‘For my son, I am going to live ... ’
Deciding against chemotherapy, Mario Oriani-Ambrosini is determined to beat cancer, writes Carol Coetzee
INKATHA Freedom Party MP Mario Oriani-Ambrosini is fighting his first-round battle against cancer. He has declined to undergo conventional chemotherapy, opting instead for treatment that includes sodium bicarbonate and supplements sent to him by the Dalai Lama.
Six months after being diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer, a thinner but healthy-looking Oriani-Ambrosini sits down for an interview at his home overlooking the valley and mountains of Hout Bay in Cape Town.
“There is no question that I am still ill and in constant pain,” he says.
Walking past his prized collection of swords, he pauses to pick one up. He grips it firmly and gives it a swish, saying: “I live and die by the sword.”
He has friends who have died of cancer. His father died of it when he was 10.
“It must stop,” said the 53-yearold, who has only taken three days’ sick leave in 10 years.
He has no faith in the cancer research of the past 120 years, “which brought no answers or relief”. “At the beginning of the last century, one in 40 people got cancer. Today, every third person has the illness and 10 million die worldwide each year. Should they [researchers] not re-examine their point of departure?”
He is referring to the theory that cancer occurs when there is a deviation in the gene structure and normal cells change and grow uncontrollably, forming a mass called a tumour. If discovered early, surgery can sometimes help. Chemotherapy — with a host of debilitating side effects — can possibly contain it, but not always cure it.
Oriani-Ambrosini wants to see government funding for trials of a treatment based on a “different paradigm”. He believes cancer is caused by a fungus and talks about how he received “backstreet” treatment in Italy — and how his illness responded to this.
It all started when he began to experience pain in his chest, back and his armpits. “I tend to ignore pain,” he says.
By the time he saw a doctor on April 19, X-rays and a scan showed a grim picture of his lungs, although he had not smoked in 17 years.
“The doctor wanted to open me up,” he says. But this had to wait because he was attending Margaret Thatcher’s funeral that weekend.
When Oriani-Ambrosini was operated on the following Tuesday, he was told that he had stage-four lung cancer. Lung cancer is aggressive and has the highest death rate of all cancers. He would be lucky to live for another four months.
“I refused the death sentence or to be passive,” he says. “For my son, I am going to live.” Luke is seven years old.
He was tested to see whether he was one of 10% of people who could respond to “targeted chemotherapy”. He did not wait the three weeks for the results.
Instead, the very next day Oriani-Ambrosini started doing research with scientists he knew, and “what satisfied us most was the hypothesis proposed two decades ago by Dr Tullio Simoncini in Rome”.
Oriani-Ambrosini flew to Rome and started treatment with bicarbonate of soda eight days after his diagnosis.
The treatment is based on a theory that cancer is caused by a fungal invasion and that the undifferentiated cells form in defence of this invasion. Bicarbonate of soda administered intravenously kills the fungi and the cells become normal.
Oriani-Ambrosini had a catheter feeding bicarbonate of soda through the cavity between his lungs and pleura. He would undergo the treatment for six days and then rest his body for six days. He repeated this cycle four times.
“It was harrowing. I had one infection after the other and lost a lot of weight, dropping from 90kg to 55kg,” he says. He now weighs about 70kg.
“I was on antibiotics, had mud coming out of me, brown fluids. I saw myself dying many times. Debilitated by constant fever, I was so weak.”
I refused the death sentence or to be passive
His mother, brother and sister helped to care for him.
“My brother stopped working for five months to be by my bedside. He administered the therapy because it was against the law for a registered nurse to do so. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from the Tibetan ambassador that the Dalai Lama had heard of my illness. They asked me to send my medical records to his personal doctor. They sent me three different herbal medicines just when we stopped with the catheter.”
By then, Oriani-Ambrosini had also started taking Salvestrol, which he believes kills cancer cells. According to its website, it is a new class of food based on natural compounds that have been shown to respond to an enzyme called CYP1B1, which is unique to diseased cells.
Once metabolised by the CYP1B1 enzyme, it has allegedly been shown to suppress and kill the diseased cell, leaving healthy cells unharmed. Salvestrol provides an explanation of the link between diet and cancer, and between the consumption of fruits and vegetables and lower cancer incidence.
By August, Oriani-Ambrosini’s infections stopped and he began to gain weight. “What kept me going was my little Luke and my will to live. And a flesh and blood angel [his wife Carin], who made it her business to ensure I was all right.”
Oriani-Ambrosini is going to campaign in parliament for the government to fund clinical trials of treatments that may work, even though they are not money spinners. Ultimately, he says, the verdict will lie in whether he survives.