In 1977, my late colleague David Horrobin, M.D D. Phil, showed that prostaglandins regulate nucleic acids (D.N.A and R.N.A). Subsequently, researchers showed that prostaglandins regulate the synthesis, inhibition, and expression of genes, and the growth and regulation of cells, when cancer is the accelerated replication of abnormal cells.

Almost twenty years, cancer belonged to prostaglandins, and not to genes or any other entity In 1973, Horrobin was among the first to show that lithium and antidepressants oppose prostaglandins.  A paradigm shift for cancer prevention and treatment was launched, but the guardians of paradigm failures rarely concede to newcomers, regardless of the damage to society.  

In the late nineteen eighties, clinical observation led me to believe that antidepressants do have anticancer properties. In 1990, a woman with inflammatory, invasive breast cancer was referred to me following two surgeries and with a grim prognosis. I treated her with various antidepressants, and when relocating in 2003, she was in apparent good health, and also free of the arthritis that had plagued her for years.

More than sixty studies show that antidepressants kill cancer cells, inhibit their proliferation, reverse multidrug resistance, protect nonmalignant cells from damage by ionizing radiation and chemotherapy,  and target the mitochondria of cancer cells while sparing those of health ones. Antidepressants combat nausea, vomiting, pain, insomnia, depression, fear of death and fatigue. They are capable of arresting cancer in advanced stages, even reversing it, and effective in such treatment resistant cancers as gliomas, cancer of the lung, liver, kidney, inflammatory breast cancer, multiple myelomas, resistant lymphomas, and probably others.   

This innovation alone would make a huge contribution to health reform, drastically reducing the burden of cancer, while radically improving the quality of care. Given the power and wealth of the cancer cartel, this will not happen without grass roots and political activism.  It has been said that Americans want health reform, but don’t want to pay for it. Here is an opportunity that requires activism and not money, with the goal of effective and highly inexpensive cancer care for everyone that needs it.