The Aging Healthfully Virtual Library - The Works of Majid Ali, M.D.
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Oxidative Theory of Cancer
From The Book RDA: Rats, Drugs and Assumptions

    The dogma of drug medicine holds that cancer results from gene mutation, and assumes that once such mutation occurs, it is irreversible. This viewpoint is tragically erroneous.
    Here, I briefly describe my theory that cancer is caused by oxidative molecular damage. Such damage may involve genes as well as nongenetic cellular molecules such as enzymes that seam together DNA and RNA molecules from their components. Other nongenetic molecules such as proteins with regulatory roles may be involved. This theory is consisted with my opinion that all diseases, except those triggered by trauma, are caused by oxidative damage.
    Several cancers are associated with nutritional factors. Environmental factors have been incriminated in the cause  of others. In experimental animal models, many types of cancers can be produced with viruses and carcinogenic chemicals. This is an age of gene manipulation, and enormous sums of money are committed to gene research each year. Some genes---oncogenes, as they are commonly called---are thought to trigger cancer formation. Certain genes---P53 are related suppressor genes---have been ascribed protective roles against cancer. At present, the concept that genetic changes are irreversible and that genes govern cancer formation and growth is firmly entrenched in the drug medicine dogma. All efforts at cancer control are directed at developing new chemotherapy drugs and antibodies to destroy cancer cells.
    Notwithstanding billions of dollars spent on cancer research, and a yet larger number of words written to publish the findings of such research, this approach does not work nor does it have any chance of working. (Hodgkin's disease and some uncommon tumors are a few exceptions to this general rule.)
    The fundamental question remains unanswered. What causes cancer? Cancer specialists invariably shrug and dismiss this question as both impertinent and an unwanted distraction in their pursuit of killing cancer with chemotherapy drugs.

Genes Preserve Health, Genes Make Evolution Possible

    DNA in human cells provides the blueprint for approximately 60,000 proteins. These molecules are essential for human life in all its stages: at birth, during spurts of growth in infancy and childhood, immune defense against infections, wound healing, digestive-absorptive functions, energy and detoxification pathways, and eventually for decomposition and disintegration of tissues after death.
    If DNA was copied flawlessly every time, there would have been no evolution---to evolve is to change and no change can be maintained for a long time except through a change in DNA configuration. Without DNA alterations, today we would have the same DNA as our genetic ancestors over three billion years ago---and the same physical characteristics as single-celled microbes that existed then.
    If DNA is copied with a mistake, each copying error carries the risk of fatal structural or functional derangement's. A common example of such an event is miscarriage---the spontaneous aborted fetus show evidence of DNA damage in most, if not all, instances.

Every second that passes, the DNA in each cell of your body is being damaged. Chemical bonds are breaking. DNA strands are snapping, and nucleotide bases are flying off. Each cell loses more that 10,000 bases per day just from the spontaneous breakdown of DNA at body temperature. Meanwhile, many cells are dividing and therefore copying DNA, and each copy introduces the possibility of error.
    Science 266:1926;1994

    Translation: Each DNA molecule in the body has 10,000 chances in a  single day of becoming cancerous. Of the estimated 100 trillion cells in the body, we can conservatively assume that at least one hundred cells in the body of a child---one trillion in all---divides every day. Since each break, loss or alteration in a DNAbase can potentially cause cancer, it follows that a child may have as many as 10,000 trillion chances of developing a cancer cell on a given day. Why then, doesn't every child die of cancer during childhood?
    DNA copying occurs with an astounding accuracy---on the average, only three base pair mistakes are thought to occur when copying 3 billion pairs of human genome (Science 266:1925;1994). This mind-numbing copying accuracy is assured by the most extraordinary DNA repair system composed of several enzymes. Thus, the reason all of us do not have cancer at all times in the enormous capacity of our DNA repair enzyme systems.
    This explains the primary difference between the philosophy of oncologists and holistic physicians. An oncologist strive to kill the last living cancer cell with chemotherapy drugs even when he knows the therapy serious damages patient's DNA repair enzyme system. Indeed, this explains how chemotherapy substantially increase the risk of second cancer. The holistic physicians, by contrast, seeks to facilitate the body's own healing ability---or, in our present context, the DNA repair system of enzymes.

Continue to part two of this article