[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 18, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10873-S10874]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              THE IMPORTANCE OF DIET IN CANCER PREVENTION

 Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, very few cancer researchers have 
stressed the importance of diet in the prevention of cancer. Dr. Daniel 
Nixon of Charleston, SC is a pioneer in this field. I ask that there be 
printed in the Record an article from the Post and Courier profiling 
Dr. Nixon's professional accomplishments in preventative medicine.
  The article follows:

            Daniel Nixon--He Fights Cancer with Strawberries

                           (By Dottie Ashley)

       Some people dream of having a lavish home in the Bahamas or 
     owning a private jet.
       Dr. Daniel Nixon dreams of a super strawberry springing 
     from the soil in South Carolina.
       If Nixon's dream comes true, the results could prolong the 
     lives of thousands of cancer patients so that they, too, may 
     dream once more.
       ``South Carolina is a perfect place for cancer research 
     because here we have both tumors of affluence and tumors of 
     poverty, a large population of the very rich and of the very 
     poor,'' say Nixon.
       In the war against cancer, Nixon, associate director for 
     Cancer Prevention and Control of the Hollings Cancer Center 
     at the Medical University of South Carolina, is in charge of 
     special weapons and tactics.
       As the Folk Professor of Experimental Oncology at MUSC, 
     Nixon has mounted his attack on cancer with an arsenal of 
     cancer-preventing compounds that block the formation of 
     cancer cells.


                         volunteers are tested

       A former associate director for the Cancer Prevention 
     Research Program of the National Cancer Institute, Nixon has 
     formed a networking arrangement between MUSC and other state 
     agencies.
       To conduct his research, which is funded largely by grants 
     from the Washington State Raspberry Commission, Nixon has 
     called on the services of the General Clinical Research 
     Center at MUSC to monitor the concentrations of ellagic acid 
     in the blood and urine of 12 healthy volunteers who are fed 
     bowls of raspberries.
       His research has been recognized by the Society for 
     Nutritional Oncology Adjuvant Therapy, and Nixon will receive 
     the Green Ribbon Award at a ceremony Sept. 18 in 
     Philadelphia. The award is given by the society to recognize 
     outstanding clinical research contributions to nutritional 
     oncology in the areas of prevention, supportive nutrition and 
     adjunctive therapy.
       Nixon has seen both sides of the cancer-treatment coin.
       ``For 13 years, I administered chemotherapy to cancer 
     patients, and finally I had to convince myself that we were 
     not going to get rid of cancer by treatment only, that we had 
     to have prevention as well,'' says Nixon, who also is the 
     former head of medical oncology at Emory University's Winship 
     Oncology clinic.


                          TREATED MISS LILLIAN

       At Emory, Nixon was oncologist for Lillian Carter, mother 
     of President Jimmy Carter.
       ``Dan Nixon is the most dedicated doctor I know. No matter 
     how bad the news may be, he exudes hope,'' says Carter's 
     sister-in-law, Sybil Carter, reached at her home in Plains, 
     Ga. ``He's Jimmy Carter's favorite physician.''
       Nixon recalls, ``Miss Lillian was wonderful. She gave me a 
     baseball that Fernando Valenzuela had signed and I still have 
     it.''
       Prevention research is designed not only for those who do 
     not have cancer, but also for those who have received, or are 
     receiving treatment for cancer. Nixon believes that where 
     cancer cells are already growing, in many cases, they may 
     retreat when bombarded with raspberries and strawberries--
     more specifically, ellagic acid.
       Raspberries and strawberries are extremely high in ellagic 
     acid, a nutrient Nixon believes will prevent both the 
     formation and advance of certain cancers, even in

[[Page S10874]]

     people considered to be at high risk for the disease.
       ``Ellagic acid is an effective cancer prevention agent in 
     animals. It stops the development of several types of cancer 
     tumors, and there's reason to believe it can do the same for 
     humans,'' says Nixon.
       His research efforts include gathering information linking 
     the connection between diet and cancer in the body by using a 
     whole-body calorimeter, a $80,000 machine that he had brought 
     to MUSC which monitors fluctuations in whole-body temperature 
     over a 90 to 120-minute period.


                           MEASURES HEAT LOSS

       ``This is the newest calorimeter in the United States. The 
     calorimeter measures heat loss, which is calories expended. 
     If a person is obese, he is calorically thrifty and suffers a 
     greater cancer risk. The calorimeter helps us determine why 
     that is.''
       Still retaining his soft-spoken Southern accent, despite 
     time spent at Harvard and in Washington, D.C., Nixon has a 
     calm demeanor that's reassuring to patients.
       ``The most important thing is to really take time and 
     listen to your patients,'' he says. ``They help you make the 
     diagnosis and teach you so much about cancer treatment.''
       Born in Brunswick, Nixon moved with his family to Ware 
     County and later to Bacon County, Ga., when his father, who 
     was a forester, took a job in the Okefenokee Swamp.
       After enrolling at the University of Georgia, Nixon double-
     majored in chemistry and zoology and went on to attend the 
     Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.
       He did his internship in Augusta, then served as a Clinical 
     Fellow in Medicine (Oncology) at Massachusetts General 
     Hospital and as a Research Fellow in The Huntington 
     Laboratories at Harvard Medical School.
       In spite of his gentle manner, Nixon is all business.
       ``I want people to realize that this work we are doing in 
     science, not home economics,'' he says, as he points out that 
     at work in his experiments are thousands of phytochemicals 
     which have been manufactured by plants to protect themselves 
     against insects and other predators.


                         fruits and vegetables

       ``These are not the usual vitamins and minerals that we are 
     studying. We've known that fruits and vegetables are good for 
     us. Now we want to know why.''
       As Nixon has investigated the connection between cancer and 
     diet over the years, he has concluded that often the feeding 
     of a normal American high-fat diet to a cancer patient may 
     actually feed the tumor and encourage its growth.
       ``When I did a metabolic balance study, I found the cancer 
     patients gained fat weight, not lean weight,'' he says. 
     ``People must learn to view eating food such as high-fiber 
     cereal as the same as taking a drug to battle cancer. We need 
     to learn how to feed our cancer patients without feeding 
     their cancers.''
       For the past year, Nixon has worked in collaboration with 
     scientific investigators at Clemson University who test the 
     ellagic acid-laden blood which he sends them to find out what 
     it does to tumor cells.
       ``We've found that the ellagic acid is readily absorbed and 
     a lot of it gets into the blood stream. This is an effective 
     delivery system to cells throughout the body.
       ``In animals it seems to protect genes against carcinogens, 
     maybe even against tobacco carcinogens. Diets heavy in fats 
     are the worst, as it appears that cancer thrives on fat 
     calories.''
       He advises limiting fat intake to 20 to 25 percent of the 
     total calories consumed daily.


                           women's nutrition

       Nixon's work with cancer prevention ranges from Emory's 
     Winship clinic for Neoplastic Disease to working with the 
     National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., where he 
     participated in a National Health Institute-funded Women's 
     Intervention Nutrition Study designed to determine if reduced 
     caloric intake contributes to a more favorable outcome in 
     cancer therapy and reducing the chance of relapse.
       After living in Bethesda for 2\1/2\ years, the Nixons 
     returned to Atlanta, where Nixon served as vice president for 
     cancer detection and treatment for the American Cancer 
     Society.
       In 1994, Nixon was asked to come to MUSC. He is 
     enthusiastic concerning the support he has received from MUSC 
     president Dr. James B. Edwards and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings.
       ``They have been wonderful about getting things going here 
     in cancer prevention. For the past two years, we have been 
     putting together a statewide network involving Clemson, the 
     USC School of Public Health, oncologists in Spartanburg and 
     Greenville as well as the S.C. Primary Research Consortium, 
     based here at MUSC.
       ``We are working with a grant from the Centers for Disease 
     Control which is funding volunteers in intervention control 
     groups. People can be subjects in the groups or they can be 
     counselors, whom we will train, to work with the cancer 
     patients.
       ``We now know that about 70 percent of malignancies are 
     either caused by tobacco or are in some way related to what 
     we eat.
       ``If we can get rid of 70 percent of cancer, then we can 
     turn our time and money to heart disease, diabetes, 
     osteoporosis and toward antiaging research. There's no reason 
     that humans can't live to be 120 years old.''


                              weight loss

       One of the cancer patients who volunteered in a clinical 
     trial is Clare Howard, 64, who was the first patient to have 
     her metabolic activity measured in the calorimeter.
       Required to keep a record of what she has eaten each day, 
     she has lost 26 pounds in the past year.
       ``I'm glad to take part in these cancer trials,'' she says. 
     ``And most of all, it's been wonderful to work with a doctor 
     who is as compassionate as Dr. Nixon. I feel like he really 
     cares.''
       Nixon's work is greatly admired by Dr. David Gangemi, 
     director of Greenville Hospital System/Clemson University 
     Biomedical Cooperative. ``Dr. Nixon is a true star in the 
     field of cancer prevention. And, going beyond that, this 
     cooperation between Clemson and MUSC could change the economy 
     of this state. If we are able to develop a strawberry with 
     even more ellagic acid, then some farmers who grow tobacco 
     could simply switch to strawberries.
       ``Also, this national grant we have will bring preventive 
     medicine to the forefront, and this is greatly needed because 
     there are some people in the medical community, such as some 
     surgeons, who don't fully appreciate the preventive approach 
     to cancer.''
       Dr. Dwight Camper of Clemson's Plant Pathology and 
     Physiology Department, says of the MUSC partnership, ``We are 
     elated because this project gives us an opportunity to team 
     the plant scientists with the medical professionals--the 
     first time this has been done in South Carolina.


                         naval reserve captain

       Nixon doesn't restrict his research to institutions of 
     higher learning. About six years ago, Nixon, who holds the 
     rank of captain in the Naval Reserve, worked with the Navy on 
     a nutrition experiment that involved two destroyers which 
     spent six months at sea.
       ``We worked with the chef on one of the destroyers to 
     prepare food that followed the National Cancer Institute 
     Dietary Guidelines and on the other ship they served regular 
     Navy food,'' says Nixon.
       ``On the ship using the Dietary Guidelines, those who were 
     obese lost weight. Also, the sailors seemed to like this food 
     better,'' says Nixon.
       Also, he has established a relationship with Johnson & 
     Wales University to train future chefs to cook high-fiber, 
     low-fat dishes.
       ``I tell them that chefs are the pharmacists of the 
     future,'' says Nixon. ``And I truly believe that.
       ``This year we have started to go into the schools systems 
     to teach nutrition and we've opened a teaching center on St. 
     Helena Island at the Beaufort-Jasper Comprehensive Health 
     Agency clinic, near the Penn Center. There, we have teaching 
     kitchens to demonstrate good nutrition because lots of 
     diabetes and cancer can be found among the people there.''
       People can, in fact, alter their taste buds, Nixon says. 
     ``I grew up eating traditional, good Southern food, like 
     fried chicken and vegetables cooked with fat. But I no longer 
     enjoy fatty foods. Now, with all the no-fat and low-fat foods 
     on the market, you don't really have to sacrifice 
     enjoyment.''
       And to experience an impromptu dinner with the Nixons, 
     indeed is proof.
       It's a rainy summer evening and Nixon and his wife, Gayle, 
     who is a cardiology research nurse, are in the middle of 
     packing up their Sullivan's Island home to move into town for 
     several months, while their new home is being built.
       ``We are donating this house to the United Methodist Relief 
     Center, which is part of the Hibben Street United Methodist 
     Church in Mount Pleasant,'' explains Mrs. Nixon, who points 
     out after the house is moved, they plan to build their new 
     home on the beachfront site.
       For dinner, Mrs. Nixon serves boiled shrimp, along with 
     carrots, grapes, blueberries, nonfat potato chips, as well as 
     iced tea.
       A careful shopper, she was glad when the National Labeling 
     Education Act was implemented in 1993.
       ``When the amount of fat a food contains is listed on the 
     bottle or box, they you know for sure whether you want to buy 
     it,'' she says.
       The Nixons met when she was a nurse in training at the 
     Medical College of Georgia and he was in medical school.
       ``Gayle kind of pushed me into getting interested in 
     nutrition,'' says Nixon. ``She was also very interested in 
     public health work and in the way that the food in people's 
     diets had an impact on their well being.''
       This shared interest led to their book ``The Cancer 
     Recovery Eating Plan: The Right Foods to Help Fuel Your 
     Recovery,'' published by Random House in 1994 and released in 
     paperback last spring.
       The Nixons say they don't miss the bustle of Atlanta.
       ``I was the `stadium doc' at the home Atlanta Braves games, 
     which meant if somebody got hit in the head with a foul ball 
     that I would go and put an ice pack on it,'' Nixon says. 
     ``That was fun, but I don't really miss Atlanta at all.''
       Nixon feels he has found his dream job.
       ``Now I can really talk to patients; whereas, when I was 
     doing chemotherapy, sometimes I would have as many as 60 
     patients a day, and I really had no time to talk.''
     
                               ____________________