THE MOSS REPORTS end-of-year summary: a must read

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Lots of good stuff . . .

Cancer Decisions - Free Newsletter - December 31, 2006

HTML version [includes hyperlinks]:

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/123106.html

2006: ANOTHER VERY BUSY YEAR

We have had another very busy year here at the Moss Reports.

Our library of cancer diagnosis-specific Moss Reports, each one over 400

pages long, now stands at 265. Every one of these reports is available

to the consumer in both an electronic and a printed version. In the

course of the year, we updated all of the most commonly requested

reports (some of them several times in 2006). We also continue to offer

specially-prepared Moss Reports on very rare forms of cancer. For

example, this year we created reports on Bellini duct carcinoma (a rare

kind of kidney cancer), polycythemia vera, biphenotypic acute leukemia,

epithelioid angiosarcoma, and other unusual cancers.

When we started the Moss Reports in the early 1990s, we set ourselves

the goal of offering reports on every form of cancer, regardless of how

obscure. Many of these rare cancers are not discussed by any other

source of information. We have fulfilled this promise, and we continue

to offer this service to those who suffer from rare malignant diseases.

I continue to do phone consultations for some of the people who have

purchased our Moss Reports. (There is a separate fee for phone

consultations.) Throughout most of the year, I have tried to average one

such consultation per day, although at times a heightened demand has

required me to do two per day. I also stay in touch with my phone

consultees by email, and a surprising number request follow-up

consultations. These consultations are very meaningful to me: they help

to ground my knowledge in the actual problems that cancer patients face

on a day-by-day basis.

We routinely request feedback from our phone consultation clients, and

from time to time throughout the year I have published some of their

remarks. As you will know, if you have been reading these, they have

overwhelmingly been very positive in nature. This is highly gratifying.

Our CancerDecisions.com Web site continues to be popular. On the key

topic of alternative cancer treatments our site comes up first in the

world (out of 7.9 million sites) in and Ask.com, and third in the

world (out of 14.8 million sites) in Google, MSN and AOL. The readership

of our free weekly CancerDecisions.com newsletter continues to grow: our

subscriber base is now over 40,000. We have published a newsletter every

week this year, including most holidays.

The topics we have covered are varied and unlike the type of information

available anywhere else. Most of these newsletters are still available

for review, free of charge, at our Web site's archives:

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/archives.html

We continue to take a critical stance towards the overly optimistic

projections made by drug companies and by many in the oncology community

regarding chemotherapy, targeted therapies, and the war on cancer in

general. As I predicted, the National Cancer Institute, which had

confidently and prominently broadcast its former director's assertions

that there would be an end to all the suffering and death due to cancer

by 2015, was forced to retract that absurd claim. Now, with a new and

less ideologically-driven director, Niederhuber, MD, the NCI,

although diminished by budget cuts, seems on a much firmer basis today

than it did a year ago. I like to think that our widely circulated

criticisms had something to do with that change.

In addition to our free newsletter, this year we also introduced our

Current Topic reports, for which we charge US $9.95 apiece. These

include our reports on mammography (January), Mexican cancer clinics

(February), Avastin (March), and the NCI (April). During this year I

also published three Opinion pieces in the New Scientist, a weekly news

magazine of science based in London. These articles concerned Herceptin

(March), patients' rights and clinical trials (June), and the faltering

war on cancer (December). In August I visited the New Scientist offices

in London and had an excellent meeting with editor in chief Webb,

and an enjoyable lunch with Opinion editor Bond and three of his

colleagues.

[Note: above topics are hyperlinked at site (URL at top of this page)]

Late in the year I proposed a change of focus for the newsletter towards

cancer prevention. I received a lot of heartfelt correspondence on this

move. While many of you acknowledged the importance of prevention,

others feared that we were in danger of abandoning our most crucial

readers, those patients who are currently struggling with cancer

treatment decisions. I had my staff convene an informal focus group of

concerned and vocal readers and we quizzed them on their hopes and

desires for the newsletter. As a result of this informal survey, as well

as your many letters, we have decided to return to the old

treatment-oriented format. I hope this shows that although Cancer

Communications, Inc. is a private company, we are responsive to the

wishes of our readers and understand the important role that we fill in

many lives.

By the way, I have heard many far-out theories about why we were

proposing a reorientation towards prevention. Some people thought I had

been captured by money-hungry mass marketers. Others thought I had been

threatened into silence by the US government or other mysterious and

conspiratorial powers. The truth is far more mundane: a simple

miscalculation on my part.

Although dismayingly little progress has been made in the official war

on cancer, I remain very optimistic about the long-term trend. I believe

that discoveries in cancer stem cells (CSCs) in particular have helped

clarify the basic nature of some common cancers (such as those of the

breast, colon and lung as well as leukemia and lymphoma) and that this

is going to lead to major changes in the way cancer is perceived and

treated. I first wrote about this subject three years ago, but was

pleased to see a cover story on the topic in Scientific American in July

2006. I hope to write a Current Topic report on this in the near future.

Another of my goals for the coming year is to explain how I believe this

modern work on cancer stem cells relates to the century-old

& ldquo;trophoblastic theory & rdquo; of Prof. Beard of the University

of Edinburgh, and how both of these relate to the use of pancreatic

enzymes in treating cancer.

To further my own understanding of this topic I visited with an

oncologist, Frantisek Trnka, MD, in the Czech Republic, this summer. I

also visited his American coworker, f Novak, PhD, at his Bucknell

University (burg, PA) laboratory several times. These two

scientists have done pioneering work in the use of enzymes in cancer.

Throughout all of this, I managed to keep up a busy travel schedule,

mostly to visit hospitals and clinics. January found me in Baltimore,

February Washington, DC, March Pennsylvania, May New York City, August

Europe, October the Chicagoland area, etc.

Finally, I wish to point out that although mine is the only face that

appears prominently on the Web site, everything that I do is done as

part of an energetic collective of highly intelligent individuals. These

include Anne Beattie, my long-term business partner who runs our parent

company, Cancer Communications, Inc., from central Pennsylvania, and

who, among other things, supervises our company's responses to many

thousands of urgent phone calls from cancer patients every year; Dr.

Louise Lubetkin, our director of research, who keeps our report library

up to date, works with me on the newsletter and Current Topics, and in

general is my intellectual better half; Jacquie , who coordinates

my phone consultations and media appearances; and Charla Blevins, our

Webmaster who ensures that our newsletter appears in your mailbox

regularly every Sunday morning. Without these incredibly talented and

dedicated individuals, my own contribution would be meager indeed. My

staff and I are excited by the research prospects in cancer. We look

forward to another very productive year of serving cancer patients with

useful and reliable information on the best available treatments.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER

The news and other items in this newsletter are intended for

informational purposes only. Nothing in this newsletter is intended to

be a substitute for professional medical advice.

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