Overcoming Cancer

Thank you very much. I'm a medical oncologist. I trained at the National Cancer Institute. I'm also a radiation oncologist. I trained at the University of Pennsylvania. I first got interested in the relationship between cancer and nutrition a while ago, over a quarter of a century ago. And the first book I wrote was called Cancer Nutrition. You could see here.

I got involved in this because two people, several several people encouraged me to do something about cancer. The first one was my grandfather. He was dying of cancer. And he told me to fix the problem.

Well, at the time, even if I had my knowledge about radiation therapy, chemotherapy, I would not have known how to fix his problem later. Vice President Humphrey was referred to me and he was dying, not of his cancer, but a malnutrition. And 40, we now know that 40 percent of all cancer patients don't die of their cancer. They die of malnutrition. And there's another reason to get involved in cancer and nutrition. And the third major reason was a young man who had a very curious kind of lymphoma starting in his prostate gland. He was dying of cancer and he wanted to be kept alive until he saw the birth of his own son. I didn't know what else to do. I gave him chemotherapy. We got rid of all the all the cancer cells that we could detect. And he was still dying. So I at last resort, gave him high doses of vitamins, minerals. This is in the late 70s. The word vitamins, minerals in the late 70s was quite taboo. We gave him vitamins and minerals and he parked right up. As a hardcore scientist, I couldn't believe that. So I risk drew the vitamins and minerals from him. He slumped right back down again. I gave them back to him and he perked up again and taught me a lot of lessons. One, I didn't know anything about vitamins, minerals, and two, I knew very little about nutrition and its relationship to cancer. And that's how the first book was published in 1980. Well, two of every five people will get cancer and two very fine people develop cardiovascular disease, and two of every five of us will be obese. The good news is that genetics is responsible for only a very tiny percentage of all of our chronic illnesses, including cancer, including heart disease. Only 47 percent of all cancers and heart disease. Here's an important graph that really started me thinking about what we are doing in cancer care. This is mortality figures from 1930, all always that up to two