of the literature where he concluded that treatments for advanced epithelial cancer rarely were successful.
By “epithelial” Dr. Abel is talking about the most common forms of adenocarcinoma – lung, breast, prostate, colon, etc. These account for at least 80% of cancer deaths in advanced industrial countries.
“This is an astounding charge coming from a member of the cancer establishment. In Germany they earned Abel a big, largely favorable, article in Der Spiegel, the German equivalent of Time.
Here, the powerful chemotherapy establishment has maintained discreet silence. More and more, toxic chemotherapy is being used against advanced cases of such diseases.
More than a million people die worldwide of these forms of cancer every year and the majority of them now “receive some form of systemic cytotoxic therapy before death,” wrote Dr. Ralph Moss who continued on to say: “The personal views of many oncologists seem to be in striking contrast to communications intended for the public.
Indeed, studies cited by Abel have shown that many oncologists would not take chemotherapy themselves if they had cancer.” Dr. Abel stated, “there is no evidence for the vast majority of cancers that treatment with these drugs exerts any positive influence on survival or quality of life in patients with advanced disease.
The almost dogmatic belief in the efficacy of chemotherapy is usually based on false conclusions from inappropriate data.” Small-cell lung cancer “is the only carcinoma for which good direct evidence of a survival improvement by chemotherapy exists,” wrote Dr. Abel but this improvement amounted to a matter of only three months!
Frequently Sick in winter? Are there more viruses or weakened immune system is more prevalent?
Posted on: January 12, 2014
We’ve all been nagged by elderly parents about staying warm in the winter: “You don’t want to catch cold!”
Is that old saying absurd?
Medical research tell us that colds are only caused by viruses, right?
In warmer seasons, we have flies, mosquitoes, pollen… transferring all kinds of viruses and bacteria. And we sleep bad, we breath with difficulty, and fail to recover from any kinds of exhaustion
Yet, why do we feel that we fall sicker in cold seasons rather than in warmer ones?
Getting sick in warm seasons catches the mind because we suffocate and we miss out on the outdoor opportunity. In winter, we are tucked in our warm bed and have an excellent excuse not to confront the cold weather, the slush, the dirty snowy streets, the brutal wind…
Can we suspect that dry weather contributes greatly to weakening the immune system?
Or dry weather turns viruses more virulent and aggressive?
Most probably, it is the dried up mucus (in noses, mouth, larynx…), our first and most efficient front-line defenses against the intrusion of particles in our system that facilitate the incursion of unwanted sickening elements… Possibly, many kinds of cells also perish in dried environment…
Actually, I mostly feel uncomfortable in air-conditioned environment and tend to catch cold as this prolonged dried up internal climate persist in close work environment… And I don’t believe that adding humidifiers can make a qualitative difference in prolonged dried environment.
I believe that close entrapment in crowded areas during the cold season and the lack of opportunity to exercise in the fresh air contribute to the dissemination of viruses and bacteria.
The weakened immune system in that season, exacerbated by anxiety and depression from lack of adequate natural light, permit the viruses to invade deeper our system.
Well, it’s complicated.
It’s not necessarily the cold itself that gets you sick; it’s all the different aspects of winter weather as a whole (dryness, lack of sunlight, etc.) that combine to make the perfect storm of prime cold conditions.
However, that doesn’t mean a drop in temperature doesn’t contribute at all.
Watch the full video from ASAP Science above to found out how, and stay bundled up out there—winter’s only just begun. [ASAP Science]
Can we avoid Cancer?
Posted on: December 29, 2013
Can we avoid Cancer?
AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY AND ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY …
Note: Make sure to read the rebuff on the hoaxes at the end of the post.
PremAseem.com posted this Dec. 19, 2013
1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion.
When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person’s lifetime.
3. When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to STARVE the cancer cells by not feeding it with foods it needs to multiple.
What cancer cells feed on?
a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells.
Note: Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg’s aminos or sea salt.
b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk, cancer cells will starved.
c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork.
Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment.
About 20% can be from cooked food including beans.
Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes t o nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells.
To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).
e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties.
Water–best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.
12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines will become putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.
13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body’s own killer cells to destroy cancer cells.
Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body’s normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.
15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor.
Anger, unforgiving and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment.
Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
STATEMENT: EMAIL HOAX REGARDING CANCER
Information falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins called, “CANCER UPDATE FROM JOHN HOPKINS” describes properties of cancer cells and suggests ways of preventing cancer.
Johns Hopkins did not publish the information, which often is an email attachment, nor do we endorse its contents. The email also contains an incorrect spelling of our institution as “John” Hopkins; whereas, the correct spelling is “Johns” Hopkins. For more information about cancer, please read the information on our web site or visit the National Cancer Institute.
Another hoax email that has been circulating since 2004 regarding plastic containers, bottles, wrap claiming that heat releases dioxins which cause cancer also was not published by Johns Hopkins. More information from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Mythbusters: Please help curb the spread of this hoax by sending a link to this page to individuals that forward you this email.
The Truth about the “Cancer Update” Email Hoax
Emails offering easy remedies for avoiding and curing cancer are the latest Web-influenced trend. To gain credibility, the anonymous authors falsely attribute their work to respected research institutions like Johns Hopkins. This is the case with the so-called “Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins.”
The gist of this viral email is that cancer therapies of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy do not work against the disease and people should instead choose a variety of dietary strategies.
Traditional therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, work. The evidence is the millions of cancer survivors in the United States today who are alive because of these therapies.
We recognize that treatments don’t work in every patient, or sometimes work for awhile and then stop working, and there are some cancers that are more difficult to cure than others. These problems are the focus of ongoing cancer research.
We’ll go through each statement in the email hoax and provide real responses from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center experts.
Statements:
The Hoax: Everyone Has Cancer Cells
The Hoax: A Strong Immune System Destroys Cancer
The Hoax: Cancer is Caused by Nutritional Deficiencies and Supplements Will Correct Them
The Hoax: Chemotherapy and Radiation Therapy Harms Normal Cells. Surgery Causes Cancer to Spread
The Hoax: Cancers Feed on Certain Foods
The Hoax: Cancer is a Disease of Mind, Body and Spirit
The Hoax: Oxygen Kills Cancer Cells
The Hoax: Everyone Has Cancer Cells
The Truth: Cancer is a genetic disease resulting from a variety of mutations and alterations either inherited from our parents or, more commonly, acquired over time due to environmental exposures and behaviors, such as smoking and poor diet. These alterations turn off important cell growth regulators allowing cells to continually divide unchecked, explains Luis Diaz, a clinician-scientist in Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins.
This type of cell is called a malignant or cancer cell. Among the trillions of cells in the human body, inevitably everyone has some abnormal or atypical cells that possess some of the characteristics of cancer cells, most resolve themselves and never result in cancer, says Diaz.
There is no single or standard test for cancer. There are ways to screen for certain cancers with tests such as colonoscopy for colon cancer, mammography for breast cancer, PSA for prostate cancer, and the Pap smear for cervical cancer, and these tests can detect cancers in a very early and curable stage. For many cancers, there currently are no screening tests, and they are diagnosed when they begin to cause symptoms.
Diaz and other Kimmel Cancer Center researchers are working on new tests that detect abnormal DNA shed by cancer cells into blood and body fluids and have the ability to find cancers before they cause any symptoms. Approaches like this could lead to a broad-based screening test for cancer.
Tests like these also are being used to detect cancer recurrences and malignant cells left behind following surgery, and can find cancers that are not detectable under the microscope or in x-rays.
Other researchers are studying cancer stem cells. They are stealth cells that make up just a tiny fraction of a tumor. While small in number, investigators believe they may be the cells that drive certain cancers and lead to cancer recurrence. Therapies that target these cells are now being tested in clinical trials.
A team of our breast cancer researchers has developed a method that could make it possible to detect breast cancer from the DNA contained in a single drop of blood.
But, while evasive cancer cells are a challenge and the focus of ongoing research, it does not mean, as the email contends, that all patients, even those treated successfully for cancer, have cancers-in-waiting—undetectable but still there. People are treated and completely cured of cancer everyday.
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The Hoax: A Strong Immune System Destroys Cancer
The Truth: When it comes to cancer and the immune system, it is not a matter of strong or weak as the fictional report contends, but rather an issue of recognition. “The immune system simply does not recognize cancer. In its complexity, the cancer cell has learned to disguise itself to the immune system as a normal, healthy cell. Cells infected with viruses or bacteria send out danger signals setting the immune system in action. But cancer cells do not, explains Elizabeth Jaffee, co-director of cancer immunology and leading expert on cancer and the immune system.”
By deciphering the methods cancer cells use to make them invisible to the immune system, Jaffee and team have developed cancer vaccines that have successfully triggered immune reactions against prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, leukemia, and multiple myeloma.
The Hoax: Cancer is caused by Nutritional Deficiencies and Supplements Will Correct Them
The Truth: Dietary habits and lifestyle choices, such as smoking, contribute to the development of many human cancers, says Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson. Our experts recommend a balanced diet as a way of reducing cancer risk. In terms of supplements, Nelson points out that while they may help mediate vitamin deficiencies, taking doses above what the body needs provides no added benefit.
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The Hoax: Chemotherapy and Radiation Therapy Harms Normal Cells. Surgery Causes Cancer to Spread
The Truth: Chemotherapy and radiation therapy kills cancer cells with remarkable selectivity, says Nelson. There are some temporary and reversible side effects common to cancer therapies, including hair loss and low blood counts. Limiting and managing these side effects is an integral part of treatment.
Surgery is the first line of treatment for many types of cancer. It does not cause cancer to spread. Cancers spread to other tissues and organs as a tumor progresses and cancer cells break away from the original tumor and travel through the bloodstream to other body sites.
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The Hoax: Cancers Feed on Certain Foods
The Truth: The premise is that cancer cells feed on certain foods, and if a person refrains from eating these foods, the cancer will die. According to our experts, a poor diet and obesity associated with a poor diet is a risk factor for the development of cancer. However, there is no evidence that certain foods alter the environment of an existing cancer, at the cellular level, and cause it to either die or grow.
While there is such a thing as tumors that produce mucus, the mucus made by a tumor does not result from drinking milk. And, eating less meat, while a good choice for cancer prevention, does not free up enzymes to attack cancer cells, explains cancer prevention and control expert Elizabeth Platz.
Moderation is key, says Platz. As part of a balanced diet, sugar, salt, milk, coffee, tea, meat, and chocolate—the foods the “Update” calls into question—are all safe choices, she says. The real concern with many of these, particularly sugar, is that it adds calories to a diet and can lead to obesity, and obesity is a major risk factor for cancer. A balanced nutritious diet, healthy weight, physical activity, and avoiding alcoholic drinks may prevent as many as 1/3 of all cancers. Platz recommends eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day and limiting red and processed meats, like hot dogs.
Several Johns Hopkins experts participated in the World Cancer Research Fund – American Institute for Cancer Research report Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective, published in November 2007, which is considered by cancer prevention experts to be an authoritative source of information on diet, physical activity and cancer. Their recommendations for cancer prevention and for good health in general are:
- Be as lean as possible without becoming underweight.
- Be physically active for at least 30 minutes every day.
- Avoid sugary drinks. Limit consumption of energy-dense foods (particularly processed foods high in added sugar, or low in fiber, or high in fat).
- Eat more of a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes such as beans.
- Limit consumption of red meats (such as beef, pork and lamb) and avoid processed meats.
- If consumed at all, limit alcoholic drinks to 2 for men and 1 for women a day.
- Limit consumption of salty foods and foods processed with salt (sodium).
- Don’t use supplements to protect against cancer.
Our experts recommend that people meet their nutritional needs through their food choices. While vitamin supplements can be helpful in people with nutritional deficiencies, evidence suggests that supplementation above what the body can use provides no added health benefit.
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The Hoax: Cancer is a Disease of Mind, Body, and Spirit
The Truth: Cancer is a disease caused by genetic alterations. Many times, these alterations occur through our own behaviors—cigarette smoking, a poor and unbalanced diet, virus exposures, and sunburns, says cancer prevention and control expert John Groopman.
How stress, faith, and other factors influence this is largely unknown. We would like people to be happy, loving, and stress free, simply because it is a nice way to live and can contribute to an overall feeling of well being, says Platz. There is no evidence, however, that a person prevents or causes cancer based on his or her state of mind.
Still, we understand that a cancer diagnosis can make patients and families feel stressed and anxious, and these are not pleasant feelings. So, we offer extensive patient and family services, including a cancer counseling center, pain and palliative care program, chaplain services and a meditation chapel, an image recovery center, and the Art of Healing art and music program.
Read more about Cancer Genetics in “A Genetic Revolution”
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The Hoax: Oxygen Kills Cancer Cells
The Truth: Platz recommends regular exercise as a part of any healthy lifestyle, but says there is no evidence that breathing deeply or receiving oxygen therapy prevents cancer.
On its Web site, the American Cancer Society includes the following statement about oxygen therapy, “Available scientific evidence does not support claims that putting oxygen-releasing chemicals into a person’s body is effective in treating cancer. It may even be dangerous. There have been reports of patient deaths from this method.” Read more
Please pass this information on to family and friends.
Questions?
Contact: Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Office of Public Affairs 410-955-1287
8 Hugs a Day per person can go a long way to increase a community life expectancy. And the reasons are…
Posted on: December 16, 2013
8 Hugs a Day per person can go a long way to increase a community life expectancy…
Preity posted this Dec. 4, 2013
10 Reasons Why You Need at Least 8 Hugs a Day For Your Health
1. The nurturing touch of a hug builds trust and a sense of safety. This helps with open and honest communication.
2. Hugs can instantly boost oxytocin levels, which heal feelings of loneliness, isolation, and anger.
3. Holding a hug for an extended time lifts one’s serotonin levels, elevating mood and creating happiness.
4. Hugs strengthen the immune system. The gentle pressure on the sternum and the emotional charge this creates activates the Solar Plexus Chakra. This stimulates the thymus gland, which regulates and balances the body’s production of white blood cells, which keep you healthy and disease free.
5. Hugging boosts self-esteem. From the time we’re born our family’s touch shows us that we’re loved and special. The associations of self-worth and tactile sensations from our early years are still embedded in our nervous system as adults. The cuddles we received from our Mom and Dad while growing up remain imprinted at a cellular level, and hugs remind us at a somatic level of that. Hugs, therefore, connect us to our ability to self love.
6. Hugging relaxes muscles. Hugs release tension in the body. Hugs can take away pain; they soothe aches by increasing circulation into the soft tissues.
7. Hugs balance out the nervous system. The galvanic skin response of someone receiving and giving a hug shows a change in skin conductance. The effect in moisture and electricity in the skin suggests a more balanced state in the nervous system – parasympathetic.
8. Hugs teach us how to give and receive. There is equal value in receiving and being receptive to warmth, as to giving and sharing. Hugs educate us how love flows both ways.
9. Hugs are so much like meditation and laughter. They teach us to let go and be present in the moment. They encourage us to flow with the energy of life. Hugs get you out of your circular thinking patterns and connect you with your heart and your feelings and your breath.
10. The energy exchange between the people hugging is an investment in the relationship. It encourages empathy and understanding. And, it’s synergistic: the whole is more than the sum of its parts: 1+ 1 = 3 or more! This synergy is more likely to result in win-win outcomes.
Note 1: I like hugging. I may also mention these same 10 reasons why friendly massages, holding hands… increase community tolerance level, our self-esteem and longevity…
Note 2: I’m handicapped and unable to extend life-expectancy of any modern community:
1. My hands are mostly cold, most of the year, particularly when in the shadow
2. I’m a smoker. Must find a smoker or an ex-smoker who relishes this aphrodisiac smell
3. My circle of friends are very restricted…
4. Must negotiate with a couple of people for multiple hugs a day to make the count of 8 and over…
5. A single beautiful and lovable person can do the trick… I’m searching for this person…
Adonis Diaries 