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  • "The Cure for All Cancers"

    A repudiation of Hulda Clark's book
    by Dr. Joe Schwarcz

    McGill University
    August 4, 1998

    Now there's a headline that gets attention! It sure got mine when I saw it on the cover of a book prominently featured in a health food store. This was not a treatment, the book suggested, but a cure! A gift to humanity, the author self-indulgently stated. What had thousands of dedicated researchers missed over the years, I wondered?

    Claims of cancer cures are of course nothing new. In medieval Europe a live crab would be placed on the body at a site close to a tumor, left there for a while, and then the animal would be removed and killed. Why? Because many tumors were seen to bear a physical resemblance to the crab. In fact, our word cancer derives from the Latin word for the creature.

    The idea then, was that the tumor would develop some kind of association with the crab and would somehow be sympathetically destroyed along with the poor crustacean. Judging by the fact that this procedure persisted for a couple of centuries, it must have produced at least some successes. This of course is not surprising in light of our current knowledge about spontaneous remissions and the "placebo" effect. But even with the popularity of "alternative medicine" today, it is safe to say that anyone suggesting that crabs can physically withdraw cancer from the body would be regarded as less than sane.

    Now fast forward to the 1990s. Imagine that you were suffering from cancer. Imagine that you were told that you could be cured of the disease in just five days by identifying and then removing the cause of your cancer. Imagine that all you had to do was buy about thirty five dollars worth of parts and build a simple electronic device that would tell you exactly what to do.

    Imagine that you were instructed to eat a certain food, then squeeze a pimple on your body and place the emerging fluid on the device next to a sealed plastic bag of the same food. Imagine that you were then to connect the contraption to your knuckles by means of two leads and listen to the sound emanating from a little speaker in the apparatus.

    Now imagine that by the type of sound emitted you could determine whether this particular food was a cause of your cancer and must therefore be eliminated from the diet to ensure a cure. Finally, imagine that you don't have to imagine all this. For indeed, the foregoing is the actual scenario being plied to the public in an epic work with the grandiose title "The Cure for All Cancers!"

    Hulda Regehr Clark, who surprisingly possesses a PhD in physiology from the University of Minnesota, unabashedly claims to have discovered the secret that has stymied all other scientists. The cause of cancer, she claims, is an intestinal parasite that can escape from the gut and take up residence in a variety of organs which have been weakened by previous exposure to a variety of substances ranging from mercury in dental fillings and thallium in wheelchairs to wallpaper glue and asbestos in clothes dryers.

    But the cancer process can only begin if certain other chemicals are concurrently present in the body. Apparently the greatest culprit is isopropanol, otherwise known as rubbing alcohol. But other solvents, such as methanol or xylene can also initiate cancer when present together with the parasite. These solvents, according to Clark, are found as contaminants in our foods, drinks and cosmetics.

    The cure for cancer then is obvious to the writer. Kill the parasites and avoid all products contaminated with solvents as well as all chemicals which weaken our organs. These products include shampoos, cold cereals, carpets, stainless steel, porcelain and toast. Toast, you ask? Of course. Didn't you know that it is contaminated with tungsten from the element in the toaster?

    How does one go about killing the parasites? A mixture of cloves, black walnut and wormwood destroys the intestinal flukes, as they are called, and therefore in Clark's words, "can cure all cancers. "And of course the instrument just described, which Clark calls a "Syncrometer" will determine exactly which foods and other substances must be avoided to affect a cure.

    If you want to know whether there is any aluminum in your brain, weakening it and therefore making it more susceptible to disease, the Syncrometer can tell you. According to the detailed instructions, just buy a piece of pork brain, place it on the device next to a piece of aluminum, attach the leads and listen for "resonance. " The pork brain, you see, guides the instrument where to look, and the piece of aluminum tells it what to look for. Similarly, you can use a piece of fish intestine to test for parasites in your colon.

    How anyone can come up with such a bizarre concept boggles the rational mind. The story would be funny, if the possible consequences were not so sad. Hulda Clark actually uses her Syncrometer to diagnose cancer! She then goes on to cure people of a disease they never had.

    Clark, in one of many "case histories," describes how a patient had undergone colonoscopy for severe diarrhea and had been pronounced cancer-free by her physician. Yet one of Clark's bizarre tests showed a positive reaction for cancer. "It came as a shock to her that she actually had colon cancer," Clark says. I bet it did. Of course, a week after starting on the anti-parasite program she was pronounced cancer-free. Strangely, the diarrhea was still present. One also wonders about how many people who really may have serious disease resort to this "therapy" at the expense of proven remedies?

    But Clark is not completely anti-establishment. She does admit that oncologists are kind, sensitive, compassionate people. But "they have no way of knowing about the true cause of cancer since it has not been published for them. I chose to publish it for you first so that it would come to your attention faster. " And publish it she did. Our doctrine of freedom of speech guarantees her right to do so. Of course the doctrine does not require that what is stated be scientifically valid. Free speech emerging from the wrong mouth can be very dangerous!

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