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Monday, 18 April 2016

Revisiting 'The Other Face of Cancer'

Tumours of Thyroid no more cancers!!!
Abhijit Mukherjee
Times of India (Mumbai 16/04/2016) carried a report of NYT which says “Docs reclassify a thyroid tumour, say it isn't cancer”. The report refers to a study which got published in JAMA on 14/4/2016 and had its conclusion that “Thyroid tumors currently diagnosed as noninvasive EFVPTC [encapsulated follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma] have a very low risk of adverse outcome and should be termed NIFTP [noninvasive follicular thyroid neoplasm with papillary like Nuclear features]. This reclassification will affect a large population of patients worldwide and result in a significant reduction in psychological and clinical consequences associated with the diagnosis of cancer”. The report of NYT and TOI also says “Patients Will Be Spared Surgery, Needless Treatment”.
Way back in 1973 Dr. Manu Kothari and Dr. Lopa Mehta in their book “The Nature of Cancer” while discussing on the various facets of cancer in general and thyroid cancer in particular pointed out the following:
1.Malignancy indicates "the tendency to go from bad to worse," or to cause death. Benignancy or malignancy should be strictly determined by what the lesion does to the patient rather than what it looks under the microscope, for these two qualities do not always correspond to each other.
2.“In a series of 1,000 necropsies, about 50 Per cent of the thyroids showed one or more nodules of which 21 per cent showed histological signs, of cancer. This is enormously higher than the standard death rate of 6 per million Per annum' from carcinoma thyroid”.[Reference from Nobel Laureate Sir Macfarlane Burnet]
3.Malignancy of parathyroid is rare; aII hyperplastic and/or adenomatous parathyroids are constituted by Jekyllian, benign cells which however, irresponsive to physiologic feedback mechanisms, keep on functioning autonomously thus almost begging for the designation of malignancy. Stanbury comments in a similar vein on thyroid cancers: "Since thyroid carcinomas may closely resemble normal thyroid tissue or benign adenomas, the pathologic diagnosis is often difficult and at times uncertain."
[Note: Time and again it has been coming to the fore the correctness of the massive work on cancer of Dr. Kothari and Dr. Mehta. So it is high time that practicing medicos seriously refer to their work and spare the brunt of “needless treatment” and anxiety to patients and their families.  In "The Other Face of Cancer" they wrote "It may seem unbelievable but it is India that is telling the world what cancer is, and what can be done about it, and what cannot be and should not be. Indeed Dr. Kothari and Dr. Mehta were much ahead of their time.]
on behalf of www.cancerfundamentaltruth.com

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