The Aging Healthfully Virtual Library - The Works of Majid Ali, M.D.
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Are the Chinese Slaying the Cancer Dragon?
(This article was originally published in 1995)

    Marco Polo said that if he told about all of what he saw in China he wouldn't be believed. What I saw in China about the success rate in treatment of childhood leukemia couldn't be believed either, but it may be true.
    I have a theory that cancer is caused by oxidative molecular damage. Such damage may involve some genes - the so-called oncogenes - or possibly, and more frequently, the non-genetic cell innards such as enzymes and other proteins.
    This is consistent with my global theory that all diseases are caused by oxidative damage.
    Several cancers are associated with nutritional factors. Nutritional factors have been incriminated in the cause of others. In experimental animal models, many types of cancers can be produced with viruses and carcinogenic chemicals.
    This is the age of gene manipulation, and enormous sums of money are committed to gene research each year. Some genes, oncogenes as they are commonly called are thought to trigger cancer formation.
    Certain genes, P53 and related suppressor genes - have been ascribed protective roles against cancer.
    At present, the concept that genetic changes are irreversible, and that genes govern cancer formation and growth is firmly entrenched in the drug medicine dogma. All efforts at cancer control are directed at developing new chemotherapy drugs and antibodies to destroy cancer cells.
    During one of our trips to China, we met Professor Dr. Wang Wanlin, Director of Strait International Salvation Hospital and of Shaxi Province Association of Traditional and Western Medicine. He is a hematologist who runs a cancer hospital outside Guanzhou (Canton).
    We are dumbfounded to learn that his success rate with acute childhood leukemias is over 85%. Such statistics are not to be believed anywhere.We stared blankly at his face as he related case history after case history with a gentle smile on his face. He uses a mixture of 12 Chines herbs and photoflourescence (light therapy performed by drawing a blood sample, exposing it to certain wavelengths of ultra-violet light and then transferring the blood back). He further told us that on some occasions he does use very small doses of chemotherapy drugs.
    The first two therapies allow him to drastically reduce the amount of chemotherapy drugs and so cut down on the drug toxicity. I kept thinking about all the children who have died of leukemias and who I had examined on the autopsy table. I didn't know whether to call Dr. Wang a pathological liar or to weep for those little children who died of drug toxicity.
    In the Japanese-Chinese Friendship Hospital, Beijing, professors Chen Shao-Wu and Zhou Shu graciously gave us several hours of their time and presented us with many case histories of cancer control with bioelectrotherapies and Chinese herbs used in conjunction with certain copper and iron salts.
    Are they consummate liars? Or are they really on to something important about cancer control? I wondered.

Why are we Americans denied such opportunity?

    How far are our silly notions of science in drug medicine going to take us before we come to our senses?
    Why is such clear evidence of reversibility of cancer ignored in drug medicine?
    Largely because, the notion of reversibility underscores the role of environment in the genesis and propagation of cancer.And there are no drugs for restoring the cellular environment. There are no drugs for normalizing the abnormal surface charge of cancer cells. There are no drugs for relieving the excessive oxidative stress on cells.These are clearly the domains of holistic medicine. And those holistic quacks must be rigorously kept away from patients with cancer. Business as usual!

WHAT CAUSES CANCER?
   Not withstanding billions of dollars that have been spent on cancer research, and yet a larger number of words written to publish the findings of such research, this approach has not worked nor does it have any chance of working. (Hodgkin's diseases and some related tumors are a few exceptions to this general rule).
    The fundamental question remains unanswered. What causes cancer? Cancer specialists invariably shrug and dismiss this questions as impertinent and an unwanted distraction in their pursuit of killing cancer with chemotherapy drugs.
    The genes story of cancer causation will always be incomplete. There is a simple reason for this: Genes are cryptic codes of biology that need to be activated by their environment. Genes change to meet the demands of the environment. I discuss this further in my upcoming book Rats, Drugs and Assumptions. Consider the following simple statement.
    The stomach cells that secrete acid have the full complement of genes as do the pancreas cells that produce insulin. What keeps the stomach cells from producing insulin? What prevents acid production by the pancreas cells?
    When a young woman finishes her menstrual cycle, bleeding and tissue shedding leaves behind gaping holes in the inner lining of the uterus. The leftover endometrial cells then multiply to repair the holes.
    How do they know when to multiply? By orders of the genes that control cell growth will be the answer from physicians. If such cellular growth was to proceed unrestrained, that will be the beginning of cancer. (Indeed, too much cell growth caused by estrogen leads to hyperplasia, and eventually cancer).
    How do the cells know when to stop? By the same genes, is the likely answer. The simple question in my mind is this: How can genes do all that except by some capacity to read their environment. The genes must be capable of adapting to the unique circumstances of the cell they are contained within.

TWO SIDES TO THE STORY
   What I illustrate above is the unassailable fact of biology that molecules and genes, cells and body tissues continually sense their environment and respond to them in ways most suitable for the survival of the whole organism.
    This means there are two sides to the cancer story:
1) How the cellular environment changes; and
2) How genes respond to their altered environment.
    Simple molecules self-assemble into amino acids. Amino acids self-assemble into functioning proteins.

    I have considerable difficulty accepting the prevailing gene theory of cancer and notions of irreversibility of cancer of drug medicine. There are several fundamental observations in chemistry that challenge assumptions made in the gene theory.
    Do genes really control everything? If so, where do genes come from?
    The current gene theory of how cancers develop was challenged, as well as notions of irreversibility of cancer by drug medicine).
    In their famous 1953 experiment, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago, subjected simple molecules such as ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water in a flask to repeated cycles of heating, electrification and cooling conditions that are thought to exist when life began on planet earth.
    The experiment produced a crimson-colored primordial soup, rich in amino acids. Amino acids, of course, are the building block of proteins including enzymes.
    In subsequent years, origin-of-life research has been focused on fundamental chemical mechanisms of pre-biological molecules.
    Notable among these studies are those of Sidney Fox that showed clearly that under primordial conditions, amino acids could self-assemble into proteins without any intervention of genes.

   If the reactions within a sphere help make macromolecules, then we're talking about a cage in which thermal proteins could help build nucleic acids like RNA or DNA. Perhaps thermal proteins can also help synthesize true proteins...through this type of mechanism, cellular evolution could have arisen from microspheres.

Biologist Aristotle Pappelis, quoted in Science News, 146:59, 1994.

The next important step was to demonstrate whether or not proteins so formed could assemble themselves into tiny protein microspheres, the precursors of cells as we know them today.

Experiments clearly showed that this does happen.

    I include these brief comments about origin-of-life research to support my view that simple molecules such as ammonia and water, larger molecules such as amino acids, and complex molecules such as proteins (including) enzymes can assemble and disassemble themselves without any organizing influence of genes. Such observations challenge the notions of irreversibility of cancer cells of drug medicine.

ALL CELLS ARE CANCER CELLS
NO CELL IS A CANCER CELL

    This is not a trivial play on words as it may seem superficially. In my view, nothing in cancer theory and practice should be held more important than this. This simple statement brings into sharp contrast the two opposing views of cancer therapies:
    The supportive and normalizing approach of the holistic community, and the destructive and de-normalizing approach of chemotherapy. It is a common observation that tumor metastases behave less aggressively, and sometimes undergo spontaneous regression when the primary cancer is surgically removed. If the gene theory of drug medicine is really valid, how does one explain such a phenomenon? Everyone knows or has heard of people who were expected to die of cancer in several months or a few years but who defied the medical prognosis and underwent spontaneous remissions.
    I know of hundreds of patients who had limited cancers that could be surgically removed, and so had little reason to die of the tumor. Yet, they succumbed quickly. I also know of many patients who went on to live with cancers that were pronounced terminal for decades. What can one make of such cases?
    It is a common observation that tumor metastases behave less aggressively - and sometimes undergo spontaneous regression - when the primary cancer is surgically removed. If the gene theory of drug medicine is really valid, how does one explain such a phenomenon?
    Everyone knows or has heard of people who were expected to die of cancer in several months or a few years but who defied the medical prognosis and underwent spontaneous remissions.
    I know of hundreds of patients who had limited cancers that could be surgically removed, and so had little reason to die of the tumor.Yet, they succumbed quickly. I also know of many patients who went on to live with cancers that were pronounced terminal for decades. What can one make of such cases?
    In the early part of this century, Otto Warburg won the Nobel Prize for his studies that showed that cancer cells use an anaerobic (without oxygen utilization) metabolism. He further proclaimed that once a cell turns to anaerobic mode, and hence becomes cancerous, it can never revert back to the normal aerobic mode.

A ONE-WAY STREET
   In other words, the cancerous transformation is a one-way street, and hence is irreversible. This, of course, fits into the prevailing notion that cancer at the cellular level is irreversible.
    Warburg was right on one account (anaerobic metabolism) but quite wrong on the other (the notion of irreversibility). Many studies, including those of surface charge normalization cited above, invalidate Warburg's view of irreversibility.
    Cancer cells, like the mythical Chinese dragons, breathe oxidative fires. They produce large quantities of hydrogen peroxide, far in excess of those produced by healthy cells even when they are attacked by chemicals or microbes.
    Cancer cells, like the Greek crabs after which are named, send out tiny projections that are in reality tentacles of oxidative flames.          
    These projections made up of tiny bits of the cell membrane as well as the cell soup of cancer cells.
    Frequently, these tentacles get pinched off, from complexes with clotting proteins such as Factor VII, and ignite the oxidative flames that engulf other clotting proteins, such Factors IX and X.
    The end result of these reactions is that the cancer cell get surrounded by fibrin nets that protect it from natural killer and other immune cells that normally search and destroy errant cells including cancer cells.
    These reactions also break contact of cancer cells with other malignant cells that surround them. Thus, cancer cells are freed and begin to travel to other parts of the body, looking for new sites to seed and flourish.Each cancer cell floating free in the blood, lymph and tissue carries simmering oxidative coals, ready to burst into oxidative flames at the slightest provocation, so triggering further oxidative reactions.Cancer cells have a very strong negative surface charge, often two or more hundred times stronger than the 2-4 mV of healthy cells.The negative cell membrane charge, of course, results from an excess of negatively charged electrons. Like charges repel. Teleologically, it follows that the cancer cell should be able to protect itself from an attack by a weakly charged immune cell by simply pushing it away forcefully by its strongly negatively charged surface. This, indeed, does happen. In 1949, highly negative charges were reported in cancer of the cervix (Am. J. Obs. Gyn, 57:274; 1949). Ten years later, control of the tumor by normalization of the surface charge on cancer cells was documented in mice (Science, 139:388; 1959).
    This raises a theoretical possibility of turning a cancer cell back into its non-cancer form by changing the surface charge. Indeed, this has been reported by many investigators.
    A large number of reports show that when the abnormally high negative charge of cancer cells is normalized, many tumors regress.

CANCER CELLS NEGATIVE CHARGE
   Why do cancer cells develop a strong surface negative charge? This simple question arose in my mind sometime ago.

Evidently, it can happen in two ways:
    1) The cancer cell membrane accumulates negatively charged electrons in response to changes in its environment; and,
    2) it does so in response to metabolic changes taking place within it, such as accelerated anaerobic metabolism that increases acidotic stress and excessive production of hydrogen peroxide.
    Since, free floating cancer cells metastasize freely, multiply and flourish-in otherwise healthy tissues, it seems probable that the strong negative charge develops on the surface of the cancer cell in order to provide a counter-balance to a strong positive charge within it.

DOGMA RECHALLENGED
   Next came the expected question: If reversal of strong negative surface charge results in regression of tumor, was that not a clear evidence that the cell innards can also respond to changes in the surface charge? In other words, (a response might be) cancer is a reversible phenomenon.
    This provides an additional challenge to the prevailing dogma that cancer is caused by mutated genes, and that genes, once mutated, cannot become "un-mutated."
    Slowly the concept evolved in my mind that cancer represents abnormal growth and replication behavior of the cell in response to changes in its electromagnetic and biochemical micro-environment.
    And that such abnormal growth behavior is reversible if the micro-environmental factors that caused it to become errant are removed.
    I believe this oxidative theory of cancer that holds cancer to be essentially a reversible phenomenon effectively explains many clinical and experimental aspects of cancer that remain unexplained by the prevailing gene theory.

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