Chris Woollams. Helping people, not cancer.
Are you the Cancer Guru who helped Geoffrey Boycott beat his cancer?
Thus started an email from a Doctor to Chris in 2007. Cancer Guru is not a title Chris considers even remotely appropriate.
He made his money at the very top of Advertising and Communication Companies when he was young, and is now a private investor. Helping people with cancer is his way of putting something back into the world. He does it, in his spare time, simply because he cares. He is a Man on a Mission.
Making smart choices
That mission is clear - he wants to empower people to increase their personal odds of survival. And this he does through imparting knowledge, information and research, so that people can make more-informed personal choices and so tailor treatment programmes to their personal situation, needs and the state of their cancer. "Its the smart thing to do", he says.
He also believes the following statement from expert US oncologist, Dr. Henry Friedman is totally sensible: I believe you can be cured. The cancer may be in remission; but it can be in remission indefinitely.
Chris receives over 120 emails a day. Many ask for help and he does what he can. (See Personal Prescriptions - CLICK HERE) A great number are from fans. Several, like Geoffrey, are well down the survival path. Some simply say, I wouldn't be here today if it weren't for you.
Chris mission was the driving force in setting up CANCERactive. It is now twelve years old. Here is a little about his work. If you want to know more about his formal CV, click here. If you want to read an interview with him, click here. If you want to go to his general Health website (Chris Woollams Health Watch) Click Here.
Choosing the Best of the Best
Chris Woollams founded CANCERactive after a very personal experience. The former Advertising and Communications wunderkind, now champions a mainstream cancer charity, CANCERactive, which aims to plug two significant gaps in the cancer arena; gaps that he and his daughter, Catherine encountered when she was diagnosed, at the age of 22, with an aggressive, malignant brain tumour.
At the time, orthodox medical opinion was clear that there was no hope of survival beyond six months. Even the Lancet recorded that the chemotherapy drugs available offered no hope of cure. Yet still the doctors persisted with their limited approach of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Chris had to find alternatives that could possibly help. And fast!
Former Communications CEO, turned philanthropist,
Chris Woollams with his daughter Catherine
So Chris decided to research all possible complementary and alternative cancer therapies, like diet, supplements, exercise, natural healing treatments, and ways of boosting the body's natural energies and immune system, from all over the world. His work covered successful therapies from Russia to Brazil, from European Nobel Prize winners to American brain tumour specialists.
The more time and effort he put in, the more he was amazed at how much quality research was available but ignored by the orthodox medical world in the UK. And so he decided to plug that failing.
Knowledge is the difference between long-term survival and failure
With Catherine's help he set out to provide easy-to-access, easy-to-understand and easy-to-use information on how to build integrated, or holistic, therapy programmes from the moment of diagnosis choosing the best of the best the best of complementary and alternative and orthodox therapies. At the time, some US experts believed this could increase your chances of survival by 60 per cent. It certainly helped Catherine live more than seven times longer than her doctors predicted.
Next, he decided to help educate people on how not to develop cancer in the first place! Again what he discovered surprised him. Existing UK charities, in his opinion, merely stated the obvious and repeatedly implied it was somehow the patients fault that they developed their cancer: It's your diet. It's your poor lifestyle smoking, drinking too much, no exercise etc. Yet expert research showed there were many other causes like toxic chemicals, EMFs, parasites and pesticides and so on, hardly even mentioned by the major charities.
But what caused your cancer could still be driving it this is not merely about cancer prevention; it underpins cancer cure as well.
So CANCERactive adopted the Precautionary Principle - where there is expert research showing an area of concern, we will tell you. It is your right to know.
The Truth is that people say that knowledge is power. In cancer it is far more than that. Knowledge is the difference between long-term survival and death.
Expert research-based evidence allows people to make more informed personal choices
Integrated survival programmes might seem a bit alternative to some UK orthodox, old school Doctors but at top US hospitals and cancer centres like MD Anderson they are increasingly the norm, says Chris. "37 per cent of American hospitals have the words treating mind, body and soul in their mission statements. UCLA now run degree courses for people wanting to become integrated doctors; there's one in most towns. Yet, we are worlds behind this in the UK. The out-dated 1939 Cancer Act is one thing holding back patient treatment in the UK. If an integrated doctor cannot even advertise in Yellow Pages that he treats cancer, he might as well jump on the next plane to work abroad. Bizarrely there are deluded people who adopt a vigilante style role to enforce this outmoded law. How they think they are helping people in the UK with cancer, heaven only knows!"
Beating cancer is about making better informed decisions - its about personal choice. Its about understanding that your cancer is as individual as you are; and it is not a cockroach you can just tread on. Cancer is a multi-step process and you need to build a personal, tailor-made, multi-step programme to tackle it. I call this your personal prescription. I merely give you the information so you can start from a more-informed place.
Be clear - No one drug, no one vitamin is ever likely to do the trick, unless you are lucky. To believe a single anything is going to cure your cancer is naive, he adds. "Dr Henry Friedman of Dukes has said exactly the same."
The man on a mission
So Chris, CANCERactive and the website, and magazine (icon) all seek to encourage people to build Integrated Personal Programmes incorporating not just orthodox, but complementary and alternative therapies as well all to give people a better chance of survival.
His mission is simple: I try to help people beat cancer. In practice this is a little more complicated and for him involves informing and inspiring people to realise cancer is an all-over-body disease and needs to be approached by building a total all-over-body programme of activities - he calls it the best of the best - whilst cutting out the factors that might be maintaining it. And that's what you'll find in the 3600 pages of magazine style writing that makes up the CANCERactive charity's website - www.canceractive.com. Of course now, ten years on, he has help - over 48 oncologists have contributed to the website and there is a fully qualified Medical board of doctors, oncology professors and specialist complementary experts to help him.
Chris has used the research he unearthed to compile the best-selling "Everything you need to know to help you beat cancer", The Rainbow Diet - and how it can help you beat cancer", "Oestrogen - the killer in our midst", "Cancer - your first 15 steps", Heal your Gut - Heal your Body (Previously The Secret Source of your Good Health) and "Conventional Cancer Cures - what's the alternative?" (now out of stock). Each of his books is user-friendly and total sales have yielded almost a million pounds in the past ten years, although none of the books sells through the mass market retail trade.
Every penny profit has been passed to the charity, supported by a further considerable donation from Chris. Everybody needs to put something into the world - this is my, and Catherine's, donation, he says.
Helping people increase their personal odds of survival
On his aims for the charity, Chris said, "Cancer affects us all. Whether or not we develop it, we all know someone who has it. I want to make the information about cancer prevention accessible and easy-to-understand. I want to tell people who have it, that there are top quality, well researched Complementary and Alternative therapies with real scientific studies behind them, and that these really can make a difference. Treatment cannot just be confined to drugs, radiotherapy and surgery, that's the stone age. The American Cancer Society produced a report in 2012 talking of an explosion in research since 2006 into complementary therapies. They talked of overwhelming evidence that therapies like diet, exercise and weight control could increase survival times AND even prevent a cancer returning. We already knew this - we've been telling people for ten years. And we promise to stay ahead of the pack. Then there's the issue of so called Alternative therapies. I prefer to think of them as new therapies. Todays alternative therapy (for example, HIFU for prostate cancer, which we had written about for 5 years before a successful clinical trial even took place in the UK) is tomorrow's orthodox one! We just bring it to people as soon as we hear that it is working elsewhere in the world.
Finally, I want to expose the hype, the quackery and even the downright lies that come between ordinary people and finding the best solutions for their personal cancer. People with cancer deserve better.
CANCERactive's mission is about empowerment, survival, inspiration. Its about improving your personal odds - firstly, against developing cancer, and secondly, improving your odds of surviving if you do develop cancer. There's so much research out there my mission is to make it available to everyone. I know it will help save lives. I'm not a Doctor and I don't pretend to be. I just want to help people give themselves the best chance of survival
As one recent cancer patient wrote to him, I couldn't believe the information that is available on your site. I have built my programme and all my scores have fallen so dramatically, my doctor is puzzled. They are now even talking about not giving me the chemotherapy. I can't thank you enough.
The mythology of modern medicine
Chris biggest concern is, what he calls, the mythology that exists in the cancer arena. Skeptics talk of there being no alternative or orthodox treatments, just medicine. But having clinical research behind a new therapy (e.g. Ablation for breast cancer) doesn't readily see it accepted as orthodox medicine. There are too many practical and political stumbling blocks before it is accepted as a norm in treatment.
And then there's the clinical trial. The Truth is it has been debased and devalued by persistent Big Pharma fraud. At a debate on Integrated cancer programmes in 2011, an MP (a Doctor) was heard to say that she wouldn't consider any treatment that hadn't been through a double-blind, placebo controlled, clinical trial. The Truth is that this argument is used to fend off the advances of vitamin D, curcumin and other potent natural compounds by people with vested interests in drug companies. It is a stupid argument anyway, as therapies in use in American Hospitals (like Dendritic Vaccines at Dukes, Carolina, and virotherapy at MD Anderson in Texas), have been used for over a decade with success. Indeed 85 per cent of common drugs on the market today have never been through this level of clinical trial, and virtually no current child chemotherapy programme has either.
It doesn't help when the FDA talk of 40% of drug clinical trials being flawed, and the head of the highly respected Nordic Cochrane institute, Peter Goetzsche, brings out a book entitled Deadly Medicines and organised crime; how big Pharma has corrupted healthcare.
Cancer patients need help sorting the truth from the mythology - and Chris is excellent at doing this.
Making Smart Choices
"The mission is to help people increase their personal odds of beating cancer by making more-informed personal choices through providing independent and trustworthy information. Frankly, informed people now see right throughout the hype, lies and downright fraud of Big Pharma, and recent research shows an increasing distrust of doctors for overprescribing and not questioning their wares.
"The smart people are health savvy, and they know that non-invasive therapies are talked down, while orthodox therapies are hyped up. Follow the money is a relevant phrase.
Well, that is not good enough for people fighting cancer. CANCERactive has become the smart choice, and no wonder".