Andreas (Andy) Porse, Ph.D.
Molecular biologist, research scientist, and colorectal cancer patient. Oxford.
About
I am a molecular biologist. I work as a research scientist and teach medical students, which trained me to read a clinical trial and to spot one that does not hold up. None of it prepared me for being the patient.
I was diagnosed with rectal cancer in my late thirties, a disease I had filed away as an older person’s problem. Surgery came first, then CAPOX chemotherapy. Somewhere between the two, I did the only thing I know how to do when I do not understand something: I started reading.
What I found was a gap. There is a great deal of good science on what helps alongside standard treatment, and almost none of it reaches the person sitting in the chair. What reaches them instead is marketing, anecdote, and the confident nonsense that collects around any frightening diagnosis. Months and more than 360 studies later, I had written the book I wanted on day one.
I am not a physician, and nothing here is medical advice. I am a scientist who reads the literature and a patient who has to act on it, and this site is what that looks like written down.
The rules I hold this site to
Complementary, never alternative. Everything here runs alongside standard treatment. Patients who choose alternative medicine instead of it die sooner, and in colorectal cancer specifically the death rate is several times higher. Nothing on this site asks you to skip a single dose.
The weak evidence gets labelled weak. Every recommendation carries a grade for evidence quality, effect size and safety. Plenty of things in the book score badly, and they are in there precisely so you can see why they are not worth your money.
No miracle cures, ever. No single supplement will save you, and anything promising otherwise should be distrusted on sight. The case this book makes is that many small, safe, evidence-based gains compound into something worth having.
Nothing is hidden behind a price. The digital book is pay what you want, including zero. Someone facing this diagnosis should not be priced out of the evidence.
I tell you when it is my own work. One chapter cites a computational screen I ran myself. It is flagged in the text as a hypothesis rather than a result, because that is what it is.
What is on this site
The book. Thirty-one chapters on what the evidence supports alongside standard colorectal cancer treatment, from the biology through to a day-by-day chemotherapy protocol.
Research updates. New colorectal cancer papers, screened and written up in plain language, so the book does not go stale between editions.
Keep up with the research
New colorectal cancer research, screened and explained in plain language, sent when there is something genuinely worth reading. Roughly monthly, never more than that.
One email when there is something worth reading, usually monthly. No advertising, no selling your address, unsubscribe in one click.