The Edward Fujimoto email is circulating again. This rumor lists an article about Dr. Edward Fujimoto saying that he appeared on a TV station in Huntsville, Alabama. The article is only available in Japanese, but the ‘doctor’ is on an American TV show. So have the article translated if it’s legit.

Dr. Edward Fujimoto is real and was the Manager of the Wellness and Lifestyle Medicine Department at Castle Medical Center in Hawaii. The fake email is the result of an interview he did on KHON-TV channel 2 in Hawaii on January 23, 2002.

Edward Fujimoto

Director of Medical Affairs at Green Panel Corporation Austin, Texas -Present Position

Past Employment

1. Director of Research and Lifestyle Medicine at New Hope Medical Center
2. Professor at Loma Linda University School of Public Health
3. Adjunct Professor at Fukushima Prefectural School of Public Health
4. Manager of Wellness and Lifestyle Medicine Center at Castle Medical Center
5. Preventionist and Director of Healthy Vacations at Guam SDA Clinic
6. Adjunct Professor at Saniku College
7. Director of Health Promotion Center at Tokyo Adventist Hospital
8. Supervisory Mechanical Engineer at U.S. Naval Ships System Command, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California
9. Nuclear Submarine Project Design Engineer at U.S. Naval Ships System Command, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California.

Every so often a new version of this email arrives in your inbox. It’s always circulated by a well meaning person aiming to help you prevent cancer. It looks so genuine because it uses world famous medical centers like Johns Hopkins and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. With a little investigation, you’d find out that neither one of these medical centers induce the email.

The email has become a immense problem, that the National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, and the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have placed words of warning on their web sites. Emails offering uncomplicated remedies for circumventing and curing cancer are the latest web-influenced movement. To achieve integrity, the anonymous authors misleadingly attribute their work to esteemed research institutions like Johns Hopkins. This is the case with the so-called“Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins.” As a matter of fact,Johns Hopkins wrote a disclaimer and showed evidence why the email is a myth. Here’s a copy of the latest version of that email:

AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY (‘TRY’),
BEING THE KEY WORD) TO ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING
TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE WAY…

Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins:

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show
up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When
doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their
bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the
cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person’s
lifetime.

3 When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer cells will be
destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional
deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and
lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and
including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also
destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastrointestinal
tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs
etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages
healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor
size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in
more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation
the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can
succumb to various kinds of infections and complications..

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become
resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to
spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not
feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply..

*CANCER CELLS FEED ON:

a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important
food supply to the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal,
Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. ALL DIET CARBONATED
DRINKS CONTAIN ASPARTAME AND ARE POISONOUS. A better natural substitute
would be Manuka honey or molasses, but only in very small amounts. Table
salt has a chemical added to make it white in color. Better alternative is
Bragg’s aminos or sea salt.

b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the
gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and
substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells are being starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic
and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork.
Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites,
which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts
and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About
20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide
live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels
within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain
live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice
(most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3
times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40
degrees C).

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is
a better alternative and has cancer fighting properties. Water – best to
drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in
tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12.. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive
enzymes. Undigested meat, especially pork, remaining in the intestines
becomes putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or
eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer
cells and allows the body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac,
anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the bodies own
killer cells to destroy cancer cells.. Other supplements like vitamin E are
known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body’s normal method
of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and
positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger,
un-forgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic
environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and
enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising
daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular
level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.

1. No plastic containers in micro.

2. No water bottles in freezer.

3. No plastic wrap in microwave.

Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This
information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well.
Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly
poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don’t freeze your plastic bottles with
water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic. Recently, Dr.
Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Cast le Hospital, was on a TV
program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad
they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the
microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that
contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics
releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body.
Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic
containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the
dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should
be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn’t bad
but you don’t know what is in the paper. It’s just safer to use tempered
glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast
food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin
problem is one of the reasons.

Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous
when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked,
the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic
wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center website makes this statement:

STATEMENT: EMAIL HOAX REGARDING CANCER

Information falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins called, “CANCER UPDATE FROM JOHN HOPKINS” describes properties of cancer cells and suggests ways of preventing cancer. Johns Hopkins did not publish the information, which often is an email attachment, nor do we endorse its contents. The email also contains an incorrect spelling of our institution as “John” Hopkins; whereas, the correct spelling is “Johns” Hopkins. For more information about cancer, please read the information on our web site or visit the National Cancer Institute’s web site at www.cancer.gov. Please help combat the spread of this hoax by letting others know of this statement.

The individual(s) who created this email have kept it current by correcting the misspelling “John Hopkins” as you can note in the copy of the email. This would indicate the person is intentionally passing on erroneous information in the hopes the email will continue to be forwarded.

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center experts goes through each statement in the email hoax and provide real responses. A sample of the Email hoax contentions #1 and 2: Everyone Has Cancer Cells

Cancer is a genetic disease resultant from a selection of mutations and alterations either inherited from our parents or, more commonly, acquired over time due to environmental contact and behaviors, such as smoking and poor diet. These modification turn off important cell growth regulators allowing cells to repeatedly divide unchecked, explains Luis Diaz, a clinician-scientist in Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics. This type of cell is called a malignant or cancer cell. Among the trillions of cells in the human body, unavoidably everyone has some abnormal or atypical cells that acquire some of the characteristics of cancer cells, most resolve themselves and never result in cancer, says Diaz.

There is no single or standard test for cancer. There are ways to screen for certain cancers with tests such as colonoscopy for colon cancer, mammography for breast cancer, PSA for prostate cancer, and the Pap smear for cervical cancer, and these tests can detect cancers in a very early and curable stage. For many cancers, there presently are no screening tests, and they are diagnosed when they begin to cause symptoms.

Diaz and other Kimmel Cancer Center researchers are working on new tests that detect abnormal DNA discard by cancer cells into blood and body fluids and have the capability to find cancers before they cause any symptoms. Advances like this could lead to a broad-based screening test for cancer.

Tests like these also are used to identify cancer recurrences and malignant cells left behind following surgery, and can find cancers that are not detectable under the microscope or in x-rays.

Other investigators are studying cancer stem cells. They are stealth cells that make up just a tiny fraction of a tumor. While small in number, researchers consider they may be the cells that drive certain cancers and lead to cancer recurrence. Therapies that aim at these cells are now being tested in clinical trials.

A team of our breast cancer researchers developed a technique that could make it possible to detect breast cancer from the DNA contained in a single drop of blood.

But, while evasive cancer cells are a challenge and the focus of ongoing research, it does not mean, as the email contends, that all patients, even those treated successfully for cancer, have cancers-in-waiting—undetectable but still there. People are treated and completely cured of cancer every day.

Read the rest of Johns Hopkins responses by clicking here.

The updated version of the email has now combined misinformation on another hoax email that has been circulating since 2004 regarding plastic containers, bottles, wrap claiming that heat releases dioxins which cause cancer also was not published by Johns Hopkins.  The creator of the email has been clever enough to keep the email updated and rewritten to keep pace with those that expose the myth.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Healthreleased January 15, 2008, Email Hoax Regarding Freezing Water Bottles and Microwave Cooking. The site includes the disclaimer:These messages, frequently titled “Johns Hopkins Cancer News” or “Johns Hopkins Cancer Update,” are falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins and we do not endorse their content.  The site contains corrected information such, “Freezing water does not cause the release of chemicals from plastic bottles.”

The subsequent version tells the story of a seventh-grade student who decided to do some experiments with microwave radiation on food wrapped in plastic. She is said to have enlisted the help of the National Center for “Toxicological” Research in Arkansas.  The student allegedly found that not only is there carcinogens migrating from the plastic into food during microwaving, but other substances as well.  Again using a verifiable institution, The National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), FDA’s internationally recognized research center, gives creditably to the email. Who wouldn’t trust a fore thinking seventh grader?

Another report declares that singer Sheryl Crow, who is suffering from breast cancer, got her cancer from drinking from plastic water bottles left in the sun. Supposedly the plastic bottle got too hot and, as a result, was contaminated with dioxins.

The next time you get an unsolicited e-mail containing some kind of health or safety scare, first check several of these debunking websites before you pass it on to everyone on your email list. Go to the company, facility and/or medical center web site quoted in the email to see if they published a disclaimer. You are responsible for your medical care and that includes the information you accept.

See links for more information.