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Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / Prostate Cancer / January 2007mistletoe/iscador
In a recent issue of Lillipoh Journal (an anthroposophical health magazine), a naturopath claims that mistletoe injections have suppressed his androgen independent prostate cancer. He had not responded to ablation therapy prior to using Iscador. I talked with him on the phone and he says his treatment is being supervised by a physician at a teaching hospital in Pittsburg. Is anyone familiar with this treatment? > In a recent issue of Lillipoh Journal (an anthroposophical health > magazine), a naturopath claims that mistletoe injections have [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > supervised by a physician at a teaching hospital in Pittsburg. Is > anyone familiar with this treatment? I'm not familiar with it but mistletoe apparently does have some cancer fighting properties. If you search Pubmed you'll find a fair number of articles about it. As to whether it can suppress androgen independent prostate cancer, I have no idea, and I doubt if anyone else does either, including the doctor who is using it. To my knowledge there are no controlled trials of it for that purpose. So the doctor who is doing it is either 1) performing research, possibly unsupervised and unauthorized research, or 2) performing a walletectomy on the patient. Also, be aware that "anthroposophical health magazines" aren't a great source for medical information. Unlike scientific journals, the articles are not reviewed by qualified experts before publication. The articles in magazines like that are written by professional writers, not professional scientists. They're paid for by the word and good old stories about how I beat cancer by eating flibberdegibbets are good magazine sellers. The story could very well be highly distorted, or even made up of whole cloth. Caveat emptor! As pure speculation, in the complete absence of knowledge, I speculate that there are a number of compounds with anti-cancer properties including mistletoe, tomato juice, pomegranate juice and others, that might have a useful effect in slowing the growth of an indolent cancer for which the rate of cancer cell death is already close to the rate of cancer cell replication. However I would also speculate that for more aggressive cancers these treatments are useless and even for indolent cancers, they will have only limited use. If I ever face this problem, I would enroll in a real honest to God clinical trial run by a real research center using a treatment that had been reviewed and approved by NIH for further investigation. Perhaps there is such a trial going on in Pittsburgh. If so, it might be worth considering. If not, there are a lot of very serious trials underway for cancer vaccines, Provenge, Gleevec, docetaxel, and other anti-cancer drugs that have already been through Phase I trials in humans and have shown some promise. I would look first to one of them for help. Alan Thanks Alan for your thoughtful reply. I agree with most of what you say, but I have a unique situation. I have advanced prostate cancer. I am still responding to triple ablation and will be entering my second period off lupron in two months. I am looking for a medication that will prolong my time off lupron. There are no clinical trials open to me because I am still sensitive to lupron. Iscador is a recognised treatment for cancer in Europe, and there have been clinical trials that support its use. If I can suppress cancer growth for a while longer I think it might be worth the effort. This medication will cost about 130 dollars per month. I will continue on casodex and avodart and zometa. I already have a rigid diet and numerous prescribed supplements. I will compare the time off lupron with iscador with time off lupron without iscador and make an empirical judgement. I will use ultrasensitive PSA. > > In a recent issue of Lillipoh Journal (an anthroposophical health > > magazine), a naturopath claims that mistletoe injections have [quoted text clipped - 48 lines] > > Alan > Thanks Alan for your thoughtful reply. I agree with most of what you > say, but I have a unique situation. [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > the time off lupron with iscador with time off lupron without iscador > and make an empirical judgement. I will use ultrasensitive PSA. I understand your situation and I agree with you that treatments that should otherwise not be considered can be considered when nothing else is available. One of the things I worry about with drugs like this, and of course this can happen with FDA approved drugs too, is that unscrupulous doctors raise false hopes in patients and provide sloppy medical care just to suck money out of desparate people. Don't let yourself fall into the clutches of a guy like that. Some doctors practicing intermittent hormone therapy are using Avodart during the "off" period. It's not really completely off, but it may prolong the off period for a long time without eliminating all benefit of getting back on casodex and zometa when the time comes. I presume the side effects will be significantly reduced under Avodart alone. You might want to ask your oncologist what he or she thinks about that. Good luck with the Iscador and let us know how it works for you. At $130 per month, at least you won't be bankrupting yourself to try it. Alan Thanks Alan, This will be my second time off lupron---I will continue with avodart and zometa. I understand your concern. My local oncologist and PMD will supervise my self administration of this drug (if I decide to take it.) I have a number of dedicated board certified docs in my corner including Strum and Block who guide my care as well. I am very curious about how this drug seems to be working for this fellow named Diamond, but I do not have false hopes. I was told that I had 6 months to 2 years to live 4 years ago and I am doing well. Sometimes we just don't really know what makes us well or what kills us. Less hubris always helps. Charlie > > Thanks Alan for your thoughtful reply. I agree with most of what you > > say, but I have a unique situation. [quoted text clipped - 37 lines] > > Alan On January 21 "sculptrock"wrote: > In a recent issue of Lillipoh Journal (an anthroposophical health > magazine), a naturopath claims that mistletoe injections have [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > supervised by a physician at a teaching hospital in Pittsburg. Is > anyone familiar with this treatment? Anthroposophy and mistletoe are well-documented quackery. See: http://www.quackwatch.org/search/webglimpse.cgi?ID=1&query=mistletoe ...where there are eight essays. I would be interested to learn just who this "doctor" is, his professional credentials, and at what "hospital" he is employed. The skeptical Alan Meyer is correct. Regards, Steve J "A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." -- Euripides > I would be interested to learn just who this "doctor" is, his > professional credentials, and at what "hospital" he is employed. > > The skeptical Alan Meyer is correct. I just asked the FDA if they had information about this. It will be interesting what, if any, reply I receive. I think it is important to remember that people with stage four cancer are uniformly receiving palliative care from traditional oncologists. The situation gets murky when people do not respond to traditional palliative care methods. Physicians and patients can choose other methods of treatment at that time. The fellow who is responding to iscador is someone who did not respond to lupron. His hormone insensitive cancer most likely would have been treated successfully with taxotere, but other medical problems made this choice problematic. Iscador has a low side effect profile and seems like a good choice since his bone mets became smaller and his psa is nadir. The physician involved with this fellow's care is the director of Thomas Jefferson's Integrative Medicine Clinic. For more info you can see: http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/pdq/cam/mistletoe. > > I would be interested to learn just who this "doctor" is, his > > professional credentials, and at what "hospital" he is employed. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > > It will be interesting what, if any, reply I receive. On January 22, "sculptrock" replied: > The physician involved with this fellow's care is the director of > Thomas Jefferson's Integrative Medicine Clinic. And his name is.....? > For more info you can > see: http://www.cancer.gov/cancerinfo/pdq/cam/mistletoe. Done. I see that re: mistletoe extract: (1) Whatever cancer kill there is is in lab experiments (aka in vitro) and not in humans. (2) Animal tests have shown that it *may* be useful in treating side effects [SEs} of "standard cancer therapy." What SEs? What cancers? What therapies? (3) Human studies in Europe (By whom? When? What controls?) have had "unclear results" and clinical trials in the US are "in progress." (4) The FDA has not approved it for use in treatment of cancer or any other medical condition. (5) The FDA forbids importation or use of injectable mistletoe except for research purposes. Comment unnecessary. Regards, Steve J "What are the facts? Again and again and again -- what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget 'what the stars foretell,' avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable 'verdict of history' -- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!" --Lazarus Long >>> I would be interested to learn just who this "doctor" is, his >>> professional credentials, and at what "hospital" he is employed. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >> >> It will be interesting what, if any, reply I receive. |
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