Homeopathy for Breast Cancer?

                Homeopathy for Breast Cancer?  Promising study from MD Anderson Cancer Center shows two remedies have pronounced cytotoxic effects

A recent study performed at the prestigious MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston may help open the eyes of homeopathy’s habitual nay-sayers.  Ultra-dilute homeopathic preparations of two remedies, Carcinosin and Phytolacca, both showed cytotoxic effects (cell death — desirable) on breast cancer cells —  effects similar to Taxol, a regular chemotherapuetic agent used to treat breast cancer. 

The study authors concluded “the ultra-diluted natural homeopathic remedies investigated offer the promise of being effective preventive and/or therapeutic agents for breast cancer and are worthy of future study.”

Both remedies were at levels of dilution well beyond the level where there is any trace of the original substances.  Carcinosin is from cancer tissue and Phytolacca is from pokeweed.  One of the problems with cancer cells is that they literally live too long — they fail to die on time, as normal cells do.  This results in extra cells accumuluating in tissue and helps explain the mass effects of cancer tumors.  By causing cell death in cancer cell lines, or inducing “apoptosis”,  it is possible to slow down or arrest the development of cancer cells. 

CARE NOT CURE                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  This study was performed in vitro, in a laboratory, outside of the human body.  So it in no way shows that the two remedies are a cure for cancer.  Nonetheless the study shows quite clearly that these two remedies are bioactive, with specific and measurable actions.  It  also joins hundreds of other studies that show the way homepathic medicines work cannot simply be explained away as “placebo”.

USED FOR CANCER IN EUROPE                                                                                                                                                                                                              Both Carcinosin and Phytolacca are used as adjunct cancer treatments in Europe.  Also of interest is the fact that neither showed the cytotoxic effects on cell cultures of normal breast tissue.  This is important because it suggests the likelihood of a low general toxicity and favorable side effect profile.  Common breast cancer drugs are notorious for their severe and often sickening side effect profiles, includling overwhelming infection, toxic shock and death as well as the more common and less dangerous nausea, diarrhea and hair loss.  Homeopathic remedies generally have very few, if any, adverse effects.

PARADIGMS MATTER                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       A major source of controversey surrounding homeopathy is the fact that remedies usually are so diluted that they have absolutely nothing left of the original compound from which they were made.  According to the dominant biomedical model, it is impossible for such an ultra-dilute remedy to have an effect. If , however, you think in biophysical terms and accept the possibility that the remaining water molecules may contain an informational trace of the original compound, the paradigm shifts and opens up the way to explaining how these remedies may work.  This biophysical informational patterning may act as a kind of signaling, showing the body how to carry out certain healing actions in the face of imbalance and disease.

I spent several weeks in 1999 observing and studying at the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital in Scotland.  Even a few hours devoted to clinical observation and researching the totality of research evidence on homeopathy strongly suggests that its effects go beyond “placebo”.  At the same time, I also believe that the clinical methods of homeopathy — the extensive history taking that can take hours, for example — are excellent at harnessing the powers of the placebo effect, altogether desirable. 

KNEE JERK DISMISSAL                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     I have always been irked by doctors and scientists who habitually resort to a knee-jerk dismissal of homeopathy, mainly because said dismissal is rarely backed up by a thoughtful, objective look at the facts.  Those who so readily dismiss homeopathy often haven’t even taken a few minutes to look into the subject!  This behavior is both unscientific and hypocritical.  Perhaps this well designed, positive study from a prestigious cancer center will help enlighten the mainstream and remove the scales of superstition, dogma and ignorance on this subject.

See Frankel M et al, International Journal of Oncology, 2010; 36(2): 395-403