One team’s approach to contending with breast cancer

04-05-1999
by: Robin Harger PhD with input of direct experience provided by Hideh Harger PhD

Introduction
Cancer! The very word strikes fear into the hardest heart of any except possibly for those that have been living with it for some time. Neither the most experienced surgeon nor the most scientifically unsophisticated adult in modern and particularly western societies is spared from its grim implications. Simply put, the word strikes terror into everyone and the majority of people deal with it by the simple expedient of denial. Denial that cancer exists and more importantly denial that it could latch onto oneself and grow. The reason is clear, medical science is extremely limited in its capacity to "cure" cancer with the result that almost every family is touched in some way by the ravages of this degenerative disease. Almost everybody knows somebody that has died of cancer, increasing almost everywhere, in spite of the best efforts of medical science.

In many ways this is a curious state of affairs. In modern societies millions of dollars are spent on capital equipment, training of technical experts and the elaboration of facilities which together process a steady stream of grim-faced cancer victims. The dreadful announcement of a cancer diagnosis comes like a thunderclap from hell stunning the victim into a wooden silence filled with the sound of "why me?" echoing endlessly from the walls of the mind. For every person that escapes mortality due to this disease at least two or three perish, sooner or later. The medical fraternity, surrounded by gleaming equipment and knowing the grim reality make no promises as to the outcome of a proposed course of treatment. The hapless victim is induced into an interminable treatment schedule in which death looms as the almost inevitable outcome. Nothing is complete, everything remains undone. The patient is reduced from a sentient entity to a helpless leaf swirling down a racing torrent, which will soon empty into the black hole of eternity.

Presentation format
The following is an account of our successful attempt to promote healing in our bout with breast cancer. It concentrates only on the conclusions we reached in our, to date, successful effort. The analytical process was ongoing over a period of five months during which time we both devoted all of our efforts to resolve our crisis. For myself, I have a Ph.D. in population ecology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and have worked all my professional life as an environmental analyst. Much of my work had involved efforts to reduce the level of environmental pollutants, particularly carcinogens. For instance I spent a year and a half as a Senior Environmental Analyst with the State of Michigan Toxic Substance Control Commission. Hideh, my wife (the "patient"), also has a Ph.D. but in Genetics from the University of British Columbia and has worked for many years as a high-school teacher responsible for "higher biology" in the International Baccalaureate program.

Since we had both recently retired we were able to devote all of our professional capabilities towards analyzing the literature, both scientific and popular, in order to decide the best approach to take with the problem. Hideh made all of the important decisions involving the critical life-style changes we undertook. Core references are presented at the end of this article. Some may notice that the list is relatively light in regard to the formal scientific literature however, this account is intended to be action oriented and it deliberately eschews scientific obscurantism. A purely technical listing can be provided for those interested. I can be contacted at robinharger@hotmail.com or directly by post at: 36 Vanessa Crescent, Glendowie, Auckland, New Zealand. Anyone vitally interested in this subject should certainly read the majority of the books cited. Strictly self-help and inspirational books, although endlessly valuable, are not cited in the references. A list of these can also be obtained from the authors.

What happened ?
In April 1998, my wife, Hideh, noticed a small lump in her left breast, a tiny thing, barely perceptible. Within a week she had identified a leading specialist in Paris where we were living. A physical examination followed in short order together with a special mammogram and ultrasound, outside the annual schedule that Hideh was otherwise engaged in. Relief followed quickly as the lump was pronounced to be nothing more than a benign thickening of a milk-duct. Everybody relaxed, life flowed on as though nothing had happened.

At the end of August 1998 I retired from UNESCO and by October of that year we had arrived in New Zealand to visit with my family, en route to Canada where we intended to reside. Almost casually Hideh suggested that we should both go for a medical check-up. The GP lost no time in referring Hideh for a mammogram and there it was. The telltale speckle of minute calcium particles scattered around the tumor, which by this time was around one centimeter long and about ½, a centimeter wide. Almost immediately a core and needle biopsy revealed the worst. The cancer had spread into the breast-tissue in several directions as a stage II multi-focal invasion of replicating cells but the lymph nodes appeared to be "clear" to the touch. Hideh was immediately placed on Tamoxifen.

The determination of malignancy was made in mid December 1998. At the time of the mammogram, the consulting surgeon had made a recommendation first of immediate lumpectomy and then, upon reflection, of mastectomy. By the time the results of the biopsy had emerged the Auckland cancer review team had changed the recommended action to a course of high-focus radiation treatment to shrink the tumor before the mastectomy. This was initiated on 12^th January and ran as daily treatments (Monday to Friday) over five weeks. The operation was scheduled for 9 April 1999. The breast was removed together with 4 lymph nodes. The combined treatment schedule had entirely eliminated the in-tissue cancer, no trace could be found. A remnant consisting of "pre-cancerous" cells was found in the milk-duct. There was not even enough of the cancer left to perform a proper estrogen receptor test. A staining technique suggested that the tumor might have been "weakly positive". The best news of all, dependant on the sacrifice of the 4 lymph nodes, was that they were "clear" meaning that no chemotherapy was suggested.

This was astoundingly good news – all we had hoped for in fact, an amazing bonus that confounded our worst fears. What were the factors that contributed to this happy result? The surgeon confidently proposed that the situation was clear: the radiation had entirely eliminated the extra-ductal cancer and the surgery had removed all possibility of further invasion. But was this all there was to it? Obviously not, we had put up a considerable fight for Hideh’s life and the radiation was only one element of what was otherwise a "confounded" experiment.

What we did
The first thing we did upon learning that Hideh had cancer was to reconfirm a visit to New Zealand by our daughters Fara and Kathie. We then took them down to the South Island for a 10-day trip to see the country before Hideh started the radiation therapy. We also immediately started to furnish our house in preparation for staying in New Zealand even though we had a huge cache of furniture already in Canada. In short I built a nest for Hideh in New Zealand rather than in Canada without regard for the additional expense.

Assessment of scientific literature
I then commenced to research breast cancer starting with the mainstream work. It did not take long to realize that most of the "scientific research" generated a simple confusion caused by the fact that individual variation greatly exceeded treatment effects for almost all comparisons that could possibly be made. Long term survival with or without surgery, one chemotheraputic cocktail as opposed to another, radiation therapy before surgery as opposed to after. Redundant ongoing studies versus historical studies and on and on. Statistical comparisons fill the literature and are deployed in publication after publication almost without end. Few clear-cut differences emerged one being that estrogen positive tumors were, by and large, suppressed or limited through tamoxifen, an artificial and carcinogenic drug that is deployed in a strategy of fire fighting fire. Secondly, the treatment effects usually seem to be constrained to consider only the narrow medical protocol under discussion with all other variables such as diet, life-style and so forth free to wander about without any attempt at control.

In short, this means that what people do or do not do in relation to the everyday things under their direct control, is at least as important, if not more so, than the main elements of "scientific" treatment. The main elements falling outside the narrow scientific constraints of treatment are diet and life-style. The conclusion which follows is that if you want to understand what principal factors constitute a survival strategy for dealing with cancer you must carefully study all the elements of practice followed by survivors.

To put this another way, if a marginally effective or even a significantly effective medical treatment for cancer is proposed, the results of this otherwise potentially positive protocol can be confounded if half the subjects follow one kind of life-style and the other half another. Similarly, and more frightening, positive results can be deliberately obscured by increasing the heterogeneity of life-styles within the treatments under study. If one thinks about it for a moment there is obviously more money to be made in looking for a cure for cancer than by curing cancer.

Options
After the diagnosis of cancer is made, people tend to face a major problem in that a fully objective system takes over and delivers industrial-scale treatments in an anonymous and faceless manner. It is not so much that the individual caregivers are faceless, many are on the contrary most kind and considerate. Few however, have any real impact on the course of treatment itself. The patient is thus reduced to the level of a helpless cipher, subject to long-term procedures having little flexibility and great uncertainty in outcome.

In the majority of life-crises it is possible for the individual concerned to pursue alternative strategies in order to obtain some hope of a successful outcome. In the case of cancer, the afflicted individual is presented with very few options whereby they themselves can contribute to achieving a cure. The apparent lack of such options in treating cancer within mainstream medicine constitutes a stress in the case of most people and at the least, a neutral personal response can only favor spread of the degenerative disease.

It is extremely important to note that cancer is a degenerative disease and once it is initiated there are two main modes of intervention available to a person in order to promote healing. Both are essentially reactive but the first encompasses attempts to limit the spread of the affliction through external invasive procedures. In general these include surgery, radiation treatment, chemical poisoning or suppression. However, all directly curative agents also fall into this category which thereby includes plant extracts or artificial chemicals that act directly on cancer cells and the like, laser targeting against individually marked cancer cells and so forth. The second, also reactive, involves deliberate attempts to boost the capacity of the immune system thereby enabling the body itself to eliminate the run-away cancer directly at the cellular level. The modes of treatment here involve the intake of antioxidants, vitamins, the implementation of dietary strategies and so forth.

A third and much less important category includes genetic malformations that, in principal, can be addressed, at least in part, through genetic engineering "patches". An environmental component may also be involved which means that some genetic structures can react unfavorably to specific environmental conditions such as those promoted by pollutants. This latter category may effectively relegate most treatments to the two main approaches indicated in the above paragraph.

In practice, a cancer patient has direct personal access primarily to the second mode of intervention although some fringe treatments may also fall into the first mode. In other words, a cancer patient has almost complete control of methods designed to promote healing through positive management of the immune system and adjustments to life-style. As mentioned above, the objective assessment of the scientific literature suggests that efforts to positively boost the immune system are at least as effective, as the standard medical forms of intervention if not more so. Furthermore, life-style adjustments (including emotional healing) and promotion of the immune system are the only tools available to preempt the development of cancer in the first place.

In view of the foregoing discussion one may safely say that the most important aspect of healing in dealing with cancer is SELF-HELP. This accounts for the comment made by our own oncologist at the point he declared Hideh cancer-free. He stated that he is constantly faced with patients that seemingly have the same external characteristics associated with their breast-cancer (cell-types, degree of invasion, age, state of health and so forth) only to see one progress steadily towards good health and the other go into decline after receiving exactly the same medical treatment. He attributed active self-help to be the primary factor involved in this differentiation.

Dietary supplements
After studying the available literature, the core of which is cited below, we both agreed to adopt a program of dietary supplements. By 25^th December we had decided on the following program of dietary additives taken on a daily basis.

Omega 3 Heart Guard (fish oil) 1000mg capsules 2

Vitamin E, 1000 I.U. capsules 1

Selenium, 100 mcg tablets 1

ENZogenol 50 mg (plus ACE + selenium) (Pinus radiata bark extract)2

Formula V vm-75 multivitimin by Solgar 1

Vitimin C plus bioflavonids by Wagner, 1000mg 6

Beta Carotene, 10,000 IU tablets by Thompsons 1

Coenzyme Q10, 60 mg by Radiance 3

Echinacea drops several

Arnica plus, Naturo Pharm, Homeopathic medicine, PO Box 952, Rotorua, New Zealand (healing after surgery)

One week after radiation began we added:

Evening primrose oil, 1000mg by Biozone 1

(control of hot flashes)

Three weeks before surgery we added:

Kyolic aged garlic extract 1200mg by Wagner 1

Liquid Morinda, by Nature’s Sunshine 1 tablespoon

Aloe Vera juice, by LifeStream 1 tablespoon

Investigation of possible causation
Following the advice of Louise L Hay we examined the factors that might have played a role in the etiology of the disease. On the mental-psychological (self-inflicted) side the following negative events were noted: the departure of Kathie from the household to attend university in Canada, September 1996 (empty nest syndrome); obligatory move from Jakarta to Paris first by me alone in March 1995 then by Hideh in June 1996 (marital separation and social disruption); death of Hideh’s father November 1997; very heavy commitment to African project by me December 1997 – August 1998. The social readjustment rating scale totaled 423 (see page 140, of the book "You can conquer Cancer" by Ian Gawler [in reference list]) where a score of 300 in one year is supposed to be associated with a 50% increase in the chance of developing illness.

On the physical side: partial exposure to environmental carcinogens in Michigan during 1979-1980 due to track-in from my job with the State of Michigan Toxic Substance Control Commission, exposure to growth hormones in chickens eaten in Jakarta from 1981 through 1996; exposure to heavy air pollution in Jakarta 1981-1996.

Cancer and ecology
In a list of 50 countries from throughout the world the lowest rate of breast cancer is shown by Thailand, followed by the Republic of Korea, China, Equador and Japan. The rates per 100,000 people are 1.0, 2.6, 4.7, 5.7 and 6.0 respectively. Women from these countries (Japan is noted particularly) who have accustomed themselves to living in the USA show a breast cancer rate approximately equal to that of the host country as a whole (22.4). The major factor held to account for this shift is of course the change in life-style and diet.

There are two major dietary approaches for dealing with cancer. The first is that propounded by Dr Max Gerson (http://www.gerson.org) based primarily on his experience in Germany where "heavy" diets were held to be responsible for many cancers. In short the Gerson diet involves an intensive period of detoxification of the body using a high-volume through-put of fresh juices, particularly green juices and an associated treatment involving coffee enemas. The overall diet is vegetarian. The second diet (macrobiotic) has been introduced to the West by George Oshawa and is based on the traditional Japanese approach. It enjoys a trial evaluation that ranges into the tens of thousands of years. It is safe and it is associated with low breast cancer incidence. It also has a thoroughly ecological context and follows a deeply environmental approach having an extensive philosophical rational associated with it. Both diets have a proven record of success but I favored the macrobiotic diet because it is more ecological and less clinical than the Gerson diet.

The fact that the environment (pollutants, pesticides etc) causes the bulk of the burden of cancer cases carried by modern civilization is now well understood and will not be extensively documented here (What causes cancer? D.Trichopoulos, F.P. Li, and D.J. Hunter, Scientific American 09/96 http://www.sciam.com/0996issuetrichopoulos.html) . Macrobiotics (macro=great, biotic=life) deals with this fact directly by advocating a return to the basic elements of diet that served humankind directly, within the context of a tight evolutionary embrace, for tens of thousands of years. Macrobiotics thus embraces organic production of all foodstuffs. It cautions that one should eat nothing from a can or a packet, that dairy products, red meat (including chicken and eggs) should be passed-by. It welcomes a little fish, a moderation of vegetable proteins and a rational balance amongst the vegetable world of roots, stems, leaves and fruits based on flavors (sour, sweet, pungent, salty, bitter) as well as one involving the concept of effects classified as expanding (lettuce) and contracting (turnip) or yin and yang. The nightshades are discouraged, they are too yin, too many alkaloids (think of green potatoes). It favors fermented grains (miso) and soy (tempe) and sea vegetables. It frowns on refined products including sugar and white flour. It lords the grain as a staple to cover 50% or so of the daily intake (wheat, rye, millet, barley, rice, corn, quinola, buckwheat). It actually forbids nothing and encourages you to eat the food you like and the food that make you feel "in balance". The last is a theoretically difficult concept but a simple notion in practice. If one eats predominantly brown rice or indeed any of the grains as whole living foods for two to three weeks, supplemented with other vegetables at choice but with a dominance of 50%-60% grains, one soon obtains balance. You know it when you have achieved it and you know it by the negative effect that is instantly detected by the body when a disagreeable item is added, for instance white flour or red meat. It is not a matter of discussion, it is a simple bio-physiological fact. If one never tries this exercise in discipline and self-control balance can never be achieved and all discussion about this state is pointless. Why whole living grains? Simply because these are the original products of the first agriculture and as such they have been tried and tested over tens of thousands of years. In this sense grains are a safe and conservative food and one furthermore, that may have been "in service" long enough to constitute a core of nutrition around which the human body has evolved. When a wheat kernel is broken (for instance) it dies and commences to oxidize. At the limit of exposure flour becomes rancid and totally inedible. The process towards those undesirable end-state starts as soon as the grain of wheat is broken. What is the solution? Buy your own grain mill and eat fresh whole foods. Many models are available on the market.

In keeping with the philosophy of ecological conservatism, we also tried to ensure as far as possible, that our diet both within and among days was as varied as possible. This was in keeping with the notion that the hunter-gatherers preceding the emergence of agriculturists must have subsisted on diverse diets (suggested by Susan Cafoncelli, health consultant, West Virginia) . This approach might seem to be somewhat in contradiction of a standard suggested by macrobiotics to the effect that clean up should be best accomplished through intake of a consistent brown rice based diet. Both courses of action are time-tested and must have their merits. As an ecologist trying to effect a traditional and healing diet, the precedence of following what might encompass aspects of the earlier approach, had the stronger appeal.

The balance in a meat and potatoes meal with lettuce can be seen instantly: meat is excessively yan and potatoes plus lettuce are together excessively yin. The combination is balanced technically but the components are too extreme, both elements straying far from the golden mean represented by whole grains and in particular brown rice. Similarly the Gerson diet can be seen as a yin extreme which is most effective in dealing with yang-based cancers.

In mid January we contacted a natural dietitian (Mary Belsy of Auckland) and after two interviews determined that the cancer afflicting Hideh was undoubtedly a yin (expansive) variety but caused by a yang (compressed) digestive characteristic. Mary recommended a macrobiotic-type diet with a deficit in yang components (rye, buckwheat, parsnip, burdock and the like). She recommended occasional intake of white wine (a yin or expansive component) along with fresh fruit juice. Hideh immediately started taking a 10 oz glass of mixed vegetable and fruit juice daily made from local in-season, organically grown produce which was also laced with local garden-ginger. Since Hideh was not able to stomach bitter juice it was not possible to move onto an intake of pure green juices such as broccoli. The juice was initially prepared with a centrifugal juicer but following the caution recommended by Dr Gerson we soon moved to a masticating type juicer (Champion). It must be noted that the time required to prepare fresh juice on a daily basis is considerable since the ingredients must be carefully selected and the machine has to be washed-down immediately. A fresh juice diet is not a casual commitment. Furthermore, fruit juice is considered to be extremely yin by the traditional macrobiotic community and not, in general, highly recommended.

The admonition made by macrobiotics to the effect that intake should be focused on produce from the immediate environment and "in-season" is not without ecological justification. All natural communities are closely adjusted to the environment in which they find themselves and it may be readily claimed that the human body balances itself most readily when in partakes directly of the life force in its direct surroundings.

In the last week of January we sought out the help of a macrobiotic chef. Mr. Bevin Kaan of Bethels Beach Auckland, trained in the Macrobiotic Institute of Switzerland, and he kindly provided us with a five-day course in which he helped to prepare macrobiotic meals at midday and in the evening. This training was necessary because many of the ingredients that are used are not immediately familiar to people trained in either Middle Eastern cooking or in western cuisine. In any event as of the last week in January we moved onto a macrobiotic diet, got rid of all plastic containers in the house and generally tried to minimize our exposure to environmental carcinogens. We abandoned the Auckland municipal water supply (pipes lined with blue epoxy resin plastic) in favor of containers of spring water, made all our food purchases from organic sources only.

For years I had dealt with environmental problems in a public context. Analyzing such problems as that faced by the township of Adrian in southern Michigan where epoxy resin curing agent "Curene", a contact carcinogen, found its way into the environment, where PBB, PCB, TRIS and other environmental carcinogens caused widespread pollution as they escaped from industrial control. In later years I pushed the idea of sustainable development for the community in general thinking somehow that I was above the fray. Alas, bitter experience has taught me otherwise and I now firmly recommend the macrobiotic way as the logical path to sustainable personal development and in the end, to world peace.

For the rest I commend those interested to the reference list appended to this action-report.

JREH

References

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