American Thought Leaders - Dr. Paul Marik: Key Strategies You Aren’t Told That Help Prevent Cancer

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

“The bottom line is that 30 to 40 percent of cancers are preventable. … And there are simple things that people can do to reduce your risk of getting cancer,” says Dr. Paul Marik, a founding member of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and former chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School.“Cancer is big business. It’s highly profitable. The average cost of chemotherapy for a patient is probably $100,000,” Dr. Marik says.He’s the author of “Cancer Care: The Role of Repurposed Drugs and Metabolic Interventions in Treating Cancer.” In this episode, he breaks down his key findings on preventing and treating cancer.

The bottom line is that 30 to 40% of cancers are preventable. And there are simple things that people can do to reduce your risk of getting cancer. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Paul Merrick, a founding member of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, FLCCC, and former chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Cancer is big business. It's highly profitable. The average cost of chemotherapy for a patient is probably $100,000. He's the author of Cancer Care, the Role of Repurposed Drugs and Metabolic Interventions in Treating Cancer. In this episode, he breaks down his key findings.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Dr. Palmerik, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you, Jan. Thanks for inviting me back again. So when we spoke last, some months ago, on a proper American Thought Leaders show, I'm not talking about the quick hit we did earlier about this new groundbreaking nature study, which I'll recommend our viewers watch if they haven't seen that yet. You were looking into cancer treatment, cancer prevention. You had discovered that in the scientific literature, well established, there's a whole body of literature that you, incredibly well-published medical professional in the industry for decades, were just simply unaware of. And we were talking about

how astonishing that was. And you have since turned that into a book, a kind of monograph. And what you found is, I'll use that word again, absolutely astonishing. So why don't you just tell me what you discovered? Yeah, so this was by accident. And I certainly didn't know this information three or four years ago. You know, obviously, you know, COVID opened up our eyes, and it started this quest about looking at repurposed drugs and alternative therapies. So the bottom line is that 30 to 40 percent of cancers are preventable. Just through simple lifestyle changes and through supplements you can reduce your risk of getting cancer, which is really important because about 10 million people

on the planet die of cancer every year. Approximately 600,000 Americans die of cancer every year. And cancer will become the most important cause of death. It's going to affect one in two men and one in three women. So it is a very common disease. And there are simple things that people can do to reduce your risk of getting cancer. And this is well published. You know, it's just been hidden in the literature. It's really important. And then similarly, they're very simple, effective measures that people who have cancer can take to improve the quality of their life and to increase the risk of their chances of going into a remission.

And these are simple lifestyle changes, dietary changes, and the use of many over-the-counter supplements. You know, I'm gonna take myself back some years. And I remember I watched this documentary about a Dr. Burdzinski from Texas. Actually, in Polish, he would say his name Burdzinski. But that's how I always thought. But it was a very interesting documentary because it chronicled a doctor who's been in practice for decades. He had found, according to the documentary,

something called an antineoplaston, a way to treat cancer. And he had a clinic that he developed, which was ostensibly successful. All sorts of people, industry, government, have been trying to shut him down for decades, but were unable to do so and he continued on. And he became this place where sort of lost cases which were untreatable. Someone might say, you could go and maybe you could try there. I've heard it helped a few people. I guess the message of the documentary also was that industry didn't want to validate his findings because he owned the patents. That was the premise and they didn't like that. So at the time I thought oh this seems very compelling and I just kind of left it at that. But now hearing everything that you're saying this whole picture takes on a whole new meaning to me. I mean, we talked about diabetes,

right? And there's basically treatments for type 2 diabetes that have very few side effects and are actually also work very well. But again, largely unknown by the broader medical community. In how many areas is this actually the case? You dug into cancer. So how many methods are there that actually could work that we've been told are some kind of snake oil or dangerous or problematic? So obviously cancer is big business. It's highly profitable.

The average cost of chemotherapy for a patient is probably $100,000. So, you know, big pharma makes a lot of money. The oncologists in this country make a lot of money. And the drugs we're talking about are cheap, off-patent drugs. So you can understand why the, you can understand the narrative. It's much like COVID. It goes against big pharma and it goes against traditional medicine, which is a tragedy because they're very effective therapies that can really improve the patient's outcome. And some of these can be used in conjunction with standard

chemotherapy. We're not saying that, you know, throw away standard therapy. These can be used as adjuncts and as supplements to standard chemotherapy if patients so choose. And I was stunned recently to discover that MD Anderson Hospital, which is probably one of the biggest cancer hospitals in the world, indeed has an integrative oncology program where they advise and they recommend and they coach patients in comprehensive lifestyle changes. And just these lifestyle changes, which include relaxation therapy, sleep, improved diet, improved relationships, exercise, can significantly reduce the risk

of patients dying of cancer. I mean, it's an astonishing finding. Well, and it seems to be actually applying cancer. I mean, it's an astonishing finding. Well, and there seems to be actually applying it, I guess, in isolated cases, but just somehow in the collective understanding of how the disease needs to be dealt with, it's just not really there. No. So, you know, you go to a traditional oncologist and that patient says, would ask, you know, what dietary advice would you give me? And the oncologist will say, well, diet has nothing to do with it. You can eat whatever you want to.

And we know that's just simply wrong. There's overwhelming scientific data that specific dietary interventions can have a profound effect on cancer, profound effect. And so this is a, you know, this is challenging the standard narrative. So Brzezinski, is this a real therapy or what do you think? Yeah, I think it's real. You know, it's been subject to scrutiny. And I think, you know, it's been subject to scrutiny. And I think, you know, we should be transparent and open. So from my understanding, it seems to be an effective treatment for cancer. I don't understand all the biochemistry, but it doesn't mean we can't study it.

It doesn't mean that it should be outlawed by the FDA. I think it should be investigated. There's a lot of cancer therapies have extreme side effects. I mean radiation, chemotherapy, right? There's serious quality of life issues with these therapies. On the other hand, these antineoplastons, vitamin D, they may not be a panacea, I don't know, but the point is they don't have, they're not associated with these types of dramatic reductions in quality of life. So, I mean, that should be part of the equation, right?

Absolutely. I mean, in many patients, the treatment of the disease is worse than the disease. And we know the extreme toxicity of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and you know these antineoplastons seem pretty benign and you know all of the repurposed drugs that we recommend are extremely safe and effective. What does the patient have to lose? You know the question is where you have an intervention which is cheap, safe, and possibly could completely change the trajectory of the patient's disease, what do you have to lose? A few times when we talked about COVID in the past, we talked about

vitamin D. Vitamin D seems to be this miracle vitamin. I don't know if that's, but it affects the immune system significantly in conjunction with some other supplements, I suppose. But it also seems to, from what you're saying, seems to have a positive impact on cancer, not just COVID. Yeah. yeah. Yes. So, vitamin D truly is an astonishing vitamin. It should be a hormone. As we know, it's very effective for COVID. It's effective for depression. It's effective for Alzheimer's disease. It's effective for diabetes. And it just so happens it's highly effective in both the prevention and treatment of cancer. There's overwhelming data that patients who are vitamin

D deficient have a much higher risk of developing cancer and as we know as as you go further from the equator and you get less ultraviolet B and you get less vitamin D, your risk of cancer goes up. Your risk of Alzheimer's goes up. And there's really good data. If you give patients vitamin D, you reduce their risk of getting cancer. And patients who have cancer, if you give them high dose vitamin D, it significantly improves their chances of going into a remission. And this is a simple over-the-counter medication. Presumably, some of these things could also be used in combination. You could do a diet change. You could do vitamin D. You could also do chemo at the same time that should help you right or is that

absolutely so what you say is true these things work much better in synergy when they're done together so for example one of the things we recommend is intermittent fasting or time restricted feeding it's been shown in the literature, in the oncology literature, if that you do time restricted feeding at the same time you're doing chemotherapy, you get a much better response. So there's absolutely no reason, there's absolutely no reason that if patients are undergoing standard, you know, chemotherapy, that it should not be combined with these supplemental or complementary techniques that can only enhance the patient's response to therapy. One of the big findings in your monograph is that you essentially believe cancer to be a metabolic disease. Now that is not,

I would say, the conventional wisdom, is it? Yeah. So what you say is true. It's, you know, this is based on the work of Dr. Seyfried. You know, he's done, I mean, this is his area of expertise. He's written, you know, hundreds of papers. He's written a book on cancer as a metabolic disease which basically challenges the conventional wisdom that cancer is due to a chromosomal mutation and so that has a profound implication because if if it's a chromosomal disease then the current chemotherapy does make it fits with that narrative but if cancer is a metabolic disease then the standard approach is not going to work and there's overwhelming evidence i mean there's overwhelming evidence in the literature that that it's not a matter that it's not a chromosomal disease. It's a metabolic disease. In fact, the person who discovered DNA, Watson and Crick,

Dr. Watson has basically said in an op-ed that he doesn't think cancer is a chromosomal disease, and we should look at the metabolic changes that happen in cancer. I guess the question is, couldn't it be both? Like couldn't there be genetic mutations? I mean, I think that we know that it's mutations that actually cause cancer effectively, right? But the question is, how does that happen? And couldn't both mechanisms be right? Yeah, so you're right.

There is a complex interplay between metabolism and genetics. We know there are some genetic predisposition. For example, we know that women with the BRCA gene have a much higher risk of developing cancer. But what's interesting is the risk of getting cancer nowadays is about 60 or 70 percent of getting breast cancer. 30 or 40 years ago it was 40 percent. So it does illustrate that there's an interplay between, you know, environmental and lifestyle changes and genetics. But most, the current thinking is maybe 5% of cancers are due to chromosomal or genetic defects. It appears that most cancers are not genetically determined.

There's been an increase, right, a significant increase in a variety of metabolic diseases, to my eye. I have not studied this, but I mean, and just in general, you know, I guess in America, there's this obesity epidemic, and I'm sure that actually has a significant impact on obviously on metabolism. How could it not, right, I suppose.

But what did you find are the kind of core kind of causes in your understanding? So there's a strong link between obesity, insulin resistance, and cancer. Probably underlies 30% or 40% of cancers are due to obesity and insulin resistance. There's a very strong association. And so there's an association between the intake of high glycemic index foods and sugar beverages and cancer because of its effect on insulin resistance. So there's overwhelming data and as the incidence of obesity is increasing so it seems in parallel the incidence of cancer is increasing

and then obviously there's the problem of environmental carcinogens just to lay on top of this problem over the past years, I've noticed an increasing perspective. I suspect it must also be in the literature, but certainly among, in the health-related discourse in media and so forth, that obesity is more a genetic disease

than a lifestyle disease. Yeah, I don't think that's true because people's genes haven't changed much over the last 30 or 40 years. But if you look at the incidence of obesity, particularly in the US, it's increased exponentially. So it is a lifestyle disease. Like know, like most things, there may be a genetic predisposition. But I think without question of doubt that obesity is a lifestyle problem because we eat processed foods and foods high in carbohydrates and glucose. And we snack all the time. You know, Western people tend to eat all the time rather than doing what our forefathers did, you know, eat one or two meals a day. So Western people eat all the time. They eat highly processed foods, high in carbohydrates

and glucose. In essence, we have become processed food addicts. Does it make sense to say that if you just focused on the obesity issue, you would deal with a whole bunch of these other issues, perhaps even cancer, based on what you said earlier? Yes I think fundamentally lifestyle change which would start off with diet and then exercise and then sleep if you if you attack those problems I think you could eliminate almost all the chronic diseases of Western society which would be cancer, cardiac disease, Alzheimer's disease. I think all these chronic diseases are related to bad lifestyle and lifestyle choices.

Hmm. So you don't think it has to do with, you know, increased radiation. That's one of the things you hear, right, often. Yeah, I think obviously environmental carcinogens are important, you know, and people or families that live near power lines are at an increased risk of certain kinds of cancer. The problem is that it's so pervasive that, you know, pesticides and toxins are so pervasive that it's very difficult for any individual to completely eliminate. There is good data, though, that people who eat organic food, as organic as can be, have a lower risk of cancer. So there is data showing that if you eat a diet of organic food,

your risk of cancer is less. So there are things that you can do, but it's pretty difficult to, you know, not to breathe the air that we're exposed to or drink the water. But there's no question that environmental carcinogens have played a role. Okay, so let's say, you know, in order of importance, you found a series of lifestyle decisions and perhaps supplements. So let's kind of go through that and maybe in order of importance based on your study of the literature, you know, because maybe there's some things that folks watching could implement right now that would help them. Yeah, so I can quote a randomized control trial, which is the gold standard that the ivory tower used.

So they did a simple intervention, three things to see what would happen to the risk of cancer. And so it was vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, plus an exercise program. And they showed the combination of all three reduced the risk of cancer by 60%. 60%. So those are very simple things that people can do. So it's a matter of exercising, taking vitamin D, and modifying your diet can significantly reduce your risk of getting cancer. I'm just going to repeat that for a second. You're saying a combination of vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids, and exercise reduced cancerous by 60% that's correct Wow yes so that doesn't get a lot of press because you can't make money in fact

it's counterproductive for the pharmaceutical industry and the medical complex if people don't get cancer. And so, you know, this was published in a peer-reviewed paper, a peer-reviewed journal. It's a really good study. It's supported by other studies. There are many studies that show that exercise reduces your risk of cancer. There's data that shows that simple relaxation techniques and techniques in terms of meditation, yoga, relaxation techniques improve your outcome if you get cancer. So there are some very simple lifestyle interventions that can reduce both your risk of getting cancer,

and if you have cancer, can improve the outcome. Well, I'm just gonna comment on this. Given how prevalent cancer is in our society, I mean, the risk of cancer, and you outlined this a little bit earlier, is high for every person. If you can reduce that by 60%, I mean, we should all be rushing off

and starting this regimen, never mind other things you're gonna tell us about in a moment. Yeah, so it doesn't get the attention that it should get. I mean, you know, particularly vitamin D. The data on vitamin D in preventing cancer, in preventing Alzheimer's disease, in preventing depression is overwhelming. And it's safe, you know, it's a cheap intervention that has minimal adverse events. And so from my perspective, there's no reason that everybody should not be taking vitamin D.

Let's talk a little more briefly about vitamin D. Can you overdose on vitamin D? So it is possible, you know, if you take mega doses of vitamin D, you can get very high levels, which cause high blood calcium levels, which can cause kidney stones. But you have to take exceedingly high levels. So, you know, what we recommend is 10,000 units a day, which seems to be a very safe dose. By all standards, it's a very high dose, but the data suggests that 10,000 units a day is safe and does not cause toxicity. And you feel comfortable sort of advising this on camera to a broad group of people based on your understanding of the

literature? Yeah. So I think between 5,000 and 10,000 units a day, depending on your particular scenario, makes a lot of sense. I mean, there's really good data for, so, you know, patients with cancer, patients with depression, we would recommend maybe 10,000 units, you know, as a prophylaxis for people, 5,000 units a day is a very safe dose. And again, I'll just mention, this also is a COVID prevention, even, I suppose, in a situation where people have been, let's say overly boosted and therefore more susceptible to being infected, this would still help. There's no problem to take vitamin D and protect yourself. I mean, vitamin D has enormous immunological effects.

It affects gene expression. There are hundreds of genes that are affected by vitamin D. And there's really excellent data that vitamin D reduces your risk of getting COVID. And if you get COVID, it reduces the severity of the disease. So your chances of being hospitalized or dying are much less. So what we should have done with the COVID pandemic, if it was a pandemic, was we should have been, what we should have done, you know, with the COVID pandemic, if it was a pandemic, was we should have been boosting people's vitamin D level, particularly the elderly who, you know, in old age homes or elderly homes, so they don't get much sunshine and are certainly

vitamin D deficient. You know, instead of, you know, vaccinating them, we would have done a much greater service to the population if we'd just given them vitamin D. Also what comes to mind, I've discussed this on a number of programs, is people with darker skin in northern climates don't synthesize as much. So they may have even lower levels of vitamin D and not realizing it.

So there's another very valuable use case. Yes. So, you know, elderly people don't make vitamin D well. Obese people don't make vitamin D. People of dark skin don't make vitamin D. So there's certain groups that are even, it's even more important to take vitamin D. Is there anything else vitamin D is good for? Well, there's nothing that it's bad for unless the only thing it can be bad for is if you have high blood calcium. So if you have hypercalcemia,

for whatever reason, you wouldn't wanna take vitamin D. But otherwise, it's very safe. You mentioned something about addiction to food. And I suspect that a lot of people, you know, I even just sort of, I'll mention this anecdotally. I actually, I was told recently a story about someone who was working in the food industry, broadly speaking, who quit at one point because she realized that her job was basically to make food more addictive. Yeah, so there's no question that processed food, there's a pervasive addiction to processed food. And basically, the sugar and fructose causes a high that then stimulates the appetite and it becomes self-serving because the more you eat the more you want to eat and then you

become your blood glucose goes up and you develop insulin resistance and so people are addicted there's animal data that shows that glucose is more addictive to mice than cocaine or heroin. Say that again? Yeah, animal data suggests that glucose. Like sugar. Like sugar. Yeah. Like sweetened beverages.

Yeah. Is more addictive to experimental animals than cocaine. Right. It causes such a high. And of course, we're not allowed to run those experiments on humans. Wow. So there's no question that a large segment of the western population are addicted to processed foods. And just by switching to real food and so you know if it looks like food it's food you know if it comes in a carton or has a wrapper and it has a package insert or a list of ingredients and preservatives and chemicals then it's not real food so just by changing your diet to real food can make an enormous difference. You know, it's very interesting because one of the things that I've done keto dieting for a long time,

and just the moment you start doing it, it actually becomes very normal. You just have to kind of overcome the initial kind of desire to eat the sugary things. But after a while, it's not an issue at all. But I've often told people, I think the reason it actually works is because you just can't eat most processed things if you're eating keto. It's just not an option for you.

Yeah, so once you become adapted to eating real food, eating processed food becomes very difficult. It just becomes, you know, unappetizing and it doesn't have the same appeal. And so that's why it's not a difficult thing to do. You know, it should be a lifestyle change, not a diet. And so once you start eating real food, then the processed food becomes unappetizing. It's still nice to have that burger once in a while. Yeah, it's not getting cheap now and then. Let me ask you about this. So I myself do a lot of meditation. It's been incredibly helpful to me. At the same time, I can disclose I don't get a ton of sleep.

And so what is the cost of that? Or what is the right amount of sleep in this broad? Of course, it's going to be different for different people, but you mentioned that as something that's important. So sleep is really important for brain restoration. And so there's something called the glymphatic system, which is the way the brain detoxifies itself during sleep. It's like the lymphatic system of the brain, but it's only active during sleep. And so we know that people that are sleep deprived, it reduces your life expectancy, it increases your risk of cancer. So it's really important that people, you know, people have the

idea that they can get away with five or six hours of sleep and it doesn't affect their health. That is not true. The data is clear that people who, you know, an adult needs at least seven hours of sleep. And interference with sleep, you know, increases your risk of many diseases, including, you know, dementia. And there's data that people who have cancer, who actually have sleep dysfunction, have a much higher risk of demising. Absolutely fascinating. What about, you know, you mentioned some repurposed drugs and so forth for use with cancer that are not generally known. Yeah, so there is a group called Redo,

which looks at repurposed drugs for the use of cancer. So they list about 250 different drugs, believe it or not, that have shown in experimental models to have activity against cancer cells. In the book or monograph that I wrote, I reduced them down to the 30 that I thought was the most effective. And so there are really good studies showing that both in a test tube, in an animal model, as well as in patients, that it has anti-cancer activity. And there's a list of these. So vitamin D is number one, but then we have melatonin, we have green tea. The anti-diabetic medication metformin actually is a very powerful anti-cancer drug. And then we have the ant-parasitic drugs. There's Mabendazole,

Ivermectin, that have activity against cancer cells. I was going to say the horse dewormer. So believe it or not, the horse dewormer is very effective against certain cancers. And so we know of cases of patients who had solid tumors who were given the horse dewormer together with some other drugs. So, you know, as I said, it's not one magical drug. It's a combination approach. But we're given a regimen which included the horse

deworm and the cancer disappeared. Absolutely fascinating. You know, it also struck me, you know, there's no reason why you couldn't have your vitamin D, have your matcha. I love, I probably drink matcha every day, you know, concentrated green tea in the powder and melatonin or other things are also very kind of innocuous. Yes. So, you know, the bottom line is, you know, there are some patients who would choose this approach rather than undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy, particularly for cancers that are not responsive to chemotherapy. But also, you know, you can use them as adjuncts to chemotherapy so that in the end you need less chemotherapy. And the data is clear that the combination is more effective than chemotherapy

alone. So, you know, this is, I think, the point. You kind of have to approach any treatment these days skeptically, any treatment regimen. You really have to, I'm going to say the terrible term, do your own research. This became something that you're not allowed to say over the last few years. Absolutely. I think the bottom line is patients must be empowered. They need to be empowered by the truth, and they should do their own research. I think the days are gone where you trust, sorry, I'm sorry to say this, you trust implicitly what the physician says, particularly the oncologist in this country. So in some European

countries, the oncologists or integrative oncologists, they follow, particularly in Europe, they'll use a combination of standard therapy plus unconventional, what would be considered unconventional, but it happens in the same hospital. In this country, almost all oncologists will just follow chemotherapy. So I think that patients. But with the exception of this one, which probably in many cases would, but has this whole integrative.

Yeah, so it is interesting. So they do, they focus on lifestyle interventions as part of it. They don't look at repurposed drugs or other dietary manipulations. So there is, I was surprised that they actually do have such a program, which is really, which is fantastic. But it should be much, it should be the standard of care that patients should follow in, you know, comprehensive lifestyle changes, as well as, you know, I would say, you know, repurposed drugs. How many papers did you look at for this monograph? Yeah, so I looked at over 1400 different peer reviewed papers. So I think I have a pretty good understanding

of the literature. And this data is out there, this data is published. I mean, there's really good data, for example, showing that controlling your diet, if you have colorectal cancer and have surgery, and you control your diet so that you control your glucose, your risk of getting a metastasis and dying of a metastasis is much less. And this is in the oncology literature. So the data is out

there. That's why patients have to do their own research. And you know, which is what I try to do in my book is to really compile all the data out there in a place that patients can read and then decide, you know, what they think is, would be fitting with their lifestyle. and our viewers can look back to some of our previous interviews. I mean, you started out as running an emergency room, a big emergency room. And of course, you also developed this vitamin C sepsis protocol, which has now been vindicated. We've talked about that before. I think you've published over 500 papers, but not really focused on cancer. Why should people trust this? People would say, stay in your lane, Dr. Merrick. Yes, I have been asked a question, and that is a good question.

So firstly, it was ICU, not emergency medicine, just although it's a small point. So the reason is is that I I have no stake in the game that I'm I'm not going to I have no conflict of interest I can objectively look at the literature and so that's what I've done in most of my career is objectively looked at the literature and come up with treatment plans so I I have no conflicts here. I can objectively look at the scientific data and I can simulate the data and I can compile the data. And so that's what I did. You know I'm not claiming to be an

oncologist. I'm just presenting the data that's out there. All I'm doing is I compile the data that's out there. All I'm doing is I compile the data that's out there. And because I have no conflict of interest, I have no skin in the game, I can be honest and objective and transparent. And so if people don't think it's true, well, let them decide for themselves. But, you know, obviously I've looked the literature, and I'm presenting it as honestly and as scientifically as I can. Well, and the reason I mentioned the number of papers you have published, and of course, sepsis is this huge problem in, frankly, any hospital. It's a significant cause of death in any hospital. You've developed protocols that were better and cheap and can

be applied almost anywhere in the world, in places where they don't have terribly great hospital facilities. I guess what I'm trying to say is you've done a lot of thinking about how to treat people and help make them better, including during COVID. In fact, that is actually what cost you your career as in running the ICU because you refuse to use these protocols, which we now know are terrible, right? And you applied, you tried to do something better, which indeed it worked. Yeah, so I think COVID basically opened my eyes, to be honest, you know, I followed the narrative previously, and then I realized that there was another story. There was another side to the story.

And I think the diabetes and the cancer treatment is a good illustration that there is another side. The data is out there. It just needs to be brought to the surface. Well, great. So where can people find this cancer monograph of yours? Yeah, so two places. They can go to the FLCCC website, so that's FLCCC.net,

and they can download it for free, or you can buy the book, the monograph, on Amazon.com. Well, wonderful. Well, any final thoughts as we finish? Yeah, I think that people need to be empowered to improve their own health. That I think cancer is largely a preventable disease and that people should do what they can so they don't get cancer.

It's as simple as that. Well, Dr. Paul Merrick, it's so good to have you on again. Thank you, Jan. It's always a pleasure. Thank you all for joining Dr. Paul Merrick and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.