Survive Cancer was founded by Dr Carmen Wheatley (D Phil. Oxon) in 1999 as a result of knowledge gained in the process of helping a number of cancer patients, including her old Oxford tutor and friend, Michael Gearin-Tosh, who, in 1994 was told he would be dead within a year of Multiple Myeloma, (a blood cancer), without treatment.

Conventional medicine offered Michael no long term hope and he rejected it, but Carmen, a keen advocate of nutritional medicine, determined to investigate other treatments that might help him. Living Proof, Michael’s book about his treatment, has inspired many cancer patients. (Simon and Schuster 2002.) Sadly Michael died of sepsis following a tooth extraction in the summer of 2005, having largely abandoned much of his integrative treatment protocols, but he had survived his cancer for 11 years. Professor Robert Kyle of the Mayo Clinic, the world expert in statistically extremely rare survivals in Myeloma, confirmed that Michael’s survival was remarkable indeed. Read what Michael did here.

Dr Wheatley is currently fully committed to research of the clinical uses of cobalamin/B12, in particular for sepsis, and cancer, with the aim of setting up various clinical trials, of high dose methylcobalamin for sepsis, and for MGUS, for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and for low grade Non Hodgkin Lymphoma.

The first trial aims to test Dr Wheatley’s published hypothesis, (Medical Hypotheses, volume 67, issue 1, on pages 124 – 142, 2006, or online at www.sciencedirect.com) that high doses of Vitamin B12 may be used as a safe treatment to dramatically reduce the up to 75% mortality from septic shock in the intensive care unit. This treatment may also apply to traumatic shock, such as results from car accidents, severe burns or radiation exposure, which causes a similar mortality. Septic shock is a dangerous, life-threatening condition that can affect anyone, not just cancer patients. It is caused by bacterial infections that cannot be controlled by antibiotics alone, or even the best supportive medical care. AIDS-related infections, Meningitis, Pneumonia, and hospital super-bug MRSA, for instance, can all induce septic shock. Post-operative and transplant patients, cancer sufferers, the old and the very young are particularly vulnerable.

The evidence for the efficacy of intravenous B12 /cobalamin as a potential treatment for shock, both traumatic and septic, already exists in animal studies dating back almost 50 years, the most recent and positive studies dating to 1994  by the University of Louisiana, and 2006 by the William Harvey Institute Biochemical Pharmacology lab collaborators of Dr Carmen Wheatley. Cf. Biphasic Modulation of NOS Expression, Protein and Nitrite Products by Hydroxocobalamin Underlies Its Protective Effect in Endotoxemic Shock: Downstream Regulation of COX-2, IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6, and HMGB1 Expression

It is quite extraordinary that this treatment has not been tested in patients, even though it has a 70 year safety record of use in the ICU as the optimal cyanide poison antidote, and the FDA has given it Orphan Drug status, for use in terrorist CN gas release scenarios.

Since publication, Dr Wheatley’s hypothesis has attracted international interest from scientists in the field of inflammation. Professors from Harvard, London and Milan have offered to collaborate. Results of preliminary lab studies at the William Harvey Institute, London, being conducted by Professor Mauro Perretti and his colleague Dr Fulvio D`Acquisto, are very positive and were published in 2013 [Results of preliminary lab studies], and more pre-clinical studies are now being completed at the University of Potenza in Italy, with a WHI collaborator lab.

Dr Wheatley has published  3 further hypotheses progressing her theory of B12 in the treatment of septic shock, which were published in 2007 and 2012. She hopes that lab work to test the latest hypothesis may be done in the very near future.

Rigorous patient trials are essential if we are to test new approaches to disease. Now we have a chance to do just this, with a vitamin that has been proved to have an excellent safety record in high doses, to treat a life-threatening condition which conventional medicine has so far failed to cure. Sepsis has been described as “the graveyard of clinical trials”, but this could change because cobalamin is a central regulator of the immune response and inflammation, which is exactly what is needed in sepsis.

We have the attention of internationally renowned scientists and doctors, eager to test high dose parenteral cobalamin. If it works, it will be a life-saver for millions.

Not least for Covid 19: See article in Health Freedom News: PARENTERAL HIGH DOSE COBALAMIN FOR COVID/ARDS

Our aims for the future include:

• Educational video/DVD

• Patient helpline

• Conferences, lectures and seminars

• Chair of Orthomolecular Medicine at a leading university

Dr Carmen Wheatley is involved in ongoing research into the clinical uses of cobalamin, and gives her services free of charge. The charity’s overheads are minimal and covered by an anonymous separate gift. Thus, any money raised, goes into the charity’s research and clinical trials fund.