The NHS is preparing a trial for mid-2021 involving 165,000 people aged between 50 and 79 involving a blood test (the Galleri Test) that is claimed to have a 99% accuracy in detecting 50 different cancers. At last!
Since I started researching cancer this time round 20 years ago, we have presented the credentials on all manner of tests, some poor, some excellent.
We covered the original study - the Galleri Blood test - from researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Dana Faber back in June 2020 that has led to this ‘game-changer’ of an opportunity in the UK. Why is this test so accurate? It measures methylation.
The Epigenetic Theory of cancer
Methylation builds up prior to cancer (or Alzheimer's) causing increased histone presence around the DNA ball in your nucleus resulting in DNA blockages - and thus a loss of messages.
This should be more than a little embarrassing to charities such as Cancer Research and many Big Pharma companies who have resolutely defended an 80 year old unproven theory of cancer (The Somatic Theory of cancer) that people must lose messages because of irreversible mutation - DNA damage caused by a sequence change in both strands of your DNA. Indeed, in 2015, the Epigenetic theory was only approved if the resulting changes ‘could be inherited’, something which is blatantly tosh.
More methylation means more histones around (epi-) your DNA, and the underlying DNA is blocked and cannot be read – blockages cause important message loss.
But blockages are reversible. Who needs drugs, radiotherapy or surgery to kill the dodgy cell? Just reverse the cause of the blockage – environment toxin, stress, loss of helpful gut bacteria and their mRNA, lowered oxygen, hormones – most causes are not even mentioned by CRUK.
The Galleri blood test is claimed to be 99% accurate. But if you don’t believe in Epigenetics and that the Somatic Theory is wrong, they wouldn’t work. The Somatic Theory of cancer never mentioned methylation! Sure enough, CRUK are already casting doubt on this NHS programme.
But the NHS are right. If we really could catch cancer early, imagine the millions of pounds the NHS would cut off their treatment bill - no need for all those expensive drugs; maybe you could use ablation to kill off the early tiny tumours?
Increasing survival?
If you can detect a cancer earlier, you have a greater chance of survival.
Define survival. A patient will say “I am going to beat cancer; I am going to live.”
CRUK will say “Do you mean 5-year survival, or 10 year survival?”
Two groups divided by a common language (sorry Winston).
Now, there are definitely cancers such as ovarian, where high grade serous is called the silent killer, which are almost always diagnosed too late. After initial treatment, the cancer comes back in 80% of cases. Can you catch it when the first fallopian cells are being surrounded by histones caused by micro-RNA from E coli and friends? This would be wonderful.
Equally, wouldn't it be wonderful if this could replace the almost useless PSA test, or avoid colonoscopies and invasive biopsies?
But there are lies, damn lies and statistics. It doesn’t necessarily follow that catching smokers lung cancer two years earlier will help a 64 year old live past 67. You just caught the cancer at 62 not 64, so 5-year survival statistics will go up, and it will look like 'We're beating cancer', when we are not.
Using modern treatments and holistic approaches
The targeted methylation approach detected over 50 cancers, across all stages of cancer, with a 99% accuracy and only 1% false positive; the accuracy of determining the correct tissue location was 90%.
I remember the Karolinska using the Nanoknife in three clinical trials on 90 women and stating that if we could detect the breast tumours early enough when they were small, an electrode either side, an electric current to punch ‘nano’ holes in the cells, and it could all be done in a lunch hour!
But don’t forget cancer is an ‘All-over-body’ disease. Even if you deal with the early stage, you must recognise you have built a body conducive to cancer. In this brave new world, you still need to build a body conducive to health! So if the Galleri blood test does work as it seems it should, and you receive a positive result, deal with the problem but treat it as a warning, and rebuild your whole body.
Go to: Sensitive and specific multi-cancer detection and localization using methylation signatures in cell-free DNA