(Vicki Batts) Conventional cancer treatments like chemo and radiation therapy are known for causing an array of undesirable health effects. Even so, the cancer industry continues to parade their flagship products as the end-all be-all of cancer treatment. But many people believe that medicine shouldn’t hurt. Perhaps that’s why scientists continue to look for other, less damaging options. Research continues to point to an array of herbs and plants as a means of natural cancer treatment, but the latest science has identified a surprising source of cancer-killing compounds: Human breast milk.
Mother’s milk is known for containing a bevy of antibodies and other beneficial compounds for newborn babies, to protect them from all the harmful things in the world while their immune system matures. So in a way, as strange as it sounds, the notion that breast milk may hold the key to fighting cancer naturally, really isn’t that surprising at all.
Breast milk as a cancer-killer
Professor Catharina Svanborg has been paving the road to capitalizing on breast milk’s cancer-fighting abilities out of her lab at Lund University in Sweden. Specifically, the professor has been working on a way to bind a breast milk protein known as alpha-lactalbumin to oleic acid, a fatty acid found in olive oil, nuts and seeds.
The cancer-killing combination she’s dubbed HAMLET (an acronym for human alpha-lactalbumin made lethal to tumor cells) has shown great success in laboratory applications, shrinking brain, bladder and colon tumors with ease. Tests involving animal and human cancer cell lines have shown that HAMLET is effective against at least 40 types of cancer.
“Looking down the microscope at the dying tumor cells, we were quite excited, especially when the experiment was repeated and showed the same effect twice. We had used non-cancerous cells for a long time in similar experiments and they had not died,” Svanborg told The Telegraph, speaking about the amazing way breast milk kills cancer.
But the funny thing is that Svanborg discovered all of this two decades ago.
Overcoming skepticism and doubt
Svanborg reportedly went onto patent her confirmed discovery in 1995. She published her research, hoping to take the cancer industry by storm with her amazing find. But instead of being met with praise and applause, she was simply met with disbelief.
“There was a certain degree of skepticism. It is about being let into the cancer community more than anything else,” the professor contended. As a university professor and immunologist, Svanborg wasn’t considered part of the cancer or pharmaceutical industries — and she struggled to have her work taken seriously. As a specialist in infectious diseases, and a threat to the profit-driven cancer industry, her research on breast milk and cancer fell on deaf ears.
But Svanborg was determined and would not be deterred. “One has to be stubborn when it is a journey into unchartered territory,” she said. For the last 20 years, Svanborg has continued her research and continues to turn her skeptics into believers, one by one.
“It is an absolutely thrilling project. If you hang in there, it opens up new ways of thinking about protein structure, cell biology and the nature of cancer. People are coming around to the fact that this is very well supported by in-depth studies,” Svanborg contended. The team recently developed a way to mass produce HAMLET, which means it could soon become a widely used cancer treatment. Her game-changing discovery promises to kill cancer cells without damaging health cells — a feat that eludes conventional treatments like chemo.
Though HAMLET still has a ways to go before becoming an approved form of treatment that’s available to the masses, Svanborg remains hopeful.
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