Calling of an Angel: Rene Caisse and Essiac Teaby Dr. Gary L. Glum |
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Dedicated to
There are no words to thank you. CONTENTS On October 5, 1983, E. Bruce Hendrick, the chief of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, wrote to the Canadian Minister of Health and Welfare saying that Dr. Hendrick supported a scientific clinical trial of the cancer treatment compound known as "Essiac." Dr. Hendrick stated that after they started on Essiac, eight of ten patients with surgically treated tumors of the central nervous system had "escaped from the conventional methods of therapy including both radiation and chemotherapy." Dr. Hendrick wrote that he was "most impressed with the effectiveness of the treatment and its lack of side effects." He closed with this: "I feel that this method of treatment should be given serious consideration and would benefit from a scientific clinical trial."
With that letter Dr. Hendrick joined a long list of physicians dating back
more than 60 years who have spoken in favor of Essiac as a cancer
treatment.
How could something like this happen? This is the story of a woman named Rene Caisse. For more than 50 years, until her death in 1978 at the age of 90, she treated thousands of cancer patients, most of them written off by doctors as terminally ill, with her own secret herbal formula. She called it Essiac - Caisse spelled backwards - and she brewed the tea herself, alone in her kitchen. Her patients swore by her. They were devoted. Men and women who believed she cured them of cancer told their friends and families, wrote letters to doctors and politicians, swore affidavits, testified before the Canadian parliament and pleaded with Rene Caisse to supply them with more Essiac when they needed it. Some husbands and wives of patients who died wrote Rene letters thanking her profoundly for making life easier - free of pain - and longer for their loved ones. Her funeral in the village of Bracebridge, about 170 kilometers north of Toronto, was attended by hundreds of people, including former patients Rene had treated for terminal cancer as far back as the 1930s and who were still on their feet to bury her and tell their stories. I'm convinced that Essiac works. It has potent healing -- and preventive -- power. It is a gift from nature. I've seen a small part of the evidence with my own eyes, and I've experienced Essiac's power as a healthful tonic in my own life. I suffered from chronic bronchitis until a few years ago when I first heard of Essiac and tried it myself. Within days my cough disappeared and it hasn't returned. I still drink the Essiac. It tastes like what it is, an herbal tea. About as plain and mild as any of the other herbal teas from around the world you can buy in any supermarket. I've never felt better. All through Canada and in parts of the United States today there are people of all ages who are absolutely convinced that Essiac saved their lives or the lives of friends and loved ones. But you can't buy it in any supermarket. Claims have been made - since about 1925, in fact - that Essiac is an effective treatment for cancer. So the governments of North America have classified it as a "drug." The Canadian government almost legalized its use by Rene in 1939, and has gone through fits and starts ever since in deciding how to handle the situation. The policy has ranged from threatening to arrest Rene if she didn't close her clinic to promising her publicly - on the record, in the press that she wouldn't be arrested if she would agree to keep her clinic open, thus quieting the public clamor that arose after the government threatened to shut her down.In the last decade, the Canadian government has classified Essiac as an "experimental drug," and then an "experimental drug" that had failed to show promise, and today - as Dr. Hendrick's letter shows - the internal battles are still going on in Canada over the future of Essiac. In the U.S., a 1978 class action suit in federal court in Detroit seeking to authorize the importation of Essiac for cancer treatment was defeated by the government. Other than that, the U.S. government hasn't faced much pressure about Essiac. There are probably high level officials in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - and the National Cancer Institute - who make life and death decisions about cancer drugs who could honestly say they've never heard of Essiac. I hope they'll take the time to read this book. I don't claim that Essiac is a miraculous panacea, capable of curing all cancers in all people, nor do I believe that. Rene Caisse didn't even believe that. She didn't claim Essiac as a "cure for cancer." Her former patients were the ones who put forward that claim, strenuously and over many decades. What Rene maintained was that Essiac caused regression in some cancerous tumors, the total destruction of others, prolonged life in most cases and - in virtually every case - significantly diminished the pain and suffering of cancer patients. If the testimonials of Rene's former patients, including those sworn under oath, have any credibility at all - and when I present them, I think you'll agree they do - then Essiac's powers as a pain reliever in cancer patients are nothing short of phenomenal. In sixty years of personal accounts, the easing of agony and an increased sense of well-being - often to the point of getting through the day without narcotics - is one of the predominant themes. You hear it over and over again, and always told with a deep sense of gratitude. Rene fought almost her whole adult life against overwhelming odds and under incredible pressures, some of them self imposed, to establish those simple facts as accepted wisdom. She never gave up her fight. But for one woman many years ago to persuade the medical and legal institutions of North America that a natural treatment for cancer - based on herbs that grow wild - might make more sense than the accepted means of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy...she might as well have been telling them in an earlier century that the earth is round. Remember: Rene was fighting cancer with a natural treatment in an era when the conventional wisdom of the medical establishment denied even that diet might be a factor in causing cancer. It's hard to believe, knowing what we know now - and what has become the conventional wisdom - but for generations those doctors who preached dietary causes of cancer were dismissed by most physicians as quacks. So what was the medical establishment to make of this woman - who wasn't even a licensed doctor - who preached that a cancer treatment was to be found in plants that grow wild? My goal in this book is simple: I want to tell the story of this ordinary woman's extraordinary Life and share the knowledge of Essiac so that people can make their own informed decisions about what it's future should be. I don't pretend to have all the answers about how and why Essiac works, or the final scientific proof that it does. There are large gaps, as I'll explain, in my own knowledge of this story. Much of it remains a mystery to me, raising deeply intriguing questions which I would love to see answered. But I do know that there is already enough evidence that Essiac has benefited cancer patients in the last 60 years to warrant those controlled clinical studies that some physicians - such as Dr. Hendrick - have advocated for decades. The risk to the public would certainly appear to be minimal. There seems to be universal agreement among the doctors and scientists who have done investigations of Essiac - and the patients who have used it - that Essiac is non-toxic and without harmful side effects. Rene Caisse drank it every day for half a century and some of her family and close friends always made sure they had their daily cup. Not even Rene Caisse's worst enemies ever put forward the argument that people were hurt by drinking the tea. This nontoxic nature of Essiac is an important consideration in making it a treatment worthy of serious investigation. Many of the conventionally accepted chemotherapy drugs actually come with toxic warning labels. One of the commonly administered cancer drugs is the chemical Fluorouracil {5 FU). Note this warning on the manufacturer's brochure: "Precautions: Fluorouracil is a highly toxic drug with a narrow margin of safety. Therefore, patients should be carefully supervised since therapeutic response is unlikely to occur without some evidence of toxicity...Severe hematological toxicity, gastrointestinal hemorrhage and even death may result from the fluorouracil despite meticulous selection of patients and careful adjustment of dosage." As if that weren't bad enough, the officially accepted "experimental drugs," on which the government and the drug companies lavish huge sums of developmental funds, can be even worse. According to a 1981 Washington Post story, a major American drug company spent significant amounts of money and years of research on a weed from India they hoped would have a beneficial effect on certain forms of leukemia - even though it was known in advance that the weed caused severe liver damage in livestock. And sure enough, when the weed was synthesized into a chemical and given to cancer patients, there were reports that it was helping some people - and killing others. But there was nothing unusual in that. "We knew from the beginning that this caused toxicity in animals," the Post quoted a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official as saying. "Almost all investigational cancer drugs are highly toxic." As you read this story and wonder - as I did many, many times while I was researching it - if an herbal compound developed by one woman could possibly - even possibly - be safer and more effective than the best of what medical science is already bringing us, please keep this quote in mind from that same 1981 series of Washington Post articles: "Over The last decade, more than 150 experimental drugs have been given to tens of thousands of cancer patients under the sponsorship of the US Federal Government's National Cancer Institute. Many of these drugs have come from a list of highly toxic industrial chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides and dyes...While all anti-cancer drugs can cause side effects among some of those who take them, the experimental drugs - along with leading to hundreds of deaths - have elicited a nightmarish list of serious adverse reactions, including kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, respiratory distress, destruction of bone marrow so the body can no longer make blood, brain damage, paralysis, seizure, coma, and visual hallucinations. "So little is known about many of these chemicals that doctors have found these ironic results: In some cases the experimental drug actually stimulated tumor growth rather than stopped the cancer - and in other tests, doctors and researchers found that the experimental drug itself caused cancer." Rene Caisse wouldn't have been surprised to read that. Her own feelings about the use of these toxic drugs, after a lifetime spent fighting cancer, were blunt and nasty: "Chemotherapy should be a criminal offense," she told one reporter. Though the medical establishment has not yet recognized Rene Caisse's herbal treatment for cancer as legitimate, there is more than ample precedent for the approach she was taking. According to a 1987 NOVA documentary on "The Hidden Power of Plants " , aired on the Public Broadcasting System: "Indeed, the history of medicine has been largely the story of plants and the potent chemicals they produce. Around the world, traditional healers, using plant medications, provide health care to eighty percent of the human population - over four billion people." Since the 1950s doctors have been using an alkaloid called vincristine - which comes from an evergreen plant known as the periwinkle - in the treatment of childhood leukemia and other cancers. Digitalis, which comes from the leaves of the foxglove plant, is an important heart medication. According to the NOVA documentary, "Over 25 Percent of the drugs prescribed in the U.S. still contain plant materials as their principal active ingredients." Throughout history there are countless examples of people discovering the healing properties of nature before science could understand them - or even believe that they existed. South American Indians treated fevers, especially malarial fevers, with an herbal tea made from cinchona bark. Scientists eventually discovered that cinchona bark is nature's source of quinine. Science didn't discover that Vitamin C prevented scurvy. English sailors discovered that without even knowing it. All they knew was that they'd better take some citrus fruits - lemons, limes along with them on long ocean voyages. That's why the English came to be called "limeys." Science didn't discover Vitamin C until 1932. For centuries, American Indians treated various aches and pains with an herbal tea made from white willow bark. It must have seemed terribly primitive to the doctors who first heard of it. They were trusting their science; the Indians were trusting nature. But eventually science caught up. Today, synthesized and refined white willow bark is the basis for what we call aspirin. Always, in all cultures, there was what might be called "living proof - medicinal value of plants long before there was scientific proof - and acceptance. Living proof, of course, is not acceptable to the scientific community. Not even the testimony of ordinary individuals, sworn to oath, meets the rigorous standards of scientific proof. But no matter what happens in the scientific world, living proof will be what passes from person to person and prevents Essiac from dying out altogether in the modern world. Rene Caisse's files are filled with letters from people all over North America testifying to lifesaving experiences with Essiac. Almost 404 people showed up at the Canadian Cancer Commission hearings in 1939 prepared to be sworn to oath and state that Essiac saved their lives. Today, all over Canada and in parts of the U.S., there are thousands of people who may not know the first thing about scientific proof, but who know that Essiac benefited or even saved them or someone they love. For science to deny that there is a cause and effect relationship between Essiac and the relief of pain and the regression of cancerous tumors is almost Like saying, "well, we can see aIl those great huge billowing clouds of smoke, but we haven't been able to determine with certainty that there is a fire." While most Americans have never heard of Essiac, the controversy it inspires has raged in Canada since the 1920s, every few years in the public glare of the press, and frequently involving the highest medical, legal and political circles in Canada. But always that controversy centered on this one woman who lived, most of the time, in the tiny village of Bracebridge, Ontario, population 9,000 or so. Rene Caisse was an unlikely public figure. She was a skilled nurse who didn't crave attention or money. "I never had $100 I could call my own," she used to laugh with her friends. She didn't charge a fee for her services. She accepted only voluntary contributions in the form of fruits, vegetables or eggs, as often as not - from those who could afford to offer them, and she didn't turn away people who couldn't make any payment at all. One man, Ted Hale, was so grateful watching his wife recover from cancer using Essiac that he slipped a $50 bill under a book on a shelf when he came to pick up another bottle from Rene. The next time he arrived at her front door, he says, she grabbed him by his shirt collar, pulled him inside and gave him a piece of her mind. How dare he leave her that much money? She didn't like it one bit. He apologized and asked her if she would accept it as his way of donating for the next people who needed her Essiac and couldn't afford to leave anything at all. She finally relented on those grounds and kept the money, but Ted Hale still laughs at his own embarrassment when he tells the story ten years later. Rene Caisse lived her whole life in modest circumstances while rejecting offers of vast sums of money to reveal her formula. She refused to reveal her formula to people who wanted to help her; she refused to reveal her formula to powerful institutions that demanded it before they would consider legitimizing Essiac. What Rene Caisse wanted was to heal the ill and guarantee the legalization of Essiac for all, yet her intransigent refusal to budge from secrecy about the formula cost her - and us - dearly. She refused to reveal the formula to the Canadian government, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York - the world's largest private cancer research center - and the National Cancer Institute, just to name some of the institutions that wanted the formula at one time or another. She wouldn't give them the formula until they would admit that Essiac had merit as a treatment for cancer. They refused to admit any merit until she gave them the formula. There were legitimate arguments made on both sides. Rene was fearful that the medical establishment would either exploit Essiac, charging exorbitant prices to make a fortune and placing it beyond the means of the poor, or discredit it and bury it. The doctors and politicians argued that they couldn't very well accept the legitimacy of a cancer treatment if they didn't even know what was in it. The result was a tragic standoff. We have lost decades of precious research. With hindsight, it can be argued that Rene Caisse should have given the formula to anyone, anywhere, at any time, who wanted to have it for any reason, on the grounds that the more people who have it, the better chance that the truth will out. That certainly will be the position taken in this book. I am going to release to the public, for the first time, the formula and the procedure for preparing Essiac. I will explain in detail at the end of this book how I will do that, and how anyone who wants that information may have it. I believe that information should be in the hands of the public. People should have the right to make their own decisions about whether or not they will drink the Essiac tea. People can make it themselves, if they wish, just the way Rene did. There is no mystery about the preparation. It must be done carefully and accurately - as I will explain - but it finally comes down to: Put in so much of this herb, so much of that herb, brew it and drink the tea. The herbs themselves grow in many regions. Rene used to say that enough of the herbs grow in Ontario to supply the whole world. But in revealing the formula, I share one of Rene's deep fears that played an important role in her refusal to release the formula until after the governing bodies of medicine and law would admit that it had merit: Namely, that once the herbs are publicly identified, these inexpensive and widely available plants will be placed on the federal "controlled substances" roster - like some dangerous drug - suddenly become very difficult - and illegal - to acquire. But there's nothing I can do about that. As always, those decisions are up to the governments. But my decision is to tell the story of how I came into possession of the formula, place it before the public and let people make up their own minds about what they want to do with it. At least once the formula is in the public domain, the old argument that was used for so long against Rene - we can't do proper scientific studies until we know the formula - will no longer have any validity at all. Sloan-Kettering, for instance, was telling Rene Caisse at least as late as 1975 that they would perform more clinical studies on Essiac, if only they had the formula. Well, now they'll have it. And so will anyone who wants it. Rene Caisse was a sweet woman who gave her best and saw the worst. She was surrounded most of her life with the pain and suffering of others. She lived under siege much of the time, with a legion of supporters who saw her as a saint and powerful enemies who wanted her arrested for practicing medicine without a license. She became so fearful and paranoid about arrest that she sometimes had to turn away dying people who were pleading with her to help them. But more often, she found ways to help the people who came to her, even total strangers who had nothing to offer her. She said once about her situation: "I was always just one jump ahead of a policeman. We were right across the street from the town jail and the keeper used to joke that he was saving a cell for me."
The blessing of Essiac brought a curse for Rene Caisse: Her life was never
her own.
Introduction I 1 I 2 I 3 I 4I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 All of the events and characters depicted in this book are non-fictional
Further InformationThe Original Four-herb Formula for Essiac Tea by Lanny MessingerRead an
Interview with Dr Gary Glum This is a crazy world. What can be done? Amazingly, we have been mislead. We have been taught that we can control government by voting. The founder of the Rothschild dynasty, Mayer Amschel Bauer, told the secret of controlling the government of a nation over 200 years ago. He said, "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." Get the picture? Your freedom hinges first on the nation's banks and money system. Freedom is connected with Debt Elimination for each individual. Not only does this end personal debt, it places the people first in line as creditors to the National Debt ahead of the banks. They don't wish for you to know this. It has to do with recognizing WHO you really are in A New Beginning: A Practical Course in Miracles, an informational study. Disclaimer - The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (attributed to Voltaire), but certainly embodies what the 1st amendment of the constitution refers to as the freedom of speech Bill of RightsAmendment 1Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
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