Lifeline: The Case for Effective Cancer Immunotherapy

By T.S. Aguilar

The book "Lifeline" provides a detailed review of a cancer case history, the failures of conventional cancer treatment that results in the death of close to 10 million "effectively treated" patients globally every year, and immunotherapy, which is the only hope we have to provide a cure for the disease.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.S.Aguilar
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9780968771143

T.S. Aguilar

T.S. Aguilar started writing professionally after working many years in engineering and computer science. First he wrote articles on eco-tourism and the environment for papers in Europe and Latin America before he got down to writing novels that were published in Europe. Side-tracked by script writing and producing documentary videos together with his wife, he continued his extensive travel in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, where he made a living as a teacher. After his wife was diagnosed with and succumbed to cancer, he returned to writing with his account of bungled and neglectful cancer treatment as documented in his non-fiction book 'Lifeline - The Case for Effective Cancer Immunotherapy'.He has now completed his Latin American trilogy. 'Shafted - A Mexican Tale', 'Impetuous - The Odyssey of a Solitary Man', and 'Paradise in Limbo' are novels that are largely based on personal experience and contacts with the protagonists. The critical topics addressed in his writing so far - the exploitation of labour, the rise and expansion of the illicit drug trade, and the destruction of the environment and biodiversity - are presented as intriguing and entertaining novels.

Book preview

In memory of

Cathy

(1963 - 2017)

May her valiant struggle not have been in vain,

so that her story will help other cancer patients

to get effective treatment and be cured of the disease.

LIFELINE

The Case for Effective Cancer Immunotherapy

T.S.Aguilar

LIFELINE – The Case for Effective Cancer Immunotherapy

A T.S.Aguilar book

First edition: 2020

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2020 by T.S.Aguilar

Text design: T.S.Aguilar

Cover design: T.S.Aguilar

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

by  any means, without permission.

For information: [e-mail]

ISBN:  978-0-9687711-3-6

Preamble

First of all I advise every reader that this book should not be construed as medical advice - repeat - it is not medical advice for cancer treatment. It does not propagate a miraculous cure or suggest consulting soothsayers who claim to have cured thousands of terminally ill cancer patients. It presents an incisive look at current cancer treatment, what is wrong with it, why orphan medications that could improve the outcome of conventional treatment are denied clinical trials, and the ongoing research and development of immunotherapies that provide a ray of hope for a cancer cure in the near future.

Now you may well ask what moves a guy without medical training to write about cancer, one of the most complex diseases to befall humanity. It started as a therapy of writing down my wife Cathy’s case history of struggling with the disease and my concurrent search for a cure. Nineteen-month after she was diagnosed my wife succumbed to cancer when we were denied the medicine that could have prolonged her life and in the best case cured her. It is a story that is probably familiar to most families and caregivers who have lost a loved one to the disease and is equally familiar to the millions of patients searching and hoping for a cure.

I continued researching current cancer treatment, and it became apparent that the prescribed and administered therapies and medications fail to have any curative effect for millions of cancer patients. Hence and not just by chance, Big Pharma’s medicine that results in the death of over nine million cancer patients globally a year after an allegedly effective treatment came into focus. There is practically no cure for cancer at present because the eight and a half million survivors have on average about five years of progression free survival before the cancer recurs in a more aggressive form and ends with the death of the patients.

My research also shed some light on malpractice and corruptibility of institutes and practitioners as well as the media’s promotion of alleged advances in conventional cancer treatment.

The negative and depressing outcome of the research of current cancer treatment moved me to search for new and unconventional treatments and medications and concluded with an investigation of curative therapies that provide hope for all people afflicted with cancer, directly and indirectly. The outcome was the case for effective immunotherapy to heal patients of their cancer.

It resulted in a positive outlook that should give hope to all people diagnosed with cancer to be cured of the disease for good in the foreseeable future. It is still some way to go and the scientists and researchers will want to learn much more about cancer and the immune system before a great and ultimate medical breakthrough will be achieved. The good news is that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel and by all accounts it is not an oncoming train.

The critical wording describing dithering medics and useless therapies may look like a condemnation of the health care systems of the two countries where my wife was diagnosed and ultimately failed to be treated effectively. But it is not! The health care systems of most other countries are not any better and in many cases far worse. It doesn’t matter if a health care system is public or private, universal or based on individual health insurance policies. All of them are inadequate to provide effective curative cancer treatment and prevent the death of millions of patients.

Several hurdles will have to be taken to improve health care. Among them are better work conditions and salaries of health care workers to attract more young people into these professions and alleviate present day shortages. The financing of immunotherapy research and development has to be increased. The bureaucracy that hinders the acceptance of researchers’ trial results as relevant needs to be overcome as well as Big Pharma’s lack of interest in and its active hindrance of finding and implementing a cancer cure.

The epidemics and pandemics of the recent past have confirmed the inadequacies of current health care policies. It begs the question if any country needs more bureaucrats to administer its health care system than medical practitioners and yet at salaries that would make nurses swoon with happiness if they received the bureaucrats’ remuneration in recognition of their work.

Politicians of all stripes should agree to raise the health care budgets instead of slashing them and provide a functioning, comprehensive universal health care. It should include dental, ocular, and auditory treatments needed mainly by old people who are also the age group most vulnerable to cancer. It has to be recognised that only a population whose health care is assured without driving it into bankruptcy and poverty can achieve the happiness it deserves and be fully productive.

Governments should restrain their bureaucracy, promote and support medical research and development at universities, and stop whining about how much health care costs. Instead they should consider it an investment into social cohesion that is lost due to the lack of effective care for the sick and elderly.

In short, the book is a summary of my multi-year investigation of medical practice, the health care industry, and Big Pharma. It is a critical assessment of conventional cancer treatments based on my experience as caregiver of both my mother and my wife who were diagnosed with and succumbed to cancer. It concludes with insights into the research of techniques and therapies that enhance immunotherapy, the manipulation and strengthening of the human immune system, and its facilitation to eradicate cancer cells without side effects.

Thus, writing this essay was like passing through a dark valley of death into the glimmer of hope of a new day.

Cathy’s Case History

This is the case history of the conventional cancer treatment that failed my wife and led ultimately to what I regard as her untimely death.

In early May 2016, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. We resided and worked in Saudi Arabia at the time. The nineteen months that followed until her death in Canada in early December 2017 was a roller coaster of emotions.

Brief euphoric moments of hope were shattered one after another. The surgery two specialists had recommended when they were consulted for a second opinion was declared out of the question by the windbag of a doctor who was in charge of her treatment and had misdiagnosed her cancer. The anticancer treatments with chemo- and radiotherapy did not have any positive effect, and in the end the doctors refused to prescribe the medication that might have saved or at least prolonged Cathy’s life. Instead she was pumped full of Fentanyl, the opioid of infamy in the opioid crisis of North America and other parts of the world.

The loss of a loved one to cancer is always a tragedy. When my wife and partner of 25 years died, overwhelming grief took hold, especially because Cathy had been only a step away from potential relief if not a cure. Thus, my grief was laced with bitterness and anger.

Doubts continue to gnaw away at me to this day, doubts if I had done enough to help save her life, and if I couldn’t have been more forceful to demand the treatment that would have eased her suffering, extended her life expectancy, and potentially cured her of the cancer.

However, obtaining the medication for various types of cancer that serves at least as an adjunct in the apoptosis of cancer cells is going to be difficult in most countries. The health care authorities simply shut their eyes to the research done around the globe and will not permit the prescription of a drug that has not yet undergone a clinical trial on their home turf despite the documented scientific proof of its efficacy achieved in other countries.

The doctors that were licensed to prescribe the well-known and very affordable adjunct medication we wanted, ignored or rejected the scientific evidence about its curative effect, and refused to consider it even as an analgesic, although in that capacity it is prescribed and administered.

During the entire episode of the misdiagnosis, delays, and failed treatments I made mistakes because I was totally unprepared. Neither Cathy nor I had ever thought of suffering cancer, prepared for it, or considered what needed to be done in case it happened. Also, we had faith in most of the doctors we consulted and trusted them, which in retrospect turns out to have been a bad mistake because we couldn’t tell the trustworthy medical practitioners apart from the blowhards who should have their license withdrawn and be banished from working in the field of health care.

In the hope that Cathy’s case history will help you to avoid our mistakes and be treated more successfully, I accentuate our mistakes and failures for you to pursue a course of action that could result in a more fortunate outcome.

Among the medics we consulted stand out the doctors and especially the nurse practitioners that truly cared. I express my deeply felt gratitude to them. They did everything in their power to help but were prevented by the bureaucracy of the current health care systems to get the treatment or prescribe and administer the medication that was necessary. They are proof that competent and dedicated medical professionals do exist and can be trusted. Unfortunately, most of them can be and are overruled by domineering colleagues who quite evidently care more about polishing their egos and very little about the positive outcome of saving a life.

These overbearing medics we had the bad fortune to consult disappear in a nebula of full-throated claims and helplessly flailing arms as well as their conceited, jingoistic dismissals of research done and curative results achieved in what are to them foreign countries and therefore irrelevant.

Those flailing medics are reminiscent of Johann Andreas Eisenbart, a doctor of the 18th century. Decades after his death, medical students wrote the following satirical poem about his controversial treatments:

I am Doctor Eisenbart,

treat people with my healing art.

I can make the blind to walk,

and the lame again to talk!

The sexton’s son at Dideldum

I gave ten pounds of opium.

He fell asleep, years passed away,

and still he sleeps until this day.

The last three lines of the poem are reminiscent of the treatment my wife received in the end. Reading them, I can only wonder if all that much has changed in the ‘Health Care Industry’ since the 18th century.

How will today’s health care and medical practices be seen in a couple of centuries or so - if humanity should survive for that long? Will there again be some medical students writing satirical poems about stupidly obstinate and ignorant medics of today? Will future generations have reason to laugh about today’s medical practices? One can only hope for the sake of humanity that it will be the case.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Suddenly and Unexpected...

It was bright and sunny morning in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday, 4th May 2016. My wife Cathy and I had got up early and we were ready for our respective work. Cathy taught at a medical college and I worked on the design of a geothermal power system.

Cathy was in a happy mood. The final exam papers she had prepared for intermediate level female students had not only been accepted the previous day but were also commended for their cultural sensitivity. She looked as radiant as ever and nobody could have expected what would unfold in the course of the day.

We lived with our cat Sparky in a single-family villa in a housing compound, a closed and guarded community complex by the name of Al Yamama (‘The Dove’). It is located approximately 15 km (10 miles) from the campus of the King Saud University for Health Sciences, Cathy’s place of work.

The university is part of a huge medical complex, King Abdullah Medical City. It is not an independent city, but a complex in the east of Riyadh with hospitals, housing for medical staff, shops, restaurants, banks, and the colleges of the university. It is run and financed by the National Guard of Saudi Arabia. The medical facilities are freely accessible and free of charge to anyone with National Guard health insurance - and Saudi royalty, of course.

When we were ready to go to work, I drove her as I did every workday in our sub-compact rental car through the hectic morning traffic while cautiously avoiding drivers who appeared to be on a suicide mission.

Believe me, driving in Saudi Arabia and especially in Riyadh was not a lot of fun. Some people compared it to a bumper car rally where traffic signs and speed limits are ignored, and traffic lights serve to illuminate intersections. Cathy had often wondered why any woman would want to drive a car in that city, that country. Well, now the Saudi women can drive and hopefully they contribute to a more sedate driving style and some consideration for the other traffic participants.

I dropped her off at the gates of the Women’s Medical College that no man, except technical maintenance staff under guard, is permitted to enter. I wished her a pleasant day and promised to pick her up after classes.

I returned home where I worked on the final touches of my project that I was to present to some rich knobs for the financing of the prototype.

Absorbed in my work I didn’t notice a taxi pulling up in front of our villa about midday. I was surprised to see Cathy come into the house and noticed the distinct yellow discolouration of her face.

Wanting to know what had happened to her, she told me that her superior had noticed the rapid change of her complexion and sent her home on suspicion that she had a sudden case of jaundice as a result of the lunch she had eaten in the cafeteria.

Not familiar with the cause of jaundice, I had no idea how that could have happened so suddenly or how one sandwich could be the cause. We decided to go immediately to the hospital to have her medical condition diagnosed.

The First Misdiagnosis

I dropped Cathy off at the regular medical ward, not the emergency ward when she assured me that she was still feeling fine.

I waited in the lobby for her return. It is depressing to sit in a public waiting area where hundreds of people with all sorts of ailments hobble past. And it got worse when Cathy returned. She looked distraught when she conveyed the doctor’s diagnosis.

He had dismissed her with his conclusion that the jaundice was caused by the excessive consumption of alcohol. He had stated to know what he was talking about from his years of study in Glasgow and Liverpool, the alleged binge drinking capitals of Scotland and England!

He insisted that Cathy’s problem was the onset of cirrhosis of the liver that would go away as soon as she stopped boozing. That was his experience with all the other expatriates he treated every day. Or so he claimed.

That sot hadn’t even listened to Cathy’s argument that we had never in our life been binge drinking and she hadn’t consumed any alcohol in more than twelve years. He insisted that all expatriates are alcoholics and that was that.

When Cathy pointed him out to me as he waltzed through the lobby, I got the picture. He was not dressed like a Saudi and thus it was fair to assume that he was an expatriate from some Middle Eastern country. His puffy face, bulbous red nose, and droopy eyelids provided the appearance of an alcoholic on his way home for some serious drinking to get blotto on home-distilled hooch.

Challenging that pompous so-called doctor in the public waiting area would have been counterproductive. Instead we arranged an appointment for the next day and insisted that it had to be a Saudi doctor, not another expatriate.

A Meticulous Exam

After that disastrous first consultation, we hoped that the next doctor would not project his own addictions onto others and know that quite a few people don’t like to pickle their brains.

As arranged, the appointment was with a Saudi doctor, not an expatriate. Cathy underwent a lengthy interview and a thorough exam on Thursday, 5th May 2016.

Methodically the doctor excluded various origins of the jaundice: no alcohol, no careless consumption of dubious food and drink, and no swimming in parasitic flatworm infested fresh water. That appeared to exclude cirrhosis and hepatitis, which still had to be ascertained, but it was most definitely not bilharzia, which can cause jaundice and is sometimes mistaken for liver cancer. Bilharzia - also known as snail fever - is caused by parasitic flatworms called schistosomes. It causes liver damage, kidney failure, infertility, and bladder cancer.

He ordered a blood test and scheduled a computer tomography scan (CT scan) for Monday, 9th May 2016, to get a clear picture of what the problem was with her liver.

The hepatitis and cirrhosis tests turned out to be negative, i.e. the diseases were not detected. But the scan showed two large tumours, one below the liver, and one on the spleen. The doctor ordered a biopsy of the