Last April, I was told that I had cancer. While I am old — 83 — and currently feeling well, I chose to forgo the horrors of chemotherapy and just take what time I had left to enjoy my family. What surprised me was the hostility my decision made on the doctors. With her pen poised to jot down the dates I would be available for five-hour sessions while toxic chemicals were poured into my veins, the lady doctor looked at me in shock.

“Without chemo,” she replied “you will be dead within three months.” This was not to be my first encounter with the scare-tactic approach, but I stood firm.

Soon after, I got hold of the book “Knockout: Interviews with Doctors who are Curing Cancer and How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place” by Suzanne Somers. This book opened a whole world of information for me on cancer, it’s causes, cures and the politics that are involved to keep cancer the thriving business it has become. The physicians interviewed explained that chemo is a $200 billion-a-year industry, with some cancer doctors earning an additional $100,000. Without the 600,000-plus new cancer patients annually, hospitals would have to close their doors. As usual, Big Pharma rules the roost along with the Food and Drug Administration, which Big Pharma has in its pocket.

Most disturbing was to read that, in this country, most often we don’t even bother to do chemotherapy sensitivity tests before administering chemo. It is a test done routinely in Germany.  This test determines how effective the chemo will be on your particular type of cancer cell.

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, interviewed in this book, said about pancreatic cancer, “We in the medical world know without a doubt, that chemotherapy absolutely, positively, does nothing, nothing whatsoever and is completely ineffective for pancreatic cancer.”  Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez states, “There are only three kinds of cancer that respond to chemotherapy, if they do, in fact, respond: testicular cancer, some lymphomas and childhood leukemia.”

We all owe it to ourselves and our families to make sure that the money we donate for cancer research has some stipulations. Some demand that further studies regarding “alternative” cures for cancer be considered. Please, read this book.

According to the New York Times, adjusting for the size and age of the population, cancer death rates dropped only 5 percent from 1950 to 2005. In contrast, the death rate from heart disease dropped 64 percent in that time, and for flu and pneumonia it fell 58 percent. The New York Times was especially critical of expensive conventional treatments that subject patients to much mutilation and suffering, yet yield survival improvements of only a few months.

Mary Milliron

Hollandale