Another victim of conventional cancer treatments: Beastie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch dead at 47

Friday, May 11, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: Beastie Boys, cancer, treatments

(NaturalNews) After undergoing nearly three years of conventional treatments for a rare form of cancer, Adam Yauch, co-founder of the hardcore punk-turned-hip hop music group Beastie Boys has died. The 47-year-old is the latest high-profile individual to have suffered the fate of conventional cancer treatments, which more likely than not were the ultimate cause of his demise.

In July 2009, Yauch reportedly announced in a video to his fans that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the parotid gland, which is a salivary gland located in the throat between the ears and mouth. Shortly thereafter, he underwent surgery to remove the tumor, and also began undergoing radiation treatments as part of a protocol whose five-year survival rate is 91 percent, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS).

At first, it had seemed as though Yauch was "rapidly recovering," to quote his own words, and by March 2010, he reportedly told his fans and the public that his energy was returning, and that things were looking bright. But like most who are treated conventionally, Yauch's situation took a turn for the worse when his highly-treatable cancer was found to have spread and caused other complications following surgery and radiation.

Though initially thought to just be an isolated tumor in his parotid gland, Yauch's cancer had apparently also spread to nearby lymph nodes, which were presumably removed in surgery alongside the tumor in accordance with conventional treatment guidelines for this type of cancer. This fact is key, as lymph nodes play an important role in filtering out cancer cells from the body and preventing them from metastasizing.

So based on the information that has thus far been released, Yauch reportedly had a tumor and some lymph nodes removed from his body following his initial diagnosis, which was followed by aggressive radiation treatments. At first, this process appeared to have successfully eradicated the cancer, only to have it recur later.

Why conventional treatments, lymph node removal appear to have killed Adam Yauch

Though it cannot be officially confirmed, it appears as though Yauch's cancer treatments, and particularly the removal of his lymph nodes, were at least partially responsible for leading to his ultimate death. And the evidence for this lies in the nature of parotid cancer, the known damage caused by surgery and radiation treatments, and the body's own immune system.

According to Dr. Spiro Manolidis, a head and neck cancer specialist at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York, parotid cancer tends to recur in most patients after several years. In other words, while early treatments appear successful at first, the cancer often ends up coming back with a vengeance several years later.

This is exactly what happened to Yauch, except that when his cancer returned, the 47-year-old had already gone through a barrage of cancer-causing radiation treatments, and had already had his cancer-filtering lymph nodes removed. Yauch's immune system, in other words, had been annihilated as a result of his treatments, which left him defenseless against the recurring cancer.

So in the end, Yauch's body appears to have been unable to fight the recurrence of parotid cancer that inevitably returned because of the treatments he had previously undergone. And even after later attempting an alternative regimen in India to boost his health, it was too late -- surgery and radiation had taken their toll on Yauch's body, and he simply was unable to recover from the damage that had been inflicted on him in the name of science-based medicine.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.rollingstone.com

http://www.billboard.com

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1684606/adam-yauch-cancer.jhtml