Post subject: New cancer treatment knocked by medical establishment!

DANIEL IN THE LION'S DEN: Do Rosy's claims for a cancer cure stack up?

Anyone who claims a cure for cancer faces the vitriol of a medical establishment that has struggled in vain to combat the disease. In the UK there's even an Act of Parliament that prevents anyone other than a doctor from making such a claim.

So we have to admire the courage of Dr Rosy Daniel, former head of the pioneering Bristol Cancer Help Centre, who is staking her reputation on an Indian herbal treatment that she believes could well be medicine's holiest of grails - a cure for cancer.

The remedy she's promoting is Carctol, a herbal formulation developed by Dr Nandlal Tiwari of Rajasthan, India, who has been treating cancer patients with it for 20 years. He has case files of 1,900 patients treated with Carctol, many of whom had been considered beyond medical help. According to Tiwari's own records, 25 per cent of patients reported a 75 per cent to 100 per cent improvement in their condition while taking Carctol, and 30 per cent reported up to 75 per cent improvement (although it's not clear what these percentages mean, or how they were measured). Carctol appears to be especially effective in treating gastro-intestinal and haemotological cancers.

Dr Daniel has been using the remedy since 2000 as an alternative practitioner, and has prescribed it to 860 patients, a quarter of whom were helped, and half were helped 'to some extent', she says - but, again, these are vague terms that are difficult to measure.

Carctol is made up of Hemidesmus Indcus, Tribulus Terrestris, Piper Cubeba Linn, Ammani Vesicatroria, Lepidium Sativum Linn, Blepharis Edulis, Smilax China Linn, and Rheum Emodi Wall. Two capsules are taken four times a day. Dr Tiwari also recommends a vegetarian diet, and prohibits sour and acidic food and drink, and the patient must drink up to six pints of boiled, refrigerated water a day. A patient also has to take a digestive enzyme with the remedy.

None of the herbs in the formulation is a cancer fighter, so Dr Daniel assumes there must be a synergistic effect. Several herbs in Carctol are classed as medicines in the UK, and so only a doctor can prescribe the remedy.

Nobody seems too clear how Carctol works, but it's thought to change the body's pH from acid to alkaline. It's designed to strengthen the immune system, neutralize toxicity from chemotherapy, support liver and kidney function, and improve digestion.

Dr Daniel's claims for Carctol have enraged the medical establishment, which says she is irresponsible for raising false hopes, and making assertions that are based on scant scientific data.

It costs many millions of pounds to produce scientific evidence that would satisfy the medical establishment, and clearly neither Tiwari nor Daniel has that sort of money.

And nobody seems too keen to point out that chemotherapy has an overall success rate of just 3 per cent. Not that that makes Daniel's claims any more valid - but in the name of humanity, surely some means can be put in place to test her beliefs, even if for once a pharmaceutical company doesn't benefit.

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