KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 24, 2011): The chairman of the Committee to Promote Inter-Religious Understanding and Harmony, Datuk Ilani Isahak, died today after fighting against breast cancer for the past five years. Ilani, 58, breathed her last at about 6 a.m. at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre (PPUKM).
The Star reported: Interfaith Relations Working Committee chairman Datuk Ilani Isahak died after a three-year battle against breast cancer. Ilani had been in hospital since Jan 23. The entire family was with her when she took her last breath,” her brother Dr Amir Farid Isahak said.
HER BROTHER EXPLAINED
On 2 March 2011, I received an e-mail from Dr. Amir Farid. I requested Dr. Amir’s permission to reproduce his e-mail (minus his name of course). This was his reply: “Yes you can quote me, with my name. That will provide credibility compared to an anonymous quote.” So here it goes, his e-mail to me. Salam, Thanks for the sharing, and also the many articles which you have written that have been invaluable resource for me. My articles to the Star are censored when it comes to criticizing chemotherapy. Fortunately they cannot censor everything, so some still get thru. I am especially upset because my own sister Dato Hajjah Ilani just died last week after undergoing three years of chemo. She followed everything the oncologist prescribed. Each time, after discussing with me, she would decide “no more chemo”, but after the next visit with the oncologist, she would tell me “the oncologist said it is absolutely necessary that I go for the chemo, so I agreed”. In three years she had many courses of chemo. She also had many doses of Herceptin, which was wrongly given because they later told her that her report was wrong. She had several doses of Avastin, which was withdrawn for use in breast cancer by US FDA in Dec 2010 because the damage outweighed any potential good. You can imagine what devastation all these did to her body. She had chemo till Dec 2010. Only when she was in bad shape in Jan 2011 did she decide no more chemo. By that time the oncologists also decided that she was a hopeless case and good for palliative care only. At her death bed, she told me “learn from my mistake, do not go for chemo”. Do you think Star will ever print if I relate this? No way. Unfortunately, many more will be convinced by their oncologists that chemo is “absolutely necessary”.
Dr Amir
(Note: Dr. Amir Farid Isahak is a senior medical consultant/gynecologist. He is also a Qigong Master and Reiki Master. He was the Founding President of Guolin Qigong Association Malaysia and was also the Vice-President of the Malaysian Reiki Association).
A RESPONSE FROM A READER
Dear Dr Amir, Sorry to hear about your sister Ilani’s passing. Having also lost a sister to breast cancer (helped by chemotherapy, of course) I can imagine how you feel … all I can tell you is that it will not be easy for you from now on, especially from your “privileged” position as a doctor who believes in complementary medicine. And because we are in the “bizness of helping people with cancer” be prepared for being quizzed … How come, you couldn’t help your own sister uh? Welcome to the club. Personally, I learned a lot from my sister’s experience which I use freely to motivate other cancer patients. I guess you will be doing the same with your sister’s “amanat”. They have moved on from their sojourn here on earth and may Allah bless their souls and grant them peace. K
COMMENTS
Thanks Doc. for sharing with us. Dato Hajjah Ilani was not the only person who died after a failed war. There were (and are going to be) many more patients like her. My only response to this episode is to lift up my hands in despair. But of course, I am not going to give up! Dato Illani’s message was: Learn from my mistake, do not go for chemo. And we are going to tell the world just that! But first let me say this loud and clear: It is not for me or CA Care to tell you, cancer patient, what to do – to go or not to go for chemo. It has to be your own decision. Our responsibility is to provide you with credible information. Read them and then make your own decision. It is your life and it is you and only you who will benefit or suffer from the decision that you have made. This is what it looks like if a chemo-drug spills onto your unprotected hand. What happens when a bottleful of this drug is pumped into your body?
This is what it looks like if doctors “messed” you up.
Picture below: Seventy-three-year-old Indonesia underwent a mastectomy. Three months (not years!) later her cancer recurred. She underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The treatments were stopped half way because she was weak and was unable to walk. Is this the so-called scientifically proven method? Better than snake oil? What if you just DO NOTHING?
Some of you may tell me: “But you are biased. You only write about the bad things … what about the good side of chemo? “Perhaps you may be right! After all the patients who come and see me are generally the failed cases – after the chemo or radiation could not save them anymore! The successful patients do not come and see me anyway. Excuse me, I get to see only the ugly side of medical treatments.
However, my question is: “Why are there so many bad cases?” Can’t the so-called scientific medicine do better than that? Then again I want to ask: “How wrong or skewed am I – if at all I am biased?”
EVIDENCE AND EXPERT OPINION
I suggest that you visit our website: https://cancercaremalaysia.com/category/breast-cancer/ before you cast the first stone. Read and hear for yourself what many others with breast cancer have got to say.
Then read books about breast cancer. Let us start off with the following:
In my book, CA Care Experience with BREAST CANCER, I have answered this most important question: How effective is chemotherapy? Let me quote what I wrote:
Graeme Morgan & Associates (Clinical Oncology 16:549-560; 2004) wrote:
- The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.
In Australia, of the 10,661 people who had breast cancer only 164 people survived 5 years due to chemotherapy. This works out to 1.5% contribution of chemotherapy to survival.
Eva Segelov in an editorial (Australian Presciber 29:2-3; 2006) suggested that:
- Chemotherapy has been oversold. Chemotherapy has improved survival by less than 3% in adults with cancer.
M. Veroort & Associates (British J Cancer 19:242-247; 204) concluded that:
- Breast cancer mortality reduction caused by present-day practice of adjuvant tamoxifen and chemotherapy is 7%.
Guy Faguet (The War on Cancer: An anatomy of failure …) wrote:
- An objective analysis of cancer chemotherapy outcomes over the last three decades reveals that, despite vast human and financial expenditures, the cell-killing paradigm had failed to achieve its objective … and the conquest of cancer remains a distant and elusive goal.
- Chemotherapy for cancer is based on flawed premises with an unattainable goal, cytotoxic chemotherapy in its present form will neither eradicate cancer not alleviate suffering.
In my book, Understanding Cancer War and Cure, I quoted the following experts:
Dr. John Lee, author of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Breast Cancer, wrote:
- Chemotherapy is an attempt to poison the body just short of death in the hope of killing the cancer before the entire body is killed.
- Most of the time it doesn’t work.
Alan Levin, professor of immunology, University of California Medical School said:
- Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy.
- Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon or lung cancers.
- This fact has been documented for over a decade.
- Yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumours.
- Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemotherapy than without it.
In the book, Enter the Zone, Dr. Barry Sears wrote:
- Everybody knows that our present cancer drugs are lousy ~ Wolfgang Wrasidlo, director of drug development, Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, California, pg. 164
- The existing treatments for cancer are probably the most barbaric in modern medicine, pg. 166.
Nearer home, a renowned oncologist of Singapore wrote this in the The Straits Times, Mind Your Body Supplement, Page 22, 29 November 2006:
- Oncology is not like other medical specialties where doing well is the norm. In oncology, even prolonging a patient’s life for three months to a year is considered an achievement.
- Achieving a cure is like striking a jackpot.
- Not all cancers can be cured.
For a patient to receive a cure is like striking a jackpot. Get that? But, take a pause and ask: Who is more likely to hit the jackpot first? Patients or oncologists? Read this story: https://cancercaremalaysia.com/2011/03/01/breast-cancer-she-died-even-after-multi-million-dollar-medical-bill/
My final comment, Beware of the Propaganda by the Mass Media
Do you think the newspapers, magazines and TV news reports present medical information fairly and objectively? Think again.
- Medical propaganda is rampant. Its goal is to mislead, confuse and coerce you into supporting conventional medicine and enhancing the cancer industry’s spoils of war ~ Burton Goldberg, An alternative medicine definitive guide to cancer.
