Dr. Minkoff argues that cancer research focuses on genetic and chemotherapy approaches because of profit incentives, not because they work best. He cites limited survival benefits from chemotherapy for stage IV cancer and traces the problem back to Nixon's war on cancer era.
Questions this video answers
Around 1972 or 1974 (speaker states 'Since 1972 or 74, when Nixon declared the war on cancer').
A study published in the Journal of Cancer (2002 or 2003) comparing stage IV patients who received chemotherapy versus those who did not, finding about a 2.5% increase in five-year survival for chemotherapy.
In terms of modern medicine, why the heck are they so focused on the DNA component of cancer or the genetic component on cancer and on chemotherapy and on doing things to the nucleus of the cell rather than addressing the mitochondrial issues?
Well, most of research is driven by, you know, is driven by, you know, how can, how can profit be generated from this? And I'm not against a profit motive. Since 1972 or 74, when Nixon declared the war on cancer, the gains in actual results of people who have cancer are really very little. There's a study published in the Journal of cancer in 2002 or 2003 where they looked at patients that had stage four cancer. And this study was done in Australia and in the United States. And half of them got chemotherapy for their problem and the other half didn't. And the difference in lifespan that the chemotherapy made over a five year period was only about a two and a half percent increase in survival. That targeting chemotherapy as your sole.
Way to kill cancer cells or cure cancer, it doesn't really work very well. And so the statistics on survival with cancer have not really been affected by it.
So that doesn't work by itself. And if you talk to most oncologists, they don't really have a mindset of, gee, maybe environment matters, maybe diet matters, maybe supplementation matters, maybe other strategies to rehabilitate mitochondria matters. The mindset pretty much is do whatever you want, eat whatever.
