Ralph Moss on Cancer

At this site you will find a wealth of information on the topic of complementary and alternative cancer treatments. It contains Archives of 10 years of The Cancer Chronicles newsletter.

Some of what you will find on this website:

• A list of the many types of cancers for which there are Moss Reports
• Sample sections from some of The Moss Reports now online
• Frequently Asked Questions about The Moss Reports
• A brief biography of Dr. Moss and how he came to write The Moss Reports
• What others say about The Moss Reports
• Use of our informative newsletter, The Cancer Chronicles

Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. is an internationally acclaimed science writer who has spent more than twenty years investigating and writing about cancer issues. Formerly the assistant director of public affairs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Moss is the author of such groundbreaking books as Cancer Therapy, Questioning Chemotherapy, and The Cancer Industry, as well as the award-winning PBS documentary The Cancer War. He also wrote the 1994 Yearbook article on alternative medicine for The Encyclopedia Britannica. Read what some people have said about Dr. Moss and his work.

Dr. Moss was a founding advisor to the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine, and is presently scientific advisor to the Rosenthal Center of Columbia University and the University of Texas School of Public Health. He is also a member of the advisory board of the medical journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.

A dynamic and witty public speaker, he has been an invited lecturer at The College of Physicians and Surgeons, Brooklyn College, Cook County Hospital (Chicago), Mt. Sinai Hospital, the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine, the American College for Advancement in Medicine, the Foundation for the Advancement of Innovation in Medicine, and many others. In 1997, he was chosen as scientific advisor and honorary member of the German Oncology Society, the first American so honored in over 20 years.

Dr. Moss travels the world in search of valid alternative approaches to cancer. His knowledge, clarity, and compassion have made him one of the most respected voices, internationally, in the field of cancer alternatives.

“Ralph W, Moss, Ph.D. has made his life’s work independently investigating alternative cancer treatment and the claims made for them. He is known for solid, comprehensive, and meticulously documented reporting on the subject. “

-Health Naturally (Canada), April/May 1996

Anne Beattie

Anne Beattie, M.A., L.MTh. is the full-time coordinator of The Moss Reports. Since 1994 she has assisted patients and family members in receiving reports from Dr. Moss that best suit their particular situation and needs. She will work closely with you in making sure that you receive the kind of information that you need. Clients all over the world describe her as caring, compassionate and efficient.

In addition to her work with Dr. Moss, Ms. Beattie is herself a licensed medical massage therapist, certified reiki practitioner, and CranioSacral therapist. She is also an author in her own right­of the See Yourself Well guided visualization audio tape series (Equinox Press). She was a long-time faculty member of the City University of New York, and is a frequent lecturer and workshop leader.

THE MOSS REPORTS

Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. writes detailed reports on a wide variety of cancer types and situations. Many people have found these reports to be an extremely helpful way of rapidly gaining knowledge in a difficult field.

Many of these reports have already been written; some are in preparation. Together, they represent the vast majority of all cancers. We also have reports that include a discussion of various metastatic situations.

However, if by any chance you do not find the kind you are dealing with on the list below, Ralph Moss will probably be able to research and write about this type specifically for you.

What can The Moss Reports do for me?

If you or someone you love has cancer, you probably have many questions about treatment options. You want to educate yourself in order to make informed decisions, and you don’t want to waste time. The Moss Reports from acclaimed medical writer Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. will provide objective, detailed information on the most promising alternative methods and practitioners for the particular type of cancer being faced.

Alternative cancer therapies are difficult to evaluate. There are hundreds of treatments and many present conflicting claims. The Moss Reports give detailed and prioritized information on practitioners and treatments that Ralph Moss feels are the most valid and relevant to any particular kind of cancer. The report you will receive should add greatly to your realistic choices. Clients of our service have described their reports as accurate, clearly written, with a sober yet optimistic tone.

One client recently wrote us, “”Your report and the extent to which I have felt empowered to take charge of my situation has made all the difference to me over the past year and a half. For that I want to thank you once more!” That is precisely what The Moss Reports is trying to accomplish with its in-depth reports.

The Moss Reports can be used to complement any conventional treatment you may have already received. We are proud of the fact that it is often used by patient and physician alike to bring their discussion of alternatives to a higher level.

This is a brief overview of what the Moss Reports offers. For more information see our Frequently Asked Questions.

What are the types of cancer for which reports are available?

There are a large number of cancer types. We have a partial list of the cancer types for we offer Moss Reports. If you do not see your cancer on the list, e-mail us with your information and we will let you know if a report is available.
Ralph Moss tells you which treatments he feels are best for a particular condition–and why. He gives name, address and phone numbers to access these treatments and to learn more about them. For more information see our Frequently Asked Questions.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ) ABOUT THE MOSS REPORTS

Q.Each report consists of hundreds of pages. What does it contain?

A. Each Moss Report contains an explanation and critique of the conventional approach to the disease. This might include a discussion of the innovative uses of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. There is a discussion of medical clinics that have experience and success in treating cancer. These may include clinics in the U.S, Europe, Latin America, etc. There is also a discussion of treatments that the patient can do at home. These do not involve any travel, foreign or domestic. Some of them are nutritional or involve food supplements. Others have to be ordered from abroad and require the cooperation of skilled medical personnel.

Q. What makes The Moss Reports unique?

A. The Moss Reports are based on the character and experience of Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

Basically, you are getting the fruit of his knowledge, experience, and judgment after more a quarter century in this field. He soberly evaluates the claims of both conventional and nonconventional practitioners. Many people consider him the world’s leading expert on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) approaches to cancer.

Q. My doctor says that all “alternative medicine” is “unproven” and “dangerous.” What does Dr. Moss have to say about this?

A.Today, CAM has gained serious interest, so much so that the Journal of the American Medical Association has devoted a special issue to the topic, with some positive articles.

And there is still some charlatanism in the field. Dr. Moss’s goal is to sort out what is valuable from what is useless in the treatment of cancer.

Q. I have heard that Dr. Moss wrote a book against the use of this chemotherapy. Is he against conventional treatment?

A. Ralph Moss is a strong advocate of rational treatment. In his view, a treatment is rational if it has been proven to improve patient welfare. Examples of such improvement are (a) cure of the cancer; (b) significant prolongation of life; or (c) improvement in quality of life.

For some kinds of cancer, chemotherapy (as well as radiation therapy) can be life saving. These include acute lymphocytic leukemia of children (ALL) and Hodgkin’s disease, as well as some others. For other kinds, chemotherapy almost certainly extends life. These include ovarian cancer, some colon cancer, small cell lung cancer, etc. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy may shrink tumors, when that is medically necessary, and in relieving pain (such as from bone metastases). Sometimes the combination of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy have made a substantial difference in the outcome of treatment.

In many other cases, chemotherapy (or radiation therapy) is more of a gamble than a proven therapy. He pulls no punches in telling you when that is so.

Q. My relative hopes that conventional medicine will help her. I want to send a report, but am afraid it will make her lose hope.

A. Faith is highly conducive to healing. The Moss Reports encourage you to work cooperatively with your oncologist. Many people tell us that the Moss Reports offered them a realistic basis of hope, especially in the new treatments that it discusses.

How can I order?

You can order your Moss Report HERE via our secure order form. You can also call our office toll free at 800-980-1234. Our lines are now open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Some clients prefer to fax in their order: our fax number is 814-238-5865.

Q. How long does it take to get a Moss Report?

A. You will be able to download your Moss Report immediately upon ordering. You will only need a current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader (Version 6.0) or higher to view the report. If you do not have an Acrobat Reader, you may download one for free at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html.

Q. How much does the report cost?

A. The Moss Report is specific to the type of cancer and is approximately 400-450 pages. It includes information about conventional, alternative and complementary treatments worldwide. Membership in The Moss Reports includes the initial report plus unlimited e-mail updates in the future. These are automatically sent to you each time the report is updated, at least three times per year. The cost is a one time fee of $297.00(American dollars).

Q. Can I see a sample of what I will be getting?

A. Yes, we have uploaded samples of the section on the conventional treatment of several particular kinds of cancer.Each report is different, however.

Book Review: We Want to Live by Aajonus Vonderplanitz

“From the Planets” © 1997 Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. (www.ralphmoss.com)

Michael Schachter, M.D., an old friend who treats many cancer patients, returned from the September meeting of The Cancer Control Society in Pasadena all fired up: he had heard a presentation by one Aajonus Vonderplanitz on the latter’s new book, “We Want to Live.”*

Mike had also seen the blood work on a multiple myeloma patient who had failed to respond to all other conventional and unconventional treatments. The man went to Mr. Vonderplanitz and in a very short time most of his blood parameters had completely normalized.

Shortly thereafter, Mike spoke at the panel that Mary Ann Richardson, Ph.D. and I organized at the Third International Congress of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in Arlington, VA. There, he made his enthusiasm for what Mr. Vonderplanitz was doing public. And so I ordered and read this book. It annoyed, fascinated and challenged me.

I was very skeptical. There is the question of authority. I am certainly not hung up on academic credentials, and know that some very excellent discoveries can come out of left field. But essentially Aajonus has little on his resume that reassures us that he knows what he’s talking about. He is a self-appointed “nutritionist,” who tells us that he was featured in Disney’s Epcot Magazine and has “fostered nutriton on several talk TV and radio shows and children’s programs.” Fine, but hardly promising for an expert on cancer therapy.

Dick Something

This book is odd, as odd as the author’s name. (His real name, he confesses, is Dick something, but not liking the sexual connotations of “Dick,” he chose a new name that he calls “more Graeco-Roman sounding.” Graeco-Roman? “Aajonus,” he is constantly explaining, “like homogenous but without the hom.” “Vonderplanitz” seems also made-up German meaning “From the Planets.”

Little things about this book and its author annoyed me. He says “effect” when he means “affect,” (twice on page 22 alone); that sort of thing. The organization of the book is maddening: the first half is a novelistic story of his estranged son’s recovery from a severe head injury, interrupted by numerous appendices. He suggests that the reader go through the book consecutively but, hungry for details, I found myself constantly flipping back and forth.

The core of the book is how Mr. V. barged into the hospital where his comatose son was dying from his car injuries and took charge of his treatment. At one point he went so far as to break open the nurses’ medicine cabinets, pour his son’s medication down the drain, and replace them with certain formulas of his own.

What were these formulas? Well, Aajonus is a total fanatic for raw foods.

His prescription for health for everyone (his comatose son included) is to get back to basics, and start eating the way our ancestors reputedly ate. His basic philosophy is that (a) food is to be eaten in a live, raw condition; and (b) a diet rich in raw fats and raw meats from natural sources is essential to health. According to the introduction to his book, “we must think of them as new food groups, utterly different in their biochemistry from the fats and meats we have been taught to avoid in cooked form.” Thus, his diet primarily encompasses:

• raw animal meats (beef, fish, poultry, organic eggs)
• raw dairy products (unsalted raw butter, raw milk, raw cream, unsalted raw cheeses, raw kefir)
• raw whole fruits and vegetables (especially vegetable juices)
• unheated honey
• Weird? Well, this is not unheard of in the holistic health movement. In the 1930s and 1940s there was fascinating work done by Francis Pottinger, M.D., who showed that raw foods contain nutrients that seemed to be vital for health. Then came Weston Price, D.D.S., a dentist who believed that deterioration of the dental arch and of teeth in general could be correlated with the switch towards an adulterated food supply. Price traveled the world studying so-called “primitive” diets. According to Price, most of the native cultures of that time ate many animal foods raw (milk and milk products in Switzerland and Africa, Eskimos, even Japanese with their sushi).

Raw Meats

According to this point of view, “civilization” brought with it a taste for cooked meats, and a consequent decline in general vitality and health. First, I am not initially convinced by Mr. V.’s contention that raw meat and dairy products are entirely safe to eat, especially for those who have compromised immune systems. (I will not attempt to deal with the intricacies of the potential bacterial contamination, a discussion too involved for this book review.)

Also, from a historical point of view, the opening sentence in the “Encyclopedia Britannica” article on Gastronomy reads: “The first significant step towards the development of gastonomy was the use of fire by primitive man to cook his food.” There are in fact prehistoric cave paintings such as those in Les Trois Frères in Ariège, southern France, depicting these gastronomic events. These sites date from 15,000 – 10,000 B.C. Our ancestors apparently had a yen for cooked meat going back many thousands of years. Not for nothing was Prometheus, the bringer of fire, considered the culture hero of the Greeks.

Nevertheless, I am prepared to admit that rare or even raw meat may have a role to play in the dietary control of cancer. Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. of New York City has observed that some of his cancer patients tend to thrive on diets that include fatty and very rare meats. These tend to be particularly the leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma patients. Dr. Gonzalez is not saying this to promote a book or to entice people to his clinic. I can only assume that this is an honest observation on the part of an intelligent and innovative clinician.

So there is some precedent for this in at least the holistic end of medical practice. But Aajonus takes it a few giant steps further. He believes that raw food and particularly raw meat is a cure for whatever ails us, especially but not limited to cancer.

Aajonus is the type of person we have all met: the health food nut with the crazy diet that will cure everyone of everything. He himself has done everything, and his Theory can explain everything. He is pure California: has a cantaloupe- and honeydew-colored kitchen, paints houses, does a little acting (on “General Hospital”) on the side. His jacket photo is a glamourous head shot.

He tells us he lived in the California desert for years, met fabled American Indian medicine men (long departed) on vision quests, and has certain other-worldly connections (hence, I assume, the “from the planets” name). He also has suffered­and cured himself of various diseases and conditions: first and foremost cancer, but also a massive dose of “death head” mushroom poisoning.

There is an essential sloppiness to the science of all this. I do not trust his scientific “facts” or misuse of statistics. For instance, like many people in the alternative health movement, he is very down on vaccinations. At one point he trots out some figures to “prove” that “polio vaccines create polio” (p. 270). The figures he gives purport to show that in five areas there was far more polio reported in 1959, after compulsory vaccination was introduced, than in 1958, before it was required. No references are given for these figures. But even if they are true, they are probably part of a larger picture whose context is not provided. Polio is an epidemic disease and so large differences are to be expected in occurrence rates from year to year. By Aajanous’ own reasoning, there should be explosive outbreaks of polio in the Western world by now. But, as every child knows, the opposite is true. The rates of polio plummeted following introduction of the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Many advocates of alternative medicine paint themselves into corners with this type of dogmatic reasoning.

Documentation Needed

There are many other scientific and factual boners in this book. But with all that I suspect that Mr. Vonderplanitz has a future in the world of alternative cancer treatments. He claims to have cured himself of multiple myeloma (a cancer of the bone marrow) and also tells in some detail the cancer history of his former companion, Owanza di Mdina, who (he says) was diagnosed as having thirty very small malignant tumors in her spine, sixteen in her liver, six in her utreus, and innumerable nonmalignant ones in her brain. Instead of taking radiation and chemotherapy, she went on Mr. V’s raw diet (p. 281). She is alive and well with no sign of cancer years later.

In a well-written introduction to the second half of this book, Mr. Ron Strauss writes that Aajonus “apparently facilitated 236 cancer remissions (of 240 cases) as well as many recoveries from heart disease, chronic fatigue and other serious illnesses.” This 98+ percent cure rate is certainly of great interest to anyone who is dealing with cancer on a personal or professional level. We can assume that many of these cases, like Owanza’s, were considered incurable by conventional doctors. This sort of claim cannot help but generate a great deal of excitement in the cancer world. The name of Aajonus Vonderplanitz may soon be on everyone’s lips.

The problem is, On what basis are such claims made? How are Mr. V’s proponents defining “remission” or “cure”? What sort of documentation can they offer? As I mentioned, my initial interest in this topic was stirred by the report on one patient. At the Arlington meeting, I looked at a copy of the blood work. It was very impressive and looked as if something remarkable was happening. But who is following up on this case? And are we sure that this man had not concomitantly been taking other treatments that might also result in the same effects. It is certainly impossible to make a case for anything based on one case.

Then what about the “236 cancer remissions”? If Aajonus can predictably get such results, he should be able to document them. No amount of paranoia about the medical profession will serve as an excuse for failure to do so. In fact, one of my disappointments with this book is the lack of documentation of his own case, that of Owanza’s, or any of the other patients mentioned. Where were they treated? By whom? Exactly what conventional treatments did they receive? What proof is there that they are currently in remission?

Claims of cancer cures are social dynamite. They get peoples’ hopes up, set them off on sometimes fruitless paths, just when there is little time to waste. And so claims should be made with the greatest degree of responsibility and circumspection. And advocates of alternative medicine should raise their standards as to what they are willing to accept or promote. We have witnessed over and over again the phenomenon of the “cure du jour.” Kathy Keeton’s apparent remission on hydrazine sulfate generated tens of thousands of hits to Web sites and calls to cancer agencies. I would not be surprised if Aajanous’s book will set a similar phenomenon in motion.

I believe that Aajonus is sincere and that himself “walks the walk” of raw foodism. It is certainly conceivable to me that some individuals need and crave raw foods, even raw meats. Although I am healthy, I myself went out and bought raw nuts, nut butters, a wonderful jar of raw honey, and some raw cheddar after reading this book! For me, personally, this message is insidiously seductive. It is precisely because of this that our left brains have to get into the act and demand facts to support instinctual urgings.

For cancer patients, there is a lot at stake.

Books by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

• Cancer Therapy – The Independent Consumer’s Guide
• The Cancer Industry
• Alternative Medicine Online
• Questioning Chemotherapy
• Herbs Against Cancer
• Antioxidants Against Cancer

Other titles by Ralph Moss, Ph.D. that may be available at bookstores or at amazon.com. Those marked with “OOP” are currently out of print.

• A Real Choice (OOP)
• An Alternative Approach to Allergies
• Free Radical: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi biography (OOP)
• Caring (OOP)
• *The Cancer Syndrome (an earlier version of The Cancer Industry) (OOP)

Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. is director of the The Moss Reports for cancer patients. Dr. Moss is the author of eleven books and three documentaries on cancer-related topics. He is or has been an advisor on alternative cancer treatments to the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the American Urological Association, Columbia University, the University of Texas, the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the German Society of Oncology. He wrote the first article on alternative medicine for the Encyclopedia Britannica yearbook. He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in the East, and Who’s Who in Entertainment (as a film documentarian). This Web site does not advocate any particular treatment for cancer. We urge you to always seek competent medical advice for all health problems, especially cancer.

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