Dr. Carl Helvie talks about his book “You Can Beat Lung Cancer Using Alternative/Integrated Interventions” and how this can assist the public as well as healthcare professionals to know more about various treatments being used to battle such disease. A lung cancer survivor himself, Dr. Carl Helvie shares his experiences to further shed light to this type of cancer.
Dr Carl Helvie is a registered nurse with a Master’s Degree in Public Health Nursing from University of California, a second master’s in the same field from John Hopkins University, and he’s got 60 plus years as a nurse practitioner, educator, and author. His latest book being “You Can Beat Lung Cancer Using Alternative/Integrated Interventions”.
Transcript
Neil Howard: You’re listening to Health Professional Radio. I’m your host, Neil Howard. Our guest is Dr. Carl Helvie. He’s a registered nurse with a Master’s Degree in Public Health Nursing from the University of California, a second Master’s in the same field from John Hopkins University. He’s got 60-plus years as a nurse practitioner, educator, and author, his latest book being You Can Beat Lung Cancer Using Alternative Integrative Interventions. Welcome, Dr. Helvie.
Dr. Carl Helvie: Thank you, Neil. I’m happy to be with you.
Neil: Great to have you. Now, why did you write your latest book, You Can Beat Lung Cancer Using Alternative Integrative Interventions? Why did you feel a need for this book to be given to the public?
Dr. Helvie: Well, the lung cancer being the major cause of death of all cancers, I thought it was important for people that develop lung cancer to know that there are alternatives and to know that there is a lot of successful treatments out there that physicians are using. So, I included chapters by some of the practicing physicians in alternative medicine.
Also, that there are some home treatments that people can use if they don’t have money, and of course, their health insurance will not pay for much of anything as far as alternative. The only exception is the one treatment that I know of, the instantiation therapy where they do use one-tenth dose of chemotherapy, and the insurance may pay for that, but that’s about the only thing.
I wanted people to at least have the knowledge if they’re ever faced with the diagnosis of lung cancer, so that they can make the decision that is right for them.
Neil: As a lung cancer survivor yourself, and at 80 years old with no chronic illnesses, you’re not using prescribed medicines, what exactly was the outcome of your particular intervention? How did that work for you? Obviously, it worked well, but let us sit on some of the day-to-day pitfall or triumphs that you experienced.
Dr. Helvie: Well, I didn’t have any side effects from any of the treatments that I took.
Neil: None at all?
Dr. Helvie: None.
Neil: That’s amazing.
Dr. Helvie: There was one thing though, but it wasn’t really a side effect but it was something I did experience, and that is, I did reach a point where I knew I was having a deficiency of proteins, so I added pre-digested protein.
Neil: Now, pre-digested protein, can you elaborate on that a bit? I’m not sure – I’ve never heard of that.
Dr. Helvie: It was a liquid and it was called pre-digested protein. It gave me the protein—as I understood it, it gave me the protein but it didn’t require the enzymes and all to digest it.
Neil: It could be used by the body immediately?
Dr. Helvie: Right.
Neil: Dr. Helvie, if alternative interventions are so successful, why in your opinion, do you think that they’re not used more in conventional medicine?
Dr. Helvie: I think that it’s two-fold. I think some physicians are not as aware of the alternatives as others. I think, secondly, drug companies are giving samples to the doctors all the time. They do a very good job of marketing all of the new drugs that come out, but I don’t see anyone coming and marketing alternatives with the doctors. I think that it makes sense that they may not be as aware of these things as possible.
But I think the other thing is that there are so many people that make money off traditional treatments that do not want a cure for cancer. I think even the American Cancer Society would not stand existent if there were cure for cancer. Hospitals would not have wings donated for cancer if there was a cure. Doctors buy the chemo wholesale, sell it retail, make money to administer it.
There is a multi-billion dollar [inaudible 04:03] from the alternative physicians that I’ve talked with, they always will offer the patient chemotherapy as the first choice, and they almost always will turn that down. They want alternative, the ones that come to them.
Neil: Basically, there’s no profit in a cure?
Dr. Helvie: There’s no profit in a cure, and there’s no profit in natural interventions. The only way the drug companies could take the natural intervention would be to take it and add to it and make it a chemical.
Neil: Even a physician who is aware or even knowledgeable about alternative medicine will automatically offer traditional chemotherapy first?
Dr. Helvie: I think that the laws are such that is required, and I think also that a lot of the patients they have already been through that. The majority of patients are Stage Four, they are people that have gone for other types of treatment and then they reach the point where they’re told, well, there’s nothing more we can do. Go home and get your life in order, etcetera. Then they start looking at alternative things.
Neil: How long have you been a medical practitioner before you were diagnosed, or were you diagnosed as a practitioner?
Dr. Carl Helvie: I finished my doctorate in ‘69 and this happened in ‘74. But I had had…I didn’t go straight through from a baccalaureate to a master’s and then to the doctorate. I had practiced as a nurse like at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, VA Hospital in San Francisco, the Health Department in San Francisco and Oakland before I went into education. I had had a fair amount of nursing practice and education before I developed cancer.
Neil: There’s a lot to be said for quality of life when someone says you’ve got a year or 18 months to live. Well, six of those months or maybe even possibly12 of those months might not qualify as quality of life as we would like to define it. I guess that was a very important aspect of your decision, yes?
Dr. Helvie: If I only got six months to live. I don’t want to be debilitated for that six months. If I can do something for that six months where I’m going to be comfortable, then go for it.
Neil: Now, in your book You Can Beat Lung Cancer Using Alternative Integrative Interventions, you had several other contributors to that publication.
Dr. Helvie: Right.
Neil: What were some of the outcomes of alternative of alternative interventions by the medical contributors in your book?
Dr. Helvie: Well, I had Dr. James Forsythe as an example. He works with stage four cancer patients. He does research on each cohort. He started with paw paw [sp], which was a supplement from trees. He had 100 patients that were all Stage Four. He followed them for three years, and he had a 28% success with that group.
Then he moved polyMVA, which is made up of an Earth metal and ethyl leporic acid and some vitamins and minerals and amino acids. He got a 30% six-year survival. Then he added some homeopathic substances to the polyMVA. He followed a cohort – I can’t remember how many they were, but it was a large cohort – for five years and he had 46% survival.
Again, these are Stage Four for all cancers and he had 39% survival for lung cancer. This is in comparison to 2% for the traditional chemo, surgery, radiation for Stage Four cancer patients. That is fantastic. But because he was so successful, he was taken to court and he told me that they couldn’t take his license, but they tried to bankrupt him. He said it cost a lot of money to defend himself.
Neil: Our guest has been Dr. Carl Helvie, a registered nurse, author, educator with 60 years experience in the field. His latest book being You Can Beat Lung Cancer Using Alternative Integrative Interventions. You can find information on Dr. Helvie at www.beatlungcancer.net. It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Dr. Helvie and hopefully, we can have an opportunity to talk again.
Dr. Helvie: Thank you, Neil. I appreciate that.
Neil: You’ve been listening to Health Professional Radio. I’m your host, Neil Howard. We’ll have much more health care information for you. Thank you.