When is a Person “Dead”?

Posted on September 15, 2025 by marcia

NOTE: This is a long article, but the topics covered warrant consideration in depth:

The Hidden Crisis in Organ Transplantation — Brain Death Diagnosis and Ethical Failures

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

The concept of “brain death,” introduced in 1968 to enable organ harvesting, has never been proven equivalent to actual death — it merely defines an irreversible coma
Documented cases exist of “brain dead” patients who were conscious, including some who mouthed “help me” as their organs were nearly harvested
Global organ shortages have fueled a black market, with an estimated 5% to 20% of transplants involving illegal procurement and added pressure to lower diagnostic standards for “brain death”
Recent federal investigations found serious failures in the U.S. organ donation system: 29.3% of reviewed cases showed troubling signs, and 20.8% of patients had neurologic activity incompatible with procurement — yet transplant coordinators still pushed to proceed
Safer, ethical alternatives exist — such as natural therapies like DMSO that have revived “brain dead” patients and restored organ function, removing the need for transplant

When I first got my driver’s license years ago, they asked if I wanted to be an organ donor. Having learned to be skeptical of institutions and having heard some concerning stories, I said no. But I felt conflicted about it — I believe in treating others as you’d want to be treated, and if I needed a transplant someday, I’d desperately want someone willing to help save my life.

Since then, I’ve discovered much more disturbing information about organ transplantation that completely shifted my perspective. Recently, RFK Jr. did something I never expected — he formally announced that there were widespread failures in our organ donation system’s ethical safeguards.¹ This opened the floodgates for others to start discussing the grim reality that organs were being taken from people who were still alive.²

Video Link

The Value of Organs

Over time, medicine transformed our cultural relationship with death — from an accepted, intimate companion to a feared, medicalized enemy to be defeated (e.g., one author traces this shift through six historical stages, arguing that medicalization stripped individuals of autonomy and commodified death itself).³

Medicine fueled this transformation by performing modern “miracles,” such as reviving the dead through cardiac resuscitation and transplanting organs — crossing what was once an absolute boundary between life and death. In doing so, it gained immense public trust and the ability to justify exorbitant costs.

This cultivated the myth that medicine can conquer death. Over time, it became seen not just as a means of survival, but as something to be continuously consumed in the name of “health” — transforming it into a highly profitable industry that now accounts for over 17.6% of all U.S. spending.

Because viable donor organs (a central crux of medicine’s dominion over death) are so limited, transplants quickly became incredibly valuable — costs range from $446,800 to $1,918,700 depending on the organ.⁴ Given how desperate people are for organs and how much money is involved, it hence seemed reasonable to assume some illegal harvesting would occur.

Over the years, as demand for organs continues to increase, I’ve continually found disturbing evidence that this was happening.⁵ This includes:

•Individuals being tricked into selling a kidney (e.g., in 2011, a viral story discussed a Chinese teenager who did so for an iPhone 4 — approximately 0.0125% of the black market rate for a kidney, after which he became septic and his other kidney failed leaving him permanently bedridden,⁶ and in 2023, a wealthy Nigerian politician being convicted for trying to trick someone into donating a kidney for a transplant at an English hospital).⁷

•A 2009⁸ and 2014⁹ Newsweek investigation and a 2025 paper highlighted the extensive illegal organ trade,¹⁰ estimating that 5% of global organ transplants involve black market purchases (totaling $600 million to $1.7 billion annually), with kidneys comprising 75% of these due to high demand for kidney failure treatments and the possibility of surviving with one kidney (though this greatly reduces your vitality).

Approximately 10% to 20% of kidney transplants from living donors are illegal, with British buyers paying $50,000 to $60,000, while desperate impoverished donors (e.g., from refugee camps or countries like Pakistan, India, China, and Africa) receive minimal payment and are abandoned when medical complications arise, despite promises of care. To quote the 2009 article:¹¹

“Diflo became an outspoken advocate for reform several years ago, when he discovered that, rather than risk dying on the U.S. wait list, many of his wealthier dialysis patients had their transplants done in China. There, they could purchase the kidneys of executed prisoners.

In India, Lawrence Cohen, another UC Berkeley anthropologist, found that women were being forced by their husbands to sell organs to foreign buyers to contribute to the family’s income, or to provide for the dowry of a daughter. But while the WHO estimates that organ-trafficking networks are widespread and growing, it says that reliable data are almost impossible to come by.”

Note: These reports also highlighted that these surgeries operate on the periphery of the medical system and involve complicit medical professionals who typically claim ignorance of its illegality (e.g., a good case was made that a few U.S. hospitals, like Cedars Sinai were complicit in the trade).

•A 2004 court case where a South African hospital pleaded guilty to illegally transplanting kidneys from poorer recipients (who received $6,000 to $20,000) to wealthy recipients (who paid up to $120,000).^12,13

•Many reports of organ harvesting by the Chinese government against specific political prisoners.^{14,15,16,17,18} This evidence is quite compelling, particularly since until 2006,¹⁹ China admitted organs were sourced from death row prisoners (with data suggesting the practice has not stopped).²⁰

Note: Harvesting organs from death row prisoners represents one of the most reliable ways to get healthy organs immediately at the time of death (which is one of the greatest challenges in transplant medicine).

•I’ve read reports of organ harvesting occurring in Middle East conflict zones,²¹ by ISIS and in the Kosovo conflict,²² and with drug cartels.²³

Note: Many other disturbing cases of illicit organ harvesting are discussed in more detail here. Likewise, many other valuable tissues (e.g., tendons and corneas) can be harvested from dead bodies. Significant controversy also exists with the ethics of how these are collected (e.g., the respect given to the bodies or how profit focused that industry is).

When Consciousness Gets Trapped

Different parts of the brain control various aspects of our being, so people who are still conscious can sometimes completely lose control of their bodies or their ability to communicate — known as Locked-in syndrome.²⁴

The most famous case involves Martin, a 12-year-old who fell ill with meningitis and entered a vegetative state.²⁵ He was sent home to die, but stayed alive. At 16, he began regaining consciousness, became fully aware by 19, and at 26, a caregiver finally realized he was conscious and got him a communication computer. He eventually married.

Note: Two things from his memoir stuck with me: years of being haunted by his mother once saying, “I hope you die” in frustration, and him sharing, “I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney” because the care center had him watch Barney reruns every day, assuming he was vegetative.²⁶

When someone is dying, certain functions are lost before others. It’s frequently observed in palliative care that touch and hearing are the last senses to disappear²⁷ (e.g., studies show hearing persists at the end of life).²⁸ This is why I sometimes tell grieving families their “brain-dead” loved one might still hear their voice or feel their touch.

Note: Many people who’ve been resuscitated report “near-death experiences” where they were aware of their surroundings when their brain was supposedly “dead,” suggesting other senses may persist during brain death.²⁹

The Problem with Brain Death

Since organs rapidly lose viability once someone dies, the only way to ethically obtain them is from someone who has “died” but whose body is still keeping organs alive — someone who is brain dead.

Brain death was defined by a 1968 Harvard Medical School Committee³⁰ report called “A Definition of Irreversible Coma.”³¹ They stated their purpose was to “define irreversible coma as a new criterion for death” for two reasons: the burden of caring for brain-damaged patients and avoiding controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation.

However, the committee was confident about diagnosing “irreversible coma” but tentative about calling this “death.”³² A Harvard ethicist noted: “That link, between being irreversibly unconscious and being dead, has never really been made in a convincing way.”

The criteria included no response to stimuli, no breathing, no reflexes, no brainwaves, and replication after 24 hours. Though rapidly adopted, it was immediately contested by doctors who felt harvesting organs from someone with a heartbeat was unethical, worried about diagnostic errors, and suspected the primary motivation was avoiding long-term care costs and obtaining organs.³³

Note: Recent studies show fMRIs demonstrate intentional brain activity in 20% of vegetative patients,³⁴ and 25% of patients with no physical ability to respond can still activate brain regions when spoken to.³⁵

The New York Times recently published an essay advocating for broadening the definition of death, arguing: “We need to broaden the definition of death … So long as the patient had given informed consent for organ donation, removal would proceed without delay … We would have more organs available for transplantation.”³⁶

When ‘Brain Dead’ Patients Are Actually Conscious

Compelling cases demonstrate these concerns are valid. Zack Dunlap, a 21-year-old pronounced brain dead after an ATV accident, was about to have his organs harvested when a nurse relative tested his reflexes and got responses.³⁷ The transplant was cancelled, and Zack fully recovered. Crucially, Zack was fully conscious throughout:

“The next thing I remember was laying in the hospital bed, not being able to move, breathe, couldn’t do anything, on a ventilator, and I heard someone say, I’m sorry he’s brain-dead … I tried to scream, tried to move, just got extremely angry.”

Jahi McMath, a thirteen-year-old declared brain dead after tonsillectomy complications, was kept on life support by her family despite court orders.³⁸ Nine months later, she had regained brainwaves and blood flow to the brain, and moved in response to verbal commands.

More cases include Lewis Roberts (began breathing hours before organ harvesting),³⁹ Ryan Marlow (diagnosis reversed after wife’s insistence),⁴⁰ Colleen Burns (awoke on the operating table and was later found by HHS to have been repeatedly misdiagnosed),⁴¹ and Trenton McKinley (13-year-old who recovered before scheduled donation).⁴²

There were also cases like Steven Thorpe (declared brain dead by four doctors, parents refused organ donation, and he awoke two weeks later),⁴³ and Gloria Cruz (husband refused to allow withdrawal of care, and she recovered).⁴⁴

Note: A recent study found that over 30% of brain-injured patients deemed unrecoverable would have partially or fully recovered had life support not been withdrawn.⁴⁵

Harvesting from Conscious Patients

Most alarming are cases where harvesting was attempted on conscious patients. Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, who’d repeatedly shown signs of life but was sedated, was brought to the operating room with eyes open.⁴⁶ Tears streamed down his face as he mouthed “help me” and thrashed to avoid surgery. The surgeon refused to proceed, but the coordinator attempted to find an alternative surgeon.

Note: In a similar case, a woman diagnosed as brain dead was in fact “locked-in” and able to hear everything around her, including a doctor telling medical students her husband was “unreasonable” for being unwilling to sign away her organs to people who could benefit from them, and that it was fine to speak this way around her as she was brain dead.⁴⁷

There have also been cases like James Howard-Jones, who woke up just before life support was to be withdrawn for organ harvesting.⁴⁸ Additionally, several patients including a three-month-old boy,⁴⁹ a ten-month-old boy, a 15-year-old girl,⁵⁰ and a 65-year-old woman,⁵¹ who were all declared “brain dead” had their life support turned off to facilitate peaceful transitions, but instead unexpectedly survived and recovered.

Note: I suspect these stories are more common than we are led to believe (e.g., after I published this story on Substack, readers came forward to share instances of “brain-dead” children or patients who subsequently fully recovered).

Federal Investigations Expose Systematic Failures

Regional organ procurement organizations facilitate transplants under the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN). Due to chronic organ shortages (roughly 5,600 die yearly awaiting organs),⁵² OPTN faced scathing Congressional hearings⁵³ and DOJ investigation.⁵⁴ They found OPTN had become corrupt and dysfunctional:

•20% to 25% of kidneys lost during transport

•Never collecting 80% of eligible organs

•Poor training leaving staff unable to determine brain death

•Retaliating against whistleblowers

•Misinforming families and seeking consent from impaired relatives

•Medicare fraud and altering causes of death

As such, Congress passed a 2023 law breaking up OPTN’s monopoly.⁵⁵

The HRSA Investigation Bombshell

The Health Resources and Services Administration conducted an extensive investigation after OPTN refused to release critical records. While OPTN’s review found “no major concerns,” HRSA’s investigation revealed disturbing patterns.

RFK Jr. made the unprecedented decision to publicly release these horrifying findings^56,57 despite knowing it would undermine trust in organ donations. The partially redacted report found:⁵⁸

“HRSA found a concerning pattern of risk to neurologically injured patients … Multiple patients were documented as evincing pain or discomfort during peri-procurement events after OPO staff had either failed to adequately assess neurologic function or had documented findings inconsistent with successful organ recovery without change to the plan.”

The scale was shocking: Of the authorized but not recovered cases (meaning something went awry at the last minute), HRSA found 103 (29.3%) had concerning features, including 73 patients (20.8%) showing neurologic status incompatible with organ procurement. At least 28 (8.0%) patients had no cardiac time of death noted, suggesting potential survival.

Note: ANR stands for “authorized but not recovered” — something went wrong at the last minute (like the donor reviving) that stopped the harvesting.

The report revealed systematic misreporting of drug intoxication cases, where depressed mental status from drugs was being mistaken for permanent brain injury.

Mainstream Media Confirms the Horror

A July 2025 New York Times investigation corroborated these findings:⁵⁹

“Fifty-five medical workers in 19 states told The Times they had witnessed at least one disturbing case … coordinators persuading hospital clinicians to administer morphine, propofol and other drugs to hasten the death of potential donors.”

One surgical technician described a crying, alert woman being sedated anyway: “I felt like if she had been given more time on the ventilator, she could have pulled through … I felt like I was part of killing someone.” Dr. Wade Smith, a UCSF neurologist, concluded: “I think these types of problems are happening much more than we know.”

Living with Transplants

Transplants aren’t the miracle they’re portrayed as. Failure rates are significant:

•Lung — 10.4% (within a year),⁶⁰ 72% (within 10 years)⁶¹

•Heart — 7.8% (within a year),⁶² 46% (within 10 years)⁶³

•Kidney — 5% (within a year),⁶⁴ 46.4% (within 10 years)⁶⁵

•Liver — 7.6% (within a year),⁶⁶ 32.5% (within 10 years)⁶⁷

Patients must follow lifelong regimens of immune-suppressing medications costing $10,000 to $30,000 annually, with many serious side effects. Comprehensive vaccination is also typically required, which became controversial during COVID-19 when people were denied transplants for refusing COVID vaccines (and in some cases then died from those required vaccines).

What’s most abhorrent is that the COVID vaccine could actually increase transplant rejection risk. I received numerous reports from my network of this and found a paper documenting 44 cases of corneal graft rejections following COVID vaccines,⁶⁸ plus similar results with kidney transplants (36 cases)⁶⁹ and liver rejections (12 cases).⁷⁰

Note: DMSO has been shown to prevent rejection of certain tissue grafts, to potentiate many pharmaceutical drugs (e.g., organ rejection medications) thereby allowing lower and safer doses to be used, to greatly reduce autoimmune responses (hence treating many rheumatologic diseases), and to restore failing organs — all of which suggests it could greatly improve outcomes for transplant recipients.

The Emotional Costs of Transplants

Transplant recipients often face intense psychological stress — from the uncertainty of waiting for a donor, to the ever-present risk of organ rejection, and the lifelong burden of managing complex medical needs.

One of the most overlooked yet profound sources of stress is the phenomenon of personality, preference, and memory transference from donor to recipient. Numerous documented cases describe recipients acquiring new traits — such as food preferences, talents, or even shifts in sexual orientation — that align closely with those of their donor, despite having no prior knowledge of them.

In some extraordinary instances, recipients have reported memories of events they never experienced, including details of a donor’s death that later contributed to solving crimes.

The psychological impact of integrating these unexpected traits — essentially, elements of another person’s identity — can be deeply unsettling. Moreover, research and clinical observation suggest that recipients who resist or struggle to accept these changes may experience more complications post-transplant. Likewise, we frequently observe an immense amount of transference with organs, and it is often necessary to release the trapped emotions from the organ to improve transplant outcomes.

These observations raise complex questions about the nature of consciousness, memory, and identity. They also bring ethical concerns to the forefront — particularly if tangible spiritual consequences exist for receiving organs that are harvested without the donor’s informed consent.

What Needs to Change

Many of the long-standing issues within the U.S. organ transplantation system stem from the lack of accountability and competition within the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN).

For decades, OPTN has operated with minimal oversight, resulting in little incentive to improve donor identification protocols (e.g., recognizing the “brain dead” patients who are still alive), invest in better diagnostic tools, or modernize organ collection practices so that fewer vital organs are lost. To address these systemic problems, meaningful reforms are urgently needed:

•Improved diagnostic standards — Incorporate advanced methods for assessing consciousness — such as functional MRI (fMRI) and other neuroimaging techniques — that can detect subtle signs of awareness often missed by traditional evaluations.

•Independent oversight — Establish clear separation between organ procurement organizations and clinical care teams. All potential donor cases should be reviewed by independent ethics and medical committees.

•Legal safeguards — Enact stronger legal protections, including mandatory waiting periods, second medical opinions from independent professionals, and family rights that cannot be overridden under pressure.

•Transparency and accountability — Implement rigorous oversight mechanisms, robust whistleblower protections, and enforceable penalties for organizations that violate ethical standards.

More importantly, viable alternatives to conventional organ transplantation must be prioritized — because as long as demand far outpaces supply, unethical practices will inevitably emerge. Fortunately, several promising solutions are already within reach:

•Natural and regenerative therapies — Throughout my career, I have seen many marginalized “alternative” therapies restore failing organs. Likewise, physician readers have reported DMSO saved livers and lungs, allowing their patients to be taken off the transplant list.

•Bioengineered organs — Cutting-edge research is advancing the development of synthetic and lab-grown organs, which may be commercially available within the next decade.

•Living donor solutions — In many cases, a healthy living donor — often a family member — can safely donate nonessential organs such as a kidney, significantly reducing the need for deceased donor transplants.

•Reversal of “Brain Death” — Intravenous DMSO has shown remarkable success in reviving patients diagnosed as brain dead or in severe neurological states (and requiring a lifetime of costly medical care). Despite decades of clinical evidence supporting its potential, mainstream medicine has largely ignored this low-cost therapy.

Note: Many documented cases of organ harvesting from paralyzed but conscious individuals closely mirror scenarios in which DMSO has led to full neurological recovery.

In short, recent federal investigations have exposed cracks in a system that can no longer be ignored. We now have a critical opportunity not only to reform a deeply flawed process, but also to champion ethical, innovative alternatives that honor the dignity of every human life.

It is up to each of us — patients, providers, policymakers, and citizens — to ensure that medical decisions are made in the true best interest of the individual, not driven by the pressures of organ demand. Organ donation touches upon one of the most sacred aspects of being human, and now is the time to make sure it is honored.

Author’s Note: This is an abridged version of a longer article which goes into greater detail on the points mentioned here (e.g., the therapies which can restore failing organs, the extensive body of data consciousness resides in the organs, and methods for releasing trapped emotional trauma). That article, along with additional links and references can be read here.

A Note from Dr. Mercola About the Author

A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician from the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate AMD’s exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and am grateful to share it. I also respect AMD’s desire to remain anonymous since AMD is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD’s work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.

from: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/09/12/organ-transplant-brain-death-diagnosis-ethical-failures.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20250912&foDate=true&mid=DM1805808&rid=386526050

Autoimmunity and Treatment

Posted on August 22, 2025 by marcia

What They Don’t Tell You About Autoimmune Disorders

and the dangers of conventional rheumatologic approaches to disease

A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR

AUG 07, 2025

•Treating illnesses by suppressing symptoms frequently precipitates far more severe diseases which have rippled out throughout our society.

•The primary management for most autoimmune conditions is through symptom suppressing drugs, which frequently have significant toxicity.

•In most cases, autoimmune disorders and inflammatory joint conditions have an underlying cause, such as a chronic undiagnosed stealth infection or food allergy, which when addressed significantly improve the condition.

•Many factors in life that we can control and do not require prescriptions to address (e.g., diet, stress or sleep) directly contribute to autoimmunity and, when addressed, improve it.

•This article will review some of the key steps which can be taken to improve autoimmune disorders and reduce one’s reliance upon toxic medications.

Autoimmune conditions have become one of the most common and stubborn health challenges of our time. While conventional medicine often treats them as mysterious immune system malfunctions—managed primarily with harmful steroids and other immunosuppressants —there’s increasing evidence that many of these diseases are not random. Rather, they’re signals of deeper dysfunctions in the body—many of which are tied to the modern lifestyle we’ve come to accept as normal.

Lifestyle Contributions to Autoimmunity

Many things in our lives that we have control over significantly affect our predisposition to autoimmunity:

Sleep—I have previously written about the profound importance of sleep and how many different illnesses are linked to poor sleep. In practice, we frequently find that patients with autoimmune conditions also have disrupted sleep cycles, and these improve once that is addressed (e.g., by improving sleep hygiene and avoiding blue light).
Note: the treatments for sleeping issues like insomnia are discussed further here.

Sunlight—Since the sun has no commercial lobby to advocate for it, the medical field demonizes sunlight as a cause of cancer despite a deficiency of the sun and sunlight being tied to a wide range of medical conditions (including cancers) and making individuals 60% more likely to die. A loss of sunlight exposure is also tied to many autoimmune conditions (e.g., multiple sclerosis). As such, we frequently find autoimmune patients improve from resuming healthy sunlight exposures (likewise, I suspect this partly explains why ultraviolet blood irradiation benefits so many different autoimmune conditions).
Note: appropriate sunlight exposure (e.g., going outside early in the morning and having the sunlight touch your face without being obstructed by glass) is also very helpful for reestablishing the circadian rhythm and restoring healthy sleep.

Exercise—Many of the benefits of exercise arise from the fluid circulation it creates in the body (as fluid stagnation underlies many illnesses—many of which we suffer from due to our sedentary lifestyle. This perspective in turn, is corroborated by the Chinese Medical viewpoint that blood stasis causes autoimmunity and that either treating blood stasis or zeta potential (which underlies both microclotting and lymphatic stagnation) frequently improves autoimmune conditions.Note: exercise and eliminating fluid stagnation frequently improve insomnia. Likewise, sunlight exposure is a critical driver of fluid circulation throughout the body, all of which illustrates how intertwined many of the key lifestyle factors we routinely ignore are to our health.

Diet—Food allergens such as wheat, dairy, and nightshades frequently contribute to autoimmune conditions (particularly arthritis), and many have found food elimination diets that identify the reactive allergen to improve their condition significantly. Additionally, in many cases, allergies arise from deficient stomach acid, as without sufficient stomach acid, proteins are often not fully broken down (allowing intact allergens to enter circulation) and triggers acid reflux (due to top of the stomach only closing when sufficient stomach acid is present), which then irritates the lungs.
Note: many of the issues with gluten (e.g., autoimmunity or weight gain) are not experienced in countries like Italy that use more natural forms of wheat.

Stress—is well known to predispose one to autoimmune disorders and flares (e.g., 80% of autoimmune patients report an unusually stressful situation prior to their disease onset, while stress disorders increased the risk of autoimmune disorders by 46%-129%).
Note: some patients will not respond to a rheumatologic drug, until they eliminate the stress in their lives.

The Global Loss of Vitality

If you review the early history of medicine, it is striking:

•How profoundly damaging many of the early western medical remedies were (e.g., the smallpox vaccine or mercury).

•How much healthier people were and how much more effective many natural therapies were in the past than they are now.

This second point prompted me to ask older doctors (from various medical schools) if they had observed a general decline in human vitality in the patients they saw at the start of their careers compared to the end, and all of them shared that they had. Additionally:

•They noted that beyond patients becoming much sicker and having conditions they’d never seen before, it was also much harder to treat them as each therapy they used had shifted from making a dramatic improvement to a more minuscule one, which required numerous successive treatments to bring about an improvement.

•They typically attributed this shift to a loss in human vitality. They cited a variety of correlates (e.g., the average human body temperature dropping, people becoming less able to mount fevers, infants being less able to produce a brisk cry, or increasing degrees of fluid stagnation in their patients).

Note: typically this decline in vitality proceeds in a linear fashion and then spikes at certain times (e.g., after the introduction of the smallpox vaccine, the 1986 law which granted immunity to vaccine manufacturers and led to a rapid proliferation in the vaccine schedule, and after the COVID vaccines). In each case, this increase in disease gets normalized and forgotten by the next generation of doctors (who entered practice after the last wave of sickness had become the “new normal”).

Likewise, many datasets corroborate this steady decreasing vitality in humanity over the decades (e.g., we’ve witnessed a continual increase in autoimmune disorders). Having extensively explored this topic, we believe much of it is due to modern technology (e.g., vaccines, chronic chemical exposures or heavy metal toxicity, dentistry and surgical scars, EMFs, and widespread circadian rhythm disruption). Many of these, in turn, share a common thread—creating fluid stagnation throughout the body.

Note: After thousands of years, around 1830, blood stasis suddenly came to be viewed as a primary cause of disease in Chinese Medicine, which occurred shortly after the smallpox vaccine (which caused many severe injuries resembling blood stasis), which was introduced in China in 1805.

Systemic Suppression

One of the central criticisms of Allopathic (Western) medicine by natural schools of medicine has been that anytime an external agent is used to forcefully change a process which is unfolding within the body (rather than aiding the body’s ability to resolve it) you run the risk of a minor temporary issue being exchanged for a severe chronic one—especially when this is repeatedly done throughout the course of someone’s life. In some cases, this risk is very justified (e.g., in a life-threatening emergency or with a relatively safe drug that has limited long-term complications). At the same time however, a general unwillingness to acknowledge this issue pervades Allopathic medicine.

I’ve thus never forgotten a conference in the 1970s at which one of the world’s leading homeopaths convened a panel to discuss the likely consequences of modern medicine routinely suppressing symptoms (e.g., aggressively using fever suppressing medications or preventing childhood febrile illnesses with vaccination).
Note: studies have repeatedly linked preventing measles, mumps, and chickenpox to severe cancers later in life.

At that conference, building upon the recent mass introduction of suppressive steroids, they correctly predicted that if this suppression continued to increased, in the decades to follow:

•We would see a global shift from less severe illnesses to more severe ones.

•That this suppression would cause physical illnesses to be pushed deeper into the body and be replaced with psychiatric illnesses, and in time spiritual ones (particularly when the psychiatric illnesses were also suppressed with medications)—all of which would dovetail with people being willing to do crazier and crazier things.

Now, everyone has gradually become habituated to patients “just being” sicker and sicker, and that not much can be done about it.

Suppressive Antibiotics

While steroids are one of the medications most associated with “suppressing” illness, many others are too. For example, for years, many natural medicine practitioners (e.g., homeopaths) also told me they’d frequently seen antibiotics “treat” an acute infection but turn it into a chronic one. I wasn’t sure what to make of this (as microbiome disruption could partially but not fully explain it), then I discovered something similar existed in Chinese Medicine:

The concept of Latent Heat is very old in Chinese medicine, having been mentioned for the first time in the ‘Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine’. Latent Heat occurs when an external pathogenic factor penetrates the body without causing apparent symptoms at the time; the pathogenic factor penetrates into the Interior, and ‘incubates’ there, turning into interior Heat. This Heat later emerges with acute symptoms of Heat: when it emerges, it is called Latent Heat.

Note: in modern Chinese Medicine, antibiotics and vaccines are now proposed as sources of latent heat.

Much later, when I read Cell Wall Deficient Forms: Stealth Pathogens all of this finally made sense. This book argued that when bacteria are exposed to lethal stressors, particularly cell wall destroying antibiotics, while most will die, some will instead enter a primitive survival mode and transform into misshapen cell wall deficient (CWD) “mycoplasma like” bacteria which can radically change their size or morphology (and hence look very different). While these bacteria are hard to detect (and when seen, due to no one knowing they “exist,” are often mistaken for cellular debris and ignored), with the correct techniques they can be detected. In turn, the book provides a wealth of evidence that CWD bacteria:

•Are found within many “aseptic” tissues undergoing an autoimmune attack, with specific CWD bacteria associated with many different autoimmune disorders which have no known cause.

•Once the environment is “safe” can transform back into their normal form and cause a sudden recurrence of an infection—suggesting chronic infections are due to antibiotics creating a dormant CWD population rather than continual reinfection.

Note: many popular alternative schools of medicine (e.g., those of Rife, Naessens, and Enderlein) came from microscopes which could directly observe these pleomorphic bacteria continually shifting into new morphologies, and that diseases states (e.g., cancer) correlated to specific morphologies, while other morphologies resulted in a symbiotic state of health. Since the morphologies adopted correlated with the internal state of the body, this gave rise to the belief that treatments should aim to create “healthy terrains” within the body, which would give rise to non-pathogenic forms of the bacteria rather than antibiotics that provoked pathogen transformation.

Addressing Autoimmune Diseases

When autoimmune disorders are treated in conventional practice, we feel five errors repeatedly occur:

1. Frequently, autoimmune disorders have a cause (e.g., a chronic infection) that goes unrecognized, resulting in powerful immune-suppressing drugs being used instead, while the underlying issue progresses.

2. In many cases, lifestyle factors significantly exacerbate autoimmune conditions. If these factors were focused on, the symptoms of the autoimmune condition would significantly reduce, and the amount of medication required to manage the condition in tandem would as well.

3. Those lifestyle factors (e.g., diet) can also prevent conventional treatments from working. Because of that, in many cases where a medication that “should work” but does not, focusing on the unaddressed lifestyle factors for a patient is often what’s needed for a remission. Unfortunately, in those instances, rather than the doctor taking a step back and asking, “What am I missing here,” the reflex often is to simply give more immune-suppressing medications. In short, if a patient has been on multiple potent rheumatologic drugs, something important was most likely missed.

4. As many of the safer autoimmune drugs with the best risk to benefit ratio are relatively new, most doctors in practice are not aware they exist (e.g., that side-effect free alternatives to methotrexate exist) or that they can be used to treat many challenging issues in rheumatology (e.g., corticosteroid pills suppressing endogenous steroid production or large rheumatoid nodules). As such, drugs that should not be used for extended periods (e.g., steroids and NSAIDs) are instead frequently the mainstay of treatment.
Note: in some cases (e.g., for a dangerous and rapidly progressing autoimmune disease or in instances where it is not feasible for a patient to implement a natural treatment plan), immune-suppressing medications, even with their side effects, are necessary.

5. Many highly effective non-standard treatments for autoimmune conditions remain fairly unknown despite extensive scientific evidence demonstrating their efficacy (e.g., ultraviolet blood irradiation or DMSO). Likewise, since there are so many natural therapies for autoimmune conditions, it’s often so difficult to sort out which work that they all get cast under the same umbrella and ignored.
Note: many of those therapies are both anti-inflammatory and highly effective at treating mycoplasma bacteria.

Because of these issues, the management of autoimmune conditions remains less than satisfactory for many patients—which is particularly unfortunate given that these conditions are becoming increasingly common (e.g., extensive evidence ties increasing vaccination to autoimmunity).

Conclusion

Since our medical system focuses on treating isolated symptoms with patentable pharmaceuticals rather than attempting to identify the root cause of a permanent illness, patients suffer, particularly those with chronic disorders. In this regard, autoimmune diseases are particularly unfortunate as they force patients to choose between having a debilitating and sometimes fatal illness or a lifetime of fairly toxic immune-suppressing drugs (e.g., steroids have a wide range of severe side effects, particularly when used systemically for a prolonged period).

But here’s the hopeful part: when we start looking at the body as a whole system and work to restore its natural balance—whether through better sleep, movement, diet, or managing stress—people often feel dramatically better. Healing isn’t always fast or easy, but it’s absolutely possible when we stop chasing symptoms and start supporting the body’s own wisdom. Likewise, while very little focus is given in mainstream medicine for producing safe treatments for autoimmunity or arthritis, many natural treatments have been developed (such as DMSO) which no longer force patients to accept a lifetime of toxic therapies to survive and be free of pain.

Author’s note: This is an abridged version of a longer article which goes into more detail on the safest natural and conventional treatments for autoimmune disorders and musculoskeletal disorders like arthritis, the dangers of steroids and the ways to safely utilize or withdraw from steroids. That article can be read here.

from: https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-autoimmune?publication_id=748806&post_id=170415402&isFreemail=true&r=19iztd&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

SOme Information on DMSO for Cancer

Posted on May 4, 2025 by marcia

The Forgotten Cancer Cure Hiding in Plain Sight

How DMSO turns a common dye into a highly potent cancer treatment that’s harmless to normal tissue

A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR

Story at a Glance

•DMSO is a safe and naturally occurring substance that is remarkably effective for a wide range of diseases including pain, injuries, and strokes.

•DMSO effectively dissolves a variety of medications and can transport them throughout the body. This increases their potency, makes it possible to administer them through the skin, and allows them to target things deep within the body (e.g., resistant infections) that other therapies have difficulty reaching.

•Through various mechanisms, DMSO selectively targets cancer cells and simultaneously mitigates the consequences of cancer therapies. It also brings conventional and natural cancer therapies to tumors, thereby significantly increasing the potency of these therapies (while simultaneously allowing a much lower and less toxic dose to be used).

•When DMSO is combined with hematoxylin (a dye widely used in pathology), it becomes a highly potent cancer treatment, both harnessing DMSO’s intrinsic anticancer properties and directly destroying cancer cells. It is also highly specific to targeting cancers while not affecting normal cells, thereby allowing it to dissolve cancers at doses that have virtually no toxicity to the patient.

•Despite its ingredients being relatively easy to procure and producing remarkable results, this therapy (like many other alternative cancer treatments) was almost completely forgotten. Fortunately, a narrow thread of knowledge has kept this sixty-year-old discovery alive, most recently through a doctor who spent the last fifteen years refining this lost therapy and successfully treating cancer patients with it.

•This article will discuss everything known about DMSO-hematoxylin, such as its mechanisms, which cancers it responds to (e.g., it’s very effective for leukemias along with their associated anemias and can often treat advanced cancers no other treatment works for), and with how to use it both at home and within a medical setting.

Over the last six months, I’ve worked to bring the public’s attention to dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) a forgotten natural therapy which rapidly treats a wide range of conditions and that many studies have shown is very safe (provided it’s used correctly), and, most importantly (thanks to the 1994 DSHEA act which legalized all natural therapies) is now readily available. Since I believe DMSO has an immense amount to offer to the medical community and individual patients, I’ve thus diligently worked to compile the evidence that would best make the case for its rediscovery. As such, throughout this series, I’ve presented over a thousand studies that DMSO effectively treats:

Strokes, paralysis, a wide range of neurological disorders (e.g., Down Syndrome and dementia), and many circulatory disorders (e.g., Raynaud’s, varicose veins, hemorrhoids), which I discussed here.

A wide range of tissue injuries, such as sprains, concussions, burns, surgical incisions, and spinal cord injuries (discussed here).

Chronic pain (e.g., from a bad disc, bursitis, arthritis, or complex regional pain syndrome), which I discussed here.

A wide range of autoimmune, protein, and contractile disorders such as scleroderma, amyloidosis, and interstitial cystitis (discussed here).

A variety of head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis (discussed here).

A wide range of internal organ diseases such as pancreatitis, infertility, liver cirrhosis, and endometriosis (discussed here).

A wide range of skin conditions such as burns, varicose veins, acne, hair loss, ulcers, skin cancer, and many autoimmune dermatologic diseases (discussed here).

Many challenging infectious conditions, including chronic bacterial infections, herpes, and shingles (discussed here).

While unbelievable, consider for a moment this 1980 report by 60 Minutes that corroborates much of that:

Fortunately, much in the same way DMSO’s caught on in the 1960s, providing that evidence again has allowed it to make a rapid resurgence (e.g., I’ve now received over 2000 stories from readers who’ve often had remarkable improvements from using it).

Of the myriad of uses for DMSO, the least appreciated one is its applications in cancer due to the politics around “unproven” cancer therapies:

Dr. Stanley Jacob [the pioneer of DMSO] also is acquainted with Tucker’s work. In fact, he telephoned Tucker a few days before the Mike Wallace 60 Minutes show on CBS-TV to check out progress on the cancer treatment. Jacob plays down the DMSO-cancer connection, because he has enough trouble getting the substance recognized for all of its other special uses. He doesn’t want to have to fight off the label of “cancer quackery” as well.

As such, I recently published an article on DMSO’s remarkable properties for treating cancer and cited hundreds of studies showing that:

•DMSO causes a wide range of cancer cells to transform back into normal cells.
•DMSO slows the growth of many cancers.
•DMSO allows the immune system to target and eliminate cancers it previously was unable to remove.
•DMSO treats many challenging complications of cancer such as cancer pain and amyloidosis from multiple myeloma.
•DMSO protects tissue from radiation and chemotherapy injuries.
•DMSO makes many cancer therapies (e.g., radiation or chemotherapy) more potent, thereby ensuring both a higher treatment success rate and far less complications (as less toxic doses are being used).

Remarkably, despite DMSO’s anticancer properties routinely being used in lab experiments (including those seeking to find anticancer agents with those same anticancer properties), the cancer field has a striking blind spot to DMSO’s use, so in the existing literature, it is almost never discussed as a potential therapeutic.

Of these many uses, I believe the two most noteworthy are DMSO’s ability to mitigate the challenging complications of cancer (e.g., cancer pain or protecting healthy tissue from radiation therapy) and its ability to potentiate other anti-cancer agents.

Combination DMSO Therapies

One of the major advantages and risks of DMSO is that it can bring substances through the skin and significantly increase their potency in the body. On one hand, this is quite advantageous as it makes it possible to administer things which would otherwise require injections through the skin and for much lower doses of them to be needed to get results (e.g., as I showed here, antimicrobials mixed with DMSO are often able to treat a wide range of chronic infections which otherwise resist antimicrobial therapy). However, on the flip side, it greatly increases the risk of toxicity, either by accidentally bringing toxic compounds (e.g., pesticides) into the body that were on the skin prior to applying DMSO (or that were touched afterwards), or increasing the potency of a drug taken in combination with it.

Note: it is well known that healthcare workers who routinely administer chemotherapy periodically have accidental exposures to it (e.g., via vapor inhalation), so organizations like the CDC and NIOSH have worker guidelines about it (as these exposures increase the risk for a variety of issues including cancers). Since DMSO will cause chemotherapy drugs it is mixed with to be absorbed through the skin, it is crucial to be extremely cautious when administering it with chemotherapy drugs (particularly when applying it topically).

Since natural therapies are typically much less toxic than conventional pharmaceuticals and easily available (rather than requiring a prescription) over the years, people have tried combining DMSO with many of them and frequently found significant advantages from mixing them together DMSO.

This also holds true in the field of cancer care, and from reviewing all of the ways in which DMSO has been used to treat cancer, I believe the most promising applications (and which had the strongest data supporting their human use) came from DMSO being used in combination with another natural therapy. Unfortunately, the number of substances DMSO can be combined with is almost endless, and as such, the DMSO field has only scratched the surface of what it can be combined with to treat cancer. Many highly potent cancer treatments are likely waiting to be discovered once the right things are combined with DMSO.

Note: somewhat analogously, in the hundreds of studies I identified that examined if DMSO could differentiate a specific tumor type or improve a particular cancer-related gene (or protein), most of them found DMSO did create an improvement. As such, many other aspects of cancer would likely also be seen to improve following DMSO if they were to be tested.

Hematoxylin

Hematoxylin is a powder obtained from the logwood tree (e.g., grinding the heartwood up, boiling it in water to dissolve the hematoxylin present, and evaporating that mixture so only the powder remains). That tree is native to Central America and was originally used by the Mayans to stain cotton and as a medicinal (e.g., to treat diarrhea and dysentery). After its discovery by the Spanish in 1502, a massive market for it quickly developed due to the textile industry’s need to establish a dependable dye. Before long it began to be mixed with a variety of metal salts so it would remain in fabric (and not wash out).

Since many cellular processes are transparent and hence difficult to see without dyes that can stain them, much later (around 1830) hematoxylin began to be used in pathology where it was discovered (once oxidized into hematein and attached to a metal salt) it was remarkably effective for staining many components of cells including DNA. In turn, because of how well it works, almost two hundred years later, it remains one of the primary stains used in pathology to evaluate tissue (it’s the “H” in H & E stains).

Note: like hematoxylin, DMSO is also obtained from trees. Because each of these compounds is so widely used, they are also very affordable.

Tucker’s Discovery

Currently, most of the drugs we use are developed by a mechanistic system where biologically relevant targets in the body (e.g., receptors or enzymes) are identified through research, then compounds are mass screened through for their ability to affect those targets, with the ones that can elicit some type of pertinent change then run through a funnel (which can involve animal and then sometimes human testing) to identify which from that large pool of candidates elicits a benefit.
Note: compounds are sometimes custom-designed to affect receptors or identified through AI systems rather than physically testing a broad swathe of them.

In contrast, previously, drug design was much more of a hit or miss process, and frequently incredible discoveries would happen either by luck or under a completely mistaken assumption.

For example, the first antibiotic was developed by mixing a substance known to be toxic to bacteria (arsenic) with a dye that stained bacterial cell walls under the theory that the dye would allow arsenic to selectively target bacteria rather than the body (with almost all the attempts failing). After decades of attempts were made to replicate this approach, another dye that functioned as an effective antibiotic was found, but before long it was discovered that the antimicrobial agent was not the dye itself but rather a colorless metabolic product of it, sulfanilamide.

Similarly, one of the most remarkable therapies I know of (Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation) was originally developed under the belief that exposing the entire circulation to UV light would sterilize the bloodstream and hence treat a lethal infection. This did not work (it killed the test dogs) but before long, the inventor accidentally only irradiated a small fraction of the dog’s blood and got a remarkable results as inputting a small amount of UV light into the circulation transforms human physiology and allows the self-healing capacity of the body to treat a wide range of illnesses (e.g. UVBI is a highly effective treatment for bacterial and viral infections, circulatory disorders and autoimmune diseases).

Hematoxylin likewise follows a similar journey. Eli Jordon Tucker, Jr., M.D. was a highly respected orthopedic surgeon in Texas (with many awards and honorary status in a numerous medical societies) who had a wealth of surgical experience and had discovered a variety of pioneering orthopedic techniques from bone research he conducted as a hobby (e.g., he gained renown for discovering how to graft bones from one species to another). Tucker’s bone research required him to purchase cattle from a meat packing company, and in the process, he noticed many of the cows butchers (and meat inspectors) were accepting for slaughter had large cancers covering their faces.

Observing those cancers made Tucker wonder if there was some type of cancer-resisting antibody in those cows, so he began administering extracts of their blood into lab rats and mice with cancers and observed anticancer activity for certain cancers. Since it was unclear how much of a change was occurring, Tucker looked for a dye that could stain the tumors, and eventually realized hematoxylin was the perfect dye because it stained the cancers one color and normal cells another color. Unfortunately, hematoxylin had poor solubility and could not dissolve in normal laboratory solvents or enter solutions, so his ability to use it in his experiments was limited.

So, once DMSO (a potent solvent), came into use around 1963, Tucker tried using it and quickly discovered DMSO not only dissolved hematoxylin but could dissolve a very high concentration of it (e.g., 25g of hematoxylin could be dissolved in 62mL of DMSO). Furthermore, this mixture was excellent for staining cancers and making them visible (e.g., they stood out under the microscope and in gross dissection) as it concentrated in the cancers, but DMSO simultaneously did not stain any other tissues in rats. Most importantly there was a “marked increase in central necrosis of the neoplasm” indicating this mixture could potentially eliminate cancers while sparing normal cells.

Note: hematoxylin (dissolved in carboxymethylcellulose), like many other compounds, had previously been screened for its anticancer activity and in the absence of DMSO, had none, which I suspect was in part due to hematoxylin rather than hematein (which hematoxylin rapidly turns into within the body) being used.

Tucker then decided to conduct toxicity studies (initially in dogs) where he found high concentrations of IV DMSO mixed with hematoxylin had no toxicity to any of the tissues or organs he examined (and did not accumulate in any non-cancerous tissue). Curiously the mixture he made was far less toxic than IV DMSO alone (which is extremely safe and only had toxicity issues at fairly high concentrations), with roughly four times as much IV DMSO being possible for animals to tolerate once it was mixed with hematoxylin.
Note: the only physiologic change he observed from D-hematoxylin was that blood urea nitrogen would typically drop by around 50%, indicating this mixture improved kidney function.

He then began treating spontaneous cancers in animals (e.g., in horses, dogs and cows), which included terminal cases with massive tumors (e.g., a large-cell lymphosarcoma, a small-cell lymphosarcoma, generalized malignant melanoma, a squamous cell carcinoma) along with an osteogenic sarcoma. In all of these cases, there was a prompt response, and the animal subsequently recovered.

Note: Tucker found that hematoxylin alone had no effect on cancer cells (as did previous researchers who tested iton a carcinoma, sarcoma and leukemia cell lines) while subsequent investigators found DMSO alone had a minimal anticancer effects compared to the mixture, whereas they could not administer hematoxylin alone (as without DMSO it is essentially not soluble in an IV solution). Going forward (for brevity) I will refer to the DMSO hematoxylin mixture as “D-hematoxylin” (which is a term I made up while writing this).

William Daniel, former Governor of Guam, one of Tucker’s friends, phoned and told the doctor: “E.J., I have a cancerous dog on my ranch who is suffering terribly. Could you do anything to help him, or should I have him put to death?”

“I’d love to try,” answered Tucker. “I’ll send my technician to pick up the dog right away.”

The technician brought the animal to Tucker’s veterinarian, Dr. Collins, for examination. The vet diagnosed that large-cell lymphosarcoma was permeating the dog’s body. “The poor animal is choking to death from the tumors in his throat, and he has large tumors all over his body,” said Dr. Collins over the telephone. “I don’t think he’ll live long enough to be transported to your laboratory.”

Tucker said, “Transfuse him, give him some blood fast, and let me have him for treatment.”

The physician took the dog, which was barely alive, into the laboratory and injected DMSO-hematoxylon solution intravenously. His technician took over the work and gave the injections daily. Within two weeks, all the tumors had disappeared. It seemed like a miracle to the technician.

Upon Tucker’s examination of the dog, he found that all the large-cell lymphosarcoma tumors had completely regressed. The huge masses in the neck and over the whole body of the animal had gone away, and the dog came out of the treatment completely cured.

The dog was thriving at the laboratory when an unlucky accident caused his death. He ate a large quantity of some meat contaminated with Malathion, an insecticide poison. Tucker performed an autopsy, which revealed no active cancer cells in the vestigial remains of the previously large lymphomatous nodules. Many ghost cells—cells that were formerly cancer but weren’t any kind of cells anymore —appeared in the microscopic sections. Not a single distinguishable cancer cell remained in the dog.

Additionally, in 2019, long after Tucker conducted his toxicity experiments, to help the Ecuador team, Roger Tapia, a veterinary student conducted his own LD50 study as a graduation thesis by giving intraperitoneal injections of D-hematoxylin to 70 mice and determined that:

•The D-hematoxylin LD50 was 1257.16 mg/kg of hematoxylin (± 159.10 mg/kg), which is very safe (and between 10 to 100 times less toxic than many commonly used cancer drugs).
Note: the LD50 of hematoxylin alone is also fairly low (e.g., the oral LD50 is over 2000mg/kg), but relatively little data exits on its actual LD50 as it is not intended for human consumption (e.g., data only exists for the oral LD50 and the actual LD50 is unknown as a high enough dose to be lethal to half of those exposed was never tested).

•At lower doses (e.g., 5.5mg/kg to 550mg/kg) low activity, tremors and accelerated breathing were observed that regressed after an hour, while at higher doses, spasms, suffocation and eventually death occurred (likely due to respiratory collapse).
Note: the authors of the study suspected these symptoms were likely due to the shock of an intraperitoneal injection and it being injected too quickly (all of which can be avoided with a careful IV administration).

•In rats that died, the presence of fluid accumulation was observed in the abdominal cavity and surrounding the lungs which was attributed to vasodilation and increased vascular fragility.

•At all doses (including lethal ones), the mixture did not produce any changes in the shape, weight, or size of the internal organs (which I assumed was due to the fact D-hematoxylin does not accumulate in normal tissues).

The full study can be read here:

DMSO Hematoxylin LD50 study

2.46MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Note: while Tucker found IV DMSO with hematoxylin was a fourth as toxic as DMSO alone, when I compared the IP (intraperitoneal) LD50 value this study obtained to the recognized LD50 values for DMSO, I found DMSO alone was less toxic.

Tucker’s Patients

From these experiments, Tucker gradually determined a workable dosing for D-hematoxylin and hence was prepared to administer it to humans. He began telling his hospital associates of his findings, and before long was approached by a colleague who had a comatose female patient on the verge of dying from inoperable fibrosarcoma. As she was his first human patient, Tucker gave her a very slow infusion, and over weeks of treatment, the tumor gradually receded until it was small enough to remove (at which point she had a full recovery).

Note: in our modern medical bureaucracy a treatment like this most likely could have never gotten approval.

Following this, he treated numerous patients, and due to the FDA banning DMSO research in 1965, conducted a small trial in Panama with a colleague. After much difficulty, in 1968, he got his cases published. There he reported on 37 patients he’d treated with recurrent cancers (excluding those who were terminal or those with markedly elevated BUN). Of them, 70.5% of those who were also on another treatment (radiation, surgery or chemotherapy such as 5-fluorouracil (5FU), methotrexate, and thiotepa) improved, 38.1% who received hematoxylin improved (typically only their symptoms but there was one case of a leiomyosarcoma regressing and being surgically removed) while only 5.4% of those receiving conventional therapy improved.

Younger patients with aggressive cancers generally responded better than older ones, as did those with minimal or no prior chemotherapy and those receiving higher total doses (e.g., 50 infusions) or combined topical and IV D-hematoxylin.

Note: over the decades Tucker was reported to have given his mixture intravenously, orally, intralesionally, intra-arterially, rectally, and topically (with topical applications of D-hematoxylin being particularly helpful for cervical cancer). Conversely, subsequent doctors I’ve spoken to (who found those routes of administration worked) made the obvious conclusion to try injecting D-hematoxylin into tumors, but oddly (in their limited attempts) never found that route worked.

In contrast, patients with more terminal conditions had worse outcomes (something which has held true with virtually every alternative cancer therapy—which is unfortunate since they only get approved for use in terminal cases after everything else failed). Additionally, patients with large-cell lymphosarcoma, giant-cell bone tumors, leiomyosarcoma, and adenocarcinomas of the breast or ovary showed positive responses to D-hematoxylin, while those with squamous-cell carcinomas (cervix, lung, or mouth) and adenocarcinomas (prostate, stomach) exhibited minor positive responses but ultimately succumbed to their cancer.
Note: another author reported D-hematoxylin was effective against squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, lymphosarcoma, lymphoma, and such associated malignancies such as Hodgkin’s disease.

Many of these cases were quite noteworthy. Both large-cell lymphosarcoma cases showed complete regression with no recurrence well beyond Tucker’s June 1968 report (one patient died from a heart attack ten years later, while the other remained alive decades later). Additionally, one case of malignant giant-cell tumor, affecting about one-third of the femur, experienced complete regression alongside new bone regeneration.

•Finally, in those 37 cases, complications were minimal (including in one patient who was continually assessed over the course of 72 [2mL] of D-hematoxylin treatments). The most common side-effect in Tucker’s patients were fevers in patients with large tumors (which typically lasted around 35 minutes and were less severe if smaller doses were used or the tumor had begun to shrink). Additionally, if D-hematoxylin was infused too quickly, a few patients developed shortness of breath (which immediately resolved if the infusion was stopped and Demerol was administered). Rashes could also sometimes occur (which were suspected to be due to the absorption of necrotic tumor material). The most severe complications occurred from absorbing large amounts of necrotic tissue matter (e.g., terminal patients with high uric acid levels would stop urinating once too much tumor necrosis occurred) so Tucker was much more cautious with these cases and used smaller doses so he did not eliminate the tumor too quickly. Finally, no changes were observed in the eyes (which was a longstanding unfounded concern about DMSO) or blood cell counts (which is a common issue with chemotherapy).

Note: since this paper (which includes many detailed patient cases) is quite hard to find online, I am including a copy of it.

Tucker Hematoxylin Article

2.39MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Sadly, after Tucker published that article, the American Cancer Society (in 1971) published a bulletin it sent to all 58 of its divisions stating D-hematoxylin was an “unproven” remedy which provided very little of substance to refute its efficacy and simultaneously made no mention of any potential toxicity (suggesting D-hematoxylin is quite safe as any signs toxicity would have been used to discredit the therapy). Tucker sadly received so much pushback from his colleagues for using an “unapproved drug” (e.g., despite having earned great respect in the medical community, he was expelled from the staffs of two hospitals for administering the treatment and had a real fear of losing his medical license) so he never published anything further. Similarly, he became much more selective in who he would treat (e.g., only pre-terminal patients and those in a destitute state), and typically did so either for free or a very minimal fee (but nonetheless successfully treated many cancer patients in the years that followed).

Note: Andrew Ivy (who was arguably the most influential doctor in America at the end of World War 2), like Tucker theorized there must be a factor in the blood which resisted cancer, and eventually came across a isolate (from cows injected with a cancer causing fungus who’d then recovered) which did just that. After refusing to sell out to the AMA (who frequently tried to buy out competing therapies), he was blacklisted by both the FDA and AMA, and despite having thousands of compelling and well documented cases showing it worked, effectively had his entire reputation destroyed because he’d promoted an “unproven cancer cure.”

Some of Tucker’s other patients included:

•A 3-year-old boy with diabetes insipidus (which requires routine vasopressin injections) who in 1972 had a terminal case of metastatic endothelioma and Letterer-Siwe disease, where solid palpable cancerous lesions had spread throughout the boy’s head and body, which his doctors had given up on and expected him to die within a few years. Even worse, the father abandoned them to escape confronting the cancer, leaving the mother destitute and struggling to survive. Tucker then gave the boy’s desperate mother a dropper bottle of D-hematoxylin to take 5 drops in distilled water every morning on an empty stomach and instructed her to let her doctors know what she was doing.

Mrs. Lindsey returned the next day totally distraught. Between heavy sobs and tears, she explained how the Texas Children’s Hospital staff became enraged and told her never to come back if she used Tucker’s medicine for her son’s cancer. This meant that her supply of Pitressin for treating the little boy’s water diabetes was completely cut off, since she had no money with which to buy more.

This scene took place within earshot of other patients sitting in Tucker’s reception room. They passed the hat and in a couple of minutes raised $75 for the mother to buy her child’s diabetic medicine.

Fortunately, Tucker’s treatment worked, the boy fully recovered (much to the shock of his ENT doctor who’d diagnosed him as terminal) and when last checked on in 1992 was a large, strong, and healthy 29 year-old boy.

•A woman who’d a seen a three hour 1972 news program by anchorman Ron Stone of KHOU-TV Houston about Tucker’s treatments who sought him out as she had a disseminated large-cell lymphosarcoma (e.g., sizable tumors in her lungs, the common iliac arteries, and the lymph nodes around her aorta) with an expected six month survival (which she had been on high doses of radiation and chemotherapy to no avail for and eventually had to stop the chemotherapy due to a very low white blood cell count). Tucker started her on five D-hematoxylin infusions a week, she stopped experiencing negative side effects from radiation, and a year later was completely cured (and remained so after 28 years of follow-up).

Note: if anyone in Houston can get a copy of that news program from the station (which I know happened as it was mentioned by multiple DMSO authors who provided different details about it), it would be greatly appreciated.

•A 41-year old man with a disseminated lymphosarcoma which had failed treatment with maximum radiation and chemotherapy who was expected to only survive for three more months. He received IV D-hematoxylin every other day for three months, after which the tumor completely disappeared, the man stopped further treatment, and had no recurrence up to his death eight years later (from a heart attack).

•A 44-year old man with advanced lymphosarcoma (including a massive lump on his neck) who had been treated for five years with maximum doses of radiation and chemotherapy (which amongst other things left him with an almost complete absence of white blood cells). Daily IV D-hematoxylin shrank his neck tumor from 22.5 inches to 18.75 inches (which was enough for his neck to return to a normal appearance), but he subsequently succumbed to the cancer as he had metastasis throughout his internal organs.

•A 36-year-old man with terminal grade 4 Hodgkin’s disease (e.g., large cancerous nodules on his neck and face, severe swelling in his abdomen and legs, and congestive heart failure) was admitted to the hospital with a prognosis of only days to live. He received D-hematoxylin intravenously and topically over his lungs and after four days, he was well enough to return home. Without continued treatment, his breathing difficulties returned, so he returned to the hospital and had a rapid response to D-hematoxylin (e.g., initial X-rays showed on May 22 showed near-total lung obstruction, but by May 25 a slight clearing appeared, and by July 18 the cancer had disappeared entirely). Following treatment, he remained cancer free until he later died from heart failure.

•A 75-year-old man who, in 1984, had a recurrent squamous cell carcinoma on the nose (where one had previously been removed 3 year prior) applied topical D-hematoxylin and within a few weeks, the cancer disappeared and the nose was saved from a disfiguring surgery.

Later, in March 1978, Tucker was invited by a group of New York City doctors to share his treatment. En route, K.C. Pani, M.D. of the FDA, requested that Tucker share his data with Dr. Pani (Tucker had numerous records of cures, X-ray films, and slides to show).

On this trip, Tucker brought Joe Floyd, an Exxon Oil Corporate Executive, who four years earlier had had an advanced metastatic colon cancer (e.g., in the lymph nodes and liver) with a poor prognosis (particularly since it was a rare lymphosarcoma). Following surgery, he was implored to start chemotherapy (by a surgeon whose wife had the same condition) but instead sought out Tucker (as he’d seen the 1972 news program two years earlier). Tucker eventually agreed to treat him on an experimental basis (with both IV D-hematoxylin and daily oral D-hematoxylin). While Floyd’s surgeon’s wife died six weeks later, Floyd “ had no nausea or any of the symptoms usually accompanying chemotherapy” and after 18 months, his CEA levels (a marker for colon cancer) were far below normal, and in the years that followed never rebounded (and likewise over 15 years of followup did not either).

Doctor and patient flew to Rockville, where Tucker presented his case histories to the FDA.

When they came to Floyd’s record, Dr. Pani asked, “How long did this one last, three months?”

Tucker replied, “He is sitting down in the lobby.”

Pani said, “I want to see this dead man.”

They sought out Mr. Floyd, and he told his story. Then the FDA official, visibly impressed, said he would be in touch with Tucker soon. He also mentioned that he was in contact with Dr. Stanley Jacob of Oregon and that he was monitoring the use of DMSO. About one week later the drug was approved for the treatment of interstitial cystitis. Nothing further was done to follow up its use in cancer, except that Tucker received a request from the FDA for “more research.”

Note: the FDA had briefly given Tucker permission to study D-hematoxylin in 1970 but withdrew that permission later that year.

Floyd also attempted to reach many other outlets. A letter he wrote to a newspaper, for example, was published in a record of a 1980 hearing Congress held to pressure the FDA to legalize DMSO, part of which said:

While I had been taking treatments from Dr. Tucker I met many of his patients who came by for check ups that he had cured. You can imagine how excited I became over this treatment. I wanted to do something so everybody with cancer could get this drug. I preached it to my friends and acquaintances but alas when one would mention it to their personal physicians, they wouldn’t touch it, especially if it wasn’t approved for general use, the hospitals would not let them use it even if they wanted to. I started writing to Congressmen, would get a Thank You letter with a Rubber Stamp signature. Even when Hubert Humphrey was dying I wrote him a letter, but back came another Thank You with Hubert’s rubber stamp signature.

Next I wrote Jimmy Carter, thinking someone in the White House might see the political possibilities and pass it on to him. But no, it was side tracked over to the FDA. Excitement, the answer did have a real signature, “Harold Davis” Bureau of Drugs (HFD—35). It was the nice “Thank You for concern but we have to protect the people from quackery etc.” He even sent me a brochure by Dr’s Tucker and A. Carrizo [the other author of Tucker’s 1968 paper], the same as I am enclosing for you that Dr. Tucker gave me.

Note: in this letter, Floyd also shared that he saw many “people that started the treatment too late but died without pain, thanks to the DMSO,” an observation also made by modern doctors using D-hematoxylin, and which was demonstrated in three recent studies where IV DMSO was combined with sodium bicarbonate.

Lastly, a few other American doctors besides Tucker also used his treatment (including a few that I know did so recently). However, the only documented case I know of where someone besides Tucker used D-hematoxylin was of a 55-year-old Texas Baptist minister who in 1982 had a tennis ball-sized mass under his ribs which was diagnosed as malignant lymphoma and began receiving large numbers of daily blood draws alongside initiating chemotherapy (chlorambucil). He quickly developed multiple significant symptoms (including the previously painless mass becoming painful), at which point a health food store referred him to a natural cancer clinic (Jasper County Medical Center) where he worked with clinical nutritionist Dr. John Meyer who placed him a mix of natural therapies alongside the clinic giving him both oral and IV D-hematoxylin and proceeded to make a full recovery (during which he quickly noticed chlorambucil made him violently ill and permanently stopped taking it).

Hematoxylin Persists

When DMSO was first discovered, due to its significant positive results, it was the most requested drug in America, and many pharmaceutical companies made substantial investments in researching to bring it to market and recruited roughly 1,500 clinicians to conduct their research. In early 1965, Merck contacted the American Podiatry Association to request their top podiatrists (foot doctors) for their trials. Morton Walker DPM was selected as he’d recently won numerous awards for his scholarship and previous clinical investigations.

He began his research in the spring of 1965 and rapidly saw great benefit in the patients he treated, but unfortunately, that fall, the FDA decided to force the pharmaceutical companies to end all research into DMSO (which, as best as I can gather, was initially due to the fact that the agency did not want to deal with a large number of applications for the myriad of conditions DMSO treated).

This podiatric study of DMSO came to an abrupt halt November 10, 1965, when a “Dear Doctor” letter arrived advising that all research on the project must cease. The FDA demanded that the used and unused supplies of DMSO and all records of patients for whom it was administered must immediately be returned to the sponsoring pharmaceutical company.

I didn’t have to mail these items because a company representative promptly arrived to take everything away—all patient reports, supplies of DMSO, even duplicates of the records. Instructions were given to report any deleterious effects from the product’s use, but there were none. No published report ever appeared in the medical literature on this four-month podiatric study of DMSO’s adaptation for a variety of foot problems. All the records of clinical trial were confiscated, and what follows are strictly the impressions of this researcher twenty-seven years later. They are based on the patients’ personal foot health histories with relation to their individual toe, foot, ankle, or leg problems.

Following this, Dr. Morton Walker became a holistic journalist, and arguably was one of the most prolific people in the genre, compiling dozens of books on the natural therapies being used around the country (many of which I read decades ago). Amongst other things, Walker felt it was critical for Tucker’s work to be preserved, and as such, much of this article was sourced from his 1983 book on DMSO (which was written jointly with William Campbell Douglass MD—a pioneer in the alternative medical field), its 1993 revision, and his 1985 booklet on Holistic Cancer care which was written with John L. Sessions, D.O. (along with a book by journalist Pat McGrady).

On an ironic note, Dr. Tucker himself came down with a form of cancer that would have responded to his DMSO-hematoxylon treatment, but before he could administer it to himself, he fell into a coma. No one had access to his formula except the author of this book, and I did not know Dr. Tucker’s attendants needed it to save his life. Dr. Tucker died [on February 7 1983] only a few months before this book was first published. Its updating and republication may save lives—I hope so!

As such, Walker was able to preserve Tucker’s formula and make a thread of it available to the next generation who chose to search for it.

Jim McCann

There were a few eclectic individuals (some of whom I studied under) who were inventors with science backgrounds who dedicated themselves to collecting many alternative technologies, some of which were medical in nature. One of these men was Jim McCann, a cantankerous Canadian engineer and Jehovah’s Witness born in 1932 who’d created a variety of inventions throughout his life (e.g., a more efficient automobile engine).

On the medical end, at 23, McCann also started researching cancer cures, and about a decade later, adopted DMSO as it hit America. After he learned about D-hematoxylin through Tucker’s 1968 paper, he tried to get ahold of hematoxylin but initially was unable to as access was restricted at that time (and instead focused on EDTA chelation therapy). Eventually, around 1985 he did, at which point he used it on a prostate cancer patient who was on the verge of death, where unsure of what to do, he used a high dose that resulted in a full recovery.

Following this, he treated a few other people in Canada (approximately five), received significant pushback from the alternative medical community for practicing medicine without a license, and in 1995, moved to Riobamba, a town high in the mountains of Ecuador.

Initially, he used DMSO (and chelation therapies like EDTA) to treat stroke and heart conditions, but eventually began also using D-hematoxylin. Since he got results, doctors began seeking him out, and ultimately directly trained approximately 20 doctors (some of whom were not from Ecuador such as a Polish doctor and a doctor from the Philippines who attracted significant attention for successfully treating many COVID patients with ivermectin) along with many patients from around the world (and many Jehovah’s Witnesses from McCann’s community). As a result, Ecuador became a hotbed for alternative therapies, and in McCann’s estimate, roughly 100 doctors there (many of whom he’d never directly trained) began using D-Hematoxylin.

Near the end of his life (at the age of 90) McCann agreed to conduct a lucid interview with one doctor who took ten hour bus rides to see him (which a few parts of can be listened to below).

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In it McCann shared:

•Many of the D-hematoxylin doses he used (especially the initial ones) were on the high end because he felt the patient would die soon regardless, so it was worth gambling on a potentially toxic dose to cure them.

•McCann believed a key part of the treatment was D-hematoxylin inducing a 103 degree fever in the body, and that it was critical not to use a fever-suppressing medicine to treat that fever or be in air conditioned rooms. However, in cases where patients did experience a significant reaction, he would administer Benadryl.
Note: This mirrors a viewpoint within the integrative cancer field that fevers are often critical for eliminating fevers (to the point that some groups cure cancer by inducing high fevers) and the anthroposophic perspective that suppressing febrile childhood illnesses with vaccination increases the risk of cancer later in life (which has been shown in quite a few studies regarding measles, mumps, and chickenpox).

•McCann felt strongly that an IV infusion of DMSO should never be combined with prednisone or a blood thinner like warfarin and heparin as this could make them far too potent (e.g., he saw this cause numerous severe adverse reactions after doctors administered mixed infusions against his advice).
Note: the reactions McCann described I have never heard of occurring in patients who were taking DMSO and one of those medications concurrently (e.g., a few DMSO studies I reviewed used topical DMSO combined with heparin found it was a helpful and side-effect free intervention) and I suspect the results McCann saw were from those drugs directly being mixed together with hematoxylin in an IV.

•He felt very strongly about the necessity of chelation therapy in cancer (e.g., to prevent subsequent heart attacks following successful D-hematoxylin treatments—which occurred years later in some of Tucker’s cases) and to that you should not give leukemia patients with anemia iron as the cancer needed that to grow (to the point he would sometimes also chelate iron in leukemic patients).

•McCann was also very focused on cultivating bacteria on a target media that would dissolve specific biological targets (e.g., he cultured bacteria from a dead cow’s cataract and then found it could eliminate other cataracts; likewise, he found this approach worked for cancer).

Note: my experience with individuals like McCann is that some of their insights are spot on while others they have a deep conviction in are ultimately not correct.

The Next Phase

Like many alternative therapies, D-hematoxylin grew up in “the Wild West” of alternative medicine. This was made possible by its very low toxicity profile, which allowed it to be used in humans at widely varying doses without significant side effects.

Fortunately, the threads keeping D-hematoxylin from being lost eventually converged in Ecuador with a doctor who’d successfully treated 44 out of 45 cases of microbiologically confirmed chronic bacterial prostatitis using DMSO combined with antibiotics that were applied directly into the bladder (much in the same DMSO is FDA approved to treat interstitial cystitis) who then tested negative for any infection 15-20 days following treatment (with no subsequent recurrences), demonstrating DMSO’s ability to counteract bacterial resistance.

Note: interestingly, Stanley Jacob, was still alive when these treatments were initiated (he died in 2019 at age 91). At the start of the prostatitis treatments, the doctor in Ecuador contacted him for advice, and Jacob encouraged the experiment, agreeing it was a good idea, even though he hadn’t heard of anyone attempting it before.

As he’d heard of McCann through Ecuador’s medical community, these prostatitis successes inspired that doctor to try intravesical DMSO mixed with hematoxylin for a prostate cancer patient (which was administered in the same manner and frequency as his prostatitis treatments). This worked, and he gradually began using it for other prostate cancer patients and then other cancers as well, which gradually grew into a fifteen-year research project on the therapy (which he’s shared with me over the course of a few months).

Note: I also know of one individual who used D-hematoxylin intrarectally over a prolonged period to locally treat a cancer there, but the data on this approach is still limited.

Recent D-Hematoxylin Patients

That project involved treating approximately 85 patients, with the cure rate in patients who had not previously received chemotherapy averaging between 80-90%. As such D-hematoxylin is an excellent cancer treatment but it is not perfect and will not work for everyone.

To read the rest, go to: https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-forgotten-cancer-cure-hiding

(PS: This guy is amazing!!!)

Considering Alternative Therapies for Cancer

Posted on September 4, 2024 by marcia

Integrative Approaches For Cancer

An Interview With Pierre Kory

A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR

AND

PIERRE KORY, MD, MPA

AUG 29, 2024

One of the most common requests I receive from readers is to discuss treatments for cancer. This in turn speaks to a broader issue—despite there being an immense interest in holistic cancer treatments, very few resources exist for patients looking for these options. That’s because it’s been well known for decades within the integrative medical field that the fastest way to lose your medical license is to practice unapproved cancer therapies and over the decades, countless examples have been made of doctors who did so (which sadly go far beyond even what we saw throughout COVID-19).

Note: I’ve also come across numerous cases where a distant relative learned of an alternative or complementary cancer treatment provided to their relative by a doctor, was triggered by it (due to their pre-existing political viewpoints) and then was able to get sanctions directed against the doctor. Most integrative doctors are aware of this and hence often decline to treat patients they are very close to that they know would wholeheartedly support what the doctor is doing because the doctor cannot take the risk of a hostile relative.

In turn, most of the doctors I know who utilize integrative cancer therapies (and have success in treating cancer) only offer this service to longtime patients they have a very close relationship with and explicitly request for me to not send patients to them. This is a shame, because beyond integrative cancer care being almost completely inaccessible to patients, this underground atmosphere both prevents most physicians from being able to have large enough patient volumes to clearly understand which alternative therapies actually work.

Conversely, countless alternative cancer treatments exist outside of America (e.g., in Mexico) which many American patients flock to since they have no alternative, and since these facilities have zero regulatory oversight or accountability, I frequently hear of very reckless approaches being implemented at these sites that none of my more experienced colleagues would ever consider doing (and likewise we often come across numerous critical oversights in those cases).

Note: most of the doctors I know who took up treating cancer with integrative medicine didn’t want to do it because of the risks involved and primarily started because they really cared about some of their patients and felt if they did nothing the patient would likely die. As a result, most of them are “self-taught” and frequently adopt very different approaches to treating cancer.

Since I’ve been quite young (long before I went to medical school) I’ve been fascinated by the alternative cancer therapies (especially those that were buried) and I’ve helped numerous people I knew through the process. From doing so, I gained a deep appreciation for the following:

Many of the conventional cancer therapies have terrible outcomes that make them very hard to justify using—especially given how costly they are. Sadly, the actual risks and benefits of the conventional cancer treatments are rarely clearly presented to patients.
Conversely, some of the conventional cancer treatments are helpful, and in certain cases, necessary. I’ve had patients who died because they understandably refused chemo, and likewise I’ve had certain cases where I had to do everything I could to convince a naturally-minded patient or friend to do chemo, and it ultimately saved their life (as they had aggressive cancers which were chemo-sensitive).
Much in the same way much of the population was fanatically committed to the COVID vaccines and the boosters despite all evidence showing each vaccination only made things worse, there is also a sizable contingent of people who will do whatever their oncologist tells them to do regardless of how clear it is that the therapy is harming them, bankrupting them and not prolonging their lifespan. Initially it was very depressing for me when I was called in to speak to someone’s friend about reconsidering their disastrous chemotherapy plan, but eventually I realized that all throughout human history people have been willing to die for their beliefs so I didn’t need to take their decision to stick to a treatment plan that ultimately gave them an agonizing death personally.
It is possible to dramatically reduce the adverse effects of conventional cancer therapies (e.g., with ultraviolet blood irradiation) but despite many of these approaches existing, there is no interest within the conventional field towards using them.
Some of the suppressed treatments for cancer are phenomenal, while others provide, at best, a marginal benefit.
While there are certain therapeutic principles that are relatively universal with cancer, in most cases, what each patient will respond to greatly differs. Because of this, if you use a safe but unapproved therapy that has a 50% success rate, you can easily find yourself in the position where the patient who received it still dies—at which point whoever provided the therapy can be found liable by a medical board (which does happen). Conversely, if you use an approved therapy that has a 10% success rate and a high rate of harm, there is no liability for the oncologist who prescribed it.
The most clinically successful integrative oncologists I know all hold the opinion that cancer is a very complex disease and anyone who claims to have a single magic bullet is either hopelessly naive or a charlatan.
There is often a significant emotional component to cancers. When this is managed correctly, it dramatically improves outcomes, but it is often a very difficult situation to navigate, especially because people emotionally destabilize when confronted with the fear of a slow but inevitable death.
In most cases, a cancer is the result of an underlying imbalance within the body (i.e., “an unhealthy terrain”). In turn, success in treating a cancer requires recognizing what is creating the unhealthy terrain and utilizing a treatment approach that also treats that. Unfortunately, quite a few different things can create an unhealthy terrain, so you again run into a situation where a one-sized fits all model for cancer simply doesn’t exist.
The COVID-19 turbo cancers are often quite challenging to treat.

Repurposed Drugs and Cancer

The aggressive suppression of unorthodox therapies during COVID-19, while initially successful at protecting the market for the pharmaceutical industry, eventually created a climate where enough pressure built for American doctors to find ways to provide non-standard COVID-19 therapies and organizations were established to support doctors wishing to go down this path (which were ultimately successful thanks to the incredible support of the internet).

One of the prominent COVID physician dissidents is my colleague Pierre Kory who gradually transitioned to building a telemedicine practice (Leading Edge Clinic) that focuses on treating individuals with long-COVID and COVID-19 vaccine injuries (two of the largest unmet medical needs in the country). Much of his treatment approach relies upon utilizing off-patent drugs that were previously approved for another use (e.g., ivermectin), which allows him to take advantage of the drugs being easily accessible, affordable and already generally regarded as safe.

Note: Pierre Kory considers repurposed drugs to be the achilles heel of the pharmaceutical industry since the entire business depends upon selling incredibly expensive proprietary medicines under the justification it is immensely expensive to prove they are safe and effective—whereas in contrast no money can be made off the repurposed drugs (since their patents expired) which nonetheless must stay legal since they were previously proven to be safe and approved by the FDA.

As they worked with studying and treating spike protein injuries, Drs. Paul Marik and Pierre Kory gradually realized that there was also a significant need to provide non-standard approaches for treating cancer and over the last year they’ve put together a model which has been quite beneficial for many patients and are now offering that treatment to a larger group of patients through this research study. Since it is quite rare to find a US based group publicly offering integrative cancer options to their patients, I reached out to Dr. Kory and asked him if I could interview him about his approach.

Before we go further, I want to emphasize that the approach he utilizes is different than my own, something which again speaks to both how many different paths exist to treating cancer.

Note: what follows is a slightly edited version of the conversation I (AMD) and Dr. Kory (PK) had.

AMD: Thank you for agreeing to do this, I know many of my readers will appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule for this discussion.

PK: Thanks. Since I left the system, my eyes have been opened to how many of the things we do in medicine need to be seriously examined. Medicine has provided us with an incredible set of tools for addressing many problems which have plagued humanity, but the politics and corruption in medicine have caused us to use those tools in a way that benefits Wall Street rather than our patients and this has to change. When I started this journey, my focus was on COVID-19 and the vaccine injuries, but as time has moved forward, I’ve come to see that I have an obligation to make a safer, more affordable and hopefully more effective form of cancer care available to the public.

AMD: Before we go further, I want to show you a chart I just pulled up.

PK: Wow. I had an idea of this, but I didn’t realize it was that extreme.

AMD: Since cancer (oncology) drugs are one of the primary profit centers for the medical industry, I’ve always thought that explains why so much money is spent in protecting this monopoly.

PK: Just like COVID-19…

AMD: Anyhow, could you share with everyone what brought you to be interested in treating cancer with repurposed drugs?

PK: Well as you know, becoming a COVID dissident made me much more open to questioning medical orthodoxies, and becoming very committed to using repurposed drugs. The full story is a bit longer though.

AMD: Let’s hear it!

PK: I first started learning about cancer a little over a year ago when my friend, colleague, and mentor, Professor Paul Marik, started to talk to me about a book he had just read. For those who know me and Paul, this should be a familiar story – Paul developing a scientific insight and then I become really passionate about it in his wake.

AMD: For those who don’t know, Paul Marik MD is an incredible researcher who pioneered many approaches with transformed the practice of critical care medicine and was highly respected in his field, being one of the most published and cited critical care researchers in the world. Nonetheless, that did not protect him from being excommunicated by the medical orthodoxy once he chose to utilize alternatives to the COVID-19 treatment guidelines (which actually saved his patient’s lives). Anyways, please continue Pierre.

PK: A lot of what we’re doing now revolves around the Metabolic Theory of Cancer (MTOC), which argues that cancer is a result of disrupted metabolism within the body, and hence that much of the focus in treating cancer should be on first starving the cancer cell of glucose through a ketogenic diet and then using medicines with mechanisms of actions which interfere or block numerous processes which allow the cell to become “cancerous,” i.e. normalizing cellular metabolism throughout the body rather than trying to just kill the cancerous cells.

Although Paul did not construct the MTOC, his recognition and appreciation of both the validity and the importance of the theory may eventually have more impact than all of his prior contributions. There are several reasons for this:

•The first is that cancer rates have been increasing for a while and more recently have exploded (particularly among young people) in the wake of the mRNA campaign.

•The second is that the available therapies used to treat cancer are often toxic, largely (but not completely) ineffective at improving survival (especially in solid tumors), and immensely costly.

•The third is that cancer mortality has barely budged in decades (in fact it has increased).

AMD: It’s always incredible that medical outcomes have no effect on medical spending.

PK: True that. Anyway, Paul was immensely excited about what he was learning about cancer and it became a frequent topic of conversation. That book inspired him to begin working on a project where he reviewed almost 2,000 studies on the metabolic mechanisms of hundreds of repurposed medicines and nutraceuticals as well as other metabolic interventions to treat cancer (i.e. diet).

AMD: 2000 studies? Paul is something else.

PK: You have to have that type of dedication and information retention capability to become the top researcher in your field.

AMD: What did you think of the concept when Paul first shared it with you?

PK: At the time I already knew a little about the topic of repurposed drugs in cancer because early in Covid I had become friendly with the amazing physician and journalist Justus R. Hope (a pen name) based on his writings on ivermectin for the Desert Review and his book called “Ivermectin For The World.” More importantly, I had also read his book called Surviving Cancer, Covid-19, & Disease: The Repurposed Drug Revolution. It was Justus (check out his Substack) who first “schooled me” on the threat that repurposed (i.e. off patent) drugs present to Pharma, and how Pharma has systematically suppressed and attacked both off-patent drugs and inexpensive, unprofitable interventions whenever they show efficacy in treating “profitable” diseases.

AMD: Oh, I always thought you came up with that. It’s great that you’re open to admitting where you got it from rather than claiming it as your own. People often don’t do that…

PK: I cite what you’ve taught me all the time as well! Anyhow, Justus’s book on cancer was inspired by the case of a close friend of his who developed glioblastoma multiforme (a nasty brain cancer). This terrible diagnosis motivated him to search and study for therapeutic interventions and/or repurposed drugs which might help his friend. He found solid evidence for a four-drug protocol which he recommended to him. His friend then proceeded to far outlive his predicted prognosis, and although he died eventually, it was from the radiation injury to his brain that he had received initially and not from the effects of his cancer.

AMD: Three quick points I wanted to share on your anecdote.

First, there’s quite a bit of evidence linking the chickenpox vaccine to a significantly increased risk of that brain cancer (which further undermines the extremely tenuous justification for that vaccine). Additionally, a few other dangerous cancers have also been linked to specific viral vaccinations.

Second, every now and then I hear a story of someone who was injured by radiation therapy that was accidentally dosed at too high of a setting.

Third, if DMSO is administered prior to radiation therapy, it dramatically reduces its complications (while simultaneously having anticancer properties and zero toxicity). In my eyes it’s unconscionable this has not entered the standard of care for oncology and I’ve spent the last month working on a series about that substance.

PK: Wow. I’ll need to look into these—a lot of the other cancer treatment ideas you’ve given have been really helpful. Also, you sadly remind me of an older dear friend and roommate that I lived with in my 20’s who developed metastatic cervical cancer who, even then, I knew had been badly injured from radiation – essentially her bowels were fried and she lived out her days on intravenous nutrition and opiates. Sad stuff.

AMD: Until they experience it, patients really don’t appreciate the side effects of radiation therapy. One of the most common problems is that it changes the tissue in the area (e.g., creating adhesions) and those can create a lot of chronic issues for people (which are often too subtle for the doctor to recognize or believe was linked to the radiation).

PK: If we circle back to Justus’s story, after I heard about it (this was still very early in Covid), I took a close relative of mine who had recently been diagnosed with melanoma for an additional consultation with an integrative oncologist I knew. Although my friend’s melanoma was completely resected and she showed no evidence of disease (NED) on imaging, the pathologists who looked at the tumor tissue (including my friend Ryan Cole, a dermatopathologist) found it suggested a high risk of recurrence and/or metastasis.

Her “system” (standard) oncologist thus proposed she use a cancer drug (an immune checkpoint inhibitor) to prevent recurrence. This was a novel use of the drug, given that she was cancer free at the time so she wasn’t sure she wanted to use it. The reason for her hesitation was that her oncologist had rightly explained that the drug had risks of adverse effects which worried her. It also didn’t help that I was a pulmonologist who had been sent numerous patients over the years with pulmonary toxicity from this same drug (i.e. I’d seen cases of organizing pneumonia).

My relative was thus greatly concerned about the potential side effects and chose to forego her system oncologist’s recommendation. The more integrative oncologist instead started her on 11 different repurposed medicines and nutraceuticals (which I was a little shocked by at the time). Although the integrative oncologist explained the conceptual scientific framework behind the regimen quite well, I wasn’t personally familiar with the evidence base or scientific rationale for the treatment protocol my relative was placed on. That would come much later. I should note that my relative is doing well and cancer free three years later, and unlike many traditional cancer patients, has had no problems tolerating her medication regimen.

AMD: One of the things I’ve always found noteworthy in medicine is that while doctors will typically recommend patients follow their oncologists recommendations, once they or someone close to them gets cancer, physicians immediately start desperately researching the subject and reaching out to anyone they know personally who intensely studies the cancer literature.

PK: I agree. My knowledge about what could have happened to my relative definitely motivated me to go outside the box for her.

PK: Anyway, Paul started becoming obsessed with studying cancer as a metabolic disease in the winter/spring of 2023 but it was not until 6 months later that that I finally read the book that inspired Paul so much, a book titled “Tripping over the Truth: How The Metabolic Theory of Cancer Is Overturning One of Medicines Most Entrenched Paradigms” by Travis Christofferson. That book would prove to be as scientifically transformative to me as “Turtles All The Way Down” was in regards to my understanding of the (non) importance and (non) safety of childhood vaccines.

I was inspired to read the book, and after meeting with Travis and Paul to design an observational trial of using repurposed medicines and dietary interventions in cancer. We designed the study together and successfully obtained IRB approval from a rigorous IRB (we have over 200 patients enrolled already). For any interested, info on the study and enrolling into it can be found here.

AMD: It’s incredible you pulled that off. Options like that are almost never available to cancer patients.

PK: A lot of this came about because I was deeply intrigued by Travis’s knowledge base and the results of one protocol of repurposed medicines that had been studied in patients with one of the nastiest cancers, glioblastoma (which is also the one that killed Senator McCain a year after diagnosis). To put it bluntly, glioblastoma, when treated with current “standard of care” (SOC) consisting of surgery, radiation, and oral temozolomide, has a horrific but well defined and reproducible median overall survival of about 15 months and a 2 year survival between 26-28%. Furthermore, those are all very aggressive therapies which can be incredibly traumatic and harmful to the patient.

In the study that blew my mind, named METRICS, a four drug repurposed medicine protocol was used (mebendazole, metformin, doxycycline, and atorvastatin) alongside the standard of care (SOC) for that cancer. They found that the treated patients lived an average of 27 months from diagnosis and had a 2 year survival of 64% compared to the well established 28% observed with SOC (despite the patients not starting the repurposed drug protocol until a median of 6 months after diagnosis). Such a sudden improvement in one cancer’s survival rate is truly remarkable if not somewhat unprecedented.

AMD: In a recent article, I made it very clear I do not support the general use of statins as there is not evidence they meaningfully decrease one’s chance of dying and conversely they have a high rate of side effects (affecting roughly 20% of users), with many of them being severe and incapacitating. At the same time however, I try to be open minded about everything, and one of the things I’ve always been surprised is that a case can be made for using them in certain cancers.

PK: Fully agree on the statin thing.

PK: Ultimately, what I learned from Seyfried and Christofferson’s papers and books (as well as lectures and interviews by Seyfried) essentially upended the conventional understanding, I like many doctors had been trained to believe causes a cell to become cancerous.

AMD: An unhealthy terrain of the body?

PK: In a way I suppose. Seyfried is the one who ultimately and nearly singlehandedly compiled all the scientific underpinnings into a coherent MTOC (metabolic theory of cancer). He found that cancer has a “metabolic” origin (i.e. problem with energy production) and not a “genetic” one (i.e. arising from mutations in genes). This might sound boring and geeky, but I cannot overemphasize the importance and applicability of Seyfried’s work (which is the culmination of the work of a smallish group of other incredible scientists and researchers over the last 100 years).

AMD: I just want to jump in and mention that one of the diseases a dysfunctional Cell Danger Response (a metabolic state mitochondria enter where the energy production of a cell is shunted to protecting it and hence its normal functions cease—which underlies many inexplicable chronic illnesses) has been linked to, is cancer.

PK: That’s really interesting. What you introduced me to the Cell Danger Response it completely changed how we looked at vaccine injured patients because we realized the mitochondrial shut down we were observing was a normal physiologic response we had to slowly coax back to normal. I only realized recently mitochondrial dysfunction was also linked to cancer.

PK: Jumping back to Seyfried’s book, more importantly, it rightly concludes from a vast body of evidence that nearly the entire scientific and oncologic community has misunderstood the true origin of cancer (they believe it is due to cells mutating by chance and then rapidly dividing and taking over the body). The implications of the erroneous somatic mutation theory (SMT) has been devastating in that it has led to the development of a range of therapies that are indiscriminately cytotoxic (kills both cancer cells and normal, healthy cells) and minimally effective if not outright harmful in terms of quality of live vs. extension of life (the stats on chemo for most cancers are deplorable, I have an upcoming article on this in my Substack series about cancer).

AMD: Another great example of this process was the Alzheimer’s field getting hijacked by the dogma amyloid production in the brain causes the disease and that treatment of Alzheimer’s thus requires destroying that amyloid. This theory has received billions in research dollars, but failed to produce a single viable therapy (even with the FDA doing everything they could to push the newest ones onto the market), and was largely a result of a study that was proven to have fabricated its data but everyone keeps on citing. In contrast, when Alzheimer’s disease is treated as a metabolic disorder, it can be treated (and data exists clearly demonstrating this) but despite the billions we spend each year searching for a cure for the disease, that proven treatment is not acknowledged by the medical field and few doctors even know it exists.

PK: It’s literally the same exact story!

PK: On the cancer front, Seyfried’s book on the MTOC was transformative to me professionally because it now dwarfs the impact of the several other practice innovations that I have been instrumental in propagating in my career (i.e., induced hypothermia in cardiac arrest patients, point-of care ultrasound at the bedside of crashing patients in the ICU, the use of IV vitamin C in septic shock, and the utility and safety of ivermectin or other repurposed drugs in Covid).

AMD: I really wish IV vitamin C for sepsis had caught on. In my experience when it’s utilized correctly, sepsis deaths rarely occur, and the hospitals I know of that use it as a standard protocol have an extraordinary low sepsis death rate. Nonetheless, most ICU doctors, despite acknowledging it’s safe will refuse to use it (regardless of what you do) even though sespsis remains the number one cause of hospital deaths (with roughly 270,000 patients dying each year).

PK: The way vitamin C for sepsis has been treated by my profession is a punch in the gut for me and it still makes me and Paul sad whenever we think about it. To your point and experience, in the first year that Paul started employing his IV vitamin C protocol for sepsis at his hospital, independent Medicare data showed the mortality rate there dropped from a stable and consistent 22% over the years down to 6% and that was in the setting of only his ICU doing it (the hospital had other ICU’s which did not). On the subject of Paul, I’d like to quote a few things from the cancer monograph (basically a book) he created after reviewing those 1800+ studies.

TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE, PLEASE GO TO; https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/integrative-approaches-for-cancer?publication_id=748806&post_id=148277456&isFreemail=true&r=19iztd&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email