Two new studies have revealed that not only are there no newly-developed 'mutations' in DNA causing cancer formation; but also where there is an inherited mutation, it does not reduce cancer survival times; if anything people with an inherited mutation survive longer!
First, researchers from Sloan Kettering have found that cancer does not derive from new mutations in your DNA - there is not one new mutation at all. Instead, cancer development comes from changes to your messenger RNA (mRNA) making ineffective proteins.
Cancer, mutations and lost messages
The 80-year 'Somatic theory of cancer' holds that people with cancer have developed mutations in their DNA - their genetic code in the nucleus of their cells. This is most usually explained away because you smoked, drank too much or ate badly and produced 'free-radicals', which ripped pieces off your DMA. Free-radical damage can definitely change your DNA, it's true. But this damage is not the same as a 'mutation'.
A mutation is defined as 'a sequence change' in your DNA.
Cancer is known to arise from lost messages - for example, you no longer make a protein which prompts your immune system to attack a cancer cell. But you have two strands of DNA - one from your father, the other from your mother. If one strand, the dominant gene, has a problem, there's still a back up gene in the other strand. So a completely lost message only occurs if you have a sequence change (a mutation) in both strands of your double helix DNA, bang opposite each other.
Since, in the Somatic theory, it is unlikely such a mutation could be reversed, the only option is to remove the cancer cell from the body or kill it. As you know, a whole industry has been built on this theory.
The new research shows this long-standing cancer theory is incorrect.
Epigenetic changes
Your DNA basically never leaves its home - the nucleus. To make the essential proteins, first it is copied by enzymes called polymerases. These copies are called messenger RNA, or mRNA. These messages are then copied to make essential proteins which control your life.
We know, for example, that there are proteins that suppress a tumour forming in a healthy person. In August 2021, researchers at the Sloan Kettering Institute found that changes in mRNA can inactivate these proteins – the proteins become incorrect and ineffective and cannot suppress tumour formation. In other words, it is your messaging that goes wrong – not your DNA. And cancer is the result of modifications to your mRNA, copying malfunctions and the resultant ineffective proteins outside outside your nucleus.
In other words, it's the microenvironment around the cell and this process that is the issue. And it is known that far more than poor diet, smoking and alcohol can affect this microenvironment.
Epigenetics (epi = around) is a theory that a number of epigenetic factors, for example, poor diet, stress hormones, environmental toxins, toxins produced by pathogens (bacteria, parasites, viruses etc), lack of minerals, lowered oxygen and more, can each and all screw up your message and copying system and therefore the production of a perfect and important protein.
You do produce a message; it’s just not the correct or perfect one. It's not just cancer and Alzheimer's that are products of this process - Aging seems to be controlled by it too.
So, you are not doomed after all. You don’t need to fret about mutations in your DNA, because you don’t have any. What is happening is that you are producing dodgy mRNA and dodgy protein messages.
And the issues causing it in the microenvironment in and around your cells can be dramatically altered.
Sloan Kettering researchers prove Epigenetic is the dominant cause
And now, Dr. Christine Mayr has told the world (winning the NIH Director’s most prestigious ‘Pioneer Award’ in the process) that some mRNA messages can lead to cancer-causing changes. And, importantly, the reason oncologists don’t understand or accept Epigenetics is because all the tests to date look at DNA for mutations, so the real issue goes undetected, resulting in orthodox treatments treating the wrong problem!!
Yes, she said this!
No mutations in your DNA
Mayr stated that if you sequence the DNA in cancer cells, you would not see cancer causing changes at all.
The changes occur in the mRNA copying. “But these mRNA changes have the same ultimate effect as known cancer drivers,” added Meyr.
Just to continue the Biochemistry a little longer (forgive us!), your messenger- RNA is made from one of your DNA strands inside the nucleus. This explains why, even if you do have an inherited mutation for BRCA1 or BRCA2, you still ‘work’ for the first 50 or so years in your life, because you still make your mRNA from the working strand of DNA that doesn’t have a sequence change and this produces working proteins.
The mRNA then moves outside the nucleus into the general cell (cytoplasm) where a ribosome ‘train’ reads the mRNA sequence and makes a specific protein.
First, the copying of the DNA could go wrong: the mRNA is much shorter anyway than DNA because a lot of the coding in the DNA is simply not needed to make proteins and is cut out – rather like leaving bits of a movie on the cutting room floor. Also, the mRNA could be mis-read to give a slightly different protein.
To quote Dr Mayr, “The findings turn some common assumptions about cancer on their head and point to the need to look past DNA for answers to questions about what causes the disease”.
Chris Woollams, former Oxford University Biochemist, said, "A mutation means only one thing to a Biochemist. It's a sequence change in the DNA. To lose a message, you would need a sequence change in both strands of your double helix exactly opposite to each other. Anyone who has followed my speeches or articles for the past 20 years will have heard me say that this is not a zillions-to-one occurrence; it's virtually impossible! I even said that at Oxford University all those years ago. The Somatic Theory of cancer is flawed. The earth is not flat."
A second study, this time by Stamford Medicine on October 1st 2021, reported on women with inherited DNA mutations like BRCA1 or BRCA2 - they only have the inherited mutation in one strand from one parent. The other strand is normal. These inherited mutations might be crucial in DNA replication (BRCA1) or immune response (BRCA2) genes!
Here, the Somatic Theory argues that over time you develop a mutation exactly opposite the original inherited mutation and thus lose the message completely, causing cancer to develop.
Yet according to this second stamford study, across 26,000 women with breast and ovarian cancer, those with these inherited mutations fared no worse, or even better, during treatment than women with no inherited mutation. The researchers from Stamford, Sloan Kettering and the University of California, San Diego, went on to conclude that cancer survival times had little or nothing to do with any ‘mutation’ in your DNA. Allison Kurian, Professor of oncology and epidemiology and population health at the Stamford University School of Medicine was the lead author on the study and went on to say that patients with an inherited mutation were actually less likely to die than people with none.
These two findings demand a scientific rethink and put Epigenetics - i.e. changes which occur in the microenvironment outside of your DNA and are potentially ‘reversible’ - as the theory most likely to lie behind cancer.
These findings make cancer a metabolic disease like all others.
Woollams added, "The two studies show that your cancer survival has nothing to do with any permanent mutation or damage in your DNA. You are not doomed."
Go to: Epigenetics and reversing cancer
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References
- Christine Mayr, Sloan Kettering; Scientists find cancer drivers hiding in a new place - https://www.mskcc.org/news/scientists-find-cancer-drivers-hiding-new-place
- Breast Cancer mutations don’t lower survival - Stamford Medicine - https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/10/genetic-mutations-cancer.html