Medical doctor and former professor of medicine Paul Marik, found out September 18, that Amazon had banned his book Cancer Care: The Role of Repurposed Drugs and Metabolic Interventions in Treating Cancer. Following an open letter to Amazon and a large public outcry, within ten days the Kindle version of the book was back up again Kindle version, however with the promise that a hardcopy would be reinstated in due course.

So why would Amazon ban the Cancer Care book?

Marik was advised by Amazon that the book had been terminated because the book had allegedly misleading content and that there was a ‘potential to mislead and defraud customers’.

Marik is no ordinary doctor. Unlike many single discipline experts in medicine, Marik’s expertise traverses a broad spectrum of medical fields: internal medicine, critical care, neurocritical care, pharmacology, anaesthesia, nutrition, and tropical medicine and hygiene.

Marik is a prolific scientist, having been cited in the scientific literature 61,000 times. His h-index which measures productivity and the citation impact of his publications, is 116.

On average, a professor of medicine would be considered to be doing well with an h-index of 25.

Marik is globally respected in the field of medicine and recognised for solving a problem that has long plagued hospitals, medical sepsis with a low-cost mix of vitamin C, hydrocortisone, and thiamine.

In an interview with executive director Kelly Bumann of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), Marik expressed his surprise. He noted that the book had had over 130 positive reviews on Amazon before being banned. That the rating sat at an average of 4.8. Bumann and Marik added that no complaints had been received by FLCCC.

There are many books on Amazon which discuss the potential to prevent and heal from cancer using non-medical strategies.

I suspect Marik’s problem may be that the book takes on four sacred cows of the cancer and medical healthcare. The first sacred cow concerns what drives the production of cancer. The second sacred cow involves the role of off-patent drug therapies and nutritional interventions to prevent and treat cancer. The third revolves around the potential role of chemotherapy and radiotherapy which, while killing tumours, may, in some cases, potentially set off a proliferative effect that increases risk of metastases. The fourth concerns the increasing body of evidence that ketogenic diets enhance long-term survival in patients with cancer – including some cancers which have little or no effective treatment.

Marik’s thesis rests on the role of nutritional and metabolic interventions to achieve three aims. Create an inhospitable environment for the differentiated cells that arise as tumours. Anticipate and ameliorate the toxicity of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to improve outcome odds. Give the body support to prevent stem cells from turning around and proliferating to drive new tumour formation and growth.

However, if you contradict so-called consensus, especially if you do it very well, you run the risk of being charged with violating content policy, and/or spreading misinformation. It’s likely your book, or even you yourself as the author, will be banned. In the FLCCC interview, Marik claimed:

‘Obviously this is pure censorship, I need to emphasise that this is highly referenced. There are over 860 peer reviewed references. Almost every statement is referenced by the peer reviewed literature. So, it’s not like I am making stuff up. This is not misleading information. This is scientifically valid information from the peer reviewed medical literature.’

Marik’s sin is possibly exacerbated by Marik’s remarkable expertise and the extraordinary number of references in the book.

Marik is passionate that cancer care should not be limited to orthodox medicine. That good cancer care necessarily integrates other strategies. This includes lifestyle changes and nutrition, nutraceutical herbs and repurposed drugs. While nutraceuticals can be patented, lifestyle changes, nutrition and repurposed drugs generally cannot be.

Marik somewhat controversially, emphasises a competing theory of cancer. Cancer is conventionally stated to arise from genetic mutations progressively transform to produce highly malignant oncogenes. Instead, Marik highlights that genetic mutations arise because the conditions are ripe for cancer development. They are secondary.

Marik has adopted Otto Warburg’s hundred-year-old theory that cancer might be more appropriately recognised as a metabolic disease. In recent years, Dr Thomas Seyfried has extensively researched the potential for disordered energy production and cellular metabolism to set the scene for system vulnerability. Seyfried is not alone, the scientific literature on this subject is booming.

The cancer cell relies on glucose for energy. Insulin is associated with the initiation and propagation of cancer. The evidence that an individual’s glycaemic burden contributes to cancer and many associated illnesses is striking. Dietary intakes with a high component of ultraprocessed foods are low in nutrients and fibre, and persistently high in additives. Poor nutrition dually encourages cancer and prevents the body from stemming inflammation. Additives add to the toxic environmental drivers which can drive inflammation, cellular injury, and mitochondrial damage.

In Cancer Care, Marik emphasises the benefits of off patent, repurposed drugs. Doctors repurpose drugs with a long history of safe use as drugs are found to have wider clinical applications. However, much oncology prescribing revolves around prescribing newer patented breakthrough drugs that are orders of magnitude more expensive. By effectively contradicting prescribing norms, Marik actions may amount to blasphemy in mainstream oncology.

Marik has a history of recommending repurposed drugs which contradict the advice of authorities intent on ensuring public access to recently patented drugs. Marik’s 2020-21 publishing history demonstrates Marik’s pursuit of easy-to-access therapies which would be protective for people during Covid, pre-release of the mRNA injections. This work included identifying products with antiviral properties against RNA viruses. One such product was the off-patent antiparasitic drug ivermectin, which had been shown to have antiviral properties for repurposing for Covid. Importantly, its safety profile was well established and it was well tolerated, and people could take the ivermectin long-term, alongside many conventional drugs without harm.

Ivermectin was discouraged as a treatment for Covid by authorities worldwide, including in Australia and New Zealand. A broad swathe of published evidence suggesting ivermectin’s efficacy remains widely accessible to authorities. Most recently the scientific literature has indicated ivermectin’s potential to inhibit the proliferation of several tumour cells by regulating multiple signalling pathways.

Ketogenic diets similarly contradict government dietary guidelines urging people limit saturated fat and consume several serves a day of cereal grains. Ketogenic diets effectively switch the body away from running on glucose to running on ketones. The physiology that humans have inherited from hunter-gatherer ancestors is designed to survive for periods of time without any food at all. There’s an increasing literature suggesting ketogenic diets may be extraordinarily effective in preventing and stemming cancer.

Marik quotes a National Cancer Institute 2020 estimate of USD208.9 billion in 2020. Not only has cancer prevalence increased, per person cancer treatment costs have surged, outpacing other healthcare costs.

The Cancer Care book is available as a PDF but was published on Amazon so that people could purchase a book edition.

Amazon’s power in book retail is extraordinary. Amazon sells $28 billion in books annually and 487 Kindle books. Amazon controls 83 per cent of the e-book market in the US and approximately 50 per cent of print book sales, owns 91.5 per cent of the self publishing market. Net sales increased 12 per cent to $574.8 billion in 2023.

We can only see what the future holds, in both cancer care, and book banning. Marik might be seen as ‘the canary in the mine’. While I keenly await the hardcopy, I’m left wondering, whose book is next on the list?