The Miracle Pill And The Missing Graph with Dr. Robert Hoffman

Cancer news can feel like a nonstop parade of miracle cures, but the lived reality is messier, harder, and far more human. We sit down with Dr. Robert Hoffman to talk about what it means to find an oncologist who won’t emotionally check out, won’t rush you onto a conveyor belt of protocols, and will fight to keep you from relapsing. That leads us straight to Dr. Tom Song’s unusual mix of intensity, independence, and patient level care, including how he navigates insurance so treatments like Keytruda can continue when other systems would stop.

We also zoom out to the tools patients can use to regain control. Joe shares why he went to Japan for a methionine PET scan and how functional imaging that tracks abnormal methionine uptake can answer a question standard CTs, MRIs, and blood tests often cannot: is there active disease right now? From keeping copies of every scan to showing up prepared, we make the case that self advocacy is not optional, especially when decisions carry lifelong side effects.

Then we tackle research hype head on through a real example: the heavily promoted pancreatic cancer pill (daraxonrasib). Dr. Hoffman walks through how he reads the original New England Journal of Medicine paper, why overall survival can look “beautiful” while progression free survival tells a harsher truth, and how side effects like rash can be minimized in summaries but brutal in real life. We also discuss the RAS gold rush, me too drug development, and why “cure” is the wrong word for most cancers compared to control, management, and staying ahead of recurrence.

If you know someone facing cancer, share this conversation, subscribe, and leave a review so more people can find it. What’s one cancer headline you want us to sanity check next?

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Meeting A Different Kind Of Oncologist

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Well hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we have back in our studio Dr. Robert Hoffman. Robert, everybody, glad to be here. It is always a pleasure to talk to you. We actually spent uh had a few hours together yesterday down in Dr. Song's office. And yeah, we were at the world's best oncologist's office yesterday. I'm telling you. In my limited experience with cancer, which hopefully will remain limited, I've met a dozen oncologists, you know, in my search for for healing and and management of this disease. And there was something very similar about all of them until I met Dr. Song. Dr. Castro, I think, was was different than most of them, but they they they were very all the other ones were very pleasant but disconnected. If I could maybe clarify it like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:16

I think that's their survival mode, Joe. Yeah, I never felt all the patients die and they just they have I think they those kind of doctors, which are the majority of people, and it's understandable, disconnect.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:33

It's uh it's a survival mechanism, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

I can appreciate that. I I if I was around a lot of people that were more or less likely to die on me, which is kind of the case for most people, I wouldn't want to get too close, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:49

I I can yeah, and not not too close, and and and and to to to kind of keep a distance where you don't blame yourself or right. It it's a very complicated thing. I think being an oncologist is very rough, very, very rough.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

But there's something that and and I think to some degree Dr. Castro has, but Dr. Song definitely has. It was Dr.

SPEAKER_05 2:19

Song is he can it seems he's so devoted to saving the patient. Yes. He he doesn't he he cannot disconnect. I'm so impressed the way he treats you. Yes, he's giving you this K Truda way, way, way longer than anybody would, in my opinion, because he's seen too much cancer come back.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

So let's backtrack a little bit because I you know we always have first-time listeners, and for those of

From Remission To Methionine PET Clarity

SPEAKER_00 3:00

you who are new, I've told the whole story about my journey with uh squamous cell carcinoma from diagnosis to what they call complete remission, to having a grapefruit on your neck, yeah. I had a complete grapefruit on my neck and one in the back of my tongue. I had a dragon in the back of my tongue and a grapefruit on my neck, and and they were setting out to to take over my body and not leave me alive in the end. And ultimately we we beat this thing, and I've got many episodes that tell that story, but in the last two months, I went to Japan and got a scan from a methionine PET scan, which is the really, in my opinion, the only way to know for sure that at that moment I had no active disease. Everything's subject to change, but but all the tools that we have, all the blood tests, all the MRIs, the different CTs, they don't tell you that you don't have active cancer. They just tell you that there's this activity or that activity, but it doesn't tell you what it is. So when I went to Japan and I got that all clear from Dr. Sato, he said with with confidence, he said, I see complete remission, I see this is resolved. You don't have what you had anymore. And then he pointed out some other things that I need to look at, but they this problem was solved for the moment. And most of the time, and why don't you take over from here? If I was at UCI or or Sloan Kettering or any other major oncology department with that diagnosis or prognosis where they say you're done, what would happen?

SPEAKER_05 4:55

Well, first of all, in your initial treatment at UCI, which is the University of California Irvine, I think you were maybe a unique patient with squamous cell head and neck cancer where they let you get neoadjuvant chemo without radiation. Right. They weren't gonna let you get away with that, or but but you were sufficiently strong to say I'm not gonna get radiated. I think I guess they maybe were gonna do surgery first, and then radiation, and then adjuvant chemo, I guess. So I would say in all the big places, the Sloan Ketterings, the MD Anderson, Dana Farber, all the big ones, and the hundreds of ones that follow them, absolutely, you would have had a mixture of surgery, radiation, and chemo, not necessarily in that order, but probably. Right. We have a patient, Greg, and unfortunately he had very also from squamous cell carcinoma originating in the tongue. And unfortunately, Greg got big radiation and lost the ability to be the ability to swallow. Right. He's slowly regaining it. He feeds he mainly feeds himself through a tube to the stomach, which is now low methionine. So if you were lucky, you would have ended up like Greg. Most of the people would have ended up with their whole side of the face taken out, maybe a plate put in. Maybe you wouldn't want to go out anymore to have people look at you. Probably not. It's a horror show, that that kind of cancer. At those cancer centers. So in your journey, you started out with a major cancer center that's perhaps better than most of the majors, and that that very nice lady oncologist you had, let you have only chemo. When you came back and said, I want more chemo, no way without radiation energy. And that's when we decided to go to Dr. Song. So as Dr. Song says, I'm an independent private oncologist. I can pretty much do what I want. I don't have to follow the guidelines. He's not disobeying the FDA, he's not, he's not malpracticing, he's giving all the drugs that he has given you are FDA approved. And you got insurance to cover it, so they they wouldn't. Not only that, which is really unusual because when you are off the guideline, it's often impossible to get insurance.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:09

And what what is amazing to me now is that you keep getting ketruda.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 8:18

I mean, it's incredible. And that's because of Dr. Song. So Dr. Song has been in this business way over 50 years. He knows everything. Not only I mean how to deal. I mean, you need to be not only a great doctor, you have to be a a master at dealing with the insurance companies. Right. Which he is. So the feature of Dr. Song that impresses me the most is he doesn't want his patients to relapse. That's my impression. That's why he gives very high doses. He makes you suffer. No no pain, no gain. He doesn't want that cancer coming back. That's his feature. Now I knew when I used to know him, there's like a 40-year gap between when I used to know him and I know him now. Back then, and maybe even now, I don't know, he was ostracized. Yeah, that's what it does. Yeah, Tom Song, he gives really high doses and oh yeah, stay away from him. Um you know, he that people just thought,

What Big Cancer Centers Push First

SPEAKER_05 9:40

you know, kind of treated him as a crazy, but he's he's he's he's doing it right. And he survived all this time. And many of those guys who were criticizing him are now passed away. Right. At least three of them who were the leading San Diego oncologists. They kind of had uh it was kind of a cartel, they kind of had it between scripts and sharp and UCSD and blah blah blah. This was all back in the in the mid-80s. They're gone. They passed away. A couple of them are around, one anyway. But there's Dr. Song running around, he's 83 years old, and whenever you and I go there together, he never stops moving. No, he never sits down. Oh he's going between all the different people there getting infusions. He's got a wonderful oncology nurse, Twee, and she's so skilled, but he's the guy that does the last hookup.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

But you see it, you watch it, he's the one that puts that needle in my port, and he's the last hookup is his. Yeah, and he's the one that prepares everything.

SPEAKER_05 10:53

Yeah, she prepares, but he hooks it in every time, every time, every one. He has never missed anything. I never did. No, and that and that's typical. The academic, the academic oncologist generally, and maybe I'm a bad guy for saying this, but I think cares much more about their academic career than they do of the patients, and and they're real interested when there's a super trial or stuff that they think can advance their position in the university and also among their peers and get invited to the meetings and become a big shot. Tom Song couldn't care less about being a big shot. Agreed. That it doesn't even enter his mind. And I don't know, he probably has a lot of money over all these years, but he walks around like a working man.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

You never know it. Yeah, you never know it.

SPEAKER_05 11:55

He wears his little beanie and his little kind of working trousers there, the little top. Yeah, he walks around like a regular working man, doesn't try to look like a doc and nothing. And the knowledge in his brain of ontology is unimaginable. What he knows from his own experience with tens of thousands of patients over these more than fifty years, he knows everything.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

And well, you know, another thing that I've noticed about him, in spite of being willing to use very difficult drugs to solve a problem when necessary, he always, when I've brought to him a symptom or a side effect or something I was dealing with, he always brings to me a natural answer rather than a natural answer because he not only knows Western medicine, yeah, he knows eastern medicine, call it Chinese medicine, Korean medicine, Japanese medicine, they're similar.

SPEAKER_05 13:05

He knows Eastern medicine as well as Western medicine, which is very, very few people do.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

And he's almost like in that in that way, like an osteopath where they combine the different types of of uh treatments. But in everything other than the chemo and the quitruda, he's recommended ginseng, a hot foot bath, just different herbs, different eastern medicine, Joe. Yeah, yeah. And so what a what a what an amazing thing. But here's a 5,000-year history. Exactly. And and for all intents and purposes, his recommendations have been helpful. The last yet yesterday I went in, I've had these horrible chap lips where my lips were literally peeling off almost every day. And it happened three, four months after I stopped the chemo. So I was like, I don't know what's going on, but I think it's somehow related because I've never had this problem in my life. And I, you know, I talked to the nurse, she's like, I don't know, I haven't heard about that. I talked to Dr. Song, he's like, right away, he's like, yeah, that's probably the chemo. And he's first answer is just get some extra virgin olive oil and rub it on there and keep putting it on. Or I can give you a steroid, and I'm like, no, I'll pass on the steroid. He's like, good, me too. And you know, that the personable element of that conversation. So how's your lips after the olive oil? So far, it's the it's it's getting better, not worse. So I'm I'm gonna continue doing it. That's that's always been my uh MO. If it's getting better, not worse, keep doing what you're doing. And you know, the other thing is, it's like back around Christmas time, you went on a little vacation. And you know, I always try to find a way to connect myself. The other doctors, I never was able to make a personal connection. In fact, my medical oncologist, I only saw her in person one time. Every other time was on a video. But when I asked him when he came back from his little vacation, I said, So how was it? He says, Uh, we didn't really go anywhere, but I discovered a new bread over at the the Whole Foods Market. And he told me about this bread he discovered because his wife had gotten a little sick and they decided not to go. But he shared that little moment with me. And so this last time I was able, I just got back from a little vacation. I took my four-year-old grandson out fishing for the first time and he caught his first fish. I was able to show Dr. Song that he connected. He goes, 'Yeah, I know, I know where you're talking about.' He he knew the places I'd been. And I said, 'You know, maybe one day we'll go fishing or bring our grandsons.' And he looked at me and he smiled and he says, 'Yeah, maybe.' And I gotta think that who knows, maybe one day we will. You know, the odds are we probably won't, but doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_05 16:06

But if you do, it's good. The main thing is not doing it, the main thing is connecting and talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 16:14

So, anyways, that that he was explaining his the pictures on his wall to us. Exactly. Norman Rockwell.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:25

Um, you know, he's such the he's such a real, excuse me, he's the real deal, I tell you.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Well, and I think the message to the listeners here is when you go and and you

Off Guideline Care And Getting It Covered

SPEAKER_00 16:40

get yourself diagnosed and you find out that you or a loved one has cancer of one side or another, they usually will send you along a path and say, okay, here's your next step. And they tell you what's gonna happen. And they tell you the doctor, you're gonna tell you when you're gonna die. More or less. Yeah, they'll they'll tell you, well, this is your situation, and you've got, you know, this much time or whatever. The truth is you have these choices, and there are lots of doctors in lots of areas, and there's integrative oncologists, and there's medical medical oncologists and radio oncologists, and you know, there's all these different types of doctors that you have the opportunity to research, look up, find out if your insurance covers them, go make a consultation appointment, bring always get copies of everything you do. If you get a scan, get that scan. If you get a test, get those test results so you can hand them to the doctor and say, hey, here's where I am. It's your job to take care of yourself. These doctors are not going to do it for you, they'll help you and they'll do the best they can, but you can make it better or worse. When I went to that ENT and I opened up my little folder and I go, here's my blood work, here's my PET CT scan, here's my MRI. His eyes got big. He's like, Wow, you're really prepared. I go, I want to I want to make the best of this appointment, you know. And he was able to give me more for his time than had I not brought those things. And I just think that for all the listeners, I understand where you're at. You're lost. You don't know what to do, you're afraid, you're you're paralyzed, all those things that happen, but you don't have to be. And our call that we have with Dr. Hoffman every Sunday at 4 o'clock Pacific time is a place where you can come, and there'll be anywhere from 15 to 50 people that all have a shared experience of cancer and solving it, and all the different ways and different tools and different doctors. And you can come and bring your story to this meet this call. You could be totally anonymous if you want. And I guarantee you, you will find some information that will help you. And I would highly encourage all of our listeners to consider that. The link to the call is right there in the show notes of every podcast, and all you gotta do is click the button. Now, I want to switch gears a little bit, Robert. We talk about your research. You spent almost 60 years in the lab doing research on cancer, specifically methionine and cancer's relationship and cancer's addiction to methionine, and that's the bulk of your work is centered around that, which is such a powerful premise, and yet it hasn't been widely accepted. And those of us who have benefited from it can't understand why the whole world doesn't know about it. But we're here to to help bring that information. But you had recently brought to our attention a paper that was just published, and your comments about it was this is overhyped. And I want to talk a little bit about research publications and the importance of the source and the importance of the message and how to kind of consider this information as it comes through. Because you'll see an article on social media all the time and say, Oh, look, we have a new a new treatment, a new cure. It's promising, it's doing this, it's doing that, all these claims. And then you look up and you read the little thing, and it's generally not a scientific publication, but some opinion article that might reference a medical journal publication or a PubMed article, but it's usually talking about that, not the actual conversation. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you know how to navigate that? Because if you listen to what everybody's saying, you think cancer's already cured.

SPEAKER_05 21:05

Okay, Joe. This is a really important point. So the the hottest thing now is this drug, it's unpronounceable. Dara Darax Rasib. Darex and Rasib. D-A-R-A-X-O-N-R-A-S-I-B. I'm gonna call it DAR. I'm gonna call it DAX. Okay, that's the cure for pancreatic cancer. I went to the post office like I do every Saturday, and Blanca waited on me, the nicest lady you can imagine. And she says, Oh, looks uh, I hear there's a pill gonna cure pancreatic cancer. My mom had pancreatic cancer. Oh, isn't that wonderful? Oh my god. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

I went yeah, you went dark, but it's okay. I can hear you fine.

SPEAKER_05 21:58

Oh, wait a minute, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

All right, no worries. Wait.

SPEAKER_05 22:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

There you go. You're back.

SPEAKER_05 22:06

Uh that's what's going around. We got the cure for pancreatic cancer.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Which, by the way, is a very aggressive and very deadly cancer that many people do not survive.

SPEAKER_05 22:18

It's one of the two most terrible. That and glioma, I think.

unknown 22:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:21

Or maybe bile duct. It's bad news. Bad news. All right. So whenever I hear all this stuff, I try to get to the original literature. So here's the new paper. Came out a couple weeks ago. This is the New England Journal of Medicine. Got it. The ultimate. This is the gold standard. It's considered. This journal started in about 1840, or I don't know. So it's the gold standard. And it's Dower and Axe, we'll call Dax or chemotherapy in previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer. This is the original study. All right. So let's

Eastern Medicine Tips And Real Rapport

SPEAKER_05 23:10

just take a little look. And I don't, you know, all this blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah. I go right to the survival curve.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

All right.

SPEAKER_05 23:21

Okay. That's what you do with these clinical trials. You just get to the end of the damn paper. All right. So these are the survival curves, okay?

unknown 23:33

All right.

SPEAKER_05 23:34

The blue is Dax, and the black is regular chemo, whatever the doctor's choice. And this is over one year. Okay. And as you see, everybody's dying, but the ones on Dax die slower. Right. You can see blue is DAX. It's a similar curve, it's just a little bit up a little, up a little. Yeah, yeah. Wait for me, wait. I'll tell you. All right.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

So in the end, uh let's see, what's the number? The this this is here.

SPEAKER_05 24:22

The survival on Dax was thirteen point two months. Okay. And on the regular chemo, six point six. All right. All right, so okay, I mean the world doesn't change for, but still seven months is something. Okay, but let me tell you another thing. So I read one of the former senators, Senator Sassier, or whatever. One of those states in the middle, Nebraska or whatever. All right. And he has pancreatic cancer. He's on this drug. He has whole body bleeding rashes. Oh no. And the interviewing person said, Well, how do you feel, Senator? And he said, Better than I should. What a comment. I mean, the guy's he's brave. Okay. All right. So this is these are survival curves, Joe. This is every time somebody dies, there's a little tick, and it goes down and down and down. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. All right. But what you don't see, and what nobody's talking about, is the next figure. And this is called progression-free survival. Okay. How long you can survive without the tumor coming back and doing whatever it does. Okay. Right. Little different. See? At the end, the two curves meet. Oh, yeah. It doesn't. It's the blue and the black, and one is a little subset of the other. It doesn't matter. But you see, they meet. Yeah. So that means at the end of one year, everyone who survived cancer progression. Everyone. This is only one little year. If you have pancreatic cancer and the damn thing is growing and you're out of chemo options, they're telling you to go to hospice. Okay. Everybody down at this end, go to hospice. Okay? They don't show you this curve. So here's a trade letter. It's called the cancer letter. I know this letter since it's been in inception in 1973. And I know this I know this the pup the current publisher, I know him a good part of that time, most of that time. Look what he puts on the front cover. Look what Kirby puts on the front cover.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Right, a good one, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:00

He doesn't put progression free survival, right? Survival. And that's the deadline of the cover. Oh boy, oh boy. Let me read you some quotes. This hype. This is the greatest thing in cancer since I don't know, since sliced bread, something. Um okay, so here's an on couple quoting an oncologist. But oh, and then they they they show the presentation at the big cancer meeting called Askel. The guy got a 43-second standing O. And look at the curves they show. Look at the curves. They show figure two, they don't show figure three, they just show figure two here. And he got a standing O.

unknown 27:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 27:52

Doctors who know better. They don't know better. This guy wants to be the king. He's the king. His name is Brian Wolpin. He wants to be the king. That's what he wants to be. And okay, I uh I understand that. All right, so let's get a quote for figure two, the survival, not the progression free.

SPEAKER_03 28:16

Right.

SPEAKER_05 28:17

Okay, here's a oncologist. What's her name? Uh all right.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

She's quoted here.

SPEAKER_05 28:34

All right. Her name is Dr. Knox. What's her first name? She's

The Case For Patient Self Advocacy

SPEAKER_05 28:40

from the University of Toronto.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Okay, so here's Dr.

SPEAKER_05 28:49

Knox. I'm trying to find her first name here. Okay, give me five seconds. Jennifer. Jennifer Knox with a K, Canox.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 29:01

All right. So they quote her here.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Here's the quote I like. Let's see.

SPEAKER_05 29:36

Jennifer Knox, uh Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. Known by people in Toronto as Tron. I'm from Buffalo, so I know about Tron. Here's what she says about the survival curve, figure two. Okay, listen to this. It's an absolutely beautiful curve. Look at it. General Jennifer Knox, a medical oncologist at the Princess Margaret, Cancer Center, professor of medicine. The curves separate early, they get wider with time. I don't think there's ever been seen in pancreatic cancer. It's beautiful. She doesn't let us understand that every time that curve moves down, somebody dies. It's a beautiful, it's an absolutely beautiful curve, she says. That's which makes the headline in this, which is figure two in the New England Journal. Right. Now it just so happens in this trade letter, which is the head story, is this Daxaranol Dax, we call it. It's the greatest thing, but not a peep. Nobody's showing these curves, which are the progression-free survival, which shows after one year, everybody's either dead or the cancers come back and with vengeance, and they're gonna die in a

The Overhyped Pancreatic Cancer Pill

SPEAKER_05 31:10

few more months.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

So I noticed was in this paper they talk about the comparison of the adverse events, the the side effects.

SPEAKER_05 31:24

Not to great detail. They talk about it, they talk about it, but they don't give you, they don't tell you what the patient tells you. The patient, Senator Sassy said, I have a bleeding rash all over my body. Yeah, you don't that's not in even in the New England.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

It doesn't say how bad the rash is, but then he says, he says it's a bleeding rash.

SPEAKER_05 31:54

And how are you, Senator? And he goes, better than I should be. Right, right. So uh you know let's see what they say here about the about the side effects.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Yeah, it's on page page a little page 10.

SPEAKER_05 32:21

Okay, page 10.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Just after the graph that showed that you were talking about, yeah, the next page.

SPEAKER_05 32:29

Okay, yeah, you you there it is, and the first one they list is rash.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Yes, it's 206 yeah over 12.

SPEAKER_05 32:39

Exactly. And they don't tell you how bad it's not like oh, I got a little itch here, right? Exactly. Whole body bleeding rash. That's what's so great about our cancer patient Zoom, right? The real information from the cancer patient, not even in the New England Journal, right from the cancer patient.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

People that are going through it are telling you about it. No, no, no. The only the only real truth tellers, right?

SPEAKER_05 33:08

It's the whole field.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 33:10

It isn't the docs, it isn't the scientists, they're all they all have an axe grind, including making money off of it. We're just telling money, fame. There's a million things. Just trying to steal up cancer patient, has no axe to grind. These she are telling you how it is, yes, how it is. Exactly. You don't, it says here rash. Oh, isn't that nice? We got rash. Oh, that's not so bad. A rash, a little rash.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

Uh, you know, we've got a rash.

SPEAKER_05 33:44

Well, when it's a whole body bleeding rash, yeah. That's a little here. What are we doing with this miracle drug? We go to progression free survival, we're all gonna die after one year, a little bit more, and we have to go through this hell to get there. So is I don't say that this isn't progress, it's progress. But if I were to make a bet, Joe, and unfortunately, this is a hypothesis we can't disprove or prove at the moment, but I would say if we put these same patients on methionine, a low methionine diet, just a diet, right? Not even the methionine, just a diet. We would the curves would be better, maybe even a lot better. Of course, some are gonna die. Maybe maybe even most will die, but I'm betting they'll be better. Yeah, the curves that count, the progression-free survival curve, these are what counts. You're surviving, you're surviving means you could be in the hospital bed and your comatose. You're surviving, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Right, you're alive, right?

SPEAKER_05 34:58

Yeah, so this is this the survival curve isn't really fair. Agreed, progression-free survival. This is the real deal. And did that make the headline in the in the trade rag? Gosh, you're I'm off again. Gosh, darn it. You're okay, just click that button.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Oh, wait a minute, Joe. I'm getting a little better at this. Yeah, yeah. Just click that button, you'll be back.

SPEAKER_05 35:22

Oh shit. Oh, sorry for the so all this hype and and and it doesn't stop there. No, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't stop there. So then we talk about how many clinical trials they're all targeting this one gene called RAS, and RAS has been the the gene of pancreatic cancer for 45, 6, 7 years. NC NCI has a that's a National Cancer Institute, has a RAS initiative. They list all the RAS trials. I think there's about 90 of them. Trial after trial after trial they're listed. Yeah, this Jennifer, she's the she's the cheerleader now. One who says the curve is so beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Right, right.

SPEAKER_05 36:39

So there there's probably ninety or a hundred or whatever. There's a ton of trials. Of course, the pharma industry all copy each other. Right. Oh absolutely, it's worse than women's fashion. They copy each other. You know, when I was coming up, uh, all cancers were caused by uh viruses, so we had which to turned out to be 99.99% wrong.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

But I got the point one.

SPEAKER_05 37:14

Well, yours is associated with right, right, right, correct. And maybe it's involved in the it's involved in the cause, but everybody has HPV all over the place, exactly. And not everybody gets involved, they all all don't get spam and cell carcinoma. Agreed, they make you more susceptible, but it's not the cause, yeah. Anyway, uh, so everybody's now all the pharma companies are gonna have me too drugs that look like this one, right? So we call them me too drugs. They're gonna be so much me tooing that you'll be just me tooing to death, the me tooing. So that's what's gonna be over something that is very limited, if it's a step, but I'm not sure it's in the right direction, Joe. Yeah, or I don't think they're gonna get much further than they've gotten. They can have all the trials and put all these little, you know, little changes into the drugs. I don't think they're gonna get much further because I don't think RAS, the RAS gene, is really central to these pancreatic cancer. I think it's peripheral, right? It has some effect, but yeah, it's not central. Well, and addiction.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

The problem with all of this, yeah, the they observe things and they see this happen and they see that happen, and they're so quick to correlate these things when they don't belong necessarily. Okay, you bring your car into the into the shop, right?

SPEAKER_05 38:54

Hey, I'm gonna give you better tires. Yeah, you're gonna be able to go faster, right? Because I'm giving you better tires, yeah, not giving you a new engine. I'd give you better tires, and you're gonna go faster, and you probably will. Right. So this RAS gene is peripheral, yeah, it has some effect. Right. You you you certainly not the cut block it with these kind of drugs, and they're very clever drugs, yeah, very clever chemistry that block the RAS protein, is it coded by the RAS gene. Very clever, very, very, very clever what they call medicinal chemistry. These these chemists are really they're geniuses, but that they're not on the central track. Right. They're you know, it's a better set of tires, it's gonna work a little better. Yeah, it ain't the engine. So that's why you see some effect. Oh, these cancers are all driven by Raz. Raz is the driver. Right. I say, well, who's talking about?

SPEAKER_00 40:01

You know, the Warburg effect. It's it's the same thing.

SPEAKER_05 40:08

So that's that's where we are. Now, every you that's all this will last about three or four years around, if that long, and then there's gonna be oh, another huge discovery, and we'll come out and say, Oh, the curves are so beautiful, right?

SPEAKER_03 40:29

Right, right.

SPEAKER_05 40:30

And actually, she gets her own little box. I didn't notice it. Here it is. Here's Jennifer's box. There you go. Wow, it's an absolutely beautiful curve. Look at it, the curves separate early, they get wider with time. I don't think this has ever been seen, pancreatic cancer, says Jennifer. Wow, that's the hype. Well, I'd like to survival curve, and that's what you say. I'm comatose sitting in the bed and I'm unconscious. Right. I'm a survivor, right? I come as a survivor.

Progression Free Survival Tells The Truth

SPEAKER_05 41:10

And that's that's the kitchen-free survival figure speak, where at the one year, the two curves, bing.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Well, that's where I wanted to transition this conversation briefly into a topic that we'll just touch on, but it's really important to me because it's where I am right now. And they talk about people talk about cure all the time. They use that word with cancer, and and it doesn't belong there. You know, there's people say, I cured cancer, I cured my cancer, this cancer's been, you know, even when they say resolved, it's like, okay, well, maybe at this moment that it's it's not present, presently able to be detected, but that doesn't mean it's not there. And you we were talking on the last meeting. I you you mentioned a word that I thought was really important. And you were saying, you know, you don't cure it, you manage it. Manage it, that's a good word.

SPEAKER_05 42:10

Control it is another word.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:13

Do we cure diabetes? Right. No, we manage it, we control it. Okay, we can live almost a normal life, right? I think with it, I think should be possible with most of the cancers. I think, I think we're not there yet, but we're getting there. We hear we got this guy, Bob Gattenby, saying, hey, with adaptive therapy of prostate cancer, nobody's gonna die anymore. That's a pretty big statement, but I think he's in the right direction. It's all about control, it's all about management, it's all about staying ahead of it and this cure thing. You know, one of my patients, oh, I don't want to stay on the methionine-free diet. My PSA is so low, I'm so good. Wait, you know, how long I gotta stay on this diet all my life. Oh no, no, no. But it's it's true. There's no, you get cancer, there's no way you're gonna eliminate all the cancer cells. No way. My and so you've gotta be diligent. These some of these poor ladies with breast cancer, the damn thing comes back after 25 or more years. It's sitting there, it's sitting there dormant, kind of chewing, whatever. There it is. There it is. And and you know, even if you're with you know, one of our patients on the zoom, oh yeah, I'm cancer free now. Now I'm gonna concentrate on not getting the second cancer. Right. And I get it, yeah. Nobody wants a second cancer. And I said, you better make sure about the first one and go to get a methionine pet. Make sure. Or as far as you can. Even even methionine pit has a detection limit. But it's the exactly. It's the we know. And it's functional. It's not just looking for a piece of piece of meat somewhere. It's looking for a tissues that's taking up abnormal amounts of methane. Yeah. There's nothing better we than that, what we know right now. Right. Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

I think that if you were to summarize your hope, if you get cancer and you let's just say for intents and purposes, beat it, meaning that you you make it to a place okay. The real good word is what you said, manage it, control it. Right. Well, and and again, what my goal is, is to die from something other than cancer. Yeah, and and and that's what's gonna happen. Yeah, and that's it. That's where I that's the rest of my life. Like the goal is to die from something else, and I don't know what it'll be, but it's not gonna be that die from very, very old age.

SPEAKER_05 45:05

Yep, 103, and it's kind of everything's worn out. Okay, fair enough. We can have a good run, yeah. We can deal with it.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Yeah, no, I agree. Well, Robert, as always, this has been fascinating, and I and I really think that we're getting more listeners. I'm starting to find new ways to reach new people, and I think as they hear these things, you know, again, I always try to make sure everybody knows four o'clock Sunday afternoon, every week, Pacific time, we got this great Zoom call that's gonna be worth a million times more than these podcasts because you have real live access to all the information, literally on the podcast. All the information comes

RAS Trials And The Me Too Drug Machine

SPEAKER_00 45:50

from the cancer basis, exactly. And it's that's all that's important to them is the truth. And a decent chunk of these guys are doctors, you know.

SPEAKER_05 46:02

I mean, it's not just you know the doctor doesn't the doctor doesn't have cancer. No, but I'm saying these our doctors on our Zoom, they have cancer. They have cancer. How are they different?

SPEAKER_00 46:16

And they're fighting it and they're beating it, and they're they have access to the highest information, the best resources, and they're going after it in ways that you know the normal. They're sharing it, and they're experimenting on themselves, exactly, just like I did. We are all we're all the guinea pig that says, Well, it might work, it might not, but it probably won't hurt me, so let's go after it.

SPEAKER_05 46:45

Yeah, so Joe, I'm gonna leave it with this for the cancer patient. If your oncologist will not listen to you, will not give you what you want, and what you want is within legality and will not give you what you want. Just keep going and trying to find another one and another one and another one because the usual oncologist is gonna say, I know best, this is what you're gonna get, this is the guideline, and you fail that, they give you this is what you get when you fail, and you fail that, and they'll say, Well, I know of this clinical trial, you can go on that, and then you if you fail that well, I know a real nice hospice, you got two months to live. Exactly. That's what's the usual course for the patient that has metastatic cancer. That's the usual course. First line therapy under the guidelines, second line therapy under the guidelines, maybe a clinical trial and then hospice, and then they tell you when you're gonna die, and you almost always die when they tell you because you lose your spirit. Exactly. You lose your life spirit. These oncologists they take away your life spirit when they give up.

SPEAKER_04 48:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 48:13

I don't that's all I have, nothing more. I don't have any more, you're gonna die. It's not, hey, maybe there's some more out there. Exactly. No, no, no. That's all I have, and you're gonna die in two months. See ya. The hospice is down the road. That's the usual. And I I tell the cancer patient, it may take you a while, but try to find somebody that isn't like that. I don't know. I mean, we know Dr. Song. I can't tell you another one unless you want to go to Japan. I can't, I can't. I would I would say Dr. Dr. Castro too. Yeah, he's right there, right in there. But those are the only two guys I know in America.

SPEAKER_04 48:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:57

And stay away from the big cancer centers. They are the worst. Yeah. Because they stay right on the guideline. Their their goal is not the cancer patient, their goal is to make money and and become famous for clinical trials for new drugs. Oh, yeah, we're we're we're testing the newest and the bestest, and that's what they want. And everybody's gonna be famous and invited to the meetings and give the big talks and get the standing ovation and all that crap. And cancer patient is way down on the priority list. That's the big cancer centers. And all these guys, they're consultants for 1400 companies, they're prescribing the drug that they uh they're they're selling the drugs that they prescribe. I it's

Stop Chasing Cure Start Chasing Control

SPEAKER_05 49:55

the worst enemy of the cancer patient are these kind of oncologists.

SPEAKER_00 50:00

Agreed, agreed. Well, Robert, as always, you've got such a wealth of good information, and you know, uh, I I I can't express enough, and I'll keep telling you whether you want to hear it or not. I I I know that had I not met you, I might not be sitting here today the way I am.

SPEAKER_05 50:22

And well, I can say if I hadn't met you, I wouldn't I wouldn't know a whole lot that I learned from you and what is possible. And and you it and the main part of what made it happen, Joe, is your personality. There you go. You your personality that it saying this ain't gonna beat me. Don't I wanna live? Remember that I wanna live. This should be the mantra. I talked to a lady yesterday. She's gonna come over on Thursday. All right, and she I told her that how much it cost to produce some methionation. She wanted, she didn't wind, and you know, okay. And then at the end of the call, the end of the call, she said, Doc, I'm young. I want to live. There you go. That's what she said. Well, so I don't know if that will overcome the money or not overcome the money. I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

I I would be glad to talk to her if you think it might do any good. I'm hoping to get her on the on the ones. If you get her on the call, that's always call.

SPEAKER_05 51:30

I hope. I don't know. I don't know. She's coming down with her husband. All right.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

Well, we'll see what happens. But I'm always happens. Yeah. I'm here to help any way I can. Thank you, Joe. Well, Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure, and I want to thank all of our listeners for making this show possible. And we will see you next time. Glad to be here, Joe. Thank you for having me. You betcha.