To have the guts to put up a web page with the responsibility of offering A 2nd.Medical Opinion is because I have studied medicine on a continuous basis since entering the University of Mexico in 1948 and attaining my Medical degree on February 11, 1955. As I was in charge of two beds in a ward of 9 women with cervical-uterine cancer when I started within the first year of the study the full ward had entered into the program financed by the Sloan Keterring cancer Institute and the N.Y. General Cancer Hospital. The program was under the Direction of Dr. Francisco Gomez Mont and Dr. Guillermo Montaño and it was a study that had been underway two years priorly. (It was a research study on cervical cancer of the uterus and the effect of hormones on the course of the disease) I was exempted from doing a six month social service.< xml="true" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" prefix="o" namespace="">
That gave me the opportunity to keep in contact with advances in allopathic medicine, and although I became a member of the Doctor's Lounge, after being a physician for the US State Department and for the American Embassy in Mexico City for 28 years. At my connection to the Doctor's Lounge I was unable to accept its promotional publicity to homeopathic medicine of a medication to cure the flu. Please do not get me wrong. I have studied medicine quite thoroughly and the placebo effect is recognized by all well informed physicians. That it is a recognized fact that persons who believe in homeopathic medicines will be cured of all their diseases throughout their whole life by taking homeopathic remedies.
A contribution to the medical literature by none other than by Harvard Medical School, some years ago, Harvard solicited elderly patient with severe Parkinson’s disease averting them that they were needed as a control group for the evaluation of the treatment group with rheotaxis X ray treatment to basal nuclei of the pall odium of the cerebrum. They stressed the fact that they had concluded that the results of the neurosurgery which they were to perform in the control group would succeed in alleviating the Parkinson’s disease symptoms just as favorably as their trial protocol for which they needed the control group. Those words were able to convince patients with Parkinson's disease to enter the clinical control group as they all respected Harvard’s opinion and after completing the control group study Harvard Medical School informed that although the control group was submitted to sham neurosurgery, all the patients improved.
On completing the control group the results were astonishing as just as they had said. It was evident through the laboratory evaluation of the control group that the elevation in cerebrospinal fluid of dopamine occurred in all the patients which was astonishing. The improvement produced in all the control group can be interpret as due to the placebo effect.
Harvard informed that everybody has access to a meditation room provided in all the Mauls of the United States. And that advantage should be taken of its existence. They went as far as to recommend prayer groups for those of the catholic faith. Their reason was that the control group was submitted to sham neurosurgery which required submitting the patients to general anesthesia. The incision in through scalp followed by a trepanation of the skull and that was all they did. They then sutured the surgical incision and that was the control group's only treatment.
Similar results have been called to my attention in a case of knee surgery for intolerable pain. The surgeons only made the incision over the knee and the patient under general anesthesia had no knowledge that he (or she) was not submitted to the knee surgery that he had been informed was to cure him of the unbearable pain. Notwithstanding, the patient was cured by the sham surgery. Another case of a placebo effect. Nonetheless, if I enter into Google Treatment of Parkinson's Disease the Results 1 - 10 of about 4,230,000 for treatment of Parkinson's disease in (0.18 seconds) gives me the idea that their exist to many articles on the subject and the same occurs when I enter Google and request Chronic fatigue Syndrome, which I will now enter and Results 1 - 10 of about 2,800,000 for Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. (0.26 seconds) These elevated number of articles gives me the impression that there is no treatment available and when one that is irrefutably effective is found, being based on correction of the pathophysiology of the disease then, no further treatments need to be advocated.
My 45 year old son was submitted to chemotherapy and radiation for a lymph node of the right area of the groin which grew to a size of that of a normal gonad. Now the fact that leukemia is not a solid tumor and that a small cell lymphoma of B cell derivation is considered as also a non solid tumor my personal assessment of a lymph node that grows to the size of an adult gonad becomes difficult for me not to consider as a non solid tumor. The problem behind this is that solid tumors can give rise to metastasis to the spinal medulla. As a precautionary measure there is a study in which methotrexate administered on 3 occasions through a spinal taps is consider to prevent the implantation of the linings of the neural outer sheath of the medulla. I was unable to convince the chemotherapy specialist as when you read ahead you’ll be informed of a scholarly article. By a colleague who is dedicated to treatment of lymphoma for over 25 years who published a paper in which he introduces OS as overall survival and has evidenced based medicine from a French study conducted with 300 lymphoma patients in a well planned Clinical Trial which The French group study of Lymphomas set up to investigate the results of administering chemotherapy to early stage I patients with evidenced based proof of no existing metastasis as confirmed by PET (Proton Emission Tomography) The OS was the same in the clinical placebo treated group than those patients who received chemotherapy and X-ray treatment which by the way Dr. Gibbley refers the X-ray treatment to the area of the ablation site wasn’t even included for as it seems to me, the only area that would worry me is the existence of lymphoma cells within the surgical ablation site of the tumor, in his case the lymph node grown to the size of a gonad. It seems that although the study did not consider it necessary to investigate if X-ray treatment to the site of removal of the tumor had been administered. It was as interpreted as if it seemed just by common sense to administer radiation to the only site in which lymphoma cells could exist.
No doubt that the proposition of a colleague who dedicated 25 years to treatment of lymphoma provides evidence of a clinical trial in the lymphoma Group of France that made a statistical study of 300 patients with grade 1 lymphoma in which the PET emission study did not detect any active metastasis and 150 were treated with the chemotherapy popular at that time and were given radiation treatment which in Dr. Gibbley's article in the second page informs that would the pathophysiology of lymphomas be known then one could expect curing the disease. Then later in the article he introduces OS which correspond to Overall Survival in which it is not surprising due to his first stated opinion that not knowing the etiology of the lymphoma then a curing treatment could not be expected. And sure enough the OS is the same in both groups of the Clinical Trial with chemotherapy and the control group, with a survival of ten to twelve years in both groups of the clinical trial. That is where we are in medicine today.
Fortunately due to my knowledge that Doxorubicin can lead to heart problems, the chemotherapy of CHOP was LEFT at COP and it seems that the doxorubicin corresponds to the chemotherapy medication “H” is what causes the loss of all the hair. At least I spared my son from that secondary effect as our last name translated into english would correctly be translated as bald. I did not give him the inconvenience of honoring his last name. Of course, Dr. Gibbley 's information should be greatly taken into consideration, as a knowledgeable physician he admits that some cases are cured.
As a physician with a vocation to cure, I am willing to provide a 2nd Opinion and orient parents or patients to the marvelous sources which are at their reach if they can connect to internet. To end this introductory comment I should like to share what I learned by connecting to the Head of the Urology section of The John Hopkins Hospital. His authorized comments referred to the Prostate Specific Antigen. In the experience at the John Hopkins' Urology Department the PSA is found to be 25% inaccurate in cases of elevated PSA in which no cancer of the prostate is found in the surgical or transrectal biopsies, and in 15% of patients with normal level of the PSA the presence of cancer of the prostate is detected. That means to say that in The John Hopkins' Urology Department there exists a 40% error as regards the PSA levels and how they are interpreted. I should add here that in a social event I recently attended I commented the information given above and a man in his early sixties commented that his doctor recommends him to get a PSA determination every four months.
These are just a few challenges physicians have to encounter and keep in mind. I share this information although my throat gets dry and I feel a certain difficulty in swallowing. We can always keep in mind how positive thinking will always give a helping hand. The placebo effect can always be enhanced. Let's just keep that in mind