Dr. Rodriguez is the medical director of the American Biological Medical Center in Tijuana, Mexico, the Northwest Mexico Nuclear Medical Center and the Bradford Research Institute of the U.S.A., Mexico and West Germany. He completed his medical studies at the National University School of Medicine (1965) and the Doctors' Hospital in Toronto. He is an assistant professor of pharmacology at the Pharmacology Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He is a recognized pioneer in metabolic, biological, nutritional and eclectric medicine.

BIOELECTRICAL PHENOMENA IN HEALTH AND DISEASE

Many of you know that American Biologics started from the fight for 'freedom of choice' in cancer therapy in the United States. Initially, it was mainly a cancer clinic like many others in Tijuana, Mexico, but when we discovered we didn't have all the answers to cancer treatment, we began to do some research. We discovered that during the 1920's and 30's a great deal of research had been done to determine the effect of electricity on health and disease. We have known for many years that our bodies have an electrical charge which can be measured using electric probes.

There is a theory that the body's immune cells do not attack cancer tumours because of a protein barrier around the tumour which also blocks the entrance of medications. In order to investigate this theory, we began to use massive doses of proteolytic enzymes to destroy the protein barrier. However, we found that the protein barrier simply was not there. It has never been seen, even today in 1990, when electromicroscopy and all sorts of electronic scanning devices have been discovered. There may be no anatomical or physical barrier, but some of the old research has demonstrated that tumours have a different electrical behaviour. In 1949, research was done with accessible cancer tumours such as tumours of the cervix and uterus. The electrical behaviour of the tumours was measured with electrical probes and it was found that nonmalignant tumours were mainly on the positive side and malignant tumours were negatively charged. More recently it has been discovered that cancer processes can either be speeded up or arrested by changing the electrical charge of the tumour. In a recent study, tumours were implanted into mice. When a positive probe was applied to the tumour, the tumour stopped growing, but when a negative probe was applied, there was an acceleration of the growth of the tumour.

We have been using the same rationale in treating cancer patients as Dr. Nordstrom in Sweden. We designed a device which could measure the electrical behaviour of a lesion and at the same time apply either negative or positive current to that lesion. In order to reverse the electrical charge of the tumour, we implant a platinum probe inside the tumour and apply a charge at another point of the body. When we treat a cancer patient, at first a very high positive reaction is produced, but unfortunately, this positive charge will not hold. Once the power is turned off, the tumour will gradually try to return to a negative condition or to its previous voltage. Nevertheless, it never goes back to the original level but always maintains a certain degree of positivity. Tumours can also be burned with high currents and part of the tumour will be destroyed, but that is very much the same as treating it with radiation or surgery. It will get rid of the lump, but treating only the lump is not the solution. Cancer arises in the first place because of deficiencies which prevent the body from identifying a misbehaving cell and destroying it. It is a failure of the immune surveillance system. If we change the polarity of the tumour, it will allow the white blood cells to enter to fight the cancer cells. What we are always afraid of is the distant metastases of the tumour, the secondary tumours that the cancer could produce in the liver, the lung, the brain and the bones, just to mention the most frequently occurring places.

It is very important to take a wholistic approach to cancer so that the body will know what to do and keep the cancer at bay the next time it sees malignant cells running around your body. That's what keeps the cancer from proliferating and going to distant areas of the body. Therefore, A.C.N., accelerated charged neutralization, as we call this form of therapy, is not the whole answer. The tumour may reduce in size, swelling may go down, and the pain may disappear because electrical currents are known to reduce pain. There are a number of very good side effects. Electricity can benefit many disease conditions. Rheumatism may improve. If we apply electricity to a fracture or to a swollen area, the swelling will go down and the fracture will heal faster. Although the bioelectrical treatment has beneficial effects, it is important to use a wholistic approach which allows the body to recuperate so that the immune surveillance system can prevent the regrowth of the tumour. And there are a number of different alternatives which can be used.

TREATMENT WITH SUPPLEMENTS

Supplements play a dual role in the treatment of cancer. They provide a basic support to the physiology and biochemistry of the body but they also act as a medication. Orthomolecular medicine is simply the use of normal dietary supplements in different dosages to produce a therapeutic effect. We use vitamin A, vitamin C, and selenium, which are the most important supplements that actually have an anti-cancer effect. In experimental animal tests, you can reverse the transformation of bronchial cells to malignancy in laboratory animals which are exposed to tobacco by the use of vitamins A and C alone. Selenium also has a very important role in arresting the growth of malignant cells. So these substances can be used in higher amounts than usual to therapeutically reverse the cancer. Vitamin B17 or laetrile plays a very important role in cancer. One of the areas of misunderstanding about laetrile is that it does not cure every form of cancer and does not necessarily work on every individual. But it has a very important role and I know people who have handled their cancer using laetrile alone with very good success.

Proteolytic enzymes are very important in the breaking down of the tumour as well as breaking down the debris that comes out of the tumour. In many therapies, a problem occurs because the degradation of the tumour can reach the point where it becomes toxic to the body. So detoxification is another important part of treatment. Detoxification can be accomplished faster by using certain substances like chelation therapy which is used in the treatment of vascular disease and rejuvenation programs.

Nutrition of course is the absolute base-line of anything connected with health care. You cannot keep plants if you don't water them properly. Similarly, there is no way you can treat or prevent any pharmacological, biochemical or physiological condition if you don't practice proper nutrition. That is very important. We take it for granted, but we make a lot of mistakes. When we get sick we never think about what we did, what we ate, drank or smoked which may have caused the problem. With nutrition alone, we have probably one of the most important keys to prevention, health and treatment. It is possible to treat deadly disease conditions with dietary modification alone.

Psychological well-being is also very important in the process of rebuilding health and this cannot be stressed enough. Depression produces immune suppression. There is no question about that. You can take a blood sample in a glass tube and send it to the laboratory, and the laboratory can tell you without knowing anything further about the patient, that the person is psychologically depressed. Why? Because depression will slow down the frequency and the depth of your respiration, accelerate your heart rate and produce a number of physiological situations that will in turn suppress your immune system. Fifty per cent of the cancer cases we see are not the typical cancer cases we expect from too much smoking or exposure to asbestos for many years - the person who has cancer often has a normal life and a good diet. There is a psychological pattern to cancer patients and depression is one of them.

Once this is done, we can go on to the second part of the program: live-cell therapy. In live-cell therapy, embryonic tissue normally obtained from a calf is injected intramuscularly at one single time. The most frequent tissues used for rejuvenation and immune enhancement would be heart, lung and intestinal tissue. After the injection of those cells, we reduce medication and supplementation to a minimum. You are already back on a diet which will be at that point strictly vegetarian and very simple, very bland. After going home you will have a supplementation program with a number of products such as gerovital GH3 or tissue extracts and after three weeks you gradually go on a more complete diet.