Questioning Conventional Oncology

An Interview with Cancer Activist Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Russ Mason, M.S.

n the high-stakes arena of alternative cancer therapi es, Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D., from Brooklyn, New York, has few peers. An internationally acclaimed science writer, he has spent more than 20 years investigating and writing about cancer issues. His published findings have compellingly demanded that the allopathic medical comm unity recognize that man y alternative treatments are safe and effective. Dr. Moss is a founding advisor to the National Institute of Healths Office of Alternative Medicine and the Cancer Advisory Panel on Complementary and Alternati ve M ed i c i n e. H e i s o n th e A dv i sor y Editorial Board of the Na tional Cancer Institutes Physician Data Query system. In 1997, he was chosen as scientific advisor to, and honorary member of, the German Society of Oncology the first American so honored in more than 20 years.

lege [Amherst, Massachusetts] and then transferred to New York University [New York City]. I got my masters and doctorate in classics from Stanford [Stanford, California]. What did interest me about medicine was its hu manistic aspects. After receiving my doctorate, I taught ancient Greek at the University of California, Irvine, including the writings of Hippocrateswho had much to say about cancer. RM: Why were you interested in classics? RWM: Classics comprises one of the very few areas in academia where you can study the whole of a society. It was ch a ll e n gi n g be c au se , in a d di t i o n t o le arning th e subje ct mat te r, I had to learn ancient Greek and Latin. All that la ngua ge w o rk t he m in d-num bi ng exercises in composition and memorizationprepared me for underst andi ng scientific language later. This remains part of what I do today: translating science-ese into standard English. So my background in the classical languages has been indispensable. RM: How did you get from classics to medicine? RWM: During Christmas, 1971, President Nixon had declared war on cancer. It was his Christ mas present to the nation. The idea was to find a cure i n t im e fo r t h e B ice nt e nn ia l, Jul y o f 1976. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center [New York City], appoin ted a new admin istratio n to go along with the war on cancer. I knew about thi s, and when I heard that there was a job

opening for a writer in the public affairs department, I decided to apply for it. I told the m th at, as a bla nk slate, I could provide a fresh view of the cancer war. And, with that, I beat out a lot of more experienced people for that job. Being hired by the public affairs department at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center turned out to be not only a terrific challenge, but an exciting new life. It w as a foo t in the do or t o be able to write about something meaningful. RM: What did you write about? RWM: I wrote a monthly article for a newsletter that went out to all the staff members, contributors, and employees. I also wrote press releases and would represent the Center with the media. My thi rd r esp onsibil ity was t o w rite t he research section of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Annu al Report. Sloan-Kettering wasand probably still isthe top cancer research center in the country. Back then, I thought that there really was a cure for Cancer and that it would be discovered at Sloan-Kettering. On my first day at work, June 3, 1974, I learned thatin addition to my official dutiesI also had another duty: to answer letters from the public about alternative and complementary cancer treatments. At that time, Sloan-Kettering was conducting some tests on alternative therapies, including hydrazine sulfate and Essiac tea.* Many of the letters in the folder a sked abo ut l aet ril e, w hi ch is an extract made from apricot kernels. At that t ime, so me p eo p le felt l aetr ile wa s a cureor a good treatmentfor cancer. 21

R u ss el l M as on : W er e y ou alw a ys interested in medicine? Ralph W. Moss: No. My great interest was in writing, and when I went to college I mainl y studied the humanities, especially classics and hi story. As an undergraduate, I attended Amherst Col-

* The Original Essiac Company, Malahide,

County Dublin, Ireland. Although the names laetrile, Laetrile, TM and amygdalin are often used interch angeably, they are not the same product.

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Dr. Sugiura said that laetrile stopped the spread of cancer, the metastases, about 80 percent of the time.
I was to write back and say: Weve looked into this. . . . Or: I have passed your letter along to so-and -so. Were alw ays lo o king fo r n ew cures . . . . I didnt want to say your idea is worth less; forget it. I tried to let each inquirer down as nicely as I could. The kind of science we were doing at Sloan-Kettering was very sophisticated and I was convinced that the cure for cancer would surel y come from this very technologically advanced work. What could alternative medicine possibly have to do with that? H owever, one day, o n a tour of t he Ins titutes Walker Laboratory in Rye , New York, I met and had lunch with a man named Kanematsu Sugiura [D.Sc.]. He was in his early 80s, and was a very impressive manan individual o f tremend ous strengt h and integrity. He was one of the pioneers of chemotherapy and had worked at Sloan-Kettering since 19 17. A t t h e en d o f t ha t i nt er v ie w al m o st a s an aft e rt ho ugh t I as ke d : Well, Dr. Sugiura, what are you working on now? He replied: I am working on amygdalin. At first, I wasnt quite sure what he was saying, but then the light bulb went off in m y he ad, and I rea liz ed t ha t he sai d amygdalin, which is another name for laetrile. I asked: Why wou ld you research something that doesnt work? And he replied: But it does. He told me that laetril e stopped the spread of cancer, the metastases, about 80 percent of the time. It was not a cure, and he regretted that it was not, but it was a good palliative drug. RM: Were you startled by Dr. Sugiuras answer? RWM: Yes, and perplexed. . . .The position of Sloan-Kettering was that laetrile was useless. And yet, one of the outstandin g cancer scientists in the world had s h o w n t h a t i t d i d w o r k t o a ce r t a i n degree. If you stop metastases 80 percent of the time, that is tremendously significant. I was confused by the increasingly nega tive statements of t he lea ders of Sloan-Kettering towards this substance. Eventually, I was instructed to lie about the outcome of our studies. It became a major cover-up. To be fair, Dr. Thomas, president of the Center, along with Drs. Good, Old, and Stockall important scientists [who are all M.D.s]went to Washington, D.C., in 1974, and again in 1975, to argue the case for laetrile and to urgently request permissi on to conduct clinical trials. The Food and Drug Administration [FDA] at that time allied with the American Cance r So cie t y and t h e Na ti o nal C ance r Instituteturned them down flat. The upshot was that if Sloan-Kettering was going to continue to receive government and foundation funding, it had better back off on the issue of laetrile, which it immediately did. It remains the official position of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center that its laetrile studie s were negative. RM: What happened next? How did you get involved in the laetrile controversy that ensued? RWM: I held a press conference at the Ne w Y ork H ilt o no n m y ow n and revealed what I knew about laetrile. I was fired from Sloan-Kettering the next day. RM: Were you angry? R WM : Ye s, and hurt. . . . I was sti ll clinging to a naive belief that the truth mattered. I was still in love with the field of oncologyand now it seemed all over for me. I couldnt find work, and none of my former colleagues would even talk to me. So, that i s w hen I wro te my first book, The Cancer Industry. The impetus first came when I saw Dr. Stock in the hallway the day I was fired in November, 1977. On my way out I said: Ive been fired! He said: I know, and good riddance! I didnt know what to say. So I blurted out: You havent heard the last of meI am going to write a book about this! R M: So you decided to write an expos and vindicate yourself in the process? RWM: Right. However, my editors at Grove Press suggested that the book take a broader view, and encompass the whole field of alternative cancer therapies and prevention, and that is what I did. The book came out in 1980 [as The Cancer Syndrome] and was very well received. During the late 70s, there were about seven or eight major alternative cancer treatments, and that was the scope of my study. By 1992, when I wrote Cancer Therapy, there were over a hundred different treatments. If I were to do an equivalent book today, I might need to include a thousand items. Thats how things have grown. Back then, all of the treatments approved for cancer by the FDA were patented treatments, usually controlled by major pharmaceutical companies; and all the nonconventional treatments were nonpatentable natural methods, that were generally significantly less toxic than the conventio nal treatments. And that, for me, wasand still isthe key.

See box entitled Books by Dr. Ralph Moss.

ALTERNATIVE & COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIESFEBRUARY 2001

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If youre looking for why alternative therapies are relegated to the junk heap by allopathic medicine, it is because these substances cannot generate megaprofits the way patented pharmaceuticals can.
The laws of economicsthe invisible hand of the marketplacewill make sure that only patented items are approved, because that is where the big bucks are. So, if youre looking for why alternative thera piessuch as hy drazine sulfate, vitamin C, and laetrileare relegated to the junk heap by allopathic medicine, it is because these substances cannot generate megaprofits the way patented pharmaceuticals can. RM: Tell us about your next book, the one about the discoverer of vitamin C. RWM: I met the famous scientist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, [M.D., Ph.D.] He worked at Marine Biological Laboratories, Woods Hole, Massa chu setts, until he died in 1986, and I wrote a book about him, Free Radical. He had won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for the discovery of vitamin C. Dr. Szent-Gyorgyi also discovered the basis of muscle physiology, actin, and myosin, and proposed the free-radical theory of cancerback in 1940! He was an undisputed scientific gen ius. He taught me w hat s cient ific d isco v ery w as real ly about. It was not just about figures or statistics or test tubes, but imagination and play. RM: So, now you were essentially an author and wrote books. Continue your story. RWM: Yes. In the mid 1980s I wrote four or five books in as many years. It was during this time that the allopathic community got bolder and bolder. A kind of demoraliz atio n set in not ju st for mebut for the movement for medical freedom of choice as a whole. During this time there was intense witch hunt against alternative cancer treatments. It culminated in raids on the Dr. Lawrence Burtons Immuno-Augmentative Therapy clinic i n Fr ee por t, T he Bah am as ; an d the | Burzynski antineoplaston institute | in Houston, Texas. In response, however, patients started to protest and demanded a Congressional investigation. In 1987, Congress asked the Office of Technology Assessment [OTA] to write a study of unconventional cancer treatments. When I read the draft report, I saw that alternative cancer treatments were condemned out of hand and half-truths were patched together to justify the Offices a priori conclusions. As a result, a movementto change the OTA reportbegan and, in early 1990, a public hearing was held in Washington, D.C. I attended and spoke at it. It was a very contentious meeting, and the OTA had even called out riot police with Plexiglas shields to defend the Offices members! It was ridiculous, but the tensions had reached the point of potential police violence, because clinics were being shut down and doctors were being thrown in jail. And, for what reason? For practicing alternative cancer therapies and for taking patients that might otherwise have been used for clinical trialssponsored by the major pharmaceutical companies! I was angry, and delivered an extremely passionate speech. [The highlights can be read at www.ralphmoss.com]. In the

Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D., Brooklyn, New York.

The late Lawrence Burton, M.D., served as

director of the clinic.

the Burzynski Institute (referred to here as the antineoplaston institute).

# Democrat, Iowa.

end, it was a great day. Leader after leader in alternative cancer therapy got up and let the OTA have it. In the end, the OTA changed its reportit turned out to be acceptableand those of us in the alternative cancer field had sco red a resounding victory. The n, in November of 1991, Senator T om H ar ki n# cr ea te d the O ffic e of A l t er na t iv e M e di ci n e [O A M ] . I w a s appoin ted to the Ad Hoc A dvi sory Board and later to the fully chartered Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Council. We were able to make recommendations to the United States government on the direc tion of resea rch into alternative medicine. That was a tremendous turning point for alterna tive medicine, and for me personally. I still have Donna Shalalas [former Secretary of Health and Human Services] letter on my wall!

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I thought alternative cancer treatments were a noble, but ultimately lost, cause.
touch alternative medicine with a tenfoo t p ole . L oo k w here w e are to day! Hospitals are lining up to do this type of treatment. There is even a Presidential Commis sion on alterna tive medicine , headed by my colleague, Jim Gordon.** It is likely that in the next few years every medical school will be teaching alternative medicine. Once youre taught in the medical schools, youre in, and thats the future. RM: It must be extremely gratifying for you. RW M: The change is so dra matic. I honestly never dreamed this would happen. I thought alternative cancer treatments were a noble, but ultimately lost, cause. But I just kept working at it because it was the right thing to do, like chipping away at the Berlin Wall. It was during this time, around 1992, that I began to personally consult for cancer patients. For many years, since my Sloan-Kettering days, I had made myself available to patients in an informal way. This evolved into a professional consultation service. Over the course of 8 years, it has evolved into The Moss Reports. RM: What are the Moss Reports? RWM: Th ey a re d etailed wr itten r e p o r t s , ba s e d o n p a t i e nt s s p e c if i c diagnoses. At this moment, I have written nearly 200 diagnosis-based reports. Th ey a re very extensive an d cover many of the problems that patients confront when they have cancer. My ultimate goal is to understand what works a n d w h a t d o e s n t w o r k an d t o h e l p patients make rational decisions whe the r the treatmen t the y choose is co nv e n t i o n al , al t e r na t i v e , o r s o m ewhere in the middle. RM: So, for a person with cancer, you provide useful information? RW M: Exactly. After p atients ha ve received their reports, they can follow up with faxed or e-mailed questions to me. I answer them personally, and a great deal of my time and effort is put into explaining the various treatment optionsboth conventional and nonconventionalto the patient . The service costs $297.00. There is only one charge and it provides a lifetime of service. In the mid-90s, I wrote Questioning Chemotherapy. It was an extremely controversi al book because, among other things, it showed the economic roots of chemotherapy, why it exists as a field, and how it functions within the overall economy. It also disputes the Grand Illus io n o f ch em o t h er ap y t ha t tu m o r shrinkages correlate with increased survival. Unexpectedly, this book had a huge impact in Germany. Hans Nieper, [M.D.] the president of the German Society of O nc o logy, invited me to G ermany t o speak, and this led to my becoming the firs t honorary mem ber of the Germ an Society of Oncology. Since 1997, I have had an intense relationship with German cancer do cto rs, and have coauthored studies with Josef Beuth, [M.D.], president of that society. In some ways, I have found an intellectual home in Germany, as well as discovering a country where the kind of cancer medicine that I believe in is legal and widely practiced. We have no idea in the United States that what we call alternative medicine is fairly convent io n al m e di cin e in mo s t p a rt s o f t he world. RM: Tell us how things are set up in Germany to protect consumers. RWM: The Germans have reasonable and sane protection from fraud. The laws in Germany foster medical pluralism not medical dictatorship. So not only do the Germans have the freedom to try new

Books by Dr. Ralph Moss

In its firs t ye ar, 1992, the OAM was allocated $2.2 million. Now it is called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and its budget is approximately 76 million dollars. I was deeply involved in setting the direction of that office. I am proud to say that just a few months ago, the NCCAM gave a grant of $7.8 mill ion dollars to establish a research center to study complementary and alternative medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School [Ba ltimore, Maryland]. Now think about the implications of this! Johns Hopkins now has a grant more than three times the original budget of OAM. Before we started, do you know what alternative medicine meant? Tijuana! No un iv e rs it y o r m ed i cal sc ho o l w o ul d

**James S. Gordon, M.D., is affiliated with the

Georgetown University Medical School, Washington, D.C.

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An entirely different kind of medicine has evolved in Europe about which allopathic medicine knows nothing.
techni ques, the y have accumulated a great deal of experience as well. I ardently hope the United States will learn from their system, though we will need some key pieces of legi slation passed in the Congre ss to cha nge this. The n we can begin our education. Even if these laws are passed tomorrow, we would still be 25 years behind Germany. RM: What are some of the therapies that German oncologists are currently using that we dont have available here? RWM: There are many. For example, hyperthermia. In the United States, there are a few courageous centers of hyperthermia, such as the Valley Cancer Institute in Los Angele s. But the Germans can use whole-body hyperthermia, and it is widely practiced. They use various forms of fever therapy, similar to Coleys toxins. Ironically, this was discovered in the United States but is virtually unavailable here. Another therapy they use is mistletoe. We now, at long last, have one form of it that is legally available in the United States, and it is called Iscar [from the Weleda company]. But the German doctors have access to dozens of mistletoe preparations. I have been to the Hisc ia resea rc h facility in Switzerland and Weledas manufacturing plant, outside Stuttgart [Germany]. Their products are produced with exquisite care. RM: Is mistletoe an effective remedy for cancer? RWM: Dr. Beuth has shown that lectins isolated from mistletoe definitely have anticancer activity. So yes, it is an active anticancer agent, and a huge number of cancer patients in Germany receive some form of mistletoe treatment. RM: What else do they use besides mistletoe? RWM: They use herbs widely, including some innovative injectable forms. For

Dr. Moss enjoys some antioxidants alone and with a very young friend.

diagnosis, in addition to the conventional methods, they use electrodermal screening or acup uncture accordin g to Voll [called EAV], a marriage of East and West. They have sophistic ated forms of thermography, which measures heat emanations from the human body. Thi s has become an ex tremely refined art . An entirel y different kind of medicine has evolved in Europe about which allopathic medicine knows nothing. RM: Where do you plan to go from here? RWM: Well, I am still learning. I dont think a day goes by that I am not confronted with some new cancer therapy. That is how quickly things are proliferating in this field. While I am curious about all new treatments, I made a decision a long time ago that I would only put my energy into those promising treatments that could ultimately result in scientific data and clinical trials.

RM: Of the alternative protocols and therapies that you have personally investigated, are there any you feel hold special promise? RWM: Well, there is no penicillin, so to speak. But I have always felt that the premise of William B. Coley [inventor of Coleys toxins] holds great promise for cancer patients. And, yes, I have seen remissions based on fever therapy and things similar to that, for example, heating the body hypert herm ia. Heat is a great medicine, and does not usually injure the person. Basically, the cancer cells cannot survive heat very well. Normal cells will

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I like the rigor of conventional medicine research; but I prefer the ideas of alternative medicine.
rebound and cancer tissue will not, so its an important and very promising area. As Ive stated, mistletoe therapy is also very promising, as are some of the herbs, especially when used in conjunction with other treatments. I also think that antioxidants have a big role to play in cancer treatment. Thousands of scientific articles point to the power of antioxidants. Yet most doctors ar e no t t au ght abo ut t his i n me di cal school. A good, powerful diet with high antioxidant values in the food can go a long way toward curing multiple ills , including premature aging. Instead of the governments recommendation of five portions of fruits and vegetables per day, I suggest seven to ten portions. To cancer patients, I recommend tha t they have fewer fruits and more vegetables, because an abundance of sugareven natural sugarsmight have an adverse affect. The foods with the highest antioxidants tend to be berriesblueberries, blackberries, even grapesand the seeds contain powerful antioxidants also. RM: Are antioxidants useful in combination with chemotherapy or radiation? RWM: Yes, even though there are howls of protests from the oncologists. In Antioxidants Against Cancer, I cite about 150 papers relating to the question of concurrent use of antioxidants with chemotherapy or radiation. The vast majority show a positive interaction, and that is where the data point, towards synergyor a mutually enh ancin g effect. In the rese arch of Kedar Prasad, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, in Denver, Colorado, vitamin C by itself had no effect on cancer cells. But when vitamin C was added to radiation, the result was tremendousmuch greater than by radiation itself. So there is tremendous potential synergy between antioxidant therapy and standard oncologic care. RM: What are some other new possibilities for the treatment of cancer? RWM: Well, I strongly believe in im munology as w ell as the work of Nicholas James Gonzalez, [M.D.] of New York City. He has developed the so-called Kelley method of pancreatic enzymes, diet, and detoxification as a treatment for many kinds of cancer. This is being tested against pancreatic canc er in a clini cal trial at Columbia Univers ity [New York City], with a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Anothe r promising treatment is PC SPES, an herbal mixture for prostate cancer developed by Sophie Chen, Ph.D., of the New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York. Dr. Chen took a traditional Chinese herbal formula and refined it into a powerful medicine for prostate cancer. PC SPES has been tentatively accepted as an experimental treatment within orthodox medicine. It is one of the first fruits of a new attitude toward alterna tive treatmentsa more scientific presentation from the alternative side and a more receptive attitude from the allopathic side. Another Chinese-American researcher, Alexander Sun, [Ph.D.] devised a soup to treat his own mother who was suffering from lung cancer. She recovered and he now markets the product as Sun Soup. He and colleagues at Mt. Sinai Hospital in The Bronx, New York, have published studies showing exciting results in lung cancer using this soup. It containsamong other thingsshiitake mushrooms. For brain cancer, I have seen some really outstanding results with Dr. Burzynskis antineoplastons. However, the prejudice against Dr. B runs deep because of past antagonisms. Its going to take some doing to get a fair trial of those treatments. I feel it is most promisin g for brain cancer and lymphoma, and we tell many of our clients about it. Ive also been very excited about a treatment called MTH-68. This is a Newcastle disease virus vaccine developed by Dr. Laszlo [K.] Csatary [M.D.] director of the U ni te d C an cer R es ear ch Ins t it ut e in Arlington, Virginia, and Eva Csatary, [an officer of the Institute]. It is a modification of a virus that is lethal to poultry, but nonpathogenic to humans. In 1999, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an astonishingly favorable piece, by Dr. Csatary, about the complete remission of a brain cancer using this entirely nonconventional treatment modality. It was a first for the AMA. And yet, for 30 years, Dr. Csatary had tried to gain acceptance of this unique treatment, and endured vilification by his peers. Now, at last, he is published. RM: So, has your role been to provide information about the broad spectrum of different protocols? RWM: Yes, and to serve as a bridge between the allopathic and alterna tive communities. I like the rigor of conventional medicine research; but I p refer the ideasthe basic humanistic approachof alternative medicine. So I am trying to take the very promising and less toxic treatments of alternative medicine and subject them to the kind of rigorous testing that will stand up to intense scrutiny. The true home of complementary and alternative medicine should be within the very best medical journals and among the best medical thinkers in the world. n
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Csatary, L.K., Bakacs, T. Use of Newcastle disease virus vaccine (MTH-68/H) in a patient with h igh -gr ad e g lio blas toma. JAM A 281(17):15881589, 1999.