Focusing on alternative treatments that have had their basis in conventional medical research, author Penny Williams paints a compelling and chilling portrait of a North American medical establishment unwilling to look at new ways of treating cancer outside the traditional trio of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Through extensive patient interviews and opened clinical files, Williams builds an argument that some of these other treatments, particularly IAT (immuno-augmentative therapy), have an impressive empirical success rate. Nonetheless these successful approaches have been closed out of the North American clinical trial circuit because their discoverers butted heads with the establishment and lost. Never losing sight of the human cost, Penny Williams shares the stories of cancer sufferers having to hide their alternative treatments from their close-minded conventional doctors. She also shares the stories of patients lucky enough to have doctors who could see that the non-traditional treatments seem to be having effect. Williams tells the story of patients who survive as long as 17 years beyond their prognosis and of those who did not. She tells stories of hope and laughter and unbeatable human spirit. Gracefully written, Toxic Treatment is compelling and important. It dares the North American medical establishment to set aside its biases, calling for the combination of conventional treatments and alternative therapies in the healing process. Anyone who reads this book will not look at the media coverage of cancer treatments the same way again. Please note: Toxic Treatment was previously published as Alternatives in Cancer Therapies, 1-55263-113-3, and is now out of print.

Penelope Williams was born in 1943 and grew up in Carleton Place, Ontario, in the midst of a big family, the Findlays, which at one point took up almost a whole street. She studied at the University of Toronto, lived in Ireland for seven years and has always been involved in writing and editing, since 1982 with her own firm, PMF Editorial Services Inc., in Ottawa. Penny has two sons, Matt (22) and Sam (18). She lives in ottawa with her husabnd, Allen Sackmann, and again enjoys another widely extended family which includes four step-grandchildren to date.

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