Too Bad.....

Well, for every clinical trial for a wonder drug like Rituxin or an improvement like Zevalin, there are probably 100 attempts at something else to treat or cure cancer that don't work out. I came across another one this week, and it really bummed me out that it probably isn't going to work.



A guy named Dr. Bill Cham has a new book out called The Eggplant Cancer Cure; his website is EggplantCancerCure.com. According to the web site, "Dr. Cham has found substances which can penetrate and kill skin cancer cells but can’t penetrate normal skin cells, so normal skin cells are untouched and unhurt while the skin cancer cells die!" He claims to have conducted extensive studies on a cream he made (called Curaderm), which contains substances derived from eggplant. The cream is rubbed on skin cancer tumors (including late stage melanoma), and in a period of months, reduces the tumors and cures the cancer. He claims it has cured 70,000 skin cancer patients in Australia, and he's working on a way to make it work on internal tunors as well.



By the way, he isn't an M.D, he has a "Ph.D. in Medicine." And we all know how useful a Ph.D. is....



It all sounds great, but there are some problems. He claims that the cream has been through Stage I, Stage II, stage III, and Stage IV clinical trials, but apparently, there isn't any published record of them. His website lists a bunch of publications supporting Curaderm, but some have titles like The Skin Cancer Cure So Effective, It's Being Kept Secret. There's a nice critique of Cham and Curaderm from a blog called Respectful Insolence, which looks at a lot of cancer cure claims like this.

I'm a little skeptical of any cancer cure that's being kept a secret.

There are two important lessons to be drawn from all of this:

1) There are a ton of cancer cure claims online. I know someone who's pushing some kind of juice on me that costs $40 a quart. But there's no real evidence that it actually wortks, apart from some personal testimonials. I can't afford $40 juice, and I can't emotionally afford "cures" that may or may not work. I have no problem with alternative medicine and natural cures, and I avoid drugs of all kinds unless I absolutely need them. An apple a day really does help keep the doctor away. I'm an antioxidant freak. But part of the problem with follicular NHL, in terms of alternative and natural cures, is that it's so slow growing, and it waxes and wanes, that it's nearly impossible to isolate something and say it's the cause of the improvement. Very frustrating. But I still eat a lot of fruit anyway.

2) I really wish eggplant was a cure for cancer. As my brother can attest, our Mom makes the best eggplant parm in the world. It's come up on the blog more than once. In fact, if eggplant provided a topical treatment for skin cancer, my brother and I would rub eggplant parm all over ourselves. And frankly, it wouldn't be the first time someone has done it.

The author of the Respectful Insolence blog does not completely discount the idea that compounds in eggplant can help skin cancers, he just wishes Dr. Cham would submit the treatment to more rigorous testing than Cham has been willing to do. As you know from reading the blog, I'm very willing to be part of a clinical trial. So I hearby volunteer to consume my mother's eggplant parm every chance I get, in the hopes that it can help provide data for researchers working for a cure.

Just doin' my part.