As many of you know, this has become my battle cry! What if mammography causes breast cancer? What if the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test isn’t prostate specific? What if Amoxicillin, an antibiotic given to millions of children, causes hyperactivity? In this issue of KNOW THIS, we’ll explore why, according to medical researchers, cancer is common and fungal infections are rare.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers have now identified how one deadly fungus, Cryptococcus neoformans, hides from the immune system, enabling it to grow, unabated throughout the infected person's body. What begins as a tiny encapsulated spore, consisting of an outer membrane made up of a sort of sugar (polysaccharide), now attracts more and more of this sugar from somewhere inside the body, leading the once tiny single spore to become too large for the scavenger white blood cells (macrophages) to gobble them up and digest them! Eventually, this mass of cells strangles off normal human physiology and the patient dies. Lead researcher Dr. Arturo Casadevall says that the mechanism for capsule growth wasn’t known until now. Of course, they have yet to identify where the other polysaccharides are coming from but, as you continue reading, you will see how, yet again, an exciting science has been touched upon. Could this discovery actually be a relevant cancer discovery? I think it is! I suspect that millions of other Cryptococcus neoformans cells are already inside our bodies and want nothing more than some bonding-time with their spore family members! Read on.

As this article, and thousands of others before, have noted, fungal infections such as these “occur most often in those with compromised immune systems.” I’ve long wondered if this “only sick people get it” mentality isn’t repeated blindly in medicine to support peer research, or if there is any merit to their contentions that only those with weak immune systems get fungal infections. As it turns out, a 2001 research paper, also completed by Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers, provides us with some compelling information about the ignorance that abounds in science today regarding fungal diseases. It also opened my eyes with regards to my own cancer research.

I believe that the ascomycete (sac) fungi are often mistaken for cancer tumors. These fungal sacs enlarge as more and more spores grow within the sac. Of course, the medical community has yet to embrace my findings particularly, as some have told me, because fungal infections are so rare in healthy individuals, and before they had cancer…they were healthy! In this 2001 paper, Einstein researchers found, to their amazement, that infection with Cryptococcus neoformans fungus was not rare at all! As a matter of fact, a whopping 70% of non-immunocompromised (healthy) children over the age of five have been infected with this same fungus! I suspect that this same percentage, or higher, can also be found in “healthy” adults on thousands of prescriptive drugs, for which they have been told by their doctors, that the cause of their illness is “unknown.” Maybe it’s all fungus!

From this research, I’m now beginning to see that my cancer hypothesis of fungal cells grow into a sac formation may be very slightly off. Cryptococcus neoformans is not an Ascomycete, rather a Basidiomycete that does not grow in a sac formation. If cancer is caused by fungus, maybe electronically charged fungal cells magnetically bind to each other, forming a mass that would become too large to be gobbled up by white blood cells. After all, we apparently all have this potential in that most of us have this deadly fungus inside us already! Or maybe the one tiny Cryptococcus cell requires sugar from surrounding cells and bloats as it consumes them! Who knows?

Reading “into” research papers is something I enjoy. Every once in a while the pieces become far more relevant than the whole, which is often inconclusive! It is interesting to read these papers, especially given the challenges that now face us. There are now 100 autoimmune disorders and, our brightest and best, instead of finding the cause of any one, are trying desperately to develop new drugs to treat them. Until next month…blessings! Doug