The Prime Cause of Cancer

Book excerpt: This is book 2 of 5 of the “Understand Cancer” series. It is based on the best-available science. The SECONDARY causes of cancer were discussed in book one. This book continues from book one and discusses the PRIME cause of cancer as discovered by Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Otto Warburg—considered by many as the founder of modern biochemistry. “There are prime and secondary causes of diseases. For example, the prime cause of the plague is the plague bacillus, but secondary causes of the plague are filth, rats, and the fleas that transfer the plague bacillus from rats to man. By a prime cause of a disease I mean one that is found in every case of the disease...Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar. All normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of oxygen, whereas cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation. All normal body cells are thus obligate aerobes, whereas all cancer cells are partial anaerobes. From the standpoint of the physics and chemistry of life this difference between normal and cancer cells is so great that one can scarcely picture a greater difference. Oxygen gas, the donor of energy in plants and animals is dethroned in the cancer cells and replaced by an energy yielding reaction of the lowest living forms, namely, a fermentation of glucose.” —Dr. Otto Warburg