The Truth about Cancer: What You Need to Know about Cancer's History, Treatment, and Prevention Hardcover – Big Book, October 25, 2016

The only reason this book fell into my hands was because my brother was evangelically giving it out to cancer patients in my family, along with surprisingly bad cancer advice, and I wanted to see where he was getting his information from. I made a lot of notes while I was reading this book and so I decided to share some of them here, in case there are others receiving this book from family members and are confused about some of the claims being made in it.If your simply looking for alternative treatment ideas you may like this book, but keep in mind that none of these treatments are proven to work (despite what the author hypes), and thus should not be used as replacements for proven treatments, and also many of them cost a lot of money, or require traveling long distances. On the other hand, if your looking for an objective book about cancer, this is NOT it, this book is about promoting alternative medicine and smearing conventional medicine, that’s it. There’s misinformation, marketing, fearmongering, conspiracy thinking, double standards, bad cancer stats, misreferencing, misrepresented testimonials, and it’s not hard to point some of these things out once you scratch the surface.The author presents himself as someone on an honest “quest for truth”, an unbiased “layman”, however he has some obvious biases which shouldn’t be ignored. He owns supplement companies, a TTAC website, and affiliate programs, which all generate revenue, in the same area he writes and gives advice about. And he’s steeped in conspiracy theories and establishment hate. How does one take his conspiracy narrative seriously when he’s also written conspiracy theories on JFK, 9/11, Illuminati, Fluoride, and so many other cliché conspiracy topics. I could possibly look past the profits if the information given was good and accurate, but it’s not.Here's one clear flaw in the book. And it’s a rather large issue since much of his prevention and treatment advice is based off of it. He repeatedly says (alarms) that cancer rates are rising, eg. “they’re ALL increasing steadily, some more than others and admittedly with dips, but increasing nonetheless,” and then he goes on to implicate a long list of recent commercial toxins, namely pesticides, GMOs, pollution, vaccines, mobile phones, fluoride, plastics, chemtrails, and processed meat. But this is wrong, cancer rates aren’t increasing they’re decreasing, and have been for some time now. Incidence and mortality are down 13% and 27% respectively over the last 25 years. And breast cancer isn’t “skyrocketting”, its been fairly level for the last 80 years, aside from a bump in the 80s when mammography screenings were introduced. (You can find cancer charts at NCI SEER or ACS Cancer Statistics Center). I’m assuming he’s using “prevalence” rates instead of “age-adjusted” rates, but it doesn’t make any sense to do this when your talking about environmental factors. And as far as his list goes, epidemiologists would likely only agree with pollution and processed meat, most of the rest are just plain fearmongering. And its odd he doesn’t mention any of the well-established risk factors like cigarettes, alcohol, and obesity, maybe he thought people already know about these. But the general theme is, everyone is being bombarded with things that are making them sicker, and you have to take his advice and buy his products to keep yourself healthy.He also says, “the earliest evidence we have of cancer’s existence dates back to only about the 17th century,” but this is a very strange thing to say considering the very origin of the word cancer comes from Hippocrates in 400 BC. Not to mention we have greek and egyption writings of cancer, and several hundred records of cancer in ancient fossils.The referencing is poor. Most of it goes to opinion articles, low-tier journals, or exaggerated or misrepresented findings. Here are some examples…- “A mere 2.1% of cancer patients survive for longer than five years after undergoing chemotherapy” ... So 97.9% of patients die after chemo? How can this possibly be when overall cancer five-year survival is 67%? Misrepresented study.- “Of more than 1000 doctors, an astounding 88.3 percent admitted that they would forego chemotherapy” ... The link goes to a study about Advanced Directives, ie, would you take chemo in a coma, which has nothing to do with the text.- “Mammograms emit up to 1000 times more radiation than a chest x-ray” ... A mammogram dose is 0.4 mSv while a chest x-ray is 0.1 mSv, and for comparison a CT dose is about 10 mSv.- “The NCI estimates that routine mammograms cause 75 new cases of breast cancer for every 15 they accurately identify” ... The link goes to a Dr Axe article (now a dead link), not the NCI, as the NCI would never say such a thing.- “Colonoscopies don’t even get high enough to find anything important” ... This is super irresponsible and ignorant, colonoscopies look at the whole colon and I’m not sure why he thinks they don’t. And I’d like to hear his explanation for why colon cancer incidence has dropped by 40% since the 1980s (he certainly wouldn’t think it was because people were eating better). This author isn’t doing this country any favors by discouraging people away from colonoscopies.- I’m sure I would find more of these bad references if I looked more.He has a strange discussion about cancer and genetics, where he misrepresents the NCI (yet again), and I think people get confused on this topic, so I think its worth bringing up. He writes, “The official position of the NCI is that cancer is purely a genetic disease,” but then he says this is a myth, and then he says “truth be told, only 5 percent of all cancers are attributable to one’s ancestry”. However, he’s confusing genetic mutations with genetic inheritance, and I think on purpose so he can have a “teaching moment” and appear smarter than the NCI. Cancer is a genetic disease, yes, but this has nothing to do with inheritance. As the very same NCI website says, “Inherited genetic mutations play a major role in about 5 to 10 percent of all cancers”, so he’s just saying what the NCI is already saying. Beyond this, implying that the other 90-95% are all environmental and in our control is not a good assumption either. There could be genes we don’t know about, environmental causes we don’t know about or aren’t in control of, or even random bad luck, and yes this is an thing, our bodies are chaotic systems.There are a lot of serious double standards. He has these strong ideologies about “natural”, “non-toxic”, “allopathic”, “the pathogen is nothing, the terrain is everything”, and uses them to discredit conventional treatments but overlooks them to endorse his own. Examples…- He criticizes conventional treatments for being “allopathic” (attacking the pathogen) yet he endorses RF generators, UV blood irradiation, Hyperthermia, RIGVIR virus, IV Ozone, IV Hydrogen peroxide, Laetrile, Photo-radiation therapy, Metronomic chemotherapy, and Signal transduction therapy, all allopathic in principle.- He writes “patented medicines do not belong in human bodies” yet the last four treatments use patented synthetic drugs. For example, Laetrile is a patented synthetic plant drug, absolutely no different from plant chemos like Taxol, but he calls it “a vitamin”.- He criticizes the PSA test because of false positives, yet he highly praises seven alternative urine/blood tests which are prone to the exact same issue.- He criticizes surgery claiming that a healthy immune system can eliminate cancer, yet he promotes the Latvian virotherapy RIGVIR saying that “cancer cells have a natural ability to hide from the immune system”.- What’s natural about “taking 143 different vitamins, minerals, enzymes a day", or injecting sterilizing agents into your bloodstream, or metronomic chemotherapy?- He criticizes conventional medicine’s profit motive but ignores alternative medicine’s profit motive.His “pathogen is nothing terrain is everything” mantra, I think, is highly influenced by what the FDA allows for health claims from supplement companies (ie. they can make claims about improving body function, but not specifically about treating disease), and its suspicious that this mantra goes away when he promotes treatments from other countries.The book is very markety. At times it feels like you’re reading an advertisement straight out of a brochure. Here’s just one example…“An analysis of over 800 ONCOblots covering 26 different types of clinically confirmed cancers showed a 99.3 percent accuracy rate at a cost of just $850 from the Cancer Center for Healing”There are a lot of these type of callouts, including five to the author’s own supplement company. I scanned the references section and found 20-30 external links to business selling cancer protocols, diagnostic tests, health products, supplements, water systems, etc. This is WAY too much promotion for an educational book, IMO.The book is very divisive. He ramps up suspicion toward oncologists, he calls CAM workers “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, he uses fearmongering to draw people away from conventional treatments and screenings, ALL of them. And within his conspiracy narrative, it seems he would like nothing more than for the current medical establishment to crumble to the ground and the FDA disappear with all of its regulations. None of this is productive, and I think it gives alternative medicine a bad name honestly.His history of medicine is intentionally conspiratorial and frequently doesn’t agree with historians. Like saying that Pasteur believed in spontaneous generation when he’s actually known for disproving it, or that he recanted his life's work on his deathbed. Or that Rockefeller’s financial interest in petroleum-based pharmaceuticals was the basis for the Flexner medical reform in 1910. Or that the AMA, government, scientists, historians, and the media are all cooperative in a propaganda conspiracy to suppress cures. More references to real historians would be nice.He says that mainstream medicine is incapable of studying anything natural or unprofitable, since they are only profit-driven. However, he doesn’t address public funding at all, which is quite extensive in cancer, and it all has to be explained. For example, the NCI gets $6 billion a year, and they intentionally fund research that doesn’t repeat the work of industry (and why wouldn’t governments across the world want to reduce their own healthcare costs?). Then there’s 49 comprehensive cancer research centers in the US (like Dana Farber and Sloan Kettering) who’s largely funded by NCI and charity, and they can study anything that shows promise. Then there’s hundreds of charities and nonprofits that fund different types of cancer research, and anyone can start one for any goal, even the author could start one. So there’s avenues to study really anything. It’s true that certain things are harder to study, like diet and lifestyle, but plants and supplements are easy, and they get studied when there is reason to do so. Vincristene originates from folk medicine. Folinic acid, which is used to treat colon cancer, is a vitamin. Many chemos come from the NCI’s Natural Products Branch, which has surveyed more than 120,000 plant and marine species for anti-cancer properties. Look up Taxol. More recently, CAM has studying a lot of the popular alternative therapies, like right now there’s a double-blind trial going on for IV vitamin C. But if the author is going to point a finger about profit-motive, he’s got four pointing back at him, as the alternative medicine industry is quite profitable (and quite unregulated), and nobody there is working from public funds. Book authors, online coaches, and cancer clinics all make money, not to mention the $30 billion supplement industry the author is a part of. Alternative medicine doesn’t get a free pass just because they say they’re in the name of a cause.The author relies on testimonials to show that his treatments work. While I’m happy that these patients got better, he provides no evidence they got better because of HIS treatments, as they generally received some conventional treatments as well. They may have turned down chemo, but they all received surgery, and surgery cures a lot of people (think of what’s responsible for the majority of the 10.3 million 5-year cancer survivors in the country). He takes credit where ever he can. Also, he announces some patients “cured” when they’ve had recurrences since the book’s publishing.I decided to dig into some of these testimonials and give my own take on them here...- Trina Hammack is said to have “stage IV” ovarian cancer, but the diagnosis was done in Mexico and there’s only mention of a pelvic exam and a blood test, no imaging. And no mention of metastasis. So I question the “stage IV”. Her cancer may have been cured by her surgery instead of her sono-photo treatments.- Pamela Kelsey was said to have beaten “liver cancer” with Hoxsey tonic, but again the diagnosis was done in Mexico, using a CT scan, which isn’t an appropriate tool for diagnosing liver cancer (and the “22 focal lesions” sounds like it could be fatty liver disease). She’s also said to have beaten pancreatic cancer in the 70s, also using Hoxsey tonic, but there’s not much detail in her story, and doesn’t even mention stage.- Allison Huish is said to have overcome brain cancer with frankincense oil, but she didn’t technically have “cancer” she had a benign tumor (pilocytic astrocytoma). And from what I read, spontaneous regression can happen after a partial resection in some patients.- Khrystyna Yakovenko is said to have “overcame stage lV melanoma” with RIGVIR and said “the disease is simply just over”, but her journal-published case report says something different, she has “stable disease”.- Trevor Smith is said to have “cured” stage II bladder cancer with cannabis oil and diet, however he was also receiving laser surgeries and BCG viral treatments, which the book makes no mention of. And he’s not “cured” either, he had a recurrence in 2019 and he’s currently receiving more BCG treatments.- Charles Daniel is said to beat stage IV bladder cancer at Hope4Cancer, but his three tumors were cleanly removed with surgery, and also treated with chemotherapy, so there’s no evidence that anything happened at Hope4Cancer. Yes stage IV is usually deadly, but it still depends on the case, and you can find survivors if you go looking for them. For example, there’s estimated more than 100,000 stage IV cancer survivors in the US, living 5 years or longer.- The other testimonials in the book had cancers of lower stages and higher survival rates, and all received surgery and/or chemo in addition to their alternative therapy.I find it slightly troublesome that all of his treatments are promoted equally, they all work great but none better than others. You would think that if there really were effective ones, that they would at least draw more attention than the least likely and nonsensical ones. Alternative medicine as a whole is this same way, its always expanding its treatment repertoire but never narrowing on anything. Never advancing. For me it’s a bad sign.I wish there were easy answers against cancer, but this type of hype isnt getting us any closer to cures. The author doesn’t address complicated concepts like tumor heterogeneity or clonal evolution, he just calls a tumor a “bag of toxins”, and his treatments are accordingly simple minded. Its easy to say “your body has the innate ability to heal”, but cancer has the innate ability to adapt and resist. And resistance doesn’t just apply to drugs, it applies to EVERYTHING, including herbs, diet, and even your own immune system. So how exactly do these natural treaments prevent adaptive clones from being selected out? If we just pretend we have answers, then we’re not going to make progress against this deadly disease.It's a long review, but I just think its important that cancer patients get accurate information, from all sources, and I think books like this can be very misleading for some people. Ultimately, this book is supposed to enable cancer patients to make more informed choices, but in reality it’s disinformative and will often lead to poorer choices. I would recommend you get your information elsewhere.

Lot to learn from this book.Even more interesting than I thought .

My father (turned 90 in January 2017) cured his own colon cancer diagnosed at 85 years old - without surgery, chemo, or radiation. His search for a non-invasive, non-harming treatment (which he ended up doing on his own) led me to finding TheTruthAboutCancer.I have been getting Ty's newsletters and watching his amazing videos for a couple years now. So I wasn't sure if I should bother with the book. Wow, I am so glad I did!The book describes very clearly how and why cancer cells form constantly in all of our bodies but are destroyed before they can become harm us...and why some people's bodies stop being able to thwart the cancer cells before they multiply and take over, even creating their own blood supplies (the nerve!) which becomes a tumor. Then he describes in a very concise and understandable way, the multiple strategies for preventing and/or fighting cancer that will not harm the rest of your body. He also describes numerous less-invasive and more accurate tests that indicate whether you have cancer and in some cases where it is. My dad would have loved this information when he was fighting cancer (and he still might use these tests). He had to do it blind with no support from Kaiser doctors at all. The biggest stress he had was wondering whether what he was doing was working. After 1.5 years, he browbeat Kaiser into giving him another colonoscopy. And much to their chagrin, the cancerous polyp was gone! Unfortunately, their electronic medical record does not have a great way to story information about what he did so it is searchable and reportable for future patients. None of their patients will be told my dad's story. That is why Ty's book is so important.At the beginning Ty describes the history of cancer treatment and why much or all of the information presented isn't common knowledge. I personally appreciated this part but for those of you just learning about these important available treatments, it is probably better to start with the chapters about cancer cells and then the treatments.This is a MUST READ for someone with cancer. It doesn't matter what kind. I have already had one neighbor with cancer turn down borrowing my book. If you have cancer, even though it may feel good to just have a plan, I encourage you to at least read about your other options. That way, at any point in time, if plan A is not working, you can move quickly to plan B. Or you might even try some of the treatments from this book in conjunction with conventional treatment.

Everyone should read this informative book before they have cancer. How to keep oneself healthy and optimize their life and if cancer is diagnosed then it is wonderful to know that there alternatives to conventional treatment that are less devastating to the body. The format is easy to follow and the layman's terminology make it a 'must have' for every household. Knowledge is empowering and reassuring. I would definitely recommend this wonderful book.

Puts big pharma to shame. A must read for every health conscious person.

It is wide ranging in its offerings. Shames the mainstream allopathic approach. How we ended up with this hackneyed, some might say barbaric so called mainstream cancer treatment system is eye opening and deeply disturbing.

An interesting book with some helpful facts although the views expressed were not always balanced

Watched Tys online series and was very impressed. The book didn't disappoint either. Everyone should have this knowledge and decide what treatment to go with. We have more options and need to take more control of our own bodies sensibly.