All cancers are fungus related" is a blanket statement that is just incorrect. Perhaps some cancers are caused by certain fungal infections I just don't know. I do know however that all of them are not.
Mjhavok
Shortly, we should be careful not to generalize so much talking about cancer. We fortunately live in a new century and scientific research has done something about it. At least we should talk about different forms of tumors, leukemias and lymphomas. In some particular case scientists finally managed to find a cause and design effective and specific treatments (without toxicity, compared to chemotherapy).
A type of slow growing gastrointestinal lymphomas called MALTomas (Mucosa Associated Lymphoid Tissue) had been treated by standard chemotherapy (CHOP protocol...what a name for a chemo!) until the end of the last century.
There was no suggestion about the origin of this clonal expansion of lymphoid cells in the gut. So the following action had to be blind and toxic.
But in the middle of the '80s two smart researchers from Australia, Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren (Nobel Prize 2005) started their battle: they tried to demonstrate that a common bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, was the major cause of gastroduodenal ulcers in humans.
A standard antibiotic treatment was able to eradicate the bacteria, allowing the ulcers (wounds in the mucosa) to heal spontaneously.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rph.wa.gov.au%2Fpics%2Fnobel.jpg&hash=b5ad2a5e604758ffc7c2199e4f85fc64)
http://www.rph.wa.gov.au/pics/nobel.jpg
They initially got veggies and bananas at medical meetings, nevertheless they went on collecting more and more evidence to prove the "infectious theory" of peptic ulcer.
It had to be tough. Medicine is highly conservative for various reasons, and for a long time infectious diseases had been strictly defined: one bacteria, one disease. Helicobacter pylori is very common in humans...but just few of us develop ulcers. That was just enough to keep stalling any bright theory for years.
Finally H.p. eradication became the standard treatment.
Now there is growing evidence that persistent Helicobacter infection and continuous release of toxic substances for years, could be one of the causes of stomach cancer.
"...tumors: wounds that never healed..."
"...leukemia&lymphoma: infections never resolved..."
Shortly after it was found that the majority of the patients with MALT lymphomas were carrying H.p. and that eradication therapy alone was able to induce a spontaneous regression of the tumors.
It was obviously too good to be true, so over the years some patients were found to be resistant to antibiotic treatment (2-3 weeks, no chemo!) and their lymphomas where identified as more advanced, with more chromosomal damage, unable to stop growing even when the bacterial stimuli were removed by eradication treatment.
Here we have a model for cancer treatment:
SPOT the cause (if there is any, but never stop searching), remove it as fast as you can. Some clone of cells will STOP proliferating and gradually disappear.
In advanced cases, most cells have been damaged so much and their DNA heavily deranged, that they cannot stop dividing (even in cell cultures). Trying to block these resistant cells, scientists are now assemblying properly designed molecules, non-toxic "magic bullets" that should take advantage of the great differences at molecular level showed by some tumor cells (abnormal receptors, defective enzymes, etc.). Time runs fast for everybody, patients and scientists.
ikod
H. pylori in a gastric pit
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pathguy.com%2Flectures%2Fnejm_h_pylori.gif&hash=84fdfd491e32bc5eebdd2bd9fd643866)
http://www.pathguy.com/lectures/nejm_h_pylori.gif
Robert M. Genta, M.D.
David Y. Graham, M.D.
Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Houston, TX 77030
N.Engl.J.Med. 1996;335:250 Jul 25, 1996. Images in Clinical Medicine