|
Background
of Cancer Treatments
I am sure that you will be surprised to learn
that in 1921 there were only approximately 5,000 deaths
recorded in the United States from all types of cancers; and
that was about 3 % greater than those reported in 1900.
Granted, since then the reporting and recording techniques
have greatly improved. In our present day society cancer
deaths account for about 23 % the total population or about
575,000 per year. Improvement in reporting technology or not
the increase is staggering to the imagination.
This is especially true, since we as a nation have declared
war on cancer in the early 1970's.
Since this nation declared war on cancer we
have dedicated over 35 billion dollars toward that effort. We
have spent, collectively, in excess of 1.5 trillion dollars
for the treatment of cancers. With all this money and effort
considered we haven't even progressed from the batter's
position. We have had only a modicum of success. That is we
have developed theories which postulate causes and suggest
directions in which we should look for the solutions.
We have
only scantly scratched the surface of success. More
specifically, we have defined the treatment for only the rare
and obscure forms of cancers such as hairy cell leukemia, male
testicular cancers, and some acute forms of blood borne
cancers in children only. Although not to make light of these
trivial but meager successes their importance and
statistically significant to the overall picture, I can
certainly conclude that they are not justified by the debt
service investment.
In the late 1980's Harvard professor John
Bailar, an epidemiologist, concluded from exhaustive reviews
of the literature that this nation has lost the war on cancer.
This of course was heatedly disputed by the pendants of profit
who represent most of the Universities and Non-profit
organizations, such as the Mayo (Is that short for
mayonnaise--a commercial product suggested to be
bad for your health?) Clinic and the American Cancer Society.
All thing being equal even our liberally slanted government
agencies supported the assertions of John Bailar. In fact the
GAO (United States General Accounting Office) report of March
1987, when closely dissected indicates that only superficial
advancements have been recognized in the treatment of patients
with cancer; they do suggest a mean increase in overall
survival time but evade the discussion of the quality of the
patient life during this extended survival period.
I might add that most other retrospective
conclusions do not even agree with the GAO's assumptions. Most
conclude that there has been little, if any, improvement in
the overall care and treatment of cancer patients in this
country from the beginning of the 20th century. If you make
statistical comparisons you can only conclude that we have at
best held our own with most types of cancers except lung and
breast cancers, where the overall success has worsened.
Conventional medicine persist in approaching
the treatment of cancer as if were some type of foreign body
which must be somehow cut from the body. Hence the standard
medical approach of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation (cut,
poison, and burn). It is this flawed theses that has resulted
in our "war on cancer" failure. Alternative,
nutritional, unorthodox, or functional health care has viewed
cancer from a different prospective. We make the assumption
that cancer is a systemic disease. A disease process that
involves the entire body and its unique biochemical functions.
We, unlike the allopathic (accepted by most as traditional
medicine), approach the treatment of cancer from a
multifactorial aspect. We attempt to correct the underlying
metabolic deficiency. That may, of course, consist of diet,
nutritional, or mental defects. No one abnormality fits every
situation or disorder.
Most of us, even the NCI (National Cancer
Institute), have concluded that most cancers are the result of
our diets, habits, and environmental conditions. In effect,
you might call cancer a disease of neglect. It could also be
called a disease failure; that is the failure of our bodies to
handle the multiplicity of insults we challenge it with daily.
If we, as a nation, are to cure cancer we must
stop fighting each other to further perpetuate our egotistical
and profitable interest. We must learn to work toward common
goals of solutions and successes. Goals that would insure that
each and everyone of us will have at our disposal an effective
and cheap solution to the prevention and treatment of the
degenerative process of cancer.
These adventurous goals can certainly be met
simply by allowing all forms of prevention and treatment to be
made available to general public and to the afflicted. We, of
the bastions of health care giving, must open our minds and
stop being the lackeys of the vested profiteers. We must begin
to simply say no! We must return to the basic traditions of
the healers! We must return to being the teachers of health
and not the drones of medicine!
We must end this needless carnage of those who
seek to destroy themselves by neglect and self abuse, which is
the primary cause of cancer.
|
