On the 24th of January 2012, at 5 p.m., whilst on holiday with my family in Bali, the famous Indonesian newspaper ‘The Investor Daily’ made a special trip from Jakarta to the Mailas Hotel I stayed in for an exclusive interview (Figure 46). The reporter said, “Professor Xu, I have read your book 'Nothing But The Truth,’ I am very interested and touched by the stories in it, and today I would like to hear more truths.” The following is a transcription of the interview.
Reporter: As an experienced oncologist, what do you want to say to patients?
Author: I hope every cancer patient has an early diagnosis and the most effective treatments. Surgical resection is the main curative means, a five-year survival rate after surgical resection for early stage cancer is up to 60% or more; radiotherapy and chemotherapy also have positive results for some cancers. The five-year survival rate of nasopharyngeal cancer patients who received radiotherapy is up to 80%. After chemotherapy, lymphoma and seminoma patients can achieve long-term survival.
Reporter: But why is it that many cancer patients cannot undergo surgery?
Author: Early stage cancers often have no specific symptoms. When symptoms appear, the cancer has often developed. Advanced cancers usually have lesion enlargement or multiple metastases, which cannot be surgically removed. Some early cancer patients have tumors in parts of the body which cannot be resected, or they are old and feeble patients whom are not suitable for surgery.
Reporter: For those non-resectable cancers, or cancers that failed to receive radiotherapy and chemotherapy, how do you treat them?
Author: My philosophy is to cherish life with the strategy of combined therapy and the methods of conventional treatment with high-tech medicine and also integrated traditional and western medicine.
Reporter: As Vice President of the International Society of Cryosurgery, would you like to apply cryotherapy instead of surgery?
Author: Cryotherapy is a medical technique to eliminate cancers, it cannot replace surgery, but it can ablate or clear tumors that cannot be removed by surgery. Currently cryosurgery is used mainly for non-resectable cancers.
Reporter: What is the success rate for cryosurgery to treat cancer?
Author: The surgical resection has a history of a thousand years, but the removal of the tumor does not mean the cancer is cured. Cryosurgery is equivalent to a cancer removal therapy. Cancer is a systemic disease, removal of the tumor is the basic step, and its success depends on other treatments, especially the systemic treatments.
Reporter: Do you oppose chemotherapy and radiation?
Author: Why should I oppose them? As therapeutic approaches go, they have specific indications. I object to abuse and overtreatment.
Reporter: So cancer can be cured?
Author: The current conventional treatments can clinically cure cancers, but cannot biologically heal most patients. It's not like treating bacterial infectious diseases with antibiotics. The only exception is acute promyelocytic leukaemia, the cure rate was almost zero in the past, but now its cure rate is more than 90%, which is due to effective treatment invented by the academicians Wang Zhenyi and Chen Zhu who adopted new ideas and innovative applications of ‘induced differentiation’ therapy. Therefore academician Wang solicits new ideas to challenge cancer.
Reporter: You invented the ‘3 C + P’ treatment mode, is it a new idea?
Author: This was inspired by the Academician Wang, but I must explain that I am not the person who invented the ‘3 C + P’ treatment mode. As CEO of Apple Steve Jobs said, ‘it is not necessarily your own invention’ but the combination is also innovative. 3C includes Cryo-ablation (localized therapy), Cancer Microvascular Intervention (localized therapy) and Combined Immunotherapy for Cancer (systemic therapy), which is a treatment combination. It could also be called an innovation. Therefore I came up with the ‘Research- Combination-Innovation’.
Reporter: Can you guarantee that it can cure cancer patients?
Author: Cure is relative concept. I have survived for 6 years after I removed my tumor by surgery. Even so, I cannot say I had been ‘cured’ because cancer could relapse at any time. I can only say I can live longer and better.
Reporter: Can you tell me the overall treatment conditions in your hospital?
Author: If 70% of patients who come to our hospital as a last resort because of losing hope for survival, then after treatment in our hospital, 70% of those patients will have an improved condition and obtain longer-term or long-term survival.
Reporter: As far as I know, you have visited patients throughout Indonesia, those that had once received treatments in your hospital, what was your purpose?
Author: To explore whether the treatments in our hospital are effective. In May 2010, I visited twenty-eight patients in Jakarta, Daxi, Bandung, Surabaya and Medan. They were very happy, so I was pleased that most of them were still alive and had a good life, which also showed that our strategy and therapeutic measures were effective.
Reporter: This is what I learned from your book, the Indonesian version of ‘Nothing But The Truth’. I was very moved. May I interview you again in the future?
Author: Definitely! I hope you can join in with us to visit patients, we will not only visit Indonesian patients, but also patients from Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines and other countries.
Reporter: I would be extremely happy to accept the invitation.
When she learned that the 18th World Congress of International Society of Cryosurgery will be held in Bali in 2013, she was very excited and willing to promote this medical technique in Indonesia. I said, “From the beautiful coast of Bali and streets, I know that Indonesia is a country with strong cultural foundations and developmental vitality, such an international professional conference is an opportunity for Indonesia and a contribution to the world”.
The interview lasted one and a half hours. I accompanied the reporter out of the VIP room into landscaped gardens with mature trees glowing with the sun. A few petals fell with the wind and slight sadness and melancholy filled my mind. Despite how successful your life can be, it fluctuates with the passage of time, with worries and cherishing health. The reporter had just arrived from the airport, with no time to even drink a cup of coffee and hurried back to work. She said, “Time is precious, I have to let your 'truths' be published in the paper as soon as possible, which contributes my own efforts to the Health Project”.