Letter from the Publisher

Aug/Sept 2017

National University of Natural Medicine Commencement and Honorary

Doctor of Letters

In May and June I had been preparing for giving the 2017 commencement address at the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM) in Portland. I had been informed in April that I was to be conferred an honorary degree and with that honor came the privilege of addressing the graduating class. Not being much of a public speaker I faced this responsibility with a mixture of pride and terror. Of course, I knew that thousands of public figures give commencement addresses, not the least of which was our President who spoke at two institution this Spring, although his talks seemed more like campaign addresses. When I watched on TV a government administrator address the University of Washington in Seattle at a filled Husky Stadium I turned grey experiencing typical stage fright. But I have been practicing breathing exercises and sharing stories in a support group during the past year, so I was not nearly as frightened as I might have been. The folks at NUNM were also very encouraging and supportive and were, after all, a group after my own heart practicing naturopathic and functional medicine, holistic healing, and nutrition. They very much subscribe to the medicine I practice as well as the writing published in the Townsend Letter. So what was there really to worry about? Basically I just needed to share my story and be myself.

Beyond telling the story of why I decided to practice integrative medicine and touching on milestones in my life, I wanted to share some common visions that I had with the graduates. From my speech (viewable on-line at NUNM Commencement 2017) I had these insights to offer each of the Masters and Doctorate graduates of Naturopathic Medicine, Chinese Medicine & Acupuncture, Nutrition, Global Health, and Integrative Medicine Research:

I share your vision that if at all possible, the ill patient should be treated with herbal and natural supports, not pharmaceuticals. I share your wisdom that food should be our medicine and that nutrition is not limited to dieting and detoxing. I share your clarity that when I approach the patient I want to understand everything about that patient—not limit my diagnosis and treatment to a body system or part that should be examined in 7 minutes. I share your courage to provide the patient the best possible diagnosis and treatment even if it lies outside the scope of conventional medicine, even if it does not abide by medicine’s standard of care, when I know that the treatment I am providing will help, when other treatments have failed, and when I know that the treatment will not harm the patient. I share your knowledge that there are no patients who suffer long-term pain and fatigue for which there is no diagnosis or treatment, and who should be sent to a psychiatrist for an anti-depressant. I share your moral integrity to counter the wrong-headed messages that the conventional medical community may make about naturopathic, nutritional and integrative care—that we offer the best type of care that is a roadmap to true healing, not a Band-Aid that only temporarily helps but fails to get to the root of the patient’s problem. And most of all, I share your philosophy that behind all of our work we work from a basis of “love” rather than “fear,” that our patient is engaged with us in the process of getting better, and that we will find healing from deep within ourselves, not by waging war against or suppressing the disease.

Following my speech I made an effort to return to my seat on the stage with the NUNM faculty when President David Schleich called me back to receive my honorary Litt. D. degree, Doctor of Letters. If you are like me, you are wondering what is a Doctor of Letters degree. According to Wikipedia this is a high academic degree, considered by some to be beyond a PhD degree, that is conferred when extensive post-fellowship graduate work is done at an academic institution. The honorary Litt. D. is conferred by universities for exemplary work done outside the academic setting. The example Wikipedia offered for an honorary Litt. D. degree was when Oxford University in the U.K. conferred it to Samuel Clemson, author of Huckleberry Finn, in 1907. I have to admit that I experienced a certain level of hubris being in such rarified company as Clemson. The degree had been conferred to me for the work accomplished in publishing the Townsend Letter for nearly 35 years.

Attending my graduation speech and degree ceremony were my wife, Deborah, daughter Affinity, son-in-law, Jeffrey, and seven-month old granddaughter Jacqueline who managed to suffer through my talk with no melt-downs.

I had the pleasure of meeting Annie Brandt at the Best Answer to Cancer Conference in San Diego this April. (Mary Budinger reports on the meeting in this issue.) Annie is the President of this organization and the physician group, International Organization of Integrative Cancer Physicians. Annie’s background is in the computer software business and she was very successful in network sales and consultant work as well as being an entrepreneur. However, in the early 1990’s she became overwhelmingly ill with what would be later diagnosed as chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). The symptoms were so severe and disabling that she was largely confined to bed-rest 20 or more hours per day for two years. Her symptoms worsened and she was then given a diagnosis of progressive multiple sclerosis. Of course, she was laid off and her husband divorced her, not able to cope with her illness, causing her major stress, factors known to play a role in contributing to developing cancer. Despite the fact that Annie would revise her life, eating much better nutritionally, exercising, engaged in meditation and prayer, involved in mindfulness activities, using immune supplements and supports, she developed about one decade later breast cancer that showed early metastasis. Although she was ordered by her physicians to immediately have surgery and then do radiation treatment, she opted to consider her alternatives and became very involved in detoxing and cleaning up her life psychologically. The cancer spread, however, and she was led to work with James Forsythe, MD, HMD, who administered insulin-potentiated, low-dose chemotherapy (IPT) as a first step in her cancer recovery. Annie is now a fifteen-year survivor of metastatic breast cancer. She has shared her story with thousands of patients and those patients have inquired of Annie what they should do to initiate their recovery.

The book, The Healing Platform: Discover What Thousands Have Done to Conquer Cancer is a guidebook for patients to design by themselves the best healing approach.

One of the nice aspects of Annie’s book are pages that are set up following each chapter with questions and blank space for the reader to journal their answers. Annie is very concerned with the cancer patient’s psychological, emotional and spiritual background. She insists that there are deep emotional issues that generally precede the cancer diagnosis and most patients do not examine those traumatic events, nor the underlying anger, resentment, and sadness that are concealed and denied. Annie thinks that without addressing the emotional and mental issues, the cancer patient cannot fully heal. Of course, most cancer patients eat the Standard American Diet and use minimal to no supplements and take a few or many pharmaceuticals. She argues that patients need to become informed about cancer treatments and options and not be coerced into undertaking surgery and chemotherapy until they understand their options.

The Healing Platform describes appropriate life style changes, nutrition, supplementation, detoxification, and energy supports, but asserts that each individual needs to assess those options and choose what works best for oneself. Her chapter on integrative cancer modalities is a great synopsis of what integrative cancer care offers diagnostically and treatment-wise.

One point that Annie makes is that cancer cells, particularly cancer stem cells, are highly resistant to curative treatments and develop resistance rapidly to such therapies. She recommends that natural therapies be employed for certain time periods and then stopped; they may be resumed at a later point, but the patient should avoid long-term continuous treatment as this encourages resistance. Annie also advises vigilance in determining what works and what doesn’t—the latter should be eliminated from treatment protocols.

Leigh Erin Conneally, MD is a physician in southern California who at one time practiced primarily urology but found herself more concerned with holistic medicine. Her clinic in Irvine brings together nearly a dozen practitioners providing a breadth of services that may be integrative medicine’s answer to what the Mayo Clinic offers. While Mayo focuses on CT scans and MRIs, basic lab panels, and conventional medicine diagnoses, Conneally reaches for benchmarks that look for disease before a major diagnosis can be confirmed. Alternatively, she prefers to follow markers that assess whether the treatment is definitely making headway or just spinning wheels.

Many of her patients either have cancer or are worried about developing cancer. In her new book: The Cancer Revolution: A Groundbreaking Program to Reverse and Prevent Cancer, Conneally spells out exactly what those markers are that enable one to diagnose cancer early as well as follow treatment progress. Not surprisingly, none of these benchmarks are generally part of the typical annual physical and most are not part of the oncology exam for either the early or the advanced cancer patient. Yet, such testing is surprisingly simple, not so expensive, and very informative. With all the hubris that the pharmaceutical industry makes about the very expensive immunotherapy drugs, one would think that oncology would seek other means to follow the cancer patient’s progress beyond doing CT and PET scans. Unfortunately, that is not the case, so patient and doctor are deprived of easy means of following cancer progress as well as the means to assess the effectiveness of proposed chemical, biologic and natural therapies.

Conneally is a major advocate of making nutrition a cornerstone of cancer treatment. She fiercely calls for patient adherence to dietary lifestyle changes and frets that a laissez-faire standard American diet will nullify much of the benefit of supportive cancer treatment. Conneally is judicious about her use of supplementation but champions high doses of nutrients, herbals, essential fatty acids, amino acids and more. Conneally review intensive treatments that are important in cancer care including the use of i.v.’s, hyperbaric oxygen, IPT, and detoxification strategies. She will call for a daily coffee enema, juicing, and mindful meditation and breathing exercise. Detoxification does not mean sickening Herxheimer reactions need to be the order of the day.

Perhaps the best part of Conneally’s writing is the synopsis she provides with each chapter describing the strategy in one column and its benefits in the second column. The trouble with most new cancer patients is the overwhelming information patients need to digest and assimilate. While a patient may not wish to follow all of her suggestions at least the strategy is laid out in a very organized manner, tactics to employ are spelled out, and resources are provided in one very easy to read text. I will be directing the patient to use this book first.

The Molecular Basis of Prostate Cancer and Targeting Therapies

Prof. Serge Jurasunas is an integrative naturopathic physician in Lisbon, Portugal, who has developed successful oncology protocols for managing cancer. Townsend Letter readers may be familiar with his work as he has published many papers here in the past 15 years. While Jurasunas employs naturopathic approaches to reversing cancer, he has become dependent on studying and evaluating tumor and molecular markers in assessing cancer status. With prostate cancer he is very interested in understanding the molecular functioning of genes involved in apoptosis.

The paper he has written for this issue examines how defects in the gene P53 network leads to tumor promotion, decreased apoptosis, angiogenesis and metastases. In fact Jurasunas considers reversing the mutation of the P53 gene to the normal “wild type” gene functioning is a key to managing and remitting advanced cancer. An important molecular factor in encouraging metastasis is BCL-2 while a related factor, BAX, encourages apoptosis. Hence high BCL-2 and low BAX activity would encourage tumor progression. Jurasunas explores how to reverse the over-activity of BCL-2. Similarly the recently studied anti-apoptotic protein Survivin causes more aggressive prostate cancer activity.

Among the many treatment strategies that Jurasunas employs is the use of soy extract, Tegaran, that he hypothesizes inhibits the activity of BCL-2 and Survivin. Soy extract increases the efficacy of chemotherapy, an important consideration in considering synergistic (adjunctive) treatment. Jurasunas is very encouraged with other supplement supports such as curcumin and propolis.

Jonathan Collin, MD

END END END END END

Commencement Introduction

Thank you for the very nice introduction. President Schleich, Vice-President Snyder, members of the faculty and board, family and friends of the graduates and, especially, to the graduates who have worked so hard to reach today’s commencement. Thank you for honoring me and permitting me to say a few words at this graduation. It has just been a year since this college has been accredited as the National University of Naturopathic Medicine. The university has been the longest running 4-year naturopathic school in North America, and the vast majority of naturopathic doctors I know as fellow colleagues have been trained here at NCNM. I say colleagues even though I am an MD, not an ND, because the medical practice that I espouse and the publication that I edit share the values and thinking of the graduating naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, nutrition graduates, and integrative medicine researchers. I share your vision that if at all possible, the ill patient should be treated with herbal and natural supports, not pharmaceuticals. I share your wisdom that food should be our medicine and that nutrition is not limited to dieting and detoxing. I share your clarity that when I approach the patient I want to understand everything about that patient—not limit my diagnosis and treatment to a body system or part that should be examined in 7 minutes. I share with you the courage to provide the patient the best possible diagnosis and treatment even if it lies outside the scope of conventional medicine, even if it does not abide by medicine’s standard of care, when I know that the treatment I am providing will help, when other treatments have failed, and when I know that the treatment will not harm the patient. I share with you the knowledge that there are no patients who suffer long-term pain and fatigue for which there is no diagnosis or treatment, and who should be sent to a psychiatrist for an anti-depressant. I share with you the moral integrity to counter the wrong-headed messages that the conventional medical community may make about naturopathic, nutritional and integrative care—that we offer the best type of care that is a roadmap to true healing, not a Band-Aid that only temporarily helps but fails to get to the root of the patient’s problem. And most of all, I share with you the philosophy that behind all of our work we work from a basis of “love” rather than “fear,” that our patient is engaged with us in the process of getting better, and that we will find healing from deep within ourselves, not by waging war against or suppressing the disease.

I have been asked why did I get involved in this type of medicine when I could have been trained as a specialist? Once upon a time I was set to do a residency in dermatology, but I abandoned that when I was introduced to the work of many of the old time naturopaths and nutritional doctors. At the time I was working with, not what you would expect, leprosy patients at the Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, Louisiana. My wife, Deborah, was pregnant and we had decided that having a home birth would be a more fulfilling birthing process that what was being offered at the local hospital. We actually found an old time doc who was willing to come to the house and do a home delivery; and our daughter, who is here in the audience today with her husband and our granddaughter, did quite well through the delivery. At that time we were introduced to integrative and naturopathic medicine and I began to use what I was able to learn with my patients at the leprosy hospital. They loved having a doctor educate them about nutrition, vitamins, and herbs, but the medical staff was not too happy about it, and we were soon to have a parting of the ways for my unapproved use of nutritional and herbal treatments. When we moved to Washington State we found Seattle and Portland were very open to naturopathic care and natural medicine. At that time, I began to study with an integrative doctor, named Leo Bolles, who had been collaborating with a biochemist by the name of Jeffrey Bland. Bland was working on developing laboratory tests that were vital in understanding why a patient who had chronic fatigue and pain was functioning with sub-adequate nutrition and faulty biochemistry. His work would prove to be fundamental in providing a scientific basis for why doctors should treat with nutrition and nutritional medicine before reaching for the prescription pad. We were also very fortunate to work together with an old time naturopathic physician, John Bastyr, ND, who instilled in us not only the wisdom of his treatment methods but also the virtues of naturopathic medicine. Also at that time we enjoyed collaboration with a doctor from Victoria, B.C., Dr. Abrahm Hoffer, who abandoned his pharmaceutical-based psychiatric practice to study how orthomolecular medicine, using high-dose vitamins, minerals and related nutrients, offered an alternative option for patients suffering from severe mental illness. Another biochemist and nobel prize winner, who many of you are already familiar with, Linus Pauling, led the way to using high dose intravenous Vitamin C in treating cancer, infection, and inflammatory disease. In a word, the medicine I was being mentored in greatly overlapped the practice of naturopathic physicians and the work of nutrition and Oriental medicine graduates here. While there may be differences, we share the intention of providing natural care that is largely evidenced based, even if conventional medicine could and would not appreciate it.

The 1980’s

In the 1980’s three things happened to me that brought me closer to naturopathic medicine, nutrition, and Oriental medicine—and I’m not talking about Madonna, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, although they probably helped. First, in 1981, I had reached a place in my life where I needed to do what everyone goes through—the Big Change. I had been working with Dr. Bolles but I needed to spread my wings and set up my own shingle and practice on my own. At the time in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula, in Port Townsend, a young naturopathic physician shared a similar vision, making the Big Change. He had developed a wonderful reputation locally with a great many loyal, faithful patients. He wanted to move to Oregon, to Portland, and do clinical and academic work at this naturopathic college. We were both tentative on having me take over his naturopathic practice. On the one hand, while I appreciated much of what old time naturopathy offered, my skill set on putting together herbal prescriptions, mixing together botanical extracts, was completely lacking. On the other hand, I was already involved in my day-to-day clinical practice with advising patients on making diet one’s medicine and supplementing that diet with nutrients, enzymes and herbals to change their medical condition. We agreed on the transition and I had a on year honeymoon of seeing Dr. Stephen Sandberg-Lewis’s patients who were expecting me to fill his shoes. Dr. Sandberg-Lewis is and has been part of the distinguished faculty of NUNM who you graduates and fellow faculty have come to love and enjoy. Of course, my clientele gradually changed as patients seeking bona fide naturopathy went elsewhere and my practice became more integrated medicine. However, that early work with his naturopathic process made me greatly appreciate the tenets of naturopathic medicine and the importance of educating patients on the importance of nutrition.

The second Big Change, and the one that brought me to this stage today, was my interest in writing and creating a forum for like-minded doctors. In the 1980s there was no internet, of course, and there were no journals or magazines for natural medicine. Of course, doctors could publish their work in the main stream medical journals, but the Journal of the AMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, were not open to publishing work by integrative and naturopathic physicians. Having edited my high school paper as well as college engineering magazine, I already had a strong interest in creating a magazine that could bring together physicians, nutritionists, and related practitioners. It started as a newsletter and we called it Townsend Letter for Doctors, eliminating the word, “Port,” from Port Townsend, the city from where it was originally published. Within a short period the newsletter became a journal and magazine for doctors reporting on the work they did or reviewing the medical literature pertinent to naturopathic and integrative practice. One of our earliest contributors, Alan Gaby, an integrative MD, set up the standard of culling the peer-review journals for academic research justifying the use of nutrients in treating illness. He continues to be the primary academic contributor to our publication 30 years later. He has also published the second edition of his opus work, Nutritional Medicine, that examines and references the scientific basis of using nutrition to treat illness. Another early contributor, Dr. Tori Hudson, a well recognized graduate from NCNM, has led the way for the past 25 years in examining the best nutritional approaches in treating women—she has been at the forefront of integrating naturopathic and conventional medicine in treating women!

The last BIG CHANGE, yes, I have been recalling those big changes I had in the 80s, was when the alternative medical community was waging a war with the conventional medical community about winning the war on cancer. Despite Nixon’s pronouncement that our funding the war on cancer would bring on great changes, not much had transpired by 1985. Gilda Radner’s book, It’s Always Something, depicted the nasty side effects she experienced with her own cancer treatment. At that point patients were seeking care in Tijuana and Germany as well as in U.S. clinics where practitioners were being prosecuted by zealous district attorneys and overbearing medical boards. Congress had become fed up and Rep. Molinari of Staten Island, New York marshaled 50 Representatives to organize the Office of Technology Assessment of the Congress to investigate alternative cancer therapies. For some reason I was invited to participate, along with Andrew Weil, and a number of proponents of the alternative cancer community as well as a few university critics. Over five years we examined what was being offered: nutrition and mindful approaches like meditation, acupuncture, as well as exercise were given the green light; unapproved treatments like laetrile, Hoxsey cure, nutritional supplements and hyperbaric oxygen were given a thumbs-down. Nevertheless, the conclusion of our investigation and the report was the N.I.H. should open an Office of Alternative Medicine. And this is exactly what happened in 1991; later it evolved into the NIH Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This Center remains today as the primary center to study integrative and naturopathic medicine and is a primary funding source for integrative research. The graduates here today receiving a degree in integrative medicine research will be working with this NIH Center in the future.

While we have become very excited by the great strides we have made in cancer treatment during the past 15 years, especially with the new immunotherapy drugs, and precision medicine based on genomic testing of the tumor, we have only made modest improvement in treating aggressive, advanced tumors. Where the outcome had been far less than 5% five-year survival in most cancers, the new immunotherapy drugs have had dramatic increases in survival for leukemia, lymphoma and related cancers. Although melanoma and some other tumors have not had quite the same level of success, there has been a major increase in long-term survival for melanoma patients. Unfortunately the same is not the case for metastic breast, prostate, lung, colon, and brain cancer.

One of the most important developments in naturopathic medicine has been specialty training in most fields of medicine. Among those specialties has been naturopathic oncology. A fellowship training for naturopathic physicians permits physicians to become specialist naturopathic oncologists. What this means for the cancer community and cancer patients is that the best and most effective aspects of naturopathic care can be offered to patients. Such services are now being integrated in major cancer centers and clinics. Nutrition has always been downplayed in cancer treatment except as a supportive measure for the depleted state of cachexia. Research in the metabolic aspects of cancer are being utilized by naturopathic physicians and nutrition consultants. Recent research has demonstrated the remarkable role of the ketogenic diet, a very high fat diet, in slowing the progression of brain cancer and some other tumors. The graduates of NCNM will play a vital role in developing naturopathic oncology and creating new standards of care for cancer work.

Homeopathy Controversy

I would like to end off my address today with a little bit of controversy and give a shout-out regarding homeopathy. Homeopathy is part of the curriculum at NUNM—it is an elective course or rather a series of courses for naturopathic students. For those not familiar, homeopathy is a system of medicine that Samuel Hahnemann popularized in the early 1800’s. It is based on the principle of “like cures likes” using extremely diluted mineral, plant, or animal matter. Very simplistically, homeopathic remedies are thought to have characteristics specific for a patient’s symptoms. The reason that homeopathy is considered controversial is that the dilution is so dilute that there is no actual chemical or biologic material that is measurable—however, because the dilution is prepared by diluting the material over and over again, the final dilution is considered to retain an “energetic imprint” of the original material. Skeptics argue that if the remedy does not have any measurable chemical or biologic substance, it cannot, by definition, exert any physical activity. However, extensive, and I mean, very extensive case study and clinical use for over two hundred years, demonstrates remarkable clinical benefit of homeopathy. Not only do patients become symptomatically better, many have complete remission of both acute and chronic illness. Patients who have failed to improve physically and mentally on pharmaceuticals have shown remarkable improvement with homeopathic care. The fact that skeptics dismiss the effectiveness of homeopathy is not testament to scientific discovery or testing; instead, it is testament to dogmatic opinion and poorly done attempts at testing homeopathic treatment.

If this were a simple matter of two camps, the allopathic camp that favors the use of pharmaceutical drugs negating the homeopathic camp, it would not be much concern. However, it is a much bigger concern than this. Political and medical associations have decided that for the public good, homeopathy needs to be shut down or curtailed at least from an economic viewpoint. The National Health Service in the U.K. decided to no longer fund homeopathic care and treatment in 2016. A report by the New Zealand medical board decided that homeopathy was not effective and suggested defunding homeopathy treatment. In the U.S. the FTC stipulated that OTC homeopathic treatment needed a warning label that homeopathy lacks scientific proof; the FDA issued a recall for homeopathic teething tablets expressing concern about the ingredients, despite the fact that homeopathic remedies, being extremely dilute, do not have adverse effects.

NUNM alumni, Judyth Reichenberg Ullman and Robert Ulman, have devoted their professional careers do practicing and writing about homeopathy. From a clinical standpoint they have consistently found homeopathy to be safe and efficacious. There is no justification for this current attach against homeopathy, an attack that besmirches the curriculum of NUNM as well as the practices of NUNM graduates. It behooves the naturopathic medicine graduates and fellow NUNM graduates to embrace efforts to defend homeopathy and not permit conventional medicine shackle long-standing naturopathic medicine practices. When and if naturopathic practice fails to improve patient care and quality of life, then, and only then, should such diagnosis and treatment be dismissed; as long as naturopathy and nutritional medicine is effective, we should champion and safeguard its practice.

As a final note, the graduates today deserve the highest honors for their work well done. Let us remember to thank those family members and friends who made this education possible—who said “yes” when you suggested that this doctoral or masters work is what you wanted to study. To the parents and grandparents, to the loved ones, to the friends who kept your back through these years of study, let’s give a heartfelt thanks.

Thank you for your kind attention.

From an educational perspective perhaps the most controversial elective offered to you is a series of courses on homeopathy. Homeopathy is a system of medicine that was named by a German physician, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, in the early 1800’s. The name, homeopathy, literally means “similar suffering,” is based on the Law of Similars, often referred to as “like cures like.” What Hahnemann discovered, and what been essentially known since Hippocrates, is that when a substance, be it plant, mineral, or animal based, evokes illness in a previously healthy individual, that same substance is capable of healing a sick individual but only if the substance is administered in very, very dilute concentration. Homeopathic remedies , and there are many, each have very specific physical and emotional characteristics, and the practice of homeopathic medicine requires that the patient’s symptoms must match exactly the homeopathic remedy’s characteristics. Since Hahnemann’s publication of the Organon of the Art of Healing in 1810, homeopathy has flourished as a system of medicine during the past century in Europe and the U.S. However, in 1910 Flexner published a report in the U.S. establishing new standards for medical education and practice, essentially paving the way for pharmaceutical medicine, and dismissing homeopathy. At that time homeopathic medical colleges no longer were authorized funding. Homeopathy lost favor in the U.S. but it continued to be well accepted in the U.K., Germany, France, and especially in India. The Royal Family in the U.K. favored homeopathic medicine and London maintained several homeopathic hospitals. Physicians in Germany and France never severed their use of homeopathy, administering drugs and homeopathic remedies to patients as appropriate. The acceptance of homeopathy in India was so remarkable that there are now 300,000 homeopathic practitioners in India with 180 homeopathic medical schools, 7500 homeopathic clinics, and 307 homeopathic hospitals. In the U.S. homeopathy had a renaissance in the 1970’s not the least of which was the education offered by naturopathic medical colleges, particularly NCNM as it was known up until last year. However, homeopathy was not limited to naturopathic physicians as MDs including myself recognized its effectiveness and, particularly, its safety.

However, just as the authors of the Flexner report attempted to do, skeptics have persisted in the AMA and elsewhere disputing the effectiveness of homeopathy. The argument boiled down to how could a remedy that is so dilute, more dilute than what chemistry defines as the number of molecules in a mole, 6 x 10 to the 23^rd power, how could a substance so dilute that the physical, chemical, biologic ability to do anything? From a logical point of view it would appear impossible that such a diluted substance would not be able to exert any physiological or biochemical activity, but, in fact, for more than two hundreds there are countless cases, not one, or two or one hundred, but countless cases of individuals not only responding to homeopathic treatment, but responding in many cases heroically, dramatically, and without harm. Before I venture into any further science, let me provide, like the politicians, a few examples of homeopathy at work. I take liberty here as these cases have been reported in the publication I edit the Townsend Letter:

A 72 year-old individual was admitted to a university hospital after having his colon removed for unsuccessfully treated ulcerative colitis. The colitis had been treated with pharmaceutical drugs for the past few decades but had become completely unmanageable. Following the removal of the colon, the patient developed severe complications. First, the remaining intestine that was to substitute for the colon failed to function with normal peristalsis (intestinal movement). Second the patient developed chronic, violent, constant hiccups. And thirdly, the patient developed severe pneumonia while hospitalized. On top of this the patient had very severe post-surgery abdominal pain and weakness. The hiccups were incapacitating causing difficulty in breathing, eating, and being able to sleep. The homeopathic practitioner, one of our Townsend Letter writers, pieced together the patient’s history and discovered that the patient developed colitis following the administration of special vaccines needed for exotic travel. That information and the patient’s current symptoms led to a clear-cut deduction that this was a case that needed the homeopathic prescription of Thuja occidentalis (also known as Arbor vitae cedar). Yes, a homeopathic prescription of the tree, Cedar. The patient’s wife gave the patient Thuja and the hiccups stopped in five minutes.

Five minutes after going on for more than 24 hours. Does this seem like placebo? Does this sound like shamanism or hypnotism? Yes, the hiccups returned two hours later, but following a second dose of Thuja, the hiccups completely resolved never to return. The intestinal peristalsis (lack of movement) resumed the next day. The pneumonia resolved. The attending doctors were shocked at the improvement and discharged the patient two days later.

Another homeopathic physician had a 34 year-old female patient who was a nurse who had been severely symptomatic with endometriosis since her teens. Endometriosis is a very disabling condition where the same tissue that lines the inside of the uterus grows outside the uterus, abnormally growing and bleeding like having monster periods. In a word it is horribly painful. The nurse already had four surgeries to remove large blood-filled cysts from her bladder and pelvic organs. She had had course of male hormone to suppress the growths. When the patient sought homeopathic care she was wishing to restore her menstrual cycle, not even thinking about becoming pregnant. After being given a homeopathic prescription she did first have some very irregular scanty periods. With additional homeopathic medicine the menstruation became fuller, more regular. Then within six months she became pregnant and eventually delivered a normal baby. She was lost to follow-up for eight years. When the homeopathic doctor next saw her she reported that she had two pregnancies with uncomplicated births and her health had been excellent with no further symptoms of endometriosis. Again, how could this be placebo effect?

Yet that is the cry of the homeopathic critics. There is no scientific evidence that homeopathy medicine can work, that any case reporting success is the result of placebo effect. If this were the extent of it, skeptics complaining that homeopathy can not work, we would not be too concerned (although we are). The problem, unfortunately, has become as worrisome as when the Flexner report came out in 1910. Late last year the National Health Service in the U.K. made a policy decision that because there have were evaluations that homeopathy does not work, that the National Health Service would no longer reimburse homeopathic prescriptions as they had been doing in the past. Also last year the news service in Moscow reported that the National Academy of Sciences in Russia deemed homeopathy as ineffective. A similar report was made by the medical board in New Zealand. In the U.S. the FTC required homeopathic manufacturers to include a statement on OTC remedies that homeopathy is not proven to work scientifically. Also recently the FDA has demanded that homeopathic manufacturers recall homeopathic teething remedies because of safety worries. Recall that homeopathy is a ultra-dilute remedy—how something that is diluted to essentially zero can pose a safety risk is beyond understanding.

Despite the onslaught of negative reports and policy homeopathy remains a safe, effective treatment system that is well documented in case reports and clinical trials. Recent scientific reports support the mechanism of action of homeopathy. In 2014 systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrated effectiveness in randomized trials of individualized homeopathic treatment. In 2015 the prestigious journal Nature reported the effect of homeopathic drugs modifying gene expression in cancer cells. Last November, PLOSOne demonstrated the effect of a well-known homeopathic remedy, Arnica Montana, stimulating gene expression in white blood cells. Finally, the recognition that nano-particles exert important medical effects is being demonstated—after all, homeopathy is essentially nano-medicine.

Controversy or not, it is vital that homeopathy medicine continue to be accepted and practiced. NUNM deserves recognition for its role in educating physicians in homeopathy and ensuring its ongoing practice in the U.S. and abroad. We need to remain steadfast in refusing to allow politicians and regulators from dismantling homeopathic medicine and pharmacy.

Cancer Treatment Hype Gives False Hope

The April 28^th, 2017 edition of USA Today had a front page story titled, “Cancer Treatment Hype Gives False Hope.” In the 1970’s President Nixon announced major funding at the National Institute of Health would enable researchers to win the war on cancer. In 1998 Nobel laureate James Watson predicted that a cure for cancer was imminent. In 2003 the director of the National Cancer Institute, Andrew von Eschenbach, announced that research and clinical efforts would end suffering from cancer by 2015.

But patients with advanced cancers not only are not winning the war with cancer, they are suffering both from the disease and the treatments. Gilda Radner described the brutal experience a cancer patient experiences in her book, It’s Always Something. Radner had been suffering from metastatic ovarian cancer and her treatment was primarily chemotherapy. Radner put on a brave face tolerating the constant nausea and vomiting and overall malaise that she bore while being given recurrent rounds of chemotherapy in the late 1980’s. Except for certain childhood cancers chemotherapy rarely extends life for older patients with metastatic tumors.

In the first decade of the 2000’s biotech firms began rolling out new biologic agents that held the promise of being able to arrest cancer without the horrible adverse effects of chemotherapy. In fact, not a few of these drug agents that function by shutting down key enzyme pathways that cancer cells require to survive offered increased survival and quality of life for lymphoma, leukemia, and other blood cancers. However, these drugs are extremely expensive and patients need to be qualified before insurance companies agreed to reimburse their use. Still, for most advanced solid cancers including breast, prostate, colon, lung, pancreas, brain, ovarian, and more, these drugs are not effective and also are outrageously expensive. Some are priced at $1 million per year for a single patient’s use.

And yet the advertising to the public for the new cancer drug often shows an older individual enjoying hiking, boating, golfing, and playing with the grandchildren, as though the cancer has been successfully put into remission. In fact, it is not unusual for these drugs to only offer additional months or a few years at most for survival, and not necessarily with a high quality of life. Not only has the advertising for these cancer drugs dramatically increased in the past decade, but cancer institutes such as MD Anderson who have build palatial facilities tout that cancer is being licked, when no such thing is occurring. Patients are being misled to believe that their metastatic disease will be arrested by using the new biologics and immunotherapy, when survival is not dramatically increased, and there is real risk that complications will include major autoimmune disease and more.

Why am I carrying on about the cancer treatment hype giveing false hope?

Because there are practitioners who are offering alternative cancer treatments, integrative medical therapies, naturopathic treatment, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, nutrition, and these treatments are being studied under IRB, investigational review boards. In a word, naturopathic and integrative therapies, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and nutrition, are achieving improved survival, quality of life, reduction of adverse effects, and regression of tumors when used as complementary therapies to conventional cancer treatment. However, we are seeing case reports of advanced cancers responding to naturopathic therapies and nutrition as stand alone therapies long after conventional therapies have been completed and failed.

It is unfortunately true that conventional medicine does not yet sufficiently employ naturopathic physicians and nutrition scientists to manage advanced cancer care. Naturopathic physicians are now being educated for oncology work training in post-graduate programs to serve as naturopathic oncologists. Integrative medicine researchers are engaging with universities to assess integrative and naturopathic care for advanced cancer care. While routine oncology tends to ignore nutrition, research is being conducted to assess nutrition’s role in cancer care. Beyond supporting the cachectic patient’s malnourished state, nutrition plays a vital role in its own right in treating cancer. Research over the past few years has demonstrated that a high-fat, low carbohydrate “ketogenic diet” has been pivotal in surviving certain malignancies, especially brain cancer. Furthermore, Seyfried’s research has described cancer as a metabolic disease especially dependent on glucose and glutamine. If the tumor can be deprived of sugar Seyfried’s research has shown a reduction in tumor growth and improved survival. If Seyfried’s thesis is correct, nutrition researchers will be busy developing new strategies to disengage the cancer metabolic process.

Surviving metastatic cancer will require symptomatic support from naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, Oriental medicine practitioners, and integrative medicine clinicians. When we are transform the treatment of cancer from palliative care for a killer disease, to managing a chronic disease like diabetes with naturopathic and nutritional care, not only will patients get their lives back and be able to enjoy activities with grandchildren, but experiencing barbaric cancer treatment will end. While medicine largely does not recognize the integration of conventional and naturopathic care, such integration will become mainstay in the future. Similarly while medicine largely ignores the role of nutrition except in recommending patients lower their fat intake to prevent heart disease and diabetes, nutritional treatment will become mainstay as well.

The 2017 graduating class of NUNM will be key practitioners, researchers, and educators in integrative cancer care. With patients being availed naturopathic and Oriental medicine as well as nutrition counseling, it will no longer be a case of false hope. Patients and their families will have reason to believe that their cancer will be addressed with a good quality of life.

I recognize in giving this speech that I don’t have the statesmanship of the President who recently gave the commencement at the Coast Guard Academy—and won’t be able to inform you that my job has been the hardest job ever. And I certainly don’t have the gravitas of Mark Zuckerberg or Ellen Degeneres, who notably both failed to graduate college, although they were just conferred honorary degrees speaking this year at Harvard and Tulane respectively. In fact, I have never held political office, nor did I fail to graduate from college—maybe I didn’t understand the purpose of education summarized by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland as ambition, distraction, derision and uglification—but I imagine our President scored high marks on those subjects.

A few years ago, David Schleich invited my wife, Deborah, and me to visit NUNM and be given a tour of the campus. I expected we would be given a brief office introduction and then be turned over to an administrative assistant to see classrooms, labs, clinics—the typical college tour. You can imagine the surprise we experienced when the red carpet was rolled out and we were taken into a board room and were introduced to all the key faculty members and learned about the expansive academic programs the then National College of Naturopathic Medicine was offering. I had known about the move NCNM had made a number of years earlier and the acquisition it had been making in its new location for additional buildings to develop into a university. I had not known about the facilities available for nutrition education, integrative medicine research, extensive library archives of original naturopath journals, expanded clinic facilities, and lecture hall for post-graduate education.

The National College of Naturopathic Medicine was, indeed, transforming into a university not only for training naturopathic medicine practitioners but also creating a masters level education in acupuncture and Oriental medicine as well as nutritional science and integrative medicine research. NCNM is the oldest four-year naturopathic medicine college and had a renowned reputation for educating naturopathic physicians in the U.S. and Canada. Now it set its goal of providing evidence-based education for nutrition and the healing arts, an important goal for practitioners, academicians, and researchers planning to work with medical colleges and universities as well as multi-disciplinary clinics. Despite the skepticism of critics who have made little study of NUNM and other four-year naturopathic institutions, graduates have received well-founded scientific academic education, successfully mastering their studies. There is no comparison in the education received today at NUNM to unaccredited “schools” that graduate “naturopaths” or “nutritionists” with correspondence courses. And, yet, NUNM graduates politically face difficulties in certain states where correspondence course graduate assert that their education matches the graduates of a four-year college. Of course, there is no truth to these assertions. And the increased academic standards for each of the departments at NUNM attest to the quality of the graduates, for their future clinical and academic work.

There is no acceptable reason that medical boards in each state do not license medical graduates to practice naturopathic medicine. The fact that more than 25 states continue to fail to establish naturopathic medicine licensure is more a testament to lobbying efforts of the local MD boards to prevent competition rather than sound medical assessment. Sadly, academia at most medical universities still belittle naturopathic medical practice advising patients to adhere to conventional medical practice and ignore nutritional counseling except as provided by a dietitian. Like you, I would have thought that at this time, naturopathic medicine, integrative medicine, would be given a green light by most MDs. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Patients who opt for naturopathic care or Oriental medicine are seen as doing treatment that may interfere with the “correct” medical treatment. There are MDs who acknowledge and accept and integrate naturopathic care and nutrition into the patient treatment—but these are all too often the exception rather than the rule. The key is whether the “natural” care is thought to be obstructing obtaining critical conventional care. For adults, this decision is a matter of free choice; one can freely choose to select whatever treatment one deems best. For children, on the other hand, a parent opting for treatment that ignores conventional care is fraught; the state holds the opinion that parents must provide care that adheres to conventional medical practice, particularly in circumstances where the conventional care is required in an emergency or for a life-threatening illness. Parents who select unconventional treatment for their children with cancer and opt to skip chemotherapy, for example, are considered to be derelict, and states order foster guardianship of children who have been denied conventional cancer treatment.

For most ND physicians, Oriental medicine practitioners, acupuncturists, and nutrition consultants, such treatment dilemmas are not the case generally; naturopathic practitioners work together with conventional physicians integrating care in cooperative fashion establishing optimal outcome for patients. High quality integrated care should be the rule, not the exception, in the future. Hospitals will begin to offer residency training for graduates of NUNM where integrated care will become the standard-of-care. This is not to say that all of naturopathic medicine will become standard-of-care; some aspects, like the old-time hydrotherapy and other spa treatments will remain separate from medical care.