Tamoxifen is among the best-selling anticancer drugs in the world. Tamoxifen is not a harmless or non-toxic supplement. It is a powerful and unpredictable agent, with complex and little understood effects on the body's hormonal balance. The drug itself causes endometrial cancer and cancer of the liver in animals.
cancer and Tamoxifen
Tamoxifen has made a small fortune for its manufacturer, ICI, and their American distributor, Zeneca, Ltd. of Delaware.
Most of the 40 or so chemotherapeutic agents cause baldness by producing a weakened hair shaft that breaks off at the scalp. Hair may take years to return to normal.
Nausea and vomiting are common. Such nausea can lead to weakness, weight loss, dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. Other GI effects are infections of the mucous lining, lips, tongue and mouth. Abdominal colic, constipation, diarrhea are all common. Candida (thrush) is found in 13% of patients. Doxorubicin causes esophagus inflammation in 50%.
Toxic drugs leaking from a needle causes skin necrosis. Severe damage to nerves, tendons and muscle can follow. Surgeons treat this by excising the skin, followed by grafts to repair the damage. Radiation recall: skin, trying to heal from radiation burns, reddens and peels again; blisters and oozing follow. 5-FU can even make people burn from normal sunlight.
Busulfan and other drugs cause discoloration of the skin, weakness, inability to eat and weight loss. Doxorubicin causes darkening of fingers and toes. Bleomycin results in weird pigmentation of the trunk. Thiotepa leads to whitening of the eyelids, nail damage, brittleness, loosening and even loss of nail plates.
Most anti-cancer drugs also cause second cancers, especially of the GI tract, ovaries, and lungs. These are nearly impossible to treat. Tumors continue to develop for years. In one study, 17% of survivors developed unrelated cancer up to 15 years later.
Immune system damage is almost universal. The whole panoply of blood diseases is seen: thrombocytopenia with its loss of white blood cells which guard against infection; severe bone marrow hypoplasia; inability to synthesize fibrinogen; abnormally long bleeding time; granulocytopenia. Resulting infections can be treated with antibiotics, but these in turn can bring their own set of side effects.
Heart damage can occur weeks, months or years after treatment, signalled by rapid heart beat, shortness of breath, distended neck veins, swollen ankles, an enlarged liver and heart. Up to 30% of high-dose Doxorubicin recipients develop congestive heart failure.
Over 40% of patients experience mouth ulcers, pain and bleeding, which can make eating a torture. Other problems: candida, herpes and viral infections, dry mouth, drooling, painful swallowing. Loss of sensation, muscle pain, weakness and changes in senses and motor skills are common. Methotrexate causes stiff neck, headache, nausea, vomiting, fever and lethargy for up to 72 hours. Paralysis, paraplegia and death have also occurred. Vinblastine and vincristine cause double vision, loss of bladder control, impotence, and paralysis of the bowel wall.
Ear damage and hearing loss are associated with cis-platin, which is being used against testicular, ovarian, cervical, head and neck cancers.
Reproductive organs can be profoundly damaged, resulting in sterility.
Given these almost uniformly bad results, where did the idea originate that chemotherapy is of such benefit in cancer? One reason is because toxic drugs often do effect a response. i.e., a partial or complete shrinkage of the tumor. But contrary to popular opinion, this reduction of tumor mass does not prolong expected survival. Sometimes, in fact, the cancer returns more aggressively than before because killing off 99% of a mass fosters the growth of resistant cell lines.
Chemotherapy came out of World War II mustard gas experiments and it remains poison. The AMA routinely condemns natural cancer treatments as quackery. But isn't it time that it dropped its quackbusting crusade and replaced it with an open-minded investigation of such methods?
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