New research shows music therapy is clearly effective. A scientific review published in August in The Cochrane Reviews shows music can reduce anxiety and pain for cancer patients. That’s because cancer is more than just a physical problem. It also brings emotional pain.

The review included 30 separate studies of more than 1,800 participants who experienced "music intervention." Music was used as a complementary therapy for patients who underwent standard clinical treatments like radiation, chemotherapy and, in some cases, surgery.

One of the most interesting things about this review was that it considered the patients’ music preferences. Patients weren’t asked to listen to standard-order classical music or soothing nature sounds. They chose their own tunes. This meant even heavy metal and hip-hop made the cut in terms of sounds that provide benefits.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

The study indicates that the style of music used doesn’t seem to matter in music therapy — you should go with your own preferences. My gut feeling is that there’s a flaw in this idea, but the researchers found any kind of music can do the job.

But it could be true to this extent: Music therapy doesn’t just soothe. It’s not all about relaxation. It’s also a way to cope with anxiety about your next hospital visit or treatment session. There are other benefits, too, including small improvements in heart rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure.

Of course, the researchers were quick to note the potential for bias in something so subjective. All the same, plenty of studies show music activates the same pleasure centers in the brain as food and sex. Music makes you feel better.

There’s hardly anything bad you can say about music therapy, especially if you’re looking at it as a way to improve conventional treatments like chemotherapy. Music involves very little cost and has virtually no side effects.

If it brings the patient renewed hope and rejuvenation, as these studies say, then it certainly won’t hurt and likely helps. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Potential Decline In Prostate Cancer Overtreatment

In other cancer good news, researchers are getting a new view of prostate cancer. Overtreatment is a big concern in prostate cancer. It can result in serious side effects that last a lifetime, including impotence and incontinence. At least, that’s true of surgery and radiation — the most commonly used therapies for prostate cancer.

That makes it especially interesting to learn that researchers in Sweden and Seattle have identified genetic markers to help pinpoint men with the most aggressive form of prostate cancer.

Most prostate cancer is not aggressive. It’s best left alone. But a small number of prostate tumors — supposedly about 10 percent — grow like crazy and kill fast. That’s what makes so many men and nearly all cancer doctors so willing to hack and burn without pausing to ask if the cancer is aggressive or not.

A test to identify which prostate cancers are aggressive would, thus, be a huge step forward. Recent discoveries offer hope.

The newly identified markers are gene variants known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are gaining ground as indicators for disease progression. In the study, DNA samples from more than 4,000 prostate cancer patients were analyzed for gene variants. Twenty-two SNPs were linked to prostate cancer-specific death; five of those showed significant association.

This discovery could translate to a basic blood test that separates those who need aggressive treatment from those who have non-aggressive prostate cancers.

Prostate cancer kills 30,000 men each year. Roughly 200,000 prostate cancers are diagnosed annually. It tends to be slow-growing, and most men diagnosed are likely to die of other causes before the cancer turns deadly. Still, most prostate cancer patients tend to be treated with radiation or surgery, since there’s no reliable way to figure out whether their cancers are aggressive. At least, that’s been the case until now.

The next step for the researchers involved in this study is to confirm their findings on different groups of patients; let’s hope their results are as promising as this preliminary research.

Dogs Recognize Cancer

On another cancer front, research confirms that dogs can smell cancer. This startling news recently surfaced from Germany. Researchers there tested whether dogs could tell the difference between test tubes with breath samples of cancer patients versus those without cancer.

The dogs, which were trained to lie down in front of the test tubes where they smelled cancer and touch the vials with their noses, had a surprising 71 percent success rate.

Dogs have actually been able to sniff out several forms of the disease, including breast cancer, bowel cancer and colon cancer. An early theory is that cancer cells produce chemical compounds which circulate throughout the body. These same compounds can exit the body in gaseous form via the lungs, affecting the breath of those with the disease.

Scientists aren’t sure exactly how to use dogs as cancer-detection aids, but current thinking points to some kind of early detection process. These findings at least clue us in to the fact that there must be compounds in the breath of patients with cancer. Hopefully, this will be translated into some kind of early warning sign for those likely to develop cancer.

The next step is figuring out what those compounds are. For now, it’s not necessarily useful information, but it sure is interesting.

Even worse, the infection may mysteriously be passed on to your children and grandchildren.

Mass vaccination campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s are now suspected in thousands of deaths per year via a cancer-causing virus contained in the early polio vaccines. But this doesn’t mean you’ll get cancer for sure. Keep reading and I’ll explain.

Researchers discovered this deadly vaccine tragedy in 1994 — when Dr. Michele Carbone found the SV40 virus in 60 percent of lung cancers (mesotheliomas) studied, 33 percent of osteosarcoma bone cancers and 40 percent of other bone cancers.

Virus From Monkeys

Known as SV40, this virus came from dead monkeys whose kidney cells were used to culture polio vaccines. More than 98 million people in the U.S., plus more in other countries, were exposed to the contaminated vaccine.

And it appears there’s a link to you, even if you were not vaccinated. Because the famous polio vaccine turned out to be a medical marvel with a deadly glitch.

The polio virus has been around forever. Yet the virus didn’t cause paralysis until sometime in the late 1800s. In fact, 95 percent of polio cases occur without symptoms. Most victims just get a mild fever. But in a tiny fraction of 1 percent of victims, the virus penetrates the blood-brain barrier to cause paralysis or death. People became terrified of the disease.

At the height of the polio epidemic in the early 1950s, the first polio vaccines were cultured in monkey tissue. The vaccine was rushed to market and made mandatory because of government panic and public hysteria. From the beginning there were cries of foul, accusations of poor manufacturing controls and even questions about whether it prevented polio very effectively.¹

In the late 1950s, the monkey tissue was found to be contaminated with a virus that could be linked to cancer and other serious diseases. It was too late; millions had received it.

Bernice Eddy, Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), discovered that 70 percent of hamsters injected with kidney cell cultures containing SV virus died without apparent cause. She later discovered that tumors could be passed easily from one animal to another over a long time period. ² The virus was dubbed SV40, meaning simian virus number 40.

Polio Vaccine Cover-Up

Eddy went public with her discovery and enraged her boss at the NIH. He tried everything he could to marginalize and discredit her — viewing her findings as a direct threat to his career and a public health policy he staunchly supported.³

In June 1961, a letter from a colleague to the Surgeon General detailed how Eddy’s work was muzzled and repressed.⁴

Meanwhile, by 1960 the Salk vaccine had been administered by injection to half the American public. But there was a rival vaccine — the oral vaccine developed by Sabin. By mid-1960, 60 million Russians had received Sabin’s oral vaccine (OPV) in field trials. It was pronounced a huge success.

A group of Merck scientists led by Dr. Maurice Hilleman eventually proved both the Salk and Sabin forms were contaminated with SV40. But the government kept this under wraps, warning neither doctors nor the public, while the vaccines continued to be given for years.

SV40 is so virulent, it became a popular tool of cancer researchers awed by its ability to transform healthy animal cells into tumor cells. This tiny but mighty life form can completely disrupt cells, cause them to lose control of themselves and reproduce wildly.

Finally, in 1994 Dr. Michele Carbone autopsied dead research animals to make a shocking discovery: SV40 was linked to the rare malignant mesothelioma — as well as to brain cancer and osteosarcoma (bone cancer). This research found that SV40 causes mesothelial cells to become malignant 1,000 times faster than fibroblasts.⁵ Between 1997 and 2003, 25 new published studies showed the presence of SV40 in mesotheliomas while 16 others found SV40 in brain, bone and other cancers.⁶

In fact, one study showed the presence of SV40 infections in children born after 1982 — decades after the polio vaccine was supposedly cleaned up.⁷⁸ Researchers do not understand why SV40 is still spreading.

Vaccine Revelations

Dr. Maurice Hilleman — head of Merck’s vaccine program, developer of more than 36 vaccines and recipient of a special lifetime achievement award from the World Health Organization — made shocking revelations before he died about Merck’s responsibility in unleashing the SV40, as well as the AIDS virus.⁹

He also testified that the government kept SV40 contamination a secret to avoid public hysteria:

• Documents now conclusively prove that SV40 was never removed from the vaccine stocks after 1963. SV40-tainted seeds were never thrown away. They were used in OPV (oral polio vaccine) for millions of children for nearly four decades.¹⁰
• SV40 appears in 61 percent of all new cancer patients, including patients too young to have received the vaccine 40 years ago.¹¹
• SV40 can be transmitted sexually and through blood transfusions.¹²
• Ten percent of those never exposed directly to tainted vaccines test SV40-positive.
• Lancet published clear evidence that tainted polio vaccine is responsible for nearly half of the 55,000 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cases per year.¹³
• People from States receiving high-SV40 OPV now get osteosarcoma tumors at 10 times the rate of those with SV40-free lot numbers.¹⁴

Scientific Integrity Or Government Cover-Up?

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but consider:

• When research went public in 1999, NCI declared there’s “no evidence of human cancer linked to SV40.” But other researchers contend that SV40 had already shown up in a wide variety of tumors — the highest rates in those receiving tainted OPV. Maybe that’s not proof it’s the cause, but it certainly qualifies as a statistical link. And, in the science of identifying causes of cancer, correlations like this have long been considered evidence of probable cause.
• The government and NIH have denied requests for grants to study SV40. Why?
• Government denies a cancer link because of “those who are too young to have received the vaccine in the 1950s,” ignoring the potential of transmission via “shedding” (passing the virus to non-vaccinated people) — something the vaccine was specifically designed to do.

Despite the government’s foot-dragging, SV40 is one of the most widely studied viruses in all of microbiology. During the past 40 years, SV40 has been widely studied and well understood. More than 3,400 scientific articles name SV40 in their title, and more than 15,000 articles mention SV40. SV40 has been routinely used to create human cancers in the lab and to test cancer therapies.¹⁵ Moreover, it’s now known how this virus causes cancer on a molecular level. And experts in SV40 research finally announced SV40 is a class 2A human carcinogen.¹⁶

Not Everyone Who Received SV40 Gets Cancer

There is hope even though nearly every baby boomer received these vaccines 40 or 50 years ago and, sadly, we can’t turn back the clock for a do-over. However, even Carbone, a leading SV40 expert, says the virus probably doesn’t cause cancer all by itself, “… you need many different carcinogens, because different carcinogens do different things. Cancer is a multifactorial process.”

In other words, no individual factor can create cancer in isolation. Instead, your cells require numerous hits (insults) from various carcinogens to start cancer development.

But Carbone does consider SV40 one of the most potent human carcinogens. He also goes on to state that cellular changes in your body (unlike a test tube) are influenced by the status of your immune system. A healthy immune system generally seeks and destroys invading viruses.

So, to decrease your personal risk, you can engage in strategies known to enhance your immune system:

• Eat a mostly raw, organic, high-enzyme diet rich in vegetables and free of sugar, artificial sweeteners and carbs.
• Take supplements that boost your immune system.
• Reduce calories, lose weight and exercise daily.
• Control stress.
• Give thanks for your daily blessings.
• Detoxify yourself, your home, yard and life as much as possible.

So, to decrease your personal risk, you can engage in strategies known to enhance your immune system: It does appear there’s damaging evidence about polio vaccines, but we may never be 100 percent sure about all of its ramifications. All the same, what’s done is done. Move forward confidently with strategies known to reduce your risk. And at the same time, be wary and don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.