I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now, a crown is waiting for me. These words could be Josefina Cua , an Appraiser in Region 5, who succumbed to her battle with cancer on February 28, 2001.

Josefina was born on December 22, 1950 in Manila, Philippines.  She graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics.  While a student in college, she also taught school part time.  In 1972 she married Stanley Cua, a chemical engineer in Region 30.  They came to the United States in 1985. Stan credits Josefina for creating and maintaining a loving, nurturing home for their three children.

Josefina joined Los Angeles County in 1990 as a clerk in the Pasadena office.  In 1997 she was accepted into Appraiser Training Class 56.  To those of us who were fortunate enough to have worked closely with Josefina, she was more than a colleague, she was a dear and beloved friend.  She was kind, generous, and extremely considerate.  She would go out of her way to help others and never expect anything in return.  Even during her illness, she still made time for her family, friends, and coworkers.  She never complained about her troubles, but was always an encouragement to those she came into contact with, including those she met while undergoing her cancer treatment.

She was the best coworker anyone could have asked for.  She was conscientious, cooperative and willing to carry more than her fair share of the workload.  She was a constant inspiration to us all.  All of us who knew her will miss her very much, but her loving and caring acts will linger fondly in our memories.

Reprinted from The Valuator, Vol 4, No 3, March, 2001, published by Los Angeles County Office of The Assessor.

The volume of publications on alternative cancer treatments I have read for the past few decades was much more than those I had read for my doctorate dissertation in Chemical Engineering. However, I have not found a really permanent cure for cancer, but I have encountered many alternative treatments that were reported to cure cancer, and have seen patients testifying that they were cured by some alternative treatments after being abandoned by the conventional treatments in many annual Cancer Control Conventions hosted by the Cancer Control Society in Los Angeles. I would like to share my opinion on the information and knowledge I have acquired in my decades of research in alternative cancer treatments below.

There are hundreds of alternative treatments of cancer that have been reported in the past 70 years. For those who are interested in the treatments the book “Cancer Therapy, The Independent Consumer's Guide To Non-Toxic Treatment & Prevention? Ralph W. Moss, PhD, published in 1992 that gave almost a hundred treatments prior to the publication can be a good starting point. Presently the website http://www.cancertutor.com/Other/Big_List.htm containing more than 200 treatments can also be a good reference.

Successes in the use of alternative treatments to cure cancer were almost all anecdotal or doctor's reports but not in the orthodox clinical trial settings. This was because the proponents of the alternative cancer treatments didn't have the private or government support to conduct the very expensive clinical trials. But as Dr. Rose Hauser pointed out in the book Hauser & Hauser, “Treating Cancer with Insulin Potentiation Therapy? 2002, p97, "What most people do not realize is that throughout most of the history "proof" of the safety and effectiveness of a new drug or therapy was provided by testimonials from satisfied patients or their doctors, which were then publicized. For many of the most famous treatments available, this is all that was used to get the treatment accepted. This includes penicillin for bacterial infections and insulin for diabetes."

When an alternative cancer treatment became popular because of the many testimonies from patients cured by the treatment, FDA would step in to stop or eliminate the treatment. This is tragic because some of the treatments or equipment used were totally destroyed and can't be duplicated, we will never know if they were really ineffective as the FDA claimed. Some writers believed there was a cancer industry and conspiracy in North America that controlled the cancer treatments, any treatment that was not the conventional surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy was to be eliminated. The most well-known examples were the herbal treatment of Harry Hoxsey, nutritional treatment of Max Gerson, Glyoxylide of William Koch, Krebiozen of Andrew Ivy, resonance treatment of Royal Rife, toxins of William Coley, vaccines of Virginia Livingston, laetrile of Ernst Krebs Jr, DMSO of Stanley Jacob, antineoplastons of Stanislao Bursynski, hydrazine sulfate of Joseph Gold, essiac tea of Rene Caisse and 714-X of Gaston Naessens in Canada. If any of these treatments were effective, can you imagine how many cancer patients would have been saved just counting those who died from half a million in the 1980s to one million annually in 2010s in North America. Readers who are interested in the stories and the politics of these cancer treatments may find the following books and websites very informative.

See also the list of books from the websites
http://www.whale.to/cancer/books.html
http://www.williamfkoch.com/web/version2/default.php

More to be added.

I have started a new webpage “My Humble Opinion?series on February 28, 2010, nine years after my wife became a victim of cancer. I will continue to disseminate the information in the series on those alternative cancer treatments that have shown effectiveness and have testimonials from the doctors who dare to use the treatments and the surviving patients. Those treatments have to be available at present, I will concentrate on those low cost but effective treatments so that the poor patients can be benefited. I will concentrate more on nutrition and diet, and Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine (ITCM) in the treatments of cancer in the series. I feel that the present ITCM practiced in the large hospitals in China has the trend of toward using western conventional surgery, radiation and chemotherapy as the primary treatment and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as the secondary or supportive treatment. It should be the reverse, that is, the western conventional treatments should serve as the supportive treatment, particularly the radiation and chemotherapy, they should be considered as “poison against poison?in one of about 6 modalities in the use of TCM in treating cancer. In fact TCM should integrate with western nutrition and diet treatments and use only radiation and chemotherapy as last resort to burn and poison the cancer cells. Traditional Chinese Medicine had already stated 5000 years ago in the famous book “HuangDiNeiJing?that food and medicine come from the same source, food should be used first to treat disease, medicine such as plant herbs is to be used if food is not enough to cure the disease. History will tell in the future if radiation and chemotherapy as used today is appropriate or is a mistake.

Do not despair, do not give up, especially the terminal patient, there is high hope that you may find a cure of your case from the testimonials. I have set an ambitious number of 1000 testimonials to be my present target, but I have the confidence that I will collect much more than 1000. Presently I have more than a hundred testimonials that are waiting for me to organize before posting them, there are also more than a hundred clinics and hospitals listed in the book "Third Opinion" 4th edition, 2005, written by John Fink that may have more than a thousand testimonials that I plan to collect. If I include in the future the testimonials from China who used Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) alone to cure their cancer disease I may reach a target of 10,000 testimonials. So you see you have a very very good chance of being cured by the non-conventional, non-toxic alternative therapies.

If anyone tells you these alternative treatments are not proven or are quack, he or she is either ignorant or not telling the truth. So cheer up, cancer is not as horrible as the orthodox medicine wants you to believe, there were some testimonials of cancer being cured by psychological means, which in simple language is to forget about the disease in your mind, watch Charlie Chaplain or some other comedy videos and laugh as much as you can, who knows, your cancer may just disappear without your knowing. The TCM doctor in Shanghai who had many long-term surviving patients told me that almost all of those survivors were optimistic and had fighting spirit. Although it is impossible to know if the treatment you select can cure your cancer, having an optimistic hope that you will be cured may increase your survival rate, there is a connection between our mind and the immune system which some researchers have proposed but have not been verified and accepted by the medical community yet.

Another piece of information that will cheer you up is a review of 741 cases of spontaneous regression from 1900 to 1987 by Challis and Stam in the medical journal Acta Oncol in 1990 cited by Donald H. MacAdam in his book Spontaneous Regression, Cancer and the Immune System, 2003. MacAdam further pointed out that if cases before 1900 and after 1987 were included, at least 1000 cases of spontaneous regression in cancer could be cited based on the standard definition of spontaneous regression of Dr Everson and Dr Cole as the partial or complete disapearance of a malignant tumor in the absence of all treatment or in the presence of therapy considered inadequate to exert a significant influence on the disease. Spontaneous regression is something medical community cannot explain, your oncologist will usually tell you it very very seldom happens, and if it happens it is a miracle. But would you consider 1000 cases all miracles? or would you think there may be a connection between cancer and the immune system that may be related to your mind and optimism?

This website will help you search for the best of many alternative treatments that can cure the cancer disease but are not known to your oncologist. Yes, as you will see from the various testimonials, some were already in terminal stage and were given up by the orthodox medicine but were saved by the alternative treatments that the oncologists were not aware of or refused to accept. You can also talk to those lucky survivors if they have the contact information.

You may ask why I am hosting this website, I have a simple answer: Because my most beloved wife became a cancer victim 6 years ago and we couldn't find enough testimonials although we found many alternative treatments after the ineffective conventional surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, we didn't know which to choose that would be best for her, I had the firsthand experience of this helplessness, I would want to help the cancer patients not to experience the same helplessness.

Now you have a better chance to get the right one from many testimonials that had similar type of cancer who were saved by a specific alternative treatment. For example, if it is skin cancer, we know that the Gerson Therapy or Hoxsey Therapy had many melanoma survivors; if it is brain cancer, the Burzynski, Polymva, or Protocel had many brain cancer survivors; if it is liver cancer, the TCM tianxian in China had many testimonials; if it is breast cancer, various alternative treatments can be seen to have many breast cancer survivors and you can select the one that suits you best. However, you have to use your own judgment in the selection because people sometimes exaggerate unintentionally in their testimonials although they have the best intention to help other patients.

I am only collecting the testimonials of alternative treatments because you can't get those information from the conventional doctors since alternative medicine is not accepted by the American Medical Association. I personally believe the collection of those testimonials will benefit cancer patients and may save some terminal stage IV patients. Why is American Medical Association or the National Cancer Institute or the American Cancer Society so much against alternative medicine? You can find out in the book "The Cancer Industry" written by Ralph Moss, PhD, who was once the assistant director of public affair at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, one of the well-known extremely orthodox cancer research center in America. The book was written by an insider of a cancer research center endorsed by the American Medical Association and supported by our huge tax money, it was a classic expose on the cancer establishment.

Low Dose Naltrexone or LDN therapy is the latest addition of alternative treatment to cancer arsenal. Although it is not widely known now it may become a major alternative treatment for cancer in the future, mainly because it is a generic drug that the patient can easily obtain if the patient has an understanding primary physician or healthcare taker. Moreover, it is extremely inexpensive, less than a dollar a day at present, and it is very easy to use just like taking an aspirin once a day before bedtime. I am very sure that the so-called cancer industry will try everything to discourage the therapy. However, in the present age of internet the patients have a very powerful weapon to band together in the persuit of an effective and inexpensive cancer treatment, and that is the latest trend of "internet clinical trials" initiated and conducted by the patients themselves. Sooner or later there will be groups of patients sharing their experience on the internet in the use of LDN to treat their cancer disease.

The two most important findings of LDN cancer therapy are (1) the inhibition of the proliferation of cancer cells, and (2) the anti-angiogenesis (the property of the inhibition of generating new blood vessels) of LDN treatment.

Naltrexone was found also to have a very unusual property, when it is used at high dose such as above 100 mg daily, cancer cell proliferation is enhanced, but when used at low dose such as 4.5 mg daily, cancer cell proliferation is inhibited. Naltrexone doesn't kill cancer cells, it has no cytotoxic property, it enhances the body's immune system to eliminate the cancer cells. Its toxicity had been well established decades ago and approved by the FDA, the normal therapeutic range is 50 to 300 mg daily. At the low dose of less than 5 mg daily it is non-toxic, probably less toxic than aspirin.

LDN is not only used in cancer treatment, at present it is also used in autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis, neurodegenerative disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and AIDS (presently clinical trials using LDN is being conducted in Mali of northwestern Africa, former Sudanese Republic). The website is http://www.ldnafricaaids.org

The most recent book on LDN is "The Promise of Low Dose Naltrexone Therapy" written by two authors. The first author, Elaine Moore, has worked in hospital laboratories for more than 30 years, primarily in immunohematology and toxicology. The second author, Samantha Wilkinson, is a patient advocate for multiple sclerosis and LDN. Through her website www.ldners.org she educates patients about current LDN research.

Here is part of the book pertaining to cancer treatment It is highly recommended that the patients should buy the book for reference. The websites below have more information on LDN

Disclaimer:  Brave-Souls.com does not in any way give professional medical advice.  This is a support website for cancer patients who wish to contact cancer survivors for advice, resources, or friendship.  Resources available at this website are for references only.  Thank you for visiting.