New book urges use of antidepressants to treat and prevent cancer

Killing Cancer by Dr. Julian Lieb reviews medical research showing that antidepressants have potent anticancer properties.

BURLINGTON, Vt.
More than 80 clinical and laboratory studies illuminate the anticancer properties of antidepressants. Antidepressants kill cancer cells, inhibit their proliferation, protect nonmalignant cells from damage by ionizing radiation and chemotherapy toxicity, convert multidrug resistant cells to sensitive, and target the mitochondria of cancer cells while sparing those of healthy ones. Depression significantly increases the risk of cancer, and increases and accelerates its mortality. Antidepressants are capable of arresting cancer even in advanced stages, and occasionally eradicating it. Published reports to date reveal that antidepressants are potentially effective for such treatment resistant malignancies as cancer of the lungs, kidneys, and liver, malignant gliomas of the brain, and inflammatory breast cancer. Lieb points out that the use of relatively inexpensive antidepressants could make cancer treatment available to low-income and disadvantaged segments of the population. By slashing the cost of cancer care, antidepressants could energize health reform and economic recovery.

“Great advances seldom emanate from ivory tower medical schools or government health agencies,” Lieb says. “They are often made by outsiders that draw together observations whose relationship to each other had never been suspected.”

In making the case for antidepressants, Lieb discusses prostaglandins, molecules that regulate the physiology of every cell in the body. When produced above a critical threshold, prostaglandins can cause many disorders including depression and cancer. By inhibiting the production of prostaglandins, antidepressants can defeat cancer. Cancer is not a hundred different diseases, as touted, but one disease with innumerable variations.

Killing Cancer is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels.

About the Author
Dr. Julian Lieb is a former Yale School of Medicine psychiatry professor and director of the Dana Psychiatric Clinic at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The author or co-author of 48 published articles and 11 books, Lieb is a recognized expert on the immunostimulating and antimicrobial properties of lithium and antidepressants, and the anticancer properties of antidepressants. He has worked closely with pioneers in prostaglandin research, and has been invited to address international cancer conferences in Greece, Germany and India.

Unfortunately, in almost 40 minutes of interview, lung cancer was not mentioned once. Much of the interview focused on breast cancer. Here’s the text of a comment I sent to FreshAir Host Terry Gross and NPR about the program:

Dear Ms. Gross -

Thank you for today’s informative interview on cancer with Dr. Mukherjee. My only disappointment was the overemphasis on breast cancer, which already gets most of the attention and a huge share of the research funding, not to mention all the pink we see on NFL players during October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

November is National LUNG CANCER Awareness Month and your program would have been a great opportunity to mention this fact. Lung Cancer accounts for more cancer deaths than breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer combined. I doubt that any football teams or very many celebrities will don the pearl-color ribbon to raise lung cancer awareness to the same extent they wear the pink ribbon.

I am a nonsmoker (from a family of nonsmokers) currently battling Stage IV lung cancer. My MD didn’t detect my cancer until a year of painful symptoms had elapsed. Lung cancer simply wasn’t on her “radar.” I was a healthy nonsmoker with back and shoulder pain. She and I had no reason to suspect lung cancer until it was too late. Chemotherapy has slowed the progress of my disease, but its effectiveness is diminishing.

Unfortunately, lung cancer is seen as a smoker’s disease, although more and more nonsmokers, especially women, are diagnosed with this cancer. It is a sigmatized and neglected form of cancer in terms of attention and research funding because we tend to blame the victims.

Even when discussing difficult cancers, lung cancer was not mentioned on today’s Fresh Air program. I found that sad. Someone MUST begin to call attention to this disease with the same fervor we show for other cancers.”