"QUESTIONING CHEMOTHERAPY"

Ralph W. Moss, PhD, author of Questioning Chemotherapy,1 is an expert on all kinds of cancer therapies. He is a former assistant director of Public Affairs at the prestigious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a member of the Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health. In 1977 he was fired from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center when he courageously "blew the whistle on a cover-up of positive experiments with nontoxic cancer treatments."

In 1977 he was fired from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center when he courageously "blew the whistle on a cover-up of positive experiments with nontoxic cancer treatments."

Dr. Moss has published extensively. In 1980 he co-authored Dr. Randolph’s book for the general public, An Alternative Approach to Allergies: The New Field of Clinical Ecology Unravels the Environmental Causes of Mental and Physical Ills, and wrote an excellent introduction on Dr. Randolph’s career. In 1987 he wrote Free Radical: Albert-Szent-Gyorgyi and the Battle over Vitamin C, a biography of the late Nobel Laureate, who was an honorary member of NOHA. His book was highly praised: "Moss has done a remarkable job in capturing the spirit of this ‘free radical’ whose motto was ‘Long Live Imagination.’"2

". . . chemotherapy can diminish the patient’s chances of profiting from promising treatments that depend upon enhancing immunity, performance status, and . . . functionality."

Dr. Moss’s latest book is Questioning Chemotherapy: Every year more and more people with cancer are given chemotherapy. Is it safe? Is it effective? Is it necessary? Dr. Moss carefully references his answers to these questions. He points out that chemotherapy can be effective for certain rare cancers. However, for many common cancers the effects of chemotherapy are often barely marginal – a few weeks additional survival, often while suffering horrendous side effects. "For most patients, chemotherapy actually represents a serious decrease in their quality of life, due to the rampant toxicity of most of the drugs used. . . . [also], by damaging the bone marrow and other organs of the body, chemotherapy can diminish the patient’s chances of profiting from promising treatments that depend upon enhancing immunity, performance status, and . . . functionality."

We are delighted that Dr. Moss will be our NOHA speaker on Wednesday evening April 17, 1996.

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1Equinox Press, 144 St. John’s Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217, 1995, 209 pages, soft cover, $19.95.

2Science, 239: 82, January 1, 1988.

Article from NOHA NEWS, Vol. XXI, No. 1, Winter 1996, page 8.