Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, director of a UCLA research project on hydrazine sulfate, conservatively estimates that the drug could benefit about half a million cancer patients each year in the United States alone.9 His team has conducted many clinical studies of hydrazine over two decades. Dr. Chlebowski says that the drug's indirect mode of action against tumors is problematic to more cautious investigators. "We found that hydrazine sulfate was an anticachexia agent that indirectly induced antitumor responses without much toxicity. Its action is not directed at cancer cells yet it may profoundly affect them."10

Dr. Chlebowski and his colleagues at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, recently found evidence that hydrazine sulfate added to conventional chemotherapy improves the nutritional status and prolongs the life of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, especially deadly forms of the disease. In the January 1990 issue of the prestigious Journal of Clinical Oncology, he reports that earlier-stage patients have a median survival time of at least 328 days, compared to 209 days for the placebo group. There is no curative therapy for this type of lung cancer, so the results, if confirmed, seem promising.

The wasting syndrome seen in cancer patients is also a prime risk factor for AIDS patients with Kaposi's sarcoma. There is evidence that hydrazine sulfate's capacity to stop cachexia may save many AIDS patients. Currently, Dr. Chlebowski is planning a study to test hydrazine sulfate as an anticachexia agent in patients who are infected with HIV and have lost weight.

Even though hydrazine sulfate is now undergoing extensive Phase III trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, resistance to this inexpensive, nontoxic chemotherapy in orthodox medical circles persists. Dr. Vincent DeVita, former director of the NCI, told a Washington Post reporter in 1988 that he thought hydrazine was a "ho-hum idea." Dr. Gold, until recently, has been frozen out of the "war on cancer." Two articles on cachexia published in duly 1990 in the prestigious Cancer Research journal fail to reference any of Gold's path-breaking work, and one even denies there is any effective treatment for the wasting-away syndrome.

Dr. Gold, who does not treat patients, says that the cost of hydrazine, at most, should be nominal-comparable to the daily cost of insulin and other supplies for diabetics. "Until a pharmaceutical company sponsors the drug through the FDA, it will not be widely in use," he predicts, adding, "However, with the new studies, drug companies have suddenly begun to take notice of this most exemplary drug."

1. Lawrence Linderman, "Finding a Magic Bullet," Penthouse, July 1989, p. 110.
2. Quoted in Ralph W. Moss, The Cancer Industry (New York: Paragon House, 1989), pp. 192-193.
3. Robert G. Houston, Misinformation From OTA on Unconventional Cancer Treatments, invited review for the U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (Otho, IA: People Against Cancer, 1990), p. 27.
4. Moss, op. cit., p. 205.
5. Joseph Gold, "Hydrazine Sulfate: A Current Perspective," Nutrition and Cancer, vol. 9, nos. 2 and 3, 1987, pp. 64-65.
6. Joseph Gold, M.D., "Cancer Therapy With Hydrazine Sulfate," Cancer Control Journal, vol. 1, no. 4, November-December 1973, p. 16.
7. Linderman, op. cit., p. 112.
8. Jeff Kamen, "Finally, Attention for Cancer Wonder Drug," West Side Spirit, New York, 24 July 1990, pp. 9, 34.
9. Kamen, op. cit., p. 34.
10. Naomi Pfeiffer, "Studies Spur New Look at Low-Cost Anti-Cachexia Drug," Oncolog, Times, vol. 12, no. 6,June 1991, p. 14.