MOHS

Thank God for Google!

No There is no relation. Mohs surgery is named after the doctor who came up with the procedure, Frederic Moh. The procedure is done for skin cancers, and is kind of like following a vein of ore. In this case though areas of skin are removed and examined in each step to map out where to continue to remove tissue.

Personally I think there are some severe limitations with this surgery. For one, cutting through potentially cancerous tissues increases the risk of metastases. Conventional surgery would take the suspected caner by cutting a larger border around the suspect spot. Safer, but more destructive so there is a trade off. The second problem is that as with all surgeries for cancer the surgery does not address the cause of the cancer, which is almost always viral infections. In the case of skin cancer, skin cancers have been linked to HPV viruses. If the virus remains it can cause a recurrence of the cancer just like it caused the original cancer. This is one of the reasons cancer tends to come back within a few years after chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgery. These generally do not address cancer microbes that have been linked to most cancers including the so-called "hereditary" cancers. The only cancer that has ever been shown to even have the remote possibility of being hereditary is infantile retinoblastoma. The oncogenes of other cancers that have been claimed to be hereditary, such as breast cancer, have all been found to be viral in origin.

This is also why the only chemotherapy drugs that have ever been shown to have any reasonable success rates are the drugs Vincristine and Vinblastine derived from the plant Madagascar periwinkle. These drugs have around an 80% success rate for leukemias and lymphomas because both of these forms of cancer are caused from viruses and Vincristine and Vinblastine are highly anti-viral drugs.

I had read in the past that cancer can be caused by virus, but I never pursued it...just looked it up, and whoa... this is stunning information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus

I had not realized so many cancers were associated with virus... and virus are transmittable person to person. That's scary.

Are you a doctor?

Rather than wait for an answer, you seem familiar with skin cancer particularly, I hope you can answer a question for me. 1. Would you buy a piece of equipment to help you diagnose skin cancer if it proved to be more effective than the usual biopsy and visual ID?

If so, would you consider this one? Why and why not?
melasciences.com/melafind
The machine is here:
www.melafind.com/patients/about-melafind#about-melafind

What about this system?
www.verisante.com/
www.verisante.com/products/aura/

This is actually a stock related question... and I'm trying to figure out market potential. They may both work (according to Verisante, theirs works better), but would doctors BUY them is the question.

If you aren't in the skin cancer field, no biggie, thought I'd ask. If you are, and you would, you might want to look into them also.

Interesting, thanks for the quick opinion, that's what I needed to know... explore the concepts with a Venture Capital firm?

Sunlight is not the cause of the cancer it is a co-factor.  Sunlight activates the HPV virus in the skin that causes the skin cancer.  This is why everyone that spends a lot of time in the sun does not develop skin cancer.  I used to race triathlons and did cross country bicycling so I was in the sun literally all day long almost every day.  I never used sunscreen, which actually contains various carcinogens.  Still, I never had any problems with skin cancer or even skin damage.  There is so much more to the issue such as nutrition, immune status, etc.

It is the same with "hormonal" cancers.  The hormones do not cause the cancer, they activate cancer viruses then can act as growth promoters in existing cancers.

Another point that should be brought up is that sunlight increases vitamin D levels, which is actually anti-cancer. So there is a lot of hype over sunlight causing skin cancer.

You are right about the melanomas. Consider how often people develop them on their backs even though they always wear shirts out in the sun. Again, the sun does not cause the cancer, the virus causes the cancer and there can be various triggers that activate cancer viruses such as sunlight, hormones, carcinogens, immune suppression, other viruses, etc.

Don't get depressed. There are things that can be done. For example, there are many antiviral compounds that are quite effective against cancers as well such as betulinic acid. And cancer cells can be selectively killed by several means. For example, skin cancers can be selectively treated with the application of food grade (35%) peroxide. The process is painful though as concentrated peroxide burns like you are being branded. Only hurts for about 20 minutes though.

Thanks James! (or do you go by Jim?) This topic is dear to me for the personal connection I mentioned earlier.

There was a study in Australia regarding skin cancer and sunscreen. Perhaps not coincidentally, sunscreen was invented in Australia.

The incidence of skin cancer's of all kinds increased beginning the year after sunscreen was introduced to the public. It continued to increase until it found a new plateau.

Further, that study referred (or vise versa) to another Aussie study in which they surveyed skin cancer patients in many various job descriptions. The highest rate of skin cancer was among office workers of all kinds.

Lifeguarding is a real career there so there are great numbers of folks who spend 200++ days a year for 20++ years in the sun, and the study showed they have the lowest rate of skin cancer.

Yes, peroxide kills cancer cells.  In fact, this is how our own natural killer (NK) cells kill cancer cells when they can be detected by the immune system.  Unfortunately, cancer cells have developed  various means to evade the immune system, which is why the immune system rarely  destroys cancer cells in the body including actual tumors.  Therefore, the primary role of the immune system in cancer is not the direct control of cancer cells but rather tumor causing pathogens.

When the immune system is capable of detecting malignant cells though the NK cells attach to the malignant cell and inject peroxide in to the cell to destroy the cell.  The reason this works and why peroxide selectively destroys cancer cells is because healthy cells contain various enzymes such as catalase and superoxide dismutase that break down the peroxides to protect the cells.  Cancer cells on the other hand do not contain these enzymes.  When they are exposed to peroxides the peroxides enter the cancer cells causing them to swell and burst. 

When using 35% peroxide, which is concentrated, the use is strictly topical. And it is is not recommended around very sensitive tissue such as the eyes since the peroxide will burn tissue.  With healthy tissue though healthy skin cells only get mildly burnt like a very mild sunburn.  They are not destroyed like cancer cells.  Some people will dilute the peroxide to a 3% solution then do therapy by dropping one drop in a glass of water then drinking it on an empty stomach.  Then they work up to two drops, then three........  The process is very slow though and would not be quick enough in most cases to deal with cancers.  Ozone therapy, which also works in large part of the peroxide principle is much faster and safer.

The reaction is a chain reaction and so will follow the tumor inward.  In short, as the peroxide breaks down there is a highly reactive singlet oxygen formed, which reacts with the lipid membranes of the cancer cells to form a lipid peroxide.  As the lipid peroxide is broken down another highly reactive singlet oxygen is formed starting the whole process over.  To give you an example, I once saw .01ml of 35% peroxide take out half of a tumor the size of golf ball in seconds.  Eventually all the singlet oxygens get used up by reacting with other singlet oxygens forming O2 or by reacting with other substances.  Another friend of mine had a tumor a little larger than a quarter.  When the peroxide was applied to the opened tumor the peroxide immediately destroyed all the malignant cells leaving a crater about 1//4 inch under her skin as the peroxide  followed the cancer cells downward.

Cancer cells can be "cooked" to destroy them.  This technology has been around since the 1950s, but is not widely used for the simple fact it is cheap and effective just like many other cancer cures that have existed for decades or for even more than a century.  Cancer is an extremely big and profitable business making massive amounts of revenue for both big business, non profit groups such as the American Cancer Society, and for the government.  This is why you always hear about these really promising developments they claim will take 14 years to develop to bring it to market yet they never make it to the market.

Anyway, hyperthermia utilizes radio-frequency to heat up the tumor literally cooking it to death.  Malignant tumors cannot dissipate heat as easily as healthy tissue so the heat can build up sufficiently in the tumor to kill it.

Lasers could be used to destroy tumors, but this would be more likely by coagulation of the blood vessels feeding the tumor.  Same principle as coagulating spider veins to get rid of them.  Unfortunately this would not cure the cancer.  The out cells could survive by getting oxygen from diffusion in the same manner cells from newly developing tumors do.

It would be harder to develop a laser that could selectively cook malignant cells without cooking healthy tissue.