Is the war on cancer a fraud?

Ted Kennedy's death from brain cancer has reignited the rhetoric surrounding the "War on Cancer" leading the New York Times to claim that 'As Other Death Rates Fall, Cancer's Scarcely Moves'. Only this summer another one of my colleagues was diagnosed with breast cancer and has gone through several weeks of chemotherapy as they try to get the cancer off her chest wall. She is the third woman in my department to have breast cancer. At the last university I was at, two of my colleagues had breast cancer.

I do not believe we are winning the war on cancer.

I think that the Cancer Industry is simply making money off of sick and scared people. I am more and more inclined to believe that our diet and lifestyle here in North America are playing a far greater role in why we get cancer than environmental toxins, etc. Ted Kennedy alone was well known for his weight problem, high blood pressure, etc. He was famous for his New Year's 'diet' where he would try and lose as much weight as possible through liquid fasting. I don't think I ever saw a publicity photo of him looking really healthy. These were all signs that physically he was not well. He could be any number of people that I know (myself included) who do not eat enough fruits and vegetables and whose diet is made up of refined and packaged foods devoid of any really nutritional value.

That said, I have written about Rip Esselstyn's Engine 2 diet and I have urged several of my friends and family to consider the knowledge and advice about cancer, heart disease, and diabetes that doctors like Dean Ornish, John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Neil Barnard, and of course the wealth of information in The China Study have to offer about the "War on Cancer". This information and these doctors have extensively covered the problems with modern diet and exercise habits and how these contribute to our battle with cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Dr. John McDougall's website has all the information a person could need to learn the types of foods one should eat to reverse these serious health issues and live a vibrant and healthy life. I believe this is the only way to avoid cancer.

Other resources in DVD form include Mike Anderson's Healing Cancer from the Inside Out and Eating. There are many, many people out there today who have defeated cancer without relying on treatments that have been proven statistically ineffective. I always think of Dr. Ruth Heidrich who is alive and thriving 30 years after her breast cancer diagnosis. She studied the statistics and found that chemo and radiation did not prolong the life of breast cancer patients so she had a full mastectomy and began following a lowfat plant-based diet and has lived to tell the tale. Some people might say, "Well ONE survivor is not statistically significant!" and they would be right. But the problem is that there are so few people who are even told that they might have a better chance of surviving cancer without treatment than with it! Even fewer are told that a lowfat plant-based diet could save their lives. It is sad to say that statistics show that chemotherapy and radiation treatments do not cure breast cancer but it is worse, and in my mind criminally negligent, to advise treatment you know won't work and can damage the immune system to the point that the patient dies of the common cold while in treatment. Moreover, given the current American health crisis, I do not understand why billions of dollars are allowed to go into research on drugs that have no proven effectiveness, all the while common-sense advice such as avoiding animal products and exercising each day could save many, many more lives at a fraction of the cost.

But, as I have said before: there's no money in broccoli. :-) And profit is what drives American health care so anything that is already growing in the ground for free (and therefore cannot be patented) is not interesting to the cancer industry. And profit is what has driven our health care in this country and continues to drive desperate and ill patients to willing undergo treatments that don't work while being deprived of accurate information.

For myself, I have been working my way towards a lowfat plant-based diet in order to avoid these diseases. It is not as easy a transition in some ways because of the culture we live in, but after seeing five women I know become bald in one month and still remain sick with cancer years later, I don't want to go through that.