Yes to Life – the cancer revolution

Suddenly immunotherapy (looking to the body’s own immune system to tackle cancer) is becoming all the rage, with articles like this one in the New York Times. And a new book, The Cancer Revolution, just out from the charity Yes2Life, describes how they have been working with this approach for a decade now, as they offer practical support to people with cancer.

Clearly this is an area where public education and public debate is vital. Anuradha Vittachi, co-founder of the Hedgerley Wood Trust, asks Yes2Life’s founder, Robin Daly about the initiative he started and his hopes for the future of cancer treatment.

Yes2Life held an important health conference in London on 19 November 2016. The audience was composed of an impressive array of doctors, nutritionists, and other health professionals – all of whom work in close contact with members of the public.

It was a fascinating and well-organised day, with detailed and substantive talks were followed by Q&As where the organizers had (unusually, in my conference-going experience) allocated enough time for the audience to raise a serious number of questions and be answered comprehensively by the panel of speakers.

The keynote speaker was Travis Christofferson, a US research scientist who has been promoting the late Nobel prize-winning biochemist Otto Warburg’s metabolic view of cancer risk and prevention, especially via his book Tripping Over The Truth. It is this metabolic approach that lies at the core of immunotherapy.

In spring 2016, Y2L was seeking funds to enable Travis Christofferson to be the conference’s keynote speaker (he was generously waiving his speaker fee). In April, the HWT board agreed a donation fill this need, as appreciatively noted by Robin Daly during the conference.

One of the many fascinating conference speakers was Dr Rob Ververk. HWT’s Anuradha Vittachi was lucky enough to sit next to him at the post-conference dinner where Dr Ververk generously shared more of his experience. We are delighted that he has now agreed to a filmed interview with HWT.