I understand that case studies are not conclusive, but you would have to prove that it fails 100% of the time to write it off completely. I have to concede to the fact that Neoplasene does not work in every situation, but that fact that it does work in others tells me that we have a lot more to understand before we are able to dismiss it as a potential alternative treatment. There are big pieces of this puzzle still missing for me and I’m not convinced that everything is known about this drug and its effects.

And the argument that it’s detrimental and causes more harm than good is incredibly debatable. If we applied this reasoning to human medicines, chemotherapy would be the first to go. I understand that a pet’s life is not as valuable as a human’s life. For a person, there is obviously a higher tolerance that allows for pain and suffering in order to prolong life. I’m not suggesting that we should do this to our pets. In many ways our society is kinder to its animals than to its people. If we experienced any negative effects, we would have reconsidered the use of Neoplasene.

It is a quite potent drug and protocols need to be followed. We have done everything to the letter and we are thrilled with the outcome. Is it possible that our dog developed some antibody to cancer or was saved by the prayers of us and our friends?? I guess it could be, but statically probability leaves me with the conclusion that this drug is what’s making the difference. If you chose to believe in divine intervention, I’m right there with you, but I believe it was in the finding of this drug and not in God’s healing rays of light miraculously curing him of a terminal illness.

Could he still die form this cancer? Absolutely, but we have more than beaten the odds and his test results have come back clear after 7 months of treatment. Our doctors are as amazed as we are and they’ve come to the same conclusions that we have – something is working here other than our prayers.

When you mentioned the NIH study, it sounds as if you’re referencing a study where some folks with pancreatic cancer opted for alternative as OPPOSED to conventional, not alternative AFTER conventional failed. I did not and am not espousing alternative in place of or instead of protocol. I hope this is clear now.

To re-iterate: beware of sharks and use your collective heads. You can take a guess at which company I’ll be using, and while I see plenty of holes in their ‘research’, I am going in with my eyes wide open. I’m a cynic at heart and a skeptic by nature, but once again, I don’t really think there is anything to be lost at this stage of the game for all reasons already cited.

I went protocol, which was sensible and responsible, but the sand in the protocol hourglass has run out. I don’t see the point of NOT taking my chances, all things considered. If it fails, it fails. I’d feel worse about his demise all told if I didn’t give him the opportunity for a different end. All I’d be doing right now with purpose it let nature take its course. If it’s the same end, I can live with that.

Neoplasene is not a bad idea just because it probably doesn’t work, but because it often causes severe, painful, and disfiguring tissue damage. Desperation and a lack of better options is a perfectly understandable reason for reaching for alternative therapies, and I agree that when the urgency of acting is greater than the uncertainty about the outcome, sometimes trying something poorly understood makes sense. But there is this strange belief out there that no harm can come of this. Yet people who try these things aren’t always as lucky as your husband apparently was. Sometimes, they suffer terribly and waste not only their money but the last weeks of months of their lives grasping at straws. So while I understand why people do it, and I don’t blame them for it, I think there very definately is something to lose here.

He is still here today, and we will always be at peace with our decision – and not just because we had the ultimate positive outcome. Many advances have been made as to surgery since then (the old man had two) and chemo (he got assaulted with Napalm, practically). The point I’m trying to make is, it WAS brutal, and although the PROTOCOL HAS SINCE CHANGED, in my first hand opinion, you almost have to be certifiably crazy to opt out of what presents your best chances – even if they are fair to middling – AT THE TIME. Now I suppose I can make an unwitting and unintended ‘argument’ for bloodletting here, but the reality is that bloodletting, although pervasive and entrenched, didn’t have the benefit of a lab. People got well in spite of. I think that goes without saying.

I am behind Trey C in this regard: he went the conventional route. I don’t see the ‘harm’ in the hands of a responsible veterinary oncologist when all else is lost. Further (and not addressed), what does a dog know from placebo effect? Either it’s going to work or it isn’t, either it has worked or it hasn’t. As to my own dog, he has received a full course of conventional radiation and chemotherapy with marginal therapeutic results. He is eventually going to succumb, that is the reality here, so I say not why, but why not? I have absolutely nothing to lose and possibly everything to gain, so for the same reason I said you’d have to certifiably crazy to forego protocol, I think that also applies to dismiss even trying Neoplasene when I’ve exhausted all of my dog’s proven options.

So, that coin I mentioned. There are those who mean well but do harm. There are those who mean well and even drugs with actual benefit in the hands of the wrong people do harm. I CANNOT IMPRESS ENOUGH on anyone and everyone out there who is dealing with cancer that there are legions of unscrupulous dirtbags out there who deserve the Perp Walk of Shame at the very least. Cancer is a horrid disease, and there are charlatans aplenty (who damn well know they are charlatans) who prey on the desperate without conscience. It’s hard to emotionally remove yourself from an emotional decision, but I consider myself a reasonable person, and I don’t think I am acting irresponsibly with my dog’s health on this one.

skeptvet is doing a very admirable job of cautioning people against the draw and reel of ‘miracle’ cures. As in all things, some folks will believe what they want to believe even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, especially when faced with their own mortality or the mortality of a loved one. I’m not, however, one of those people. I am simply giving my dog the chance he deserves in the hands of a highly competent and compassionate veterinary oncologist when all conventional methods have been exhausted. This is not the same thing as choosing Neoplasene over convention, which I would never have done.

I won’t waste my dog’s time left on earth disproving and debunking Neoplasene or doing everything possible to dissuade myself from trying it when there is absolutely nothing to be lost here under the circumstances. I’m not a fool. I’m not a fatalist, either. His veterinary oncologist, to her credit, has – and is – looking askance at Neoplasene for a variety of reasons, but we are in general agreement and consensus that in my dog’s case, at this juncture, nothing ventured is nothing gained. Obviously he will be monitored medically (and very stridently at that). I will post back when I have a good handle on how it’s going. I think that will prove a service to anyone who is in a similar position, good result or bad. Blessings and good luck to all.

“*personal research is due”
“Personal research” is an oxymoron, if you mean individual trial and error, which is guaranteed to be unreliable. If you simply mean pet owners looking for possible therapies beyond what conventional medicine offers, that’s perfectly fair. Unfortunately, the methods by which the plausibility and evidence concerning such methods is evaluated tend to be untrustworthy (argument from authority, anecdotes and testimonials, etc)

“*and a company that holds its product to high standards of consistency”
What standards? In the absence of meaningful regulation, the fox guards the henhouse and you have only the company’s word for their quality control. When commercial veterinary probiotics (another promising but not thoroughly studied area) were investigated, the vast majority did not contain what the company’s claimed on the label. The vast majority of homemade recipes for pet food published in books for lay people are not nutritionally balanced. Who is setting and moniotring the standards?

“*a number of veterinarians cautiously endorse it (especially if they have experienced firsthand cases of success, as far as, improvement or cure)”
You can easily find veterinarians who endorse homeopathy, energy medicine, and prayer, but that isn’t very persuasive evidence that these approaches work.

See, my problem is not that people turn to alteratives when conventional medicine can’t fix something, It is tthat the standards they apply to these alternatives are far lower than what is required by science, and as a result they come to believe in and then testify to the effectiveness of therapies which are very likley ineffective. Let’s not forget the best and brightest in medicine stood by bloodletting, purging, and many other totallly useless or even positively harmful therapies for literally thousands of years. We simply are more falible as individuals in our judgements than we can possible accept, and so without a scientific evaluation, our conclusions are overwhelingly likely to be mistaken. Saying this is not hubris, it’s humility.

“In those that failed, as well as those that succeeded, I’d love to know where owners or vets obtained their “medications”, whether they followed the protocol to the letter, and whether they followed up, and whether they used any other support, such as diet. I am aware, as I’m sure you are, that even pet owners don’t always give the best preventative care, nor do they always follow protocol, or follow-up, and this can be a factor in the success of any treatment. ”
Your own biases show here, where you are willing to accept your own experience of success as valid but quick to suggest that others’ experiences of failure represent improper technique or some other error on their part. Another reason why unblinded, subjective trial and error so often fails to yield the correct answer.

“Most discoveries are met with a fair amount of academic push back before they ever become truly accepted or before outdated and/or dangerous practices are withdrawn, even after testing. ”
This is not evidence of human resistance to change, though undoubtedly such is as widespread in scientists as in any other group of people. It is precisely how the process is supposed to work. Widespread acceptance of a new idea in the absence of rigorous scientific evaluation would simply lead to the acceptance of more wrong ideas than right ideas, since most new ideas turn out to be wrong. It is the process of a community challenging and criticising a hypothesis, and subjecting it to rigorous study and then only accepting it when the evidence is undeniable that makes science more trustworthy than other methods of evaluation. Sure, the process can take what seems like a long time. But adical shifts in thought and wild ideas that turn out to be true often go from scorn to universal acceptance in 10-20 years. Whereas wrong ideas that are accepted on good authority or based on anecdote (like humoral medicine and bloodletting) often persist for centuries, even millenia even though they are wrong. Push-back may be a form of bias i individuals, but in the comunity of science it is precisly how we sift the wheat from the chaff.

Ultimately, the limited evidence available for this product is enough to justify further preclinical and animal model evaluation, and if it survives that maybe even clinical trials. It is not enough to responsibly recommend using the product in actual patients. Our need for something to do in desparate circumstances is understandable and fair, but what desparation drives us to believe and to do is all to often wrong. I don’t say this as a moral judgement but as a fact well-established by the history of medicine and science. I would never tell anybody it is wrong to seek hope. But I do tell people that what they have hope in may not, as in this case, be deserving of their trust, and that those who are selling them this hope are not giving them the brutal honesty they may not want but that they deserve.

Again, everything that has held up to the scientific method, had a period in its existence that it had not yet been through that process. The cost of getting anything approval under drug guidelines is prohibitive to all but the most powerful drug companies, which is why most things that can get by without going through this process do (those that help, those that harm, and those that do nothing).

When it comes to deadly diseases, conventional medicine has the same drawbacks as some of the more promising alternative medicines, if you consider a failure of the medication or surgery to result in death or continued spread of a disease leading to natural death or the necessity of euthanasia or severity of side effects or secondary infection or amputation…and you can find statistics from scientific studies that attest to that. Personally, I would not generally turn to alternative medicine when there is a treatment in conventional medicine without first considering, and generally, utilizing conventional treatments.

I did not suggest forgoing conventional medicine…nor am I suggesting going down to your local psychic healer for vial of snake oil…because I am a skeptic, as well.

Here are the basics of what I think:
*conventional medicine has failed to deliver
*personal research is due
*you find something that looks promising
*and a company that holds its product to high standards of consistency
*a number of veterinarians cautiously endorse it (especially if they have experienced firsthand cases of success, as far as, improvement or cure)
*you commit to the protocol regardless of convenience and expense before you go forward
*you continue to work closely with your veterinarian
*you give it a limited time period to see if there are changes, as you would any treatment to determine if you continue (if there is improvement & your animal is feeling OK) or move on to the next (either because it isn’t showing success or because your animal is going downhill in either the specific condition or wellbeing)

…then you are doing the very best that you can…RESPONSIBLY.

I’m also not saying to keep your pet alive in tremendous pain for an extended period of time while you figure it out.

I don’t know about you, but ask yourself…would you quit looking for a cure, if it was, say, your child, or your spouse, or yourself? If you consider this “emotionally compelling”, then you have me there…because it is, but the rest is not.

It isn’t “luck” or an accident to get the results ‘cautiously’ expected/hoped for from something that made the claim and explained the mechanism…and if it was missed in my previous submission…her cancer was spreading and inoperable (a second time – having gone the conventional route first & having sought out a second opinion), so wherever she was going outside of a “lucky” miracle, she was dying…and dying quickly. I’m game for those, too, but I’m going to do all I can do, while I wait for them.

In the treatment we are doing now, even if the success we’ve seen thus far continues – and we are cautiously optimistic – not starry eyed followers, the oral in a lower dose is to be continued even after successful initial treatment, to keep any stray or new cancer cells from getting a foot hold. This is the same for human cancer survivors.

In those that failed, as well as those that succeeded, I’d love to know where owners or vets obtained their “medications”, whether they followed the protocol to the letter, and whether they followed up, and whether they used any other support, such as diet. I am aware, as I’m sure you are, that even pet owners don’t always give the best preventative care, nor do they always follow protocol, or follow-up, and this can be a factor in the success of any treatment.

Scientific study is the “ideal”. I agree with you that it would be great, because it could be controlled enough to account for all of these factors and, if successful, would bring a new treatment into mainstream awareness and use, as well as, revealing risks, limitations, and side effects, or help develop new protocols or support treatments…but until then, looking for options beyond what is endorsed by our government remains the responsibility of those who need an answer.

It should also be noted that the scientific & medical communities, sometimes forget that they are still humans, with the natural human inclination to an aversion to change. Most discoveries are met with a fair amount of academic push back before they ever become truly accepted or before outdated and/or dangerous practices are withdrawn, even after testing. Many dentists, doctors, and vets hang on to antiquated practices after safer alternatives are discovered or new protocols put in place (for example metal filling with mercury…still in practice). Also to note, some medications are withdrawn after extensive testing, when the passage of years reveals negative effects that could not have been predicted.

To make the leap…I have known in my life a people who have died of cancer that were treated conventionally, and people who are in long term remission that were treated conventionally, and three that after conventional medicine failed went for cancer treatments outside of the U.S. and are also in long term remission, as a result of treatments that are not approved in the U.S. (one considered conventional medicine outside of the U.S., one considered alternative medicine outside of this county, and one that was completely diet).

These are only three anecdotal cases…but if what you want is life, when death is eminent, then you are not crippled by the pronouncement, but compelled forward in pursuit.

Not emotional in anything but motivation…
logical progression of actions…
with responsible caution…

So either we accept an eternal game of deuling anecdotes, or we try to find something more reliable. Fortunately, we’ve found it in the scientific method and evidence-based medicine. Unfortunately, many people don’t care and still rely on anecdotes. You got lucky, and I am happy that things worked out for your pet (so far, though oral melanomas are notoriously prone to metastases, and I hope you don’t have to one day find that the tumor you believe is cured has spread elsewhere). But I am sad that stories like these lead others into relying on treatments that have not passed the bar of legitimate scientific study.