New evidence on a key nutrient offers hope to cancer patients; will the FDA snuff it out? Action Alert!
A new study on annatto-sourced delta-tocotrienol (one of the compounds contained in vitamin E) has shown incredible results for extending the life of ovarian cancer patients. It is a stunning finding that should be hailed as a major breakthrough, but don’t expect to hear much about it from the crony medical establishment, which does everything it can to prevent you from learning about the benefits of natural products.
The study found that delta-tocotrienol, used in combination with Avastin, an FDA-approved drug, was able to stabilize and control ovarian cancer after surgery by 50% at six months; Avastin alone was only able to control the disease by 25%. Delta-tocotrienol used in combination with Avastin nearly doubled survival of ovarian cancer patients after surgery.
It’s hard to over emphasize how ground-breaking this study is. There have been studies on the anti-cancer effect of certain nutrients, but these are generally smaller in scale and use animal or in vitro models; never before has the ability of a nutrient to significantly prolong survival in cancer patients been demonstrated in a study of drug-level quality.
Further, the authors of the study don’t explicitly say it, but implicit in the study’s results is that Avastin might not be required. Overall survival in patients on just Avastin was 5-7 months; for Avastin plus delta-tocotrienol, it was 11 months. This could mean that delta-tocotrienol is just as effective, if not more so, than Avastin—but more study would be required to establish this.
These are astonishing results and great news for women with ovarian cancer. If it were a drug, delta-tocotrienol would be celebrated as the next breakthrough and sold for tens of thousands of dollars a year. But because natural medicines generally cannot be patented—meaning the drug industry can’t make mega-profits from them—the government suppresses what the public can know about their benefits, lest drug companies lose some market share. The feds don’t tell us, for example, about the promising cancer research on vitamin C. In fact, the agency will try to block you from knowing about the benefits of these nutrients because they aren’t FDA-approved drugs, and only drugs can make claims to treat or prevent a disease. The FDA wouldn’t want to upset the cancer drug industry’s more than $100 billion market.
The FDA has in fact shown that it is willing to go to absurd lengths to protect the drug industry from natural products. The agency went after walnut growers for daring to list some of the scientifically proven benefits of walnuts. Similarly, the FDA attacked cherry growers for citing Harvard research indicating cherries can reduce inflammation and pain. For these “crimes,” the FDA threatened jail time.
The FDA even bans many legal structure function claims, arguing that some are “implied disease claims,” a fabricated term meant to further restrict what can be said about supplements and other natural products. For example, a legal claim can describe the role of a nutrient on the structure or function of the body, such as “calcium builds strong bones.” But if the FDA thinks that the structure or function referenced in a claim indicates a disease state, it will ban the claim. The truthful claim that magnesium lowers blood pressure is banned by the FDA because they think it implies that magnesium is a treatment for hypertension, and only FDA-approved drugs can claim to treat hypertension.
When the FDA fails to censure free speech, the FTC picks up the baton. We saw this in the FTC’s case against POM Wonderful, the pomegranate juice company that spent millions on research only to be told by the FTC that it wasn’t the right research, so the claims were illegal. POM even had qualifying language in their claims so as not to mislead consumers, but the FTC wasn’t satisfied, outrageously demanding that POM conduct two randomized clinical trials to substantiate their claims.
These overt attacks on free speech subvert Americans’ ability to take charge of their health by learning about the established benefits of natural products. This isn’t good for anyone but the drug industry monopoly. If the FDA actually cared about cancer patients, they would be shouting from the rooftop about the benefits of delta-tocotrienol. But in our crony medical system, not only will we not hear a peep—the FDA will actively block companies that try to inform the public about its benefits, even though the companies are in the best position to tell us about the science since they are the entities performing the applicable studies.
The FDA’s conduct in this arena is truly shocking. Scientists continue to understand more about the many benefits of natural products, from fish oil to coconut oil, from CoQ10 to vitamin D, but rather than trumpeting these discoveries, the federal government is doing everything in its power to throttle the industry and protect Big Pharma profits. We must stop them.
Action Alert! Send a message to the FDA telling them to permit free speech about natural products, in particular to revise their position on implied disease claims. Please send your message immediately.
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The FDA is a criminal enterprise!
Along with the pharmaceutical corporations who make the money.
The FDA, Medical Associations, and Pharmaceutical Companies = a multi billion (trillion?) dollar enterprise. It’s more than criminal. Cloaked by the disguise of working on the peoples’ behalf to help restore health and promote wellness, they work together to accomplish the opposite of health and wellness..
Give me a break. My life was saved by Ibrutinib, a big pharma drug.
How many people are you willing to kill for your purity of thought and anti-commercial ideology?
My life was also extended by Chinese Herbal Medicine until Ibrutinib was approved. I know Integrative Medicine works best.
I can support a wake up call against agencies that suppress good data on herbs. But the diatribe here against drug companies and western medicine is most dangerous. You are just as blind as the MDs who pooh-pooh traditional herbal medicine…and yes they are the majority of MDs.
If you do not like drug companies, start your own and charge less. No one is stopping you. Some hospitals are actually collectively doing this to help lower drug costs.
Big Pharma has a wide moat and huge barriers to entry. And they still work through the revolving door at the FDA. Yes some of their patent medicines work. That does does give them the right to work against the consumer.
I think you are begging the question with the assumption that they are working against the consumer. I and and 10s of thousands with CLL have been rescued from certain death. They are not working against us.
You do not think companies have no right to make a profit? There are many drug companies that compete. AbbVie and Gilead both provided cures to Hep C and their stocks have gone down because they are running out of customers and competing on price.
Part of your big moat is the fact that it cost on average several $B to bring a drug to market. Much of this can be attributed to outdated rules of the FDA that demands full efficacy results from long term trials, even if the risk of the disease from waiting is much more than the risk of the drug. They do not allow patients and docs to make their own risk evaluations. I came close to dying because of this. Patients being able to buy some drugs earlier could lower company costs and provide more data for evaluation.
The high cost of my Ibrutinib invited at least 7 other drugs to be developed in competition. Ibrutinib controls but seems to be needed forever. When a more recent drug, Venetoclax, is added, more than 1/2 of people on the combo show no sign of the disease and most of these are trying to stop treatment.
Do you object that Apple makes a large profit on their iphones? They are likely worth more than the 10 largest drug companies put together. I have not checked this fully, but Bristol Meyers and AbbVie are each worth about $100 B. Apple about $1T.
AbbVie had a 21% of sales loss last quarter, Bristol M. made about 20% of revenue. AbbVie owns the drugs that saved my life. I think they will have difficulty getting back their investment in them, given the new drug competition, followed by genetic competition in about 7 years.
Tumeric and green tea is useful but came up short for me. That said, because of my herbal protocol and some drugs that are off-label for my leukemia, I take my big pharma drugs at a small fraction of the normal doses and get away with that.
You are attempting to hijack the discussion, which is simply how a self-serving, protectionist industry tries to deny natural treatments.
You are making argument for and against as you respond to my statements. You suggest the FDA increases the moat. Well, of course, the former Pharma execs who walk the halls and enjoy the director’s offices make these decisions. They are, like many others, an agency that sets its own rules and always come down on the side of the industry they shill for.
Your success with treatment for anything is great, but the requirement to wait for drugs is, as you note, a death sentence for many. Their outright refusal to simply review foreign medical literature for fast tracking is calculated, in my opinion. As is their insistence to classify amplified adult stem cells as a drug, yet still sanction outdated meniscus surgery. See the work of Neil Riordan, PA, PhD–one of the early pioneers and experts in applied stem cell research, who had to move to Panama to continue his amazing research.
I would suggest an FDA with directors who are not trying to destroy access to natural treatments, or better yet, develop an agency to oversee a non-patented medicine approach, perhaps run by someone like Dr. Joseph E Pizzorno,
Congrats on surviving CLL. Sorry it takes expensive drugs to maintain. My 87 year old mother-in-law has it, and has had it for about 10-12 years. Perhaps due to her low carb high vegetable diet and activity level at her age, she remains in remission–no bruising, no lymphadenopathy, and she out functions most people in there 60s. She has never required chemo.
I did manage to survive 12 years without chemo with the help of Chinese Medicine. This is much longer than the median lifetime of those who took the recommended FCR. Ibrutinib was the addition that turned things around.
Some would dismiss me as anecdotal. In truth, my experience is that most MDs are not sophisticated about about statistics and are too quick to ignore small sample sizes. I am a retired product development scientist. My more recent oncologist was impressed and referred many patients to my herbalist, who, while not an MD, knows oncology as well as any oncologist.
There are some critical reports on Riordan. I do not know the author below. She may be critical of all methods that are not fully mainstream, but I do think she makes some good points about lack of full data on his patients.
https://www.skepdoc.info/beware-stem-cell-clinics-that-offer-untested-treatments/
Someone I do trust to review standard and non-standard treatments is Ralph Moss. He is a PhD who spent decades at Ketterling-Sloan and became disenchanted when they pooh-poohed good evidence on the benefits of Laetrile. He eventually started Cancer Decisions, which is now Moss Reports. He does not give medical advice, but helps people figure whom and what to trust.
I first read his book “Questioning ChemoTherapy”. Then I bought his binder about leukemia. In a phone consultation, I was led to the “Herbalist”, Donnie Yance, whose advice on herbal and western treatments saved my life.
Moss travels the world and could provide an honest review of Riordan.
https://www.mossreports.com/
We do have a right to make our own choice regardless of the consequences. However, insurance pays from their own list (probably government requirement), so for most of what I use insurance is useless.
Occasionally drugs work, but side effects are ignored and kill more than they save. Some I received, I returned both because I couldn’t afford to pay for them, and I was already using herbs that reduced my cancer to the point where I hardly noticed it anymore.
Clean up your diet, Eat organic Fresh fruits and vegetables and whole foods, no processed foods. Take gold standard sulfur crystals and a quality mineral complex, drink half of a fresh squeezed lemon, take omega 3 supplements or eat cold water fish like sardines, salmon, mackerel, herring, halibut, also ginger, turmeric, broccoli sprouts, take 3000 to 5000 mg non gmo vitamin C every day along with 5000iu of vitamin D3 if you are not getting much sunlight. Juicing fresh fruits, vegetables, and wheat grass also very good. Do these things and it doesn’t matter what the FDA and big Pharma do.