The Hippocratic Oath is often summarized by the idiom “do no harm”. Harm in turn may be caused by action or inaction. Inaction in its purest form is a courageous physician admitting “I don’t know” in response to a patient’s condition and through inaction avoiding making the condition worse.

So much for ideals: Regrettably inaction has taken a perverted form in medical research and practice. “Do no harm” has been mutated into “do not get sued”. What was once considered prudent in the best interests of the patient has become prudency in protection of the practice.

In 2007, Dr. Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Calgary reported that cheap and common chemical, Dichloroacetate (DCA) was effective in shrinking tumours in a wide variety of cancers in rats. Murine (rats,mice) trials have often not been transferrable to human treatments, but the research proved to be a ground shift in common theory about cancer. It turns out that mitochondria (energy producing organelles in the cell) are not damaged beyond repair in cancer cells – as was commonly held – but instead they were only dormant.

Mitochondria are key organelles in cancer prevention and treatment in that they are the ones which effect ‘aptopsis’. Aptopsis is the automatic destruction of cells in a cancerous or damaged state. The resurrection of mitochondria offers a new hope and direction in cancer research.

In the ensuing years, DCA was all but ignored by the pharmacy companies because of its one critical flaw: it can’t be patented. It has long been used for a rare mitochondrial disease in humans is chemically similar to common kitchen vinegar. It has documented side effects but they are orders of magnitudes milder than common chemotherapy agents. Its most noxious characteristic is that it is too common to be of interest to the pharmacy conglomerates.

Dr. Michelakis has left to scrape pans and beg for government funding, which he received. He was able to conduct a limited pre-trial which established that biologically, DCA operated the same way in humans as it did in rats. To run a full human trial will run anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion. Without a human trial, oncologists will not consider it in treatment of their patients… they would consider such an action a violation of their Hippocratic Oath.

The bar that great hospitals and care institutions are built upon is the ‘human trial’. As with all such dogmatic bars, they can be used to build fine institutions but can also be used as a crutch for shortsighted and timid caregivers. A highly expensive and comprehensive human trial makes sense in the world of big pharma with big bucks and big patents to protect their investments.

One might suspect that this paragraph following from the previous will be a call for public funding of DCA research. Indeed, exactly that is needed for DCA best understood and accepted. However, before a full human trial is run, an entire class of patients should get instant access to DCA without having to guess as to whether it will work for them.

Thankfully medical science has evolved far faster than the governing bureaucracies that oversee it. A new generation of Chemosensitivity/Chemoresistance (CR/CS) assay is available. With this test, a small piece of tumour is extracted and tested with various agents and combinations of agents. A report is produced detailing the most effective agents and/or combinations for the given patient.

The practice is gaining acceptance in various cancer specialty treatment centers across North America with encouraging results. Traditional chemotherapy is based upon ‘empiric therapy’ which is to say… a given cancer yielded an automatic commencement of specific chemotherapy, often quite toxic and perhaps unnecessary. CR/CS assays are now compatible with a wide variety of cancers offering doctors precious guidance in which course of treatments will work best. Patients and doctors no longer have to shoot in the dark when selecting the best course of treatment.

If you have the misfortune of a cancer diagnosis don’t expect to receive a CR/CS assay to see if DCA or other agents and combinations thereof are most effective for you; not without a fight at least. The cancer of profit based medicine has metastasized into and masqueraded itself as science and proper procedures.

If your doctor reaches for his/her textbook to find out which course of highly toxic chemotherapy you should be started on, take his/her hand in yours and reassure your doctor: “I know this is very difficult for you. I know I’m asking you to go outside the box and risk the ridicule of your peers. I’d like to ask for a CR/CS assay to test if DCA and other chemicals and combinations will work best for me. If the test doesn’t yield any results, we can still run the other chemotherapy as planned. No one will fault you for exhausting every possible avenue in my care.”

As difficult as it is for a cancer patient to shift focus from their own illness, they must come to realize that their doctors are also suffering from the cancer of profit based medicine. This methodological cancer impinges upon their ability to think freely and holistically about the patient in front of them. Only with the patients and doctors working in conjunction to deal with both cancers will we put into remission the sickness afflicting our medical research establishments. Patients now have it in their power to demand a return to innovation and caring in healthcare by judiciously rejecting healthcare based on legal prudence and avarice.

Further information: http://www.martincwiner.com/dca/