The dispute on how to treat Cancer
Why are there two different theories on cancer with two different therapy propositions? Is the medical establishment unable or unwilling to test them against each other?
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Last month, I started a story on two opposing explanations for cancer:
One is what I call the establishment or the mainstream explanation and it argues that cancer is caused by damage to the genes. The scientific literature refers to it as the somatic mutation theory (SMT).
The second one, which I call as the opposition or the alternative explanation, proposes a metabolic origin caused by defective mitochondria. The scientific literature refers to it as the Mitochondrial Metabolic Theory (MMT).
Other headings are:
A Sabine Hossenfelder video on whether we should stop funding the universites
Comparing Istanbul and Brisbane prices - AT index
and more Pascal Hagi antics.
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Cancer is the second worst killer after heart attacks and may overtake it soon. Therefore, there is a genuine urgency in finding effective treatments. I gave numbers in the first part proving the fact that treatments based on somatic theory, the mainstream explanation, are not working. But there is a refusal to try the alternative. Why?
Because of the drug companies? I do not think so. Drug companies cannot prevent doctors from prescribing alternative cures. But, at the same time, the companies would not volunteer their own funds to test the competition.
It is also possible that the alternative treatment is simply wrong. I do not think it has been tested sufficiently to be able to make this assessment. You form your own opinion after reading this post.
Even if you cannot form a firm opinion, at least you will be informed. We have to try and be informed on topics important to us. If we leave all thinking to the experts, we may end up with decisions not necesarily the best for us all but the best for the experts making those decisions.
Disclaimer: The purpose of this post is to reflect on the causes of cancer and the differences between the current treatment methods. Nothing you read here should be taken as specific advice for any medical condition. If you need medical advice, talk to your doctor.
What is Cancer?
Cancer is a disease characterized by the uncontrolled growth and division of abnormal cells.
There are about 30 trillion cells in your body. They are all of different types and serve different functions. Muscle cells contract and relax to give us mobility, the bone cells provide structural stability, the liver cells do the liver things, and the kidney cells do the kidney things.
Apart from a few exceptions (neurons, heart muscle cells, and mature red blood cells), no cell is immune to cancer.
The Establishment Theory
According to the mainstream theory, the somatic mutation theory (SMT), a cell turns cancerous if the genes in its nucleus get damaged. Since the assumption is that cancer is caused by random gene mutation, there is no need to search for common frameworks. The manifestation of cancer is different for each organ. Specialised therapies need to be developed to separately target different cancers. Since cancer is caused by random mutations making some cells turn bad, the treatment focuses on building bullets to aim at and kill the bad cells. Practitioners of SMT vigorously pursue this strategy. When one chemotherapy does not work, another toxic chemical is designed. It is coupled with radiotherapy to burn the cancer cells in situ. This is a journey with no logical end because more investigation always reveals deeper differences and highlights the need for bullets for narrower windows.
With years of failure, the expectations from each new bullet candidate are getting low. To shorten the time to the market, meaningful indicators such as Overall Survival have long been replaced by more wishy-washy metrics like Progression-Free Survival (PFS) measuring the time a patient lives without cancer worsening. If the new chemo drug takes the previous PFS of 20 weeks to 25 weeks, this is registered as 25% improvement, even if there is no change in the fatality rate. Consequently, new drugs are approved without clear evidence of their effectiveness. This is a win-win situation for the hospital sector and the pharmaceutical companies — but not the patients. The number of deaths from cancer in USA is increasing at a rate of about 0.6% every year despite US spending $210 billion dollars a year on cancer-related prescription drugs and medical services.
In summary, the establishment theory, the somatic mutation:
attributes cancer to genetic damage, and
advocates chemotherapy, radiation, and targeted genetic therapies
has failed to arrest the cancer death growth.
The fact that the established treatment paradigm is failing does not mean the proposed alternative is better.
The Alternative Theory
The alternative is not new. It came out almost one hundred years ago but was largely dismissed and discredited post-WWII.
The alternative theory, also known as the metabolic theory, recognises that while the cells in different organs are different in many different ways, they all have a common property. To do their jobs, they need energy and they all get their energy from ATP, adenosine triphosphate.
Cells produce their ATP by converting glucose in the presence of oxygen through a process called cellular respiration. It is a complex oxidation process. The breakdown of this production mechanism turns a healthy cell to a cancerous tumor.
Let us take a closer look.
Cell Energy Production
The following sketch shows only those elements of a cell relevant to our dicussion.
The blood stream brings glucose to the cell like a conveyor bringing coal to a coal-fired power generator. Glucose enters the cell through a molecular transport mechanism called GLUT (Glucose Transporter).
A healthy cell can produce 32 ATP molecules from one glucose molecule:
30 by the mitochondria through oxidation
2 by cytosol (the cell fluid) through fermentation
The mitochondria of cancer cells are damaged. Therefore, they can metabolise their ATP only through fermentation. They ferment glucose when available. If glucose is scarce they ferment glutamin, an amino-acid produced in the body for other purposes. This is common to almost to all cancers and therefore gives us the opening to develop a universal cancer cure.
Universal Cure for Cancer
This is an oxymoron for the SMT. There can be no universal cure for cancer according to the establishment theory. The somatic mutation theory (SMT) says that cancer is caused by random damage to the genetic material in the cell nuclei and there is little commonality between different types of cancer. Therefore, the best solution method the SMT can offer is trial and error. In my first post, I gave some numbers that shows how this method is not working. The annual cancer death growth rate in USA indeed is now exceeding the population growth rate.
On the other hand, the Mitochondrial Metabolic Theory (MMT) identifies the weakness common to virtually all cancer cells. The weakness is their dependence on two key fuel sources—glucose and glutamine. Cancer cells cannot survive if you remove or drastically cut off the glucose and glutamine supply. It has been tried and seen that starvation diets that lower blood glucose and drugs that block glutamine pathways severely weaken or kill tumor cells. The body of course needs glucose and the internal organs need glutamine for self-maintenance. Therefore, the treatment is applied in intervals. I think the art is in finding the right schedule. The advantage over the traditional treatment tools like chemo and radio therapy is that at least we are not injecting poison into the body. Starvation is not pleasant but no permanent damage is incurred if it is done with continuous monitoring.
A most convincing argument for MMT is the the consistent reversion of a cancerous cell to a non-tumor cell when its damaged mitochondria are replaced with normal mitochondria. Repeated experiments, e.g. Darlington (1948), Israel and Schaffer (1987 and 1988), have shown that after swapping the mitochondria between a healthy and cancer cell, the healthy cell becomes cancerous and the cancerous cell loses its malignancy. The same is not observed when you replace the nucleus of a healthy cell with the nucleus of the cancer cell. If mitochondria are normal, the cell can often be normalized despite insertion of a cancer-cell nucleus.
There is still reluctance on the part of the medical establishment to recognise the merits of the MMT. For example, the US National Cancer Institute still unequivocally states that “Cancer is a genetic disease—that is, it is caused by changes to genes that control the way our cells function, especially how they grow and divide”. Such dogmatic assertions make it difficult for the MMT practitioners to receive research grants to demonstrate and prove their points. The MMT progress over the last decade has been mostly through support from private foundations and this has made the progress slow. Nevertheless, there are indications the tide is finally turning. I copy from the introduction on a relatively recent Special Journal Issue dedicated to MMT: ”Although we do not yet have enough evidence to fully embrace the metabolic theory, … metabolomics can make a significant contribution. The fact that metabolism can have a crucial role … assigns it a unique place for the discovery of new specific therapeutic targets. In this exciting field, we still have almost everything to discover and much to gain in the understanding of a disease that has become one of the most demanding challenges of modern medicine.” (Cicero, 2021)
References
Cicero, D O. (2021). Is Cancer a Metabolic Disease? The Answer of Metabolomics. Invitation to the Special Issue.
Darlington,C.D.(1948).Theplasmagenetheoryoftheoriginofcancer. Br.J. Cancer 2,118–126.doi:10.1038/bjc.1948.17
Israel,B.A.,and Schaeffer,W.I.(1987). Cytoplasmicsuppressionof malignancy. InVitroCell.Dev.Biol. 23,627–632.doi:10.1007/BF02621071
Israel,B.A.,and Schaeffer,W.I.(1988). Cytoplasmicmediationof malignancy. In VitroCell.Dev.Biol. 24,487–490.doi:10.1007/BF02628504
Seyfried, T.N., Chinopoulos, C. Can the Mitochondrial Metabolic Theory Explain Better the Origin and Management of Cancer than Can the Somatic Mutation Theory? Metabolites 2021, 11, 572. https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo11090572
Seyfried, T, M. (2024). Cancer as a Mitochondrial Metabolic Disease. YouTube Video.
Short Takes
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Progress in the Natrium Project
Power, 27 February 2025, Sonal Patel
On 8 July 2024, I wrote about the Natrium reactor, a promising concept being developed by a consortium supported by Bill Gates.
The a 345-MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) project is reportedly advancing through the licensing process faster than expected. The regulatory approval is due in late 2026, nuclear construction in early 2027, and commercial operation by 2031.
Between the reactor and the turbine plant, there is molten salt–based thermal storage system. Heat from other sources can be used to heat the salt tank as I sketched below:
Other notable features of the Natrium reactor include a low-pressure system (liquid sodium coolant does not need pressure), passive cooling, and underground reactor placement. The project secured support for up to $2 billion from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
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The simple reality of Trumpian politics
Trump is the first US president who understands that we are entering a new era (what I call the ROGUE era). In this new era, US does no need for Europe as an ally. If US does not need Europe, then it does not have to fight Europe’s wars.
The US support for Ukraine was at the expense of the US citizens. Helping Ukraine meant billions of dollars being transferred from the US taxpayer to American weapons manufacturers. The consequent impoverishment of the nation brought Trump to power.
Ukraine war is an European war. In the 20th century, when US was policing a world order, it needed its European allies to legitimise and support this order. But US interests have changed. Some American politicians now believe that it is probably better for the US to go back to the 19th century where weak nations bend to the strong with no international legal norms protecting the weaker nations. A quotation from Lord Palmerston, a 19th century British Prime Minister, is apt here: “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” In a perod different from Lord Palmerston’s world, since the Second World War, Europe was a permanent ally of US serving its permanent interests. This world order was upended with the recent advent of China. In the new era there is no room for permanent allies.
As a corollary, in a multi-polar world there is no reason for USA and Russia to be enemies. Russia does not pose any commercial threat to USA. If anything, it could be a good market for American products and an excellent source of raw mateerials. On the other hand, reiterating the previous paragraph, European nations are in competition with the USA for the world markets and for global resources. If we ignore all past baggage, Russia is a better strategic ally for USA than Europe.
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In the meantime, in Turkiye
The Kurdish party PKK has been waging a rebellion against Turkish government since 1980s. Last week, PKK leader announced the end to their armed struggle and asked the party militants to lay down their arms.
Some Turkish opposition politicians explain this as an opportunistic deal between President Erdogan and the Kurds to give Erdogan another term. I think the real reason is Syria. Turkiye wants to influence (if not control) Syria. It cannot do that with one unreliable partner (HTS) while fighting one enemy, the PYD (Syrian Kurds, which is an offshoot of PKK). The latest events, starting with the Bahceli’s invitation to Kurds, is to strengthen Turkey’s hand in Syria so that it will have, in the worst instance, at least two unreliable partners and no enemies.
Turkiye would also like to increase its influence in Iraq too and this would come at the expense of Iran. As a logical follow-up, I predict a future alliance with Israel but this may come only if Israel can get rid of the Netanyahu government and relinquish its unrealistic ideas.
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Rogue headstarts
While writing this post, it has just occurred to me that the rule-based order had been effective in the last century. There are only a handful of countries that invaded other countries and got away with it in the last seventy years: USA, Russia, China, Turkiye, Morocco, and Israel. One might say that these countries enter the Rogue Era with a head start because they have been experiencing it longer than anyone else.
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Video
I have been meaning to write about the future of the universities for quite some time but Dr SH beat me to it. She is only addressing the research performance of the universities, not education and gatekeeping functions. I am not as pessimictic as she is about the university research but I agree with her that we need to develop ways of measuring the return to the nation from investment in universities.
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Diary
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Tiny Books for Tiny Dolls
There is a “surprise” gift you can buy for young girls. A tiny doll with accessories comes packed in a 12-cm plastic ball. I do not think you can tell what is in the box before opening it. It is a suprise. Here are the sets Eleanor has received lately from different people:
What you see to the right of the pencil, which is there for purposes of scaling, is a tiny book with many pages. Eleanor asked me last week to read it to the tiny dolls lying in the tiny cots. The print was too small for my eyes. For future repeats, I copy it at a large enough font using a magnifying glass:
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Market Stories
We have had a lot of rain last month and that had an effect on the markets. For example, no one is selling parsley any more. Probably, all parsley beds have been washed away. Luckily, supermarkets still have it.
There is a granma in the markets who sells eggs from her chicken farm. She sells other stuff too but not in large quantities, just a little bit of lemons, oranges, and sweet potatoes. I buy two dozens of eggs and some lemons from her every Sunday. She has also two toddler grandkids. We compare notes. She had been away for three weeks. I was worried she might have been sick. It turns out that she had to look after her husband. He was using the whipper snipper to trim the edges around the garden. The string hit a rotten log and pieces of timber came and got stuck into his leg. The wound got infected after a couple of days. She took him to Mater Hospital where he had to stay under observation for five days. He is fine now but it is a lesson that when you are old every little thing could be a life threatening challenge.
Here are some pictures from last Sunday around the market:
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Pascal Hagi
Meliz offers the birds a stalk of real fresh sunflower. They were intrigued by it and nibbled a bit on the petals but were not that interested. As you know, lorikeets do not eat seeds. They are nectar eaters.
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What I Read
Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
I thought I had read The Left Hand of Darkness, but upon revisiting it last month, it felt entirely new. First published in 1969, Ursula K. Le Guin's masterpiece continues to challenge more than five decades later.
The story unfolds in the Hainish universe, which I wrote about before. In this universe, the Ekumen is a federation of human-inhabited planets, founded by the ancient and technologically advanced Hainish, who seeded life across the stars—including Earth (Terra). While interstellar travel remains constrained by the speed of light, the Ekumen overcomes this limitation with the ansible, a device enabling instantaneous communication
In The Left Hand of Darkness, an envoy is sent to a newly discovered planet, Gethen (also called Winter), to invite its people into the Ekumen.
A World Without Fixed Gender
Gethen is an interesting planet. Gethenians have no fixed gender. Most of the time, they are androgynous and asexual. However, for a few days each month, during a period called kemmer, they become sexually receptive, with one partner developing male characteristics and the other female. This transformation is involuntary, triggered by hormonal interaction.. Ekumen scientists speculate that Gethen was probably an experiment by their Hainish ancestors who wanted to see how a society would develop without permanent gender assignment.
The Ekumen envoy, Genly Ai1, a "normal" male, finds himself constantly disoriented in this society. The Gethenians, in turn, see his continuous maleness as something of an aberration, occasionally referring to him as a "pervert."
The novel is often categorised as LGBTQ fiction. Amazon ranks it as #5 in LGBTQ Science Fiction, though this classification is debatable. While the novel explores gender fluidity, its primary focus is not on LGBTQ identity but on the social and political implications of a world without fixed gender roles.
Le Guin herself, a married woman with three children, wasn't necessarily proposing this as an alternative to mainstream sexuality of her society. Her purpose was more ambitious: to explore how many of our societal structures are influenced by gender and to imagine how different civilization might be if we had no sexual orientation for most of our lives.
Politics without Gender
There are a number of sovereign states on Gethen but we get to know two: Karhide, an absolutist monarchy that lacks strong central governance (think of the 18th century Ottomans); and Orgoreyn, a bureaucratic collectivist state (not unlike the Orwell’s Oceania in the novel 1984).
On Earth, neighboring states like Karhide and Orgoreyn would likely be in constant war, with one seeking dominance over the other. On Gethen, however, large-scale warfare is conspicuously absent—not due to harmony, but because the lack of fixed gender roles makes mass mobilization difficult. Yet, this does not mean Gethen is peaceful. Both nations are governed by ruthless political systems where power struggles often end in death. Le Guin seems to suggest that while a society without fixed genders might lack the aggressive drives that fuel traditional warfare, it still contains the capacity for cruelty.
A Mirror to Our Own
Genly Ai’s spaceship first lands in Karhid, where he is well received and the “King’s Ear” (a position similar to the Grand Vezir in Ottomans) support his mission but others do not. He then tries Orgoreyn, which he thinks would be more receptive because it is technologically more advanced.
Reading this book, I thought how the Earth governments would respond if an emissary comes from the space and invites the Earth to join a interstellar confederation. Our rulers would likely also dismiss him as fraudulent and attempt to neutralize the threat they pose—not because of the messenger's intentions, but because joining a larger federation would undermine their local authority.
Conclusion
This review may be longer than my usual ones, but The Left Hand of Darkness is a novel that demands deeper reflection. Its exploration of gender, politics, and human nature remains as relevant today as when it was first published. I highly recommend it.
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Comparing Istanbul and Brisbane prices - AT index
Based on my basket of goods, Australia is 18% more expensive this week compared to Istanbul. Both Coles (AU) and Migros (TR) prices are expressed in Turkish liras for the items in the basket on 2 March 2025. I converted Coles prices to Turkish liras at the exchange rate of 1AUD=22.65 TRY.
The y-axis in the following chart is
The trend (the red dotted line) is rising, which means that, since 5 July 2024, the Turkish prices are slowly approaching the Australian prices. Some items, e.g. beef mince, is more expensive than in Brisbane and has been consistently so since I started this chart.
The code to create the above tables and the plot is in my github repository and can be downloaded if you are interested.
Ai means love(爱) in Chinese. I do not know whether this is a coincidence or a deliberate choice.
Halim hi,
How about the latest Koc Medicine Award winner Kıvanç Birsoy declaring antioxidants feeding the tumors. The social media is full of news reposts that black-currants are out now!
Selçuk Özdil