CANCER STORY: Success & Hard Truth

• In the past 30 years, the U.S. has poured $30 billion into finding a cure for cancer.

• 30 years, $30 billion and no cure.

• Mounting numbers of people are contracting cancer; particu­larly breast cancer.

• What’s wrong with this picture?

Reference: Alle Hall, The Stranger, May 1996. http://www.fwhc.org/health/ nocure.htm 

Nobel Laureates and High-powered Research

At a dinner talk in New York on 29 Sept. 2002, Dr. Rath said: When you open the newspaper, Time Magazine or Newsweek, USA Today, you may read this advertisements: We are there because one day cancer will be gone – Pfizer, Merck, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Aventis.

• Fifty-five thousand scientists are employed in the research laboratories of those companies.

• 32 Nobel Laureates have received Nobel Prizes on cancer research aspects.

• Millions of dollars have been spent, both private and public ones.

• Yet the epidemic is expanding. How can you explain that?

• Why have they not succeeded?

Reference: Matthias Rath, http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/NHC/cancer/ lecture/new_york_2002_09_29.htm 29 Sept. 2002 

Crashed Dream, Naïve Hope

Today, the annual budget for the National Cancer Institute is over US$4.8 billion, approximately 20-fold greater than when the War On Cancer was declared in 1971.

What we have learned from this massive investment is that the hope for a simple cure was naïve – the goal for a cure remains elusive.

The national cancer program should break from its focus on cancer treatment and do more to reduce the number of people getting cancer in the first place.

Reference:  Congressman David Obey, Foreword, Cancer-gate: how to win the losing cancer war.

We Know Too Little About What Matters

Decades of research and billions of dollars, but a cure for cancer has not been found. Why?

Cancer is an unpredictable evolutionary process and tumour cell evolution poses the main problem.

A patient can have billions of variety of different cancer cells spread throughout his or her body.

We cannot identify all cancer cells that are present in a patient.

Cancer cells constantly mutate and evolve.

This enables new cancer cells to arise that can evade therapy and cause progressive disease.

We cannot know what will evolve.

The current cancer theories and approaches are logically inconsistent with the evolutionary nature of cancer.

Reference: Arnold Glazier, http://www.lulu.com/content/276115

 Why We Will Never Cure Cancer

Dr. Bach, physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City wrote:

The Cancer Establishment trumpeted and celebrated the recent 2% annual decline in cancer mortality rates as proof that there is progress in cancer research.

I think they are celebrating the glass being 1/50th full.

Can the health-care system be able to deliver these advances to the patients who need them?

Examples: It is estimated colonoscopy alone could reduce the colon cancer death rate by 50%.

But only four in 10 people have ever gotten a colonoscopy (to detect precancerous polyps).

Even for those who do get colonoscopies, the quality is uneven.

Not all colonoscopists are good at finding the precancerous polyps.

Whether a patient actually benefits from having a colonoscopy depends on the ability of the doctor who does the examination.

Reference: Peter Bach, http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB119344360505573496.html, 27 Oct. 2007 

Fixed Mindset and Conflict of Interest

The Cancer Establishment remains fixated on damage control

screening, diagnosis, treatment … with indifference to prevention research.

This mindset is compounded by pervasive institutional and personal conflict of interest with the cancer drug industry … petrochemical and other polluting industries.

Reference: Samuel Epstein, Preface, Canger-gate: how to win the losing cancer war.

Unholy Alliance With Business Interests

Dr. Devra Davis, Director of the Centre of Environmental Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Insitute wrote:

Rather than coming up with actions to keep cancer from occurring, we are spending more money than ever to find and treat cancer.

But when it comes to ferreting out the root causes of the disease, we have limped along ineffectively. Why?

The leading figures in the war on cancer profited both from producing cancer-causing chemicals and from producing anti­cancer drugs.

Astonishing alliances between naïve or far too clever academics and folks with major economic interests in selling potentially cancerous materials have kept us from figuring out … our chances of developing cancer. 

Reference: Devra Davis, The secret history of the war on cancer.