Hydrazine Sulfate Cancer Coverup Part 3 of 3

Another important study came from Russia's highly distinguished Petrov Research Institute of Oncology in Leningrad. In a 1976 study of 95 terminal cancer patients who had not responded to any other treatment, Soviet researchers reported that "the administration of hydrazine sulfate produced a 41 percent objective response [tumor regression and stabilization] and a 55 percent subjective response [improvement in general status and appetite, 'vigor enhancement,' and reduction or disappearance of pain]."

The Sloan-Kettering research study was finally published in the November/ December edition of Cancer Chemotherapy Reports, and it sparked a heated debate. In the July 1976 issue of Cancer Treatment Reports, Dr. Gold responded in a scathing letter that showed that Sloan-Kettering had failed to include pertinent data and had treated less than half the patients in the study adequately.

"The study stated that 29 of 32 patients had received adequate treatment," wrote Dr. Gold. "But in fact out of 29 patients in reality only 13 were treated for 28 days, a length of time considered adequate for eliciting a beneficial response. [Four of 29 received treatment for less than 14 days, l2 for only 14 to 28 days, and l3 for 28 days.]" This was first reported to Gold by David Rorvik, fellow of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Gold also questioned the methods by which Sloan-Kettering reported weight loss and gain in the patients studied. "Hydrazine sulfate is a drug specifically designed to halt or retard weight loss or cachexia in cancer. If a patient is losing three to seven pounds weekly before hydrazine sulfate therapy and afterward loses no more but does not gain either, this is a significant response. But no where in the Sloan-Kettering study could such pertinent data be found." One would think that a study at best thought to be "a pilot" and at worst called "invalid" would be taken with a grain of salt. Indeed, definite questions of improper dosage levels, inadequate treatment time, and incomplete presentation of data have to this day been left unanswered by the Sloan-Kettering research team. Yet this flawed study was the only published work upon which the American Cancer Society based its decision to place hydrazine sulfate on its Unproven Methods List. Here we can see how much was hanging on the outcome of the Sloan-Kettering study. This effectively closed the doors to grants and further research on hydrazine sulfate by other larger institutions for many years. In 1976 even Dr Gold's funding was cut off, and he has had to support the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute from private funds.

Why was the ACS so quick to put hydrazine sulfate on its Unproven Methods List? Why has the list not been updated in the light of recent, more positive evidence in hydrazine sulfate's favor? For answers to these questions, we must turn to the politics of 1976, right after the Sloan-Kettering study came out. There is now evidence that the American Cancer Society was aware of the positive studies supporting the use of hydrazine even before its final report was published in the March/April 1976 issue of CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the official ACS magazine "After careful study of the literature and other available information." reads the introductory statement, "the American Cancer Society does not have evidence that hydrazine sulfate is of any objective benefit in the treatment of cancer in human beings."

The report went on to say that the information was a summary of admissible evidence on hydrazine sulfate "as of February 1976." Yet Dr. Gold had published his Calbiochem study before February 1976. It showed 70 percent subjective improvement and 17 percent objective positive response. Before February 1976 the Soviets had also published their first study, which showed 55 percent subjective improvement and a whopping 41 percent objective response. Why weren't either of these studies included in the ACS report that was supposedly current "as of February 1976"?

In an interview with David Rorvik, published in the Alicia Patterson Foundation Report DMR-6, CA's executive editor, Dr. Sidney Arje, responded to this paradox by saying that the damaging article had been written eight months earlier in June 1975 before both Dr. Gold's and the Russian studies had been published. The reason for the June deadline on a March/April article, Dr. Arje explained, was due to a policy that articles published in the "Unproven Methods" column must first be approved by a committee, then the board of directors, then by the ACS legal staff. It the ACS was so careful about its facts, however, then why did it say that its negative report on hydrazine sulfate was "current as of February 1976"?

If the real deadline for information on hydrazine sulfate was June 1975, conveniently before positive evidence was presented by both Dr. Gold and the Russians, how could the American Cancer Society include the negative Sloan-Kettering study as a basis of its report when in fact the Sloan-Kettering study was not published until November 1975? The ACS unproven-methods article also reported on a negative study completed by Dr. William Regelson of the Medical College of Virginia.

But even with their careful checking of facts, the authors somehow didn't discover that Regelson's study had never been published. In fact it had been reelected from Cancer Treatment Reports because of its faulty scientific design. (In the Regelson report over half the new patients studied had received hydrazine sulfate in combination with other drugs, thereby making it difficult to judge the effects of hydrazine sulfate alone. Only now, five years later, has the study been accepted for publication in a scientific journal, after the patients receiving combination drugs were removed.

Still, no new patients have been added to the study, and results seem inconclusive.) One must ask, then, what the rationale of the ACS was when it managed to discover Regelson's invalidated, unpublished study but overlooked ten positive studies in both animals and humans that had been conducted by Dr. Gold and the Soviets. The ACS failed to contact Dr. Gold, the principal American researcher on hydrazine sulfate. According to David Rorvik, CA editor Dr. Arje finally admitted that "most of the attitude toward the hydrazine problem was resolved in our minds with the Sloan-Kettering experience. We do recognize some deficiencies in the piece . . . maybe we could soften up our position." In fact, Dr. Arje had indicated to the persistent Mr. Rorvik that all distribution of reports on hydrazine would be discontinued pending a revision, Far from "halting distribution" on the article, Dr. Gold informs us that the journal containing the article was distributed to several hundred thousand physicians. The most fundamental damage here is that physicians all over the country are being handed erroneous data. And the one who will ultimately suffer, of course, is the cancer patient.

Today the American Cancer Society is distributing the same Unproven Methods List report on hydrazine sulfate with one interesting revision. The date has been changed from February 1976 to December 1975, an obvious attempt to cover up the fact that positive results were ignored when the report first came out. But even this change didn't take place until some-time in July or August of 1979. We requested copies of the Unproven Methods List and received, on July 3, 1979, a copy of the article dated February 1976. However, when a lawyer who had heard Dr. Gold present his story about hydrazine sulfate on the July 3 installment of Gary Null's "Natural Living" radio show (New York City) requested his own copy of the ACS Unproven Methods List report, he received a copy dated December 1975. These last-minute changes only fuel the suspicions of a concerned public that the actions of the ACS in condemning hydrazine sulfate were unjust and based on distorted facts. One wonders just how many other "Unproven Methods" nontoxic ones especially were placed on this list in the same manner. Isn't it time that this blacklist be abolished so that certain methods of cancer treatment can receive proper scientific testing?

It is a testament to the power of hydrazine sulfate that, despite the ACS report, physicians from all over the country are requesting it for testing on their terminally ill patients. Dr. Gold estimates that over 2,000 doctors are now using hydrazine sulfate therapy on about 10,000 cancer patients. But since the ACS report was published, even more remarkable evidence has become available. Continuing studies by Dr. M. Gershanovich et al. at the Petrov Research Institute in Leningrad have resulted in a large-scale, highly conclusive study published just this year. This intensive report was based on four full years of research conducted on over 225 terminally ill cancer patients who had been considered unsalvageable by conventional therapy. These patients had been through every known therapy and had less than a 1 percent chance of survival. Cases included Hodgkin's disease; breast, gastric, colon, rectal, ovarian, cervical, and uterine cancers; hypernephroma; melanoma; angiosarcoma; pancreatic cancer; bladder cancer; and others. The only treatment was hydrazine sulfate, taken orally in gelatin capsules for periods of six weeks with one-month interruptions.

After four years of study, a total of 147 patients demonstrated that 65 percent of all cases had shown a positive subjective improvement, This was reduction of fever, normalization of laboratory findings, an improvement in general status and appetite, and, most important, reduction or elimination of pain. In addition, 32 percent of the patients reached a stabilized condition; i.e., their cancers did not grow or progress once hydrazine sulfate treatment had begun. Another 12 percent actually showed tumor regression as a result of the treatment, these were the patients that orthodox medicine had given up for dead.

The study should have made worldwide news.
The Russians were part of a bilateral agreement on health exchanges made in the early 1970s between Nixon and Brezhnev . Dr. Gershanovich is widely regarded as one of the most highly respected cancer chemotherapy researchers in his country. The meetings were organized by the National Cancer Institute one week prior to the American Association for Cancer Research annual convention so that there might be further exchange. But Gershanovich and his colleagues were actually denied a spot on the program at the AACR convention in May of this year. Although their abstract was accepted for publication in The Proceedings of the AACR, the Soviet scientists were prevented from presenting in person their results at the largest meeting of cancer researchers in the world. Why?

The program chairman, Dr. Bayard Clarkson of the Sloan-Kettering Research Institute, said that the abstract as presented by Gershanovich did not receive a high enough rating from the review committee to merit presentation (We were informed that approximately 68 percent of abstracts accepted for publication are allowed to be presented.) In an attempt to make up for tack of public exposure, the National Cancer Institute offered to organize seminars at the National Institute of Health in Maryland, where Gershanovich was already meeting with American researchers under the bilateral U.S.-U.S.S.R. health-exchange agreement. Here Dr. Gershanovich was allowed to present his findings to interested members of the NIH community about a week prior to the AACR meetings. But Dr. Gold maintains that it would have been much better had the Russians presented their paper at the AACR convention. "In that way," said Dr. Gold, "hundreds of physicians from all over the country and the world would have heard this and had a chance to question Dr. Gershanovich."

Why did the program committee of the American Association for Cancer Research put a lid on the Gershanovich study, possibly the most definitive report on hydrazine sulfate yet?
Dr. Gold seems to think that it's an aftereffect of the ACS ruling on hydrazine sulfate; the situation may have been embarrassing. "Concerning our own work," said Dr. Gold, "how does it look when the NCI is giving out nine hundred sixty million dollars a year in grants and contracts, and the ACS is giving out maybe five percent of that, and a small organization such as the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute with a relatively small even tiny budget comes up with something major in cancer? How does it look if an institute with a budget of one hundred fifty to two hundred thousand dollars a year brings forth something that can treat all cancer patients?
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