Surviving Terminal' Cancer: Clinical Trials, Drug Cocktails, and Other Treatments Your Oncologist Won't Tell You about

by Ben A. Williams

Book Overview

Describes how to use the Internet and other sources to learn about experimental drug trials, effective forms of alternative medicine, and other breakthroughs with the potential for dramatically... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1577491165
• ISBN13: 9781577491163
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Fairview Press
• Length: 275 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

12 Year Survivor of a 2 Year Disease

The Gold Standard treatment for Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) brain tumors is a combination of surgery, radiation and the chemotherapy themozolomide (Temodar / Temodal). Untreated, GBM uniformly kills its victims within four months. For 10% of all patients treated with radiation, that survival expectation increases to two years. At four years, 3% of the original group will still be alive. Add Temodar and surgery to that radiation, and 27% of those treated can expect to survive to two years. At four years, 12% of those treated with the Gold Standard combination will still be alive. University study press releases cheer the dramatic increase in surivival rates for patients receiving Tamodar along with radiation and surgery. From 10% to 27% for two years and from 3% to 12% for four years are big jumps. While the numbers do represent a significant increase, the fact remains that at four years, 88% of those receiving the Gold Standard treatment for Glioblastoma Multiforme tumors will be dead. In 1995, before Temodar was anywhere near the marketplace, Dr. Ben Williams discovered that he had a large Glioblastoma Multiforme tumor. Williams looked at the survival rates for those receiving the recommended treatment and did not like the odds. A research scientist and academic, Williams scoured every resource to create a state-of-the-art Glioblastoma Multiforme protocol. He received all of the standard treatment, which he supplemented with six other anti-cancer, pro-immune agents (and aspirin for the side effects). Williams combined the prescribed treatment: * Surgery (which left mass behind) * Radiation * BCNU chemotherapy * PCV chemotherapy With these addition of these agents: * Tamoxifen * Verapamil * Accutane * Melatonin * Mushroom extract * Gamma Linolenic Acid * Aspirin The treatment the oncologist recommended was certain to result in Williams' death. Yet the doctor refused any treatment outside the standard protocol, for fear of doing harm. Williams believed that nothing was more harmful than death. The oncologist only budged a little. He gave Williams some Tamoxifen. Everything else Williams took to reduce his tumor - including a higher dose of Tamoxifen than the oncologist would prescribe -- he researched and obtained on his own. A 1995 Gold Standard for GBM tumor treatment did not exist. The oncologist offered surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. The difference between 1995 and 2007 is the accuracy of the radiation and the quality of the chemotherapy. At two years from diagnosis - when 92% of patients receiving standard treatment would be dead - Williams received the first of what is now 12 years of clean MRIs. Williams regards his low-toxicity drug cocktail as a synergistic weapon against glioblastoma multiforme. He compares the current Gold Standard GBM treatment to the AZT AIDS treatment. Although AZT worked at first, the body developed a resistance to it. No more HIV patients were alive at four years on AZT than off of it. GBM

The best book for brain tumor patients

After I was diagnosed with a high grade brain tumor I read as much as I could to learn what I was up against. Ben Williams' book is by far the best that I found. As a glioma patient and Harvard trained research scientist who peer reviews articles for academic journals, he turned a critical eye to conventional and alternative treatments that could save his life. Dr. Williams cogently argues that cancer patients should understand all of their treatment options and not passively accept the standard treatments offered by their oncologists. Many treatments that have been effective in phase II trials or in successful use overseas are not offered because the FDA requires expensive phase III trials. Brain tumor patients do not have time to wait for conclusive research, and must balance the risk of new treatments with the lethality of their disease. Also, treatments that work for some patients do not for others, and patients may not have time to try them one by one. Many treatments are partially effective, but leave enough resistant tumor cells to allow for more deadly recurrences. For these reasons, Ben Williams believes that a "cocktail" of several treatments in parallel offer a better chance of longterm survival than a serial approach. I gave a copy of this book to my neuro oncologist, and he read it overnight. He disagrees with many of William's suggestions, but acknowledges that some of his colleagues favor them. He also agrees that the book is very well written and researched. I heard a neuro oncologist strongly endorse this book at a meeting of the American Brain Tumor Association in July 2005. Because Williams is a long term survivor, there are new treatment options not covered in his book. He updates these on his website, http://virtualtrials.com/pdf/williams2005.pdf. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, buy this book. I am getting clear MRI scans, and with luck and knowledge, you can too.

The book to buy and read and take with you to your doctor

I found this book to contain the most comprehensive, informatative compilation of facts about brain tumors that has been written to date. Ben Williams not only has tirelessly researched this subject, but he has LIVED this first-hand. This gives him an insight that is unsurpassed in it's ability to convey this information. I have been reading everything possible for over two years about brain tumors and treatments, ever since my brother was diagnosed with the same type tumor as Ben's. Ben has really taken his professional abilities as a medical researcher and applied it to the area of cancer treatment, the medical issues involved with treatments, clinical trials, and all the related factors. This book is a must for anyone that knows someone that is battling cancer....not just brain cancer, but due to Ben's insightful treatment of the relevant issues, anyone that is facing a life-threatening diagnosis should read this book. It explains the "whys" of how our medical system works, and doesn't work. It will give you the power to be able to ask the "right" questions. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking answers and hope facing a terminal diagnosis.

Guerilla Warfare Against Cancer

A terminal cancer diagnosis is a shove through the looking glass into a terrifying alternate reality of imminent death, where medical science has no answers and clinical trials and alternative medicine offer fleeting glimpses of real or perceived hope. This is the experience of millions of people every year, who find they suddenly must trust doctors they have never met to make the best choices for them according to principals of science and the Hippocratic Oath. Seven years ago, Ben Williams heard perhaps the worst of all such diagnoses, Glioblastoma Multiforme. This fast-moving brain cancer carries a devastating prognosis where survival is measured in weeks and where approved treatments add only a few weeks more. In his battle with this ferocious disease, he left the established path to fight on his own terms, mixing conventional, experimental, and alternative medicine. His eventual recovery, and the lessons he learned, are the basis for this book.'Surviving Terminal Cancer' is written in three sections. Section I is a narrative of the onset, diagnosis, treatment, and eventual remission of the author's own terminal disease. This section includes the bizarre initial symptoms of his brain tumor, and the emotional upheaval of the diagnosis and devastating prognosis. During the treatment course, Williams must struggle with a medical system that denies him obvious treatments; he confronts his doctors and travels to Mexico to obtain the drugs they refuse to prescribe. His treatment plan is a drug cocktail synthesized from his research into clinical trials and other published experimentation. A brain tumor proves intriguing subject matter, as fascinating as it is horrifying, and this creates a charged backdrop for the section's already interesting storyline. It is an MRI-to-MRI clinical suspense thriller, superimposed onto a very human drama of husband and wife coping with fear and mortality. Ultimately, Williams survives this Nietzschen transformation to complete the book. The resulting Section II delivers a scathing, if constructive, criticism of the American medical system and the FDA. Although well-meaning, this section may disturb many readers as it addresses the basic assumption of trust between doctor and patient. Williams pulls no punches, arguing against the statistical methods mandated by the FDA, the funding and motives behind drug trials, and even the present interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath. He turns the very notion of conservative, scientific medicine on its ear as fundamentally unscientific and irrational. With chapters like 'Bastille Day for Cancer Patients,' Williams handles this subject as brazenly as his self-medicated treatment plan in Section I. The theme of a deeply broken system culminates with a call for cancer patients to fix it themselves through direct political action. Section III is a useful summary of alternative medicine, supplements, and clinical trials, and how to effectively research all such options for any part

Remarkable Story, Terrific Book

This book tells a dramatic story of a battle for survival against a dread disease, and also offers a useful guide for cancer patients determined to try to beat the odds. On top of that, the author delivers a scathing critique of the conventional approach to treatment of life-threatening illness in the US. The book starts off with the author's story: a psychology professor at the University of California, Williams was diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable brain tumor (glioblastoma). Refusing to accept his imminent demise, he launched an unconventional (but nonetheless science-based) fight for survival. Searching the biomedical literature, he was surprised to uncover many studies describing relatively nontoxic compounds -- some of them drugs approved for other purposes - which seemed to show at least modest tumor-fighting effects (based on preliminary data, often involving animal models). By traveling to Mexico and other means, Williams was able to put together a cocktail of such compounds that he took on top of the conventional treatments (which normally achieve at most a minor and transient effect with glioblastoma). MRIs showed the tumor at first shrinking and then disappearing completely, and Williams has had no recurrence in more than five years. The book describes Williams' cocktail, which may be of use to other patients with similar brain tumors. Of equal value, however, is the general approach described in the book, which could be adapted to fight other kinds of cancer as well. The basic idea seems almost obvious: when conventional treatments are unlikely to succeed, combine everything that is reasonably nontoxic and seems (based on however preliminary data) to have a decent chance of some efficacy. Any intelligent person can see the good sense in this (if you are going to die anyway, why on earth would you NOT want to try any nontoxic treatment that has some chance of helping?), but Williams describes the stubbornly hostile reaction of oncologists to his approach. He describes how academic physicians prefer to corral patients into unimaginative trials of single-agent therapies for which even the doctors themselves entertain little optimism (except perhaps for the publication they hope to add to their CV). Experience with AIDS and the few kinds of cancer now considered curable suggests that dramatic results usually occur only when multiple agents are combined to obtain a synergistic effect. Yet the oncology profession sees it as somehow more "scientific" to test drugs in isolation (or occasionally to combine two agents only after each has been thoroughly tested by itself). The book harshly criticizes the role the FDA has played in promoting this approach, which may be rational for ulcer or arthritis therapy but is obviously inappropriate for the therapy of terminal diseases. In summary, this book combines three ingredients in a unique way: a personal survival story, a roadmap, and a devastating intellectual critique