What follows is my response to a patient inquiring about IPT in our clinic whose family members were skeptical and who discouraged him from coming for Corrective Cancer Care at our clinic. I hope that all readers find my response helpful. This response, when read in conjunction with my article on Corrective Cancer Care ( https://weeksmd.com/?p=4319 ) clearly reveals our therapeutic approach.
January 20th 2011
Dear Mr. _____________
The extensive correspondence which you forwarded to me from your family is heartening. While treating people with cancer can be a sad and discouraging process (given that the standard of care is so debilitating and given that most oncologists I know admit that we are losing the “war on cancer”), nonetheless, when I see families come together in love and support for an ill member, it is a wonderful thing. Therefore, I was pleased to read of all the concerted effort which your son and daughter-in-law have expended as an expression of their love for you.
It will not surprise you to learn that I myself entertained their very objections when I first learned about IPT from a patient in 2001, but further investigations persuaded me that IPT is the best chemotherapy option available today when one does a risk / benefit assessment. (Much of what your objects to are valid concerns – mutation or chemo resistance issues, for example, but I wonder what he thinks might be a better option?).
That being said, IPT is only one small aspect of what we offer for people fighting cancer in our clinic. However, since you called inquiring specifically about IPT, that was the focus of our discussion and my responses to you over the phone and with follow-up email. You may not remember the aspect of our conversation where I told you that IPT is only one of many modalities we may use and so I want to take this opportunity to remind you that we won’t know what your specific corrective cancer protocol will be (and even whether or not I will recommend IPT) until I meet you in our clinic, review your medical records and discuss with you the pros and cons of various options. Of course, your son and any family members would be most welcome to attend that consultation where we would discuss your options in detail, and I would be glad to answer their and your questions and concerns directly. Once you have been fully informed of my assessment and recommendations, you will be presented with a detailed corrective protocol and approximate costs of treatment.
Before that consultation, however, let me address three issues which you raised in your email:
1) There are many doctors claiming to offer IPT. Some of the websites your family referenced are sites which I have no association with and so you need to know that I can only speak about my practice. In that light, let me say that, in the treatment of people with cancer, I always recommend that patients carefully consider all conventional treatment protocols before resorting to any treatments which are investigational or not the standard of care. While I believe that oncologists in the near future will use IPT since it appears to be a more efficient and less toxic way to deliver targeted chemotherapy, nonetheless, even IPT has its limits (for example: chemo and radiation do not kill cancer stem cells efficiently). Therefore, we never simply give IPT; we offer this in the context of an integrated anti-cancer protocol which we call Corrective Cancer Care (CCC).
2) Secondly, we never purport to offer a cure for cancer. To my knowledge, no one does. I described to you (and on the video case) studies where the patients followed our corrective cancer protocols and, per PET/CT scan, had no evidence of cancer – but these patients know that we can not let our guard down and that a return to their prior lifestyle choices (alcohol, sugar, lack of exercise etc.) could well prove to be lethal. Cancer is a complex disease process and countless are the women who, tragically, had a breast cut off, were told by the surgeon “we got all the cancer” and who were shocked to discover metastatic disease to the bone with in 1 year because they did not change their lifestyle and the cancer which originally manifested in a breast, found another organ system to attack. So please understand that we do not suggest this is a simple cure but rather a difficult process whereby we start with correcting lifestyle issues and address the battle on many fronts simultaneously.
3) Because few IPT clinical studies have ever been funded, the standard of care within my IPT community of colleagues is to get baseline studies (PET/CT or MRI etc.) for an objective marker and then to offer an initial treatment course of 6 to 10 IPT treatments after which we assess not only one’s subjective response (less pain, less bloating etc) but also compare pre and post radiologic studies (MRI, PET/ CT) to see if there are objective changes. This is how we determine whether we will recommend further treatment or whether we would advise discontinuation of CCC and IPT. I have been offering corrective cancer care since 2002 and have never seen an instance where only 6 treatments were sufficient. I wanted to clarify that important point since I suspect you might have been under the wrong impression, based on your emailed questions that six treatments of IPT cures cancer.
To summarize:
1) I would be surprised if your oncologist would deny this statement: “Rarely are stage IV cancer patients cured by conventional treatment (excepting testicular cancer, some lymphomas and some leukemias).” So it is unclear how beneficial the standard of care is in your case. Please determine this with your oncologist.
2) As there are no head to head double blinded placebo controlled studies of IPT vs. conventional treatment of cancer, we don’t know statistically which is optimal. We do know, however, that IPT is less toxic than conventional treatment and that it causes fewer and less debilitating side effects as well as a higher quality of life. (Donato Perez Garcia, the Mexican grandson of the inventor of IPT, claims that he hasn’t seen a serious side effect in 25 years which is impressive compared to the track record of our conventional chemotherapy colleagues who see chemotherapy related deaths regularly. See his website http://www.iptldmd.com/ ).
3) More to the point, (aside from being less toxic) we would need to determine whether IPT and CCC is potent enough to merit your compliance. While the scientific rationale for IPT is compelling, we certainly won’t know whether it is sufficient in your case unless and until we assess your situation.
At this point, Mr. __________, I strongly suggest that you bring your son with you if you decide to pursue Corrective Cancer Care at our clinic, since he loves you and has very strong opinions against what he thinks we offer. Your prognosis is best if we all have a coordinated effort.
Kind regards,
Bradford S. Weeks, M.D.
PS: I suspect that the doctor who your son references as “specializing in medical fraud” is Steven Barrett. At any rate, you might find Tim Bolen’s articles on Dr. Barrett of interest: see http://www.quackpotwatch.org/