We believe cancer research is way off track.

To be sure, hope and optimism go hand and hand with cancer advocacy and research, and rightfully so.  These are the emotions that motivate us.  We’ve all heard news of a possible breakthrough, or of someone beating cancer against the odds.  It’s human nature to stay hopeful and be optimistic in the face of despair.  But reality portrays a different image of cancer – one much less hopeful. 

The statistics are a cruel reminder of the fact that we are far from winning the ‘war against cancer’ declared by President Nixon in 1971. The truth is folks, the cancer death rates today, are the same as they were in 1950.  Cancer will likely soon pass heart disease as America’s leading cause of death.  Many of you probably think of cancer as a disease that just affects the elderly.  It’s not.  Cancer is the number one killer of children and all the way up to people in their thirties.

Undeniably, meaningful progress in treating cancer has remained terribly elusive.  Lifestyle changes, like a reduction in smoking rates, and earlier diagnosis, account for the vast majority of progress.  New chemotherapeutic drugs account for almost nothing in terms of survival rates.  In fact, one of the main therapies used to treat cancer today – radiation, has been round for 100 years.  It’s hard to think of another technology that has been so stagnant.

The next generation of ‘targeted’ therapies designed to singularly target the genetic defects of the cancer cell, leaving normal cells alone — the ones you hear about on the news, or read about in the paper, the ones we are told have so much promise –have been an abysmal failure.  Of the 700 targeted therapies developed to date, only one, Gleevec, has made a difference in people’s lives.

There are too many examples of oncological drugs with marginal to no benefit, like bevacizumab (Avastin, Genentech) approved for metastatic breast cancer (provides progression-free survival improvement but no   increase in overall survival; estimated total cost of therapy, $90,816).  No increase in overall survival for a price tag of $90,816.

This is unacceptable.  There is something clearly wrong here.   Critically, we think the profound lack of progress is because cancer research has for too long chased a single scientific paradigm that is increasingly showing flaws.

Our scientific convictions are what make us different from the numerous other cancer foundations.  Albert Einstein once said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same think over and over again and expecting different results.”  Sadly, this seems to apply to cancer research today.  Rather than spending money researching genetic defects with no clinical relevance, over and over again, we think there is a better way. 

We are not alone.  Recent evidence implicating the importance of metabolism in cancer has not escaped the attention of some prominent researchers.  DNA co-discoverer, and NCI board member, James Watson, is equally frustrated with the lack of progress, and said this recently, “More attention should be paid on the metabolism of cancer……The cancer cell should be treated as a ‘sick man’ and not a ‘superman’ by attacking cancer cells where they are metabolically vulnerable.”

Without delving too far into the science, there are two facts you should know:

  1. No single mutation or any combination of mutations is reliably diagnostic of any type of cancer – On the whole, the cancer mutations thought to cause cancer, seem to be almost random.
  2. Every cancer cell has a defective metabolism, regardless of tissue type and regardless of the mutations they possess.  This is where cancer is vulnerable.  This is why the cancer cell is a ‘sick man’.

Preliminary research using therapies based on exploiting the metabolic vulnerability of cancer cells has shown remarkable promise – and it has only just begun.

We feel we are posed on the precipice of a new era of progress in the understanding of cancer, and therapeutic progress.  The growing body of evidence is too compelling to be ignored.    We have certainly chased-down and mapped-out countless dead ends in the effort to cure cancer — but it is time to recognize and admits past failures, and move forward where the evidence dictates.  Once the focus of research shifts to metabolism of the cancer cell, meaningful progress may be realized where there has been none.

Our singular mission, our unrelenting goal, is to move forward with fresh vision — removing all preconceived notions and entrenched bias — and finally change the course of this insidious disease that affects us all.

Sincerely,

Travis M. Christofferson, MS

Founder and President


 

In my studies about health, partly due to my father's being an autistic scientist brainiac type, and my mother being incredibly strong with sticking with things (and genetics, therefore), I'm a nice mix of their influences, both genetic and environmental.  Nature and nurture. I think I'd always been familiarized to genes.  My father learned about genes along the way, and focused study time on it when my mother wanted to get into breeding and selling golden retrievers in the early part of the marriage in the 1950s. They continued until I was school age and had moved to Colorado's mountains and bought an old farm which had good outbuildings for dog kenneling.  

Prior to that, he started realizing something was 'wrong with him' which was perhaps genetic, and he thought maybe he shouldn't marry and have a family.  Being used in the US military programs for, I now believe, mind studies to do with telepathy, he went after World War II to UCLA in California, where he got a degree in psychology he was secretive or later confusing about.  On his death bed, the year of the UCLA era of his life changed and made more sense.  He went on to Texas then Albuquerque, where he went into a bookstore near the campus to buy a gift for his girlfriend in Texas.  My mother was on a ladder shelving books.  And that was that. Here I am, here YOU are, due to that meeting nearly sixty years before Lumigrate would be available for your use.  

But I've forgotten most of what I've learned about such details, either at home around the dinner table or in my occupational therapy schooling in the mid 1990s,  and went to brush up about genes, because something was in the back of my mind about mitochondria DNA and the mother.  What I found is very interesting -- in the early part of this new century, there were some cases reported after being studied where the father's DNA was found, in rare cases, within offspring.  But mostly the DNA from the sperm don't live once in the egg from the mother.  This varies from what science had found and believed (and everything was based off of) before.  

So this means that it's been traced back to where all people originated, and how long ago -- and there's some debate in what I found at different sources on the Internet about that, but overall what's said that I looked at dovetails with the theories and information being presented at 'truth' places on the Internet that I've been encountering from my seeking that 'layer' in recent years, increasingly. 

These 'truth movement providers' are spilling the beans on the truth of history and having us rewrite what we've been taught by The System of the corrupt cabal in the shadows, which I've termed 'The Monkeys and Their Monkey Businesses' to make it lighter and clearer to YOUsers or people I'm teaching 1:1 or 1:duo or group, and disclosing about another whole type of being more advanced than ours doing genetics work with beings on planet Earth over 100,000 years ago.  In Africa, they say. Of course much disinformation is out there, too, and one has to wade through a lot of information, use discernment, and that's what I bring to Lumigrate for YOUsers. 

Just a little 'seed planted' here to potentially 'raise your awareness' if you're not already aware or educated about that aspect of things.  Our "junk DNA" wasn't junk, folks! And it's coming into play currently more than ever, as it's getting 'turned on' for people to 'wake up' and 'ascend', it is said.  Again, might be of interest to YOU to study, or it might not.  I hope it did not turn anyone 'off' by reading this little sidenote.

Because mostly, for what this topic is about, I think it's important to be provided a good site for overall information about genetics, and I liked this one: 

www.genesinlife.org/genetics-101/how-does-genetics-work/main-inheritance-patterns [16]

They have WONDERFUL graphics to present the difficult to visualize information of inheritance of genetic material and the various types.  This is what is said at the very bottom of the thread at the link: 

Mitochondrial

Mitochondrial inheritance [17], also called maternal inheritance, refers to genes in the mitochondria. Although these conditions affect both males and females, only mothers pass mitochondria on to their children.

  • A father can never pass on a mitochondrial condition, because he does not pass on his mitochondrial genes.
  • If a mother is affected, her children will be affected, regardless of whether they are male or female, because she always passes her mitochondrial genes to all her children.

Diabetes mellitus and deafness, a rare form of diabetes, follows the mitochondrial inheritance [17] pattern.


When you click on the link, this is what is provided about mitochondrial inheritance
The mitochondrion, an organelle in the cell, contains its own genome. Mutations in these genes are responsible for several known genetic diseases. Individuals only inherit mitochondrial DNA from their mothers.

Check out Genetics Home Reference [18]  for more about genetic conditions and inheritance.

I point this out because it says, as you can see, "A father can never pass on a mitochondrial condition...." but that's contrary to what I found in a very short period of time online researching mitochondrial DNA and mothers. Here's what I found:

From New Scientist

23 August 2002

Mitochondria can be inherited from both parents

Mitochondria may not be inherited solely through the maternal line, according to new research that promises to overturn accepted biological wisdom.

If confirmed by other researchers, the findings could have huge implications for evolutionary biology and biochemistry.

Robert Sanders Williams, from Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, says the findings are “remarkable and unanticipated. This is more than a mere curiosity. It asserts the principle that it can occur in humans. It could have significant implications for the study of human evolution and the migrations of populations,” he says.

For decades biologists have assumed that mitochondria – the cells’ power stations – are inherited solely through the maternal line.

Mitochondria in the sperm from the father were presumed to be destroyed immediately after conception, leaving behind only those from the mother. But Marianne Schwartz and John Vissing from the University Hospital Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, have discovered that one of their patients inherited the majority of his mitochondria from his father.   

“Even with very sensitive methods, paternal mitochondrial DNA has never been detected in man before,” Schwartz told Reuters. “There are many examples of family pedigrees that follow mitochondrial diseases through the maternal line.”