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Cancer and the New Biology of Water
Why the War on Cancer Has Failed and What That Means for More Effective Prevention and Treatment
A groundbreaking look at the role of water in living organisms that ultimately brings us closer to answering the riddle of the etiology of, and therapy and treatment for, cancer
When President Nixon launched the War on Cancer with the signing of the National Cancer Act of 1971 and the allocation of billions of research dollars, it was amidst a flurry of promises that a cure was within reach. The research establishment was trumpeting the discovery of oncogenes, the genes that supposedly cause cancer. As soon as we identified them and treated cancer patients accordingly, cancer would become a thing of the past.
Fifty years later it’s clear that the War on Cancer has failed—despite what the cancer industry wants us to believe. New diagnoses have continued to climb; one in three people in the United States can now expect to battle cancer during their lifetime. For the majority of common cancers, the search for oncogenes has not changed the treatment: We’re still treating with the same old triad of removing (surgery), burning out (radiation), or poisoning (chemotherapy).
In Cancer and the New Biology of Water, Thomas Cowan, MD, argues that this failure was inevitable because the oncogene theory is incorrect—or at least incomplete—and based on a flawed concept of biology in which DNA controls our cellular function and therefore our health. Instead, Dr. Cowan tells us, the somatic mutations seen in cancer cells are the result of a cellular deterioration that has little to do with oncogenes, DNA, or even the nucleus. The root cause is metabolic dysfunction that deteriorates the structured water that forms the basis of cytoplasmic—and therefore, cellular—health.
Despite mainstream medicine’s failure to bring an end to suffering or deliver on its promises, it remains illegal for physicians to prescribe anything other than the “standard of care” for their cancer patients—no matter how dangerous and ineffective that standard may be—and despite the fact that gentler, more effective, and more promising treatments exist. While Dr. Cowan acknowledges that all of these treatments need more research, Cancer and the New Biology of Water is an impassioned plea from a long-time physician that these promising treatments merit our attention and research dollars and that patients have the right to information, options, and medical freedom in matters of their own life and death.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 24, 2019
107 people are currently reading
581 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
October 22, 2024
Cowan starts with a pretty interesting take on the history of cancer treatment. He poses some great questions as well! It set up what could have been a very engaging read on shortcomings in the field, and highlighted promising research and new avenues of thinking.
He then decides to halt everything and spends 1/4th of the book giving you a high school biology lesson... This was an absolute slog, and I don't think it added much other than to show us that Cowan is capable of paraphrasing a textbook. I would understand if this acted as the basis for later points. But he simply explains a few fundamentals, lightly touches on their importance, and then extrapolates like crazy.
The last half of the book is one anecdote after another about how someone cured their cancer by eating turmeric. I honestly think Cowan flexed his "science muscles" earlier to fool people into thinking his points are based in science. He provides terrible comparisons along the lines of "chaga mushrooms look like cancer, and grow on birch trees. Guess which kinds of trees don't get cancer!?"
I'm oversimplifying - but so is he. For someone who is so critical of research and modern sciences, he felt overly willing to throw away sound scientific basis and quality research for his BS.
The worst thing is that he has the odd good idea, or semi salient point. But please don't go to this man for answers! Maybe he'll get you thinking about a few aspects of modern medicine? But don't expect to actually learn anything real or significant.
I hate to use the word quack. But in the later half of the book, he reeeally pushed into quack territory.
He then decides to halt everything and spends 1/4th of the book giving you a high school biology lesson... This was an absolute slog, and I don't think it added much other than to show us that Cowan is capable of paraphrasing a textbook. I would understand if this acted as the basis for later points. But he simply explains a few fundamentals, lightly touches on their importance, and then extrapolates like crazy.
The last half of the book is one anecdote after another about how someone cured their cancer by eating turmeric. I honestly think Cowan flexed his "science muscles" earlier to fool people into thinking his points are based in science. He provides terrible comparisons along the lines of "chaga mushrooms look like cancer, and grow on birch trees. Guess which kinds of trees don't get cancer!?"
I'm oversimplifying - but so is he. For someone who is so critical of research and modern sciences, he felt overly willing to throw away sound scientific basis and quality research for his BS.
The worst thing is that he has the odd good idea, or semi salient point. But please don't go to this man for answers! Maybe he'll get you thinking about a few aspects of modern medicine? But don't expect to actually learn anything real or significant.
I hate to use the word quack. But in the later half of the book, he reeeally pushed into quack territory.
December 30, 2019
I have read Dr. Cowan’s Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, and it prompted me to change my husband’s diet, and medication, to the result that at 83 he takes no prescription drugs at all, despite 2 heart attacks, triple bypass and a valve replacement. Strophanthus, as described by Cowan in that book is his only medication. He is healthy beyond his years. So now comes his new book, and of course I had to try to read and understand it. I am already traveling the path of Dr. Cowan, and having family members who died from cancer despite treatments, it is a particular interest of mine. I have long believed that it, like most disease, is due to more than one cause. Not only are there the environmental assaults, both in what we eat, breathe and touch, including EMF exposure, but there is the mental and emotional aspects of the degradation of the body. You can read a review of the book by others here and elsewhere, so I will only say that I am focused here instead on the willingness of Dr. Cowan to seek other answers outside the mainstream research methods, to take a new look at this ubiquitous disease, which is still continuing to increase in its assault upon the population. I am going to read the book again before continuing with this review, because there is simply just too much to absorb the first time around. But I can say that I am absorbing and trying to continue to modify my behaviors and eating. And I am willingly making these changes because I think he is on to something here. As Dr. Cowan says, near the end of his small book, quoting Marcia Angel, MD, former executive editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal Of Medicine.” p.158. Wow. More later.
October 8, 2023
Revoke their medical license
*edit* I just googled him and his medical license was relinquished a year after this was published :) holy fuuuuuck also he thinks COVID is caused by cell phone networks
*edit* I just googled him and his medical license was relinquished a year after this was published :) holy fuuuuuck also he thinks COVID is caused by cell phone networks
interest
January 19, 2023December 30, 2019
There's a theme in tales of the Old West about a lone gunslinger who rides into town to fight evil and injustice, ultimately triumphing despite the powerful forces arrayed against him. It's also a popular theme among supporters of alternative medicine.
Thomas Cowan is one of the latest Brave Mavericks to arrive on the scene, defying conventional medical wisdom. In previous books he assured us that vaccines cause autoimmune diseases (they don't) and that the heart is not a pump (huh?). In "Cancer and the New Biology of Water" Cowan explores his belief that cancer is caused by derangements in the intracellular structure of water.
You see, oncologists and cancer researchers are all wrong by focusing on genetic mutations and known toxic exposures (i.e. smoking and excessive alcohol consumption) as causes of cancer. Cowan has decided that a host of other things, including glyphosate and EMFs from cellphones and computers are to blame, and this somehow ties in to our precious intracellular bodily fluids. Since there is virtually no good science in support of this theory, Cowan seems to have arrived at it through intuition and occasionally observation. One of his early revelations came when he worked at an ER and discovered that his instructors were wrong about the human body being mostly composed of water, since he observed lots of trauma patients and they were never gushing out water, just blood.
I am not making this up.
The rest of the book's haranagues about water range from the comical to the bizarre, as when Cowan eloquently describes the moment of conception as a "merger of the dense, nuclear male side and the watery, maternal feminine side."
Cowan attacks the mainstream medical community for not plowing major resources into investigating alternative cancer therapies long ago discarded as useless or outright quackery. He praises such figures as Royal Rife and Max Gerson and provides a list of interventions and supplements that are supposed to help cancer patients. These include consumption of bone broth, mistletoe, "Quinton Isotonic Seawater", deuterium-depleted water, special diets (including eating only at certain times of the day), NADH, EMF bracelets and coffee enemas. Numerous supplements that he recommends are ones Cowan sells or distributes through his website.
It's sad to think of cancer patients wasting money and time cramming down handfuls of supplement pills, drinking enormous quantities of fruit and vegetable juices, eliminating favorite foods and undergoing coffee enemas. An illustration of the futility of such practices was provided recently in a formal study comparing use of a Gerson-style protocol vs. conventional chemotherapy in treating pancreatic cancer patients. The outcome showed that the juice/supplement/coffee enema group had significantly shorter survival and poorer quality of life than the conventionally-treated group.
It should be noted that false claims about water structure and the promotion/selling of "special" water to improve health is old hat in the world of woo. The website www.chem1.com/CQ/ is a good source of information.
Be advised though that if you don't take Doc Cowan's advice there are apocalyptic consequences. As he warns, "Either we can wake up to our true nature, and soon, or we are destined to destroy everything.
Which will you choose?"
Choose wisely. :)
Thomas Cowan is one of the latest Brave Mavericks to arrive on the scene, defying conventional medical wisdom. In previous books he assured us that vaccines cause autoimmune diseases (they don't) and that the heart is not a pump (huh?). In "Cancer and the New Biology of Water" Cowan explores his belief that cancer is caused by derangements in the intracellular structure of water.
You see, oncologists and cancer researchers are all wrong by focusing on genetic mutations and known toxic exposures (i.e. smoking and excessive alcohol consumption) as causes of cancer. Cowan has decided that a host of other things, including glyphosate and EMFs from cellphones and computers are to blame, and this somehow ties in to our precious intracellular bodily fluids. Since there is virtually no good science in support of this theory, Cowan seems to have arrived at it through intuition and occasionally observation. One of his early revelations came when he worked at an ER and discovered that his instructors were wrong about the human body being mostly composed of water, since he observed lots of trauma patients and they were never gushing out water, just blood.
I am not making this up.
The rest of the book's haranagues about water range from the comical to the bizarre, as when Cowan eloquently describes the moment of conception as a "merger of the dense, nuclear male side and the watery, maternal feminine side."
Cowan attacks the mainstream medical community for not plowing major resources into investigating alternative cancer therapies long ago discarded as useless or outright quackery. He praises such figures as Royal Rife and Max Gerson and provides a list of interventions and supplements that are supposed to help cancer patients. These include consumption of bone broth, mistletoe, "Quinton Isotonic Seawater", deuterium-depleted water, special diets (including eating only at certain times of the day), NADH, EMF bracelets and coffee enemas. Numerous supplements that he recommends are ones Cowan sells or distributes through his website.
It's sad to think of cancer patients wasting money and time cramming down handfuls of supplement pills, drinking enormous quantities of fruit and vegetable juices, eliminating favorite foods and undergoing coffee enemas. An illustration of the futility of such practices was provided recently in a formal study comparing use of a Gerson-style protocol vs. conventional chemotherapy in treating pancreatic cancer patients. The outcome showed that the juice/supplement/coffee enema group had significantly shorter survival and poorer quality of life than the conventionally-treated group.
It should be noted that false claims about water structure and the promotion/selling of "special" water to improve health is old hat in the world of woo. The website www.chem1.com/CQ/ is a good source of information.
Be advised though that if you don't take Doc Cowan's advice there are apocalyptic consequences. As he warns, "Either we can wake up to our true nature, and soon, or we are destined to destroy everything.
Which will you choose?"
Choose wisely. :)
November 11, 2019
Science, physics and chemistry: Art, robeen evaded by?) mainstream caregivers. After nearly 40 years of the "War on Cancer" spending billions of dollars, Cowan posits that "the current path represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of life, and therefore the nature of cancer."
The most empowering aspect of this book is Cowan's calm delivery of doable options that for the most part, can be undertaken independently from mainstream caregivers.
The most empowering aspect of this book is Cowan's calm delivery of doable options that for the most part, can be undertaken independently from mainstream caregivers.
March 6, 2020
Of course the last chapters are the best - The Basic Cancer Framework and Conclusion. We are living the tale of Sleeping Beauty, and cancer is the projection of our state of consciousness (or the lack of consciousness).
March 19, 2020
Very compelling. Hard to put down. This author describes the failure of the gene theory with statistical analysis. And gives hope by finding a common thread through a compilation of alternative treatments.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 10, 2020
An interesting theory about the origins of cancer and a call to fund the research of non-standard of care cancer treatment options. Includes some history and background on those treatments.
January 6, 2025
Author Thomas Cowan is a former medical doctor who espouses controversial viewpoints about vaccines and cell biology. Here he contends that cancer is primarily a problem with cell cytoplasm rather than its nucleus / DNA, and that the nature and structure of healthy cytoplasm consists of the gel-phase of structured water with a proper electrical charge. Cancer forms when unhealthy / dead cells devoid of the proper charge start clumping together. Part I of the book opens with a critique of modern medicine’s approach to cancer diagnosis and treatment - specifically questioning the efficacy of such by pointing out that decades and billions of dollars after the Nixon Administration’s declaration of War Against Cancer, we’ve only seen a marginal decline that is probably primarily due to the reduction in smoking. Parts II and III introduce potential alternative medicine therapies and protocols, some of which imo seem somewhat far-fetched. Among others, these include: a ketogenic diet sufficient to keep fasting blood sugar below 70 mg/DL; isotonic seawater; mistletoe extract; chaga mushroom tea; turmeric; burdock root; sauna; grounding; and even crystals(?!).
March 27, 2022
Finally a book that confronts the medical industry’s failure in the “War on Cancer“, billions have been spent over the past 50 years going in circles researching the same old treatments.
Very easy to read, not overly technical.
I loved the frank, refreshing look at how our bodies work, structured water and the proposal that cancer results from a distorted structure of the intercellular gels. He also doesn’t throw out conventional cancer treatments, like surgery to remove tumors.
What if the cure is the disease? What if cancer is a SYMPTOM of a degenerated cellular environment?
Several fascinating non-toxic interventions were shared; many were new to me that will definitely be added to my tool belt. This book also goes beyond cancer as the processes he shares are for overall health and wellness; like the importance and function of ATP and Mitochondria.
There is real hope out there and those doing new research, although lots more still to be done.
A book to read more than once!
Very easy to read, not overly technical.
I loved the frank, refreshing look at how our bodies work, structured water and the proposal that cancer results from a distorted structure of the intercellular gels. He also doesn’t throw out conventional cancer treatments, like surgery to remove tumors.
What if the cure is the disease? What if cancer is a SYMPTOM of a degenerated cellular environment?
Several fascinating non-toxic interventions were shared; many were new to me that will definitely be added to my tool belt. This book also goes beyond cancer as the processes he shares are for overall health and wellness; like the importance and function of ATP and Mitochondria.
There is real hope out there and those doing new research, although lots more still to be done.
A book to read more than once!
December 30, 2025
Cancer doesn't work with , it works against the body after certain cells have mutated and clustered together forming the distinctive hard mass we identify as cancer.
These cells are energy starved and in most cancers use up far more glucose than oxygen as a healthy cell would not and then make mistakes in their cell division.
The current oncological treatment model using chemotherapy is flawed and does very little to help the patient recover and heal itself in a meaningful way.
Destroying the immune system as chemo does is not the answer.
The book lists many alternative treatments and examines their results as likely or unlikely to have a healing effect on cancer.
Natural remedies are not very lucrative for the medical industry so are generally ignored if a patent cannot be procured from a synthesised version of the remedy.
It would seem allowing natural forces to heal the body is a far better method than destroying all cells around a tumour.
These cells are energy starved and in most cancers use up far more glucose than oxygen as a healthy cell would not and then make mistakes in their cell division.
The current oncological treatment model using chemotherapy is flawed and does very little to help the patient recover and heal itself in a meaningful way.
Destroying the immune system as chemo does is not the answer.
The book lists many alternative treatments and examines their results as likely or unlikely to have a healing effect on cancer.
Natural remedies are not very lucrative for the medical industry so are generally ignored if a patent cannot be procured from a synthesised version of the remedy.
It would seem allowing natural forces to heal the body is a far better method than destroying all cells around a tumour.
November 22, 2020
Noticing I skipped writing a review of this book. I have some ambivalence about it. It’s a bit of a somewhat superficial mish mash — and something about it made it hard to read and absorb. As an alternatively minded stage 4 cancer patient I’d think I’d gobble this book, but I felt strangely separated from it. My own resistance? Feeling like I should do everything I can, but all the ideas are just kind of exhausting.
Fundamentally I’m thrilled with his idea of the 4th phase of water and that we are all batteries generating energy for our biological processes in a way that hasn’t been appreciated in the mainstream. This concept is also explores in Sayer Ji’s book, Regenerate if anyone is interested. Cowan is a creative cutting edge free thinker, and I wish sometimes that I could read a companion voice that would double check and pressure test his ideas. He tosses out a lot of stuff that then often leaves the reader without practical or affordable ways to work with or implement the ideas. It doesn’t negate the information, but leaves me a little bit cool about it all.
Fundamentally I’m thrilled with his idea of the 4th phase of water and that we are all batteries generating energy for our biological processes in a way that hasn’t been appreciated in the mainstream. This concept is also explores in Sayer Ji’s book, Regenerate if anyone is interested. Cowan is a creative cutting edge free thinker, and I wish sometimes that I could read a companion voice that would double check and pressure test his ideas. He tosses out a lot of stuff that then often leaves the reader without practical or affordable ways to work with or implement the ideas. It doesn’t negate the information, but leaves me a little bit cool about it all.
January 18, 2023
I've read a lot of books over the years about cancer, but if I had to give someone a book about the subject, this would be the one. Fascinating from the first page and so many strategies that I had never heard of to bring healing to the body. I think Thomas Cowan is one of the most brilliant minds of our day. None of his books ever disappoint at making me look at things from a different perspective.
June 23, 2021
very interesting book. He really blends the ultra scientific with the mental and spiritual. Kind of weird, but hang with it and it’s worth it. May not agree with everything he says, but this book is really good for stimulating thought in new ways of thinking about cancer, disease in general, and really there physical world.
August 13, 2022
Having read a number of his earlier books, I came to this with preconceptions. Cowan (operating on a level of consciousness few are) ties argues that for as long as we view ourselves as mere a collection of particles, we will continues to experience this disease. Thought provoking on many levels. Loved the Appendix too.
January 8, 2022
Beautiful book. The thesis is so clear and makes so much sense, although I do think there’s still a missing key. Must read for anyone into alternative health and planning to never do conventional treatment if they get cancer.
May 4, 2022
Definitely one of the best books on cancer and it’s biology I have read in a long time. It’s a keeper!
March 2, 2023
When will we learn not to be rigid in our thinking, especially about issues that involve our health.
June 14, 2023
Everything you need to know about structured/charged/energised water.
October 21, 2023
Wow!!!! Such great insights. Life is profoundly deep and magically! More than we can understand, and simplifying things have not helped.
“Love awakens us to the reality of who we truly are.”
“Love awakens us to the reality of who we truly are.”
October 5, 2025
Um yikes. Bro had his medical license revoked after publishing this.
November 11, 2024
The importance of water in its fourth state, as described by Pollack in The Fourth State of water, is central to Cowan's thesis. This book is half science discussion and half clinical application with things other than water.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews