I hate the days when my husband visits the oncologist. Mostly because it invariably brings a mix of good news and bad news, generally heavier on the bad news. There always seems to be some setback or other, just when you start getting comfy that things are looking up.Cancer research
I've come to the conclusion that trying to find a cure for cancer is the wrong way of going about it. The treatments are brutish, dangerous, painful and, oftentimes, not very effective. Wouldn't it be just as effective and important to spend money on researching the cause of cancers than trying to get rid of it once the cancer cells start doing their thing?
Sure, we know the cause of many cancers, but there are so many out there where we don't know much (like myeloma) and so many out there where there is an increase in occurrence (like breast cancer) that we should focus some of those energies and funds on figuring out what in our environment might be triggering these? This research is going on now, but I'm curious as to what the ratio is: prevention versus cure?
The argument that there are too many variables to understanding why someone gets cancer can be equally be applied to whether or not that same someone will respond to treatment. And, regarding treatment, there are no precision tools, only hatchets, axes and the equivalent of a corporeal nuclear bomb.
Toxic research and the FDA
However, there is one gaping hole in the cancer prevention research: and that is the fact that there is so little research going on in regards to the potential toxins in our products and their possible links to cancer that it's not even funny. The FDA is so completely castrated when it comes to the products we buy and the chemical soup they contain that for any consumer to think that we are being protected by the government and that these things are safe, well, we all have a lot of educating to do.
The more I read about the possible carcinogens in the products, foods and materials I am exposed to daily, not excluding the air I breathe and the water I drink, it angers, shocks and depresses me that the last few generations of Americans have been subject to a giant science experiment where there are no scientists monitoring the experiment.
How does the U.S. compare?
Do countries in the E.U. allow the same chemical mix that we are subjected to here in the U.S.? No. They follow a precautionary principle to protect their consumers. So, if something hasn't been tested to be safe, it's not sold. How about China? You'd think they'd be loosey goosey with chemicals based on some of the issues we've seen with lead in their products and the whole melamine deal. But, you'd be wrong - they follow E.U. standards.
Where do those toxic products get dumped? On U.S. consumers. Because we follow the principle that, if it hasn't been proven to cause a problem it must be okay. We get the useless designation of "generally regarded as safe". We just take the company's word for it.
Do you think that U.S. companies with products that include ingredients on the excluded list just don't sell to countries in the E.U.? Wrong again. They make two formulations: one "safe" version of the product for the E.U. (and China) and one "questionable" ingredients version of the product for the U.S.
Do you know why? Because if those manufacturers were to remove the "questionable" ingredients from those products for sale in the U.S., then it would appear that they would be admitting that there was something wrong with those products all along, thereby potentially opening themselves up to a lawsuit.
Do something about it
If this doesn't anger you immensely, then I don't know what to tell you. Your apathy isn't going to help prevent poisoning Americans. And cancer is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more hideous things in store if left unchecked. If you want to do something about it, watch what you buy, avoiding chemicals that are on the E.U. list (this also includes any chemical that is known or suspected to cause cancer). For personal care products, choose companies that have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics as they would be adhering to the E.U. directive.
Finally, urge your legislators to keep the suspicious crap out of our products. America lost its foothold on setting worldwide safety standards for chemicals in products years ago. But, at the very least, we can keep some dignity and protect our citizens instead of using them as a toxic waste dump.
19 Crunchy Thoughts:
Thank you, Deanna. I know this is an extremely heartfelt subject for you, as it should be for all of us. We all know probably more than one person who has or has had cancer.
You are absolutely right in that it has been done to us willfully in the name of profit.
You are also right that the FDA doesn't have the motivation to keep the multitude of poisons out of the products we consume. However, the government does want the FDA to worry about where every individual livestock and food animal in the country might be and where every apple and head of lettuce was grown. I know which I am more concerned about.
You are also right about the much worse consequences lurking in the shadows. If we keep on buying the shit that agribusiness and the industrial producers of consumer goods put in front of us, we, as a race, may find ourselves unable to perpetuate ourselves. Personally, I find that to be an acceptable consequence, but I think most people wouldn't agree with me on that.
Anyway, Deanna, I appreciate the the ongoing information presentation battle you engage in on our behalf.
Thanks Deanna, for providing good information about cancer through this blog. Breast Cancer is a cancer that develops in the breast due to uninhibited multiplication of abnormal tissue.
http://www.cancery.com
As a EU resident, I may add that I am thankful for our precaution principal BUT the USA are such an economic gigantosaur that we often get products "forced" into our market, like GMOs for example. It has been forbidden, then industrials had to clearly show if there were GMOs on the packagings, and now we've almost totally let it invade the EU :(. So please, don't let yourself be guinea pigs for ethicless industrials ! Speak up, for all USA citizens, but also for everyone else in the world, cause we often get in the end what you accepted to consume at the beginning...
Have you read The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell? There's some pretty compelling evidence in there about the role that food plays in cancer (not toxins in food--the proteins themselves in specific types of food). If this research, which was very extensive and funded by major organizations and universities, is correct, then it puts a lot of the ability to prevent cancer into the individual's hands, regardless of the things done by corporations that we have less control over. At the very least, it's an interesting read, but I think there's validity to it, and I have modified my diet accordingly.
Could you post a link to the EU list? I'd really like to have that information available.
Deanna, your passion has become very personal to me this winter, as my 75-year-old mom was diagnosed with myeloma in February. Thalidomide is working, but not so well that chemo will be unneeded. Of course, for her the horse is out of the barn, so I'm exploring food and movement therapies to help her be strong for the fight.
For my kids, though, I'm more and more determined not just to feed them well but also teach them why. It's very hard to find the path and buck pre-teen social needs (I won't buy Axe, but my boy will buy it for himself sometimes. Oh, my aching nose). My daughter refuses reusable menstrual pads. Should I sprout or soak ALL of our grains? And exactly when? And so on.
Knowledge is double edged -- there's more control, and more guilt about what we can't get to. We're on a journey with a goal, but perhaps no finish line.
My mom's next oncologist visit is tomorrow. Cross your fingers.
Anticancer, A New Way of Life, New Edition (Hardcover)
~ MD, PhD, David Servan-Schreiber
I heard this author interviewed on NPR. His work on cancer seemed rather insightful-----being a survivor himself. Perhaps this would be a helpful read for you and your family. He talks a great deal about preventative care.
The Cancer Answer (Paperback)
~ Larry Lymphocyte (Author), Albert E. Carter
Attacks cancer from a nutritional perspective. May be useful to you.
My best wishes to you and your family.
I have had these thoughts myself and I couldn't agree more. I work at a huge research institution and I see the millions and millions of dollars that are spent on researching cures and it all just seems so futile. Why invest in a band-aid when you could be investing in prevention?
I just got a book from the library called the rubber duck, all about toxins in our daily environment. I think you inspired me to start reading it today!
Deanna,
I totally agree with you, of course, and you bring so much power and conviction and personal experience and your post could not be more timely as today legislation will be introduced By Senator Lautenberg that will help us with this dilemma: reform of The Toxic Substances Control Act.
We need everyone to write their Congresspeople and get behind this!
I think it'd be very interesting to know, yet almost impossible to figure out, how much toxins play into causing cancer. Even if we weren't exposed to all that stuff there would still be plenty of cancer, of that I'm sure. As the body gets older it starts malfunctioning and not doing such a good job making cells... and sometimes the bad cells take over, and there you have cancer. (In overly simplistic terms.) This is gonna happen with or without toxins, but who knows to what extent.
On a totally different note... I just noticed last night that my face wash soap says something like "Meets EU cosmetic standards". So it is possible to avoid some of the stuff that the FDA just lets slide.
Wow, thanks for writing this. I would be too shy of people getting on my case to admit this in public, but I've thought for a long time that trying to cure cancer, or indeed, many others things, isn't as effective as PREVENTING it. My sister was diagnosed at 18 with stage 4 melanoma after a lifetime of NOT having been in the sun. Even her doctors were sort of baffled. Amazingly,10 years later, she's in remission and doing fine, it was not as bad as they had thought. But her life is changed irrevocably due to severe lymphedema. People need to wise up to the crap the FDA allows as safe.
Good stuff, Crunch. I have a slightly different take on cancer research directions; which does not mean I don't think your points are not valid; they are.
For me:
After 40 some years of the "war on cancer" - measurable progress, objectively, is miniscule, by the standards normally applied to such projects.
At this point, we have established a very real "Cancer Research Industry"; employing many thousands of people at thousands of institutions. This means each institution now had very large incentives to declare that their particular approach is succeeding, since they compete for funds. This industry provides a huge and unregulated force for non-objective processes.
If, in research, you discover after considerable effort your approach is providing no traction on the problem- what should you do? Work harder? Or start over?
In reality, it is vastly more productive to start over, completely. If your research is not providing answers to your questions-
YOU ARE ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS.
Multiple great scientists have believed that, including Einstein. In reality, truly starting over and examining the basic questions is extraordinarily difficult; and requires absolutely first-rate intellects (not in evidence).
Focusing on preventing toxins from entering our ecosystems would almost certainly be vastly more cost-effective than adding researchers.
A major problem to actually adopting that direction is that your success is extremely hard to measure, and very open to simple contradiction.
Your success is in people who do NOT get sick. Your opponents (the industries making the toxins) can and will simply state that THEIR scientists say the decrease in cases was just natural, not due to the toxin prohibition. That little tussle has no end to it.
Well, unless, of course, you could require the company to do 40 year studies where half their Board is subjected to their toxin- and half aren't.
:-)
"which does not mean I don't think your points are not valid; they are."
:-) sorry about that. A little post-prandial stupor going on here.
If you take a bunch of those negatives out, it should be made to say: your points are perfectly sound.
good post. Part of the problem, though is I am afraid the politicians are in the pockets of the manufacturera. Until the gubernment gets real, we will always have this experience I am afraid. When you get someone in there trying to change things from the status qou, the pundits call him a socialist, hitler,unamerican. Really makes my head spin
Hi Crunchy - I'm with Stephanie. I read The China Study, and changed my diet accordingly.
When it comes to Big Nasties like cancer, you just can't go past hard scientific fact. The China Study really put the nails in the coffin for me. I'm a "give me the facts, not the media hype" kind of girl ;-)
That said, a lot of cancers are also lifestyle related:
*Skin cancer - wear a hat, long sleeves, and don't sunbake
*Lung and oesophageal - don't smoke or eat pickled / salted foods, and if you have reflux, do something about it (reflux causes oesophageal cancer)
*Bowel cancer - stop eating red meat and dairy, eat lots of green veggies, go vegan if poss., as vegetarian as you can
*Breast cancer - avoid milk and dairy, keep weight down
We're learning more about cancer all the time, but it makes sense that, although we know that diet is the No.1 contributory factor, we should also avoid nasty plastics and chemicals in cosmetics and drugs etc.
It's a horrible subject. My father-in-law died last year from oesophageal cancer. If he'd known his reflux could kill him, he'd have treated it. But simple stuff like this simply isn't known in our society :-(
"Silent Spring" is a great read on this subject, too -- it brings you nose-to-nose with the way our country has historically dealt with unknown entities when there's money to be made from embracing the "free market," not public health. It's deeply unnerving, but that emotion is an important catalyst for working to improve things. When you read about how the chemical industry responded to the book, it's so unsurprising, but amazing -- the chemical industry's stance hasn't changed, nor has our government's way of dealing with these issues, in any real way. It's still "assume it's fine, cover it up if it turns out not to be, then clean it up if it blows up and becomes a huge deal." The most cherished values of our society are still abundance, affluence, progress, more, higher, better. The alternatives are seen as a step backward, shrinking, giving things up. Our priorities are deeply held, but often allll wrong, and these things change so slowly. You can hear it in the derision aimed at Europe. We left England, we wanted to be different, better, and we turn our back on European things as a point of pride, whether it hurts us or not. It's frustrating that the identity of such a young country is so hard to change!
Great post and thanks for sharing a subject that is so personal for you!
Interesting, Deanna. You're absolutely correct about the food companies and the FDA (which are virtually one and the same) care only about profits. I'd like to add that, not only do food companies not care about our health, but that they actually have a vested interest in our sickness; that's because the same major shareholders of the food giants also own the pharmaceutical companies. So, we eat, we get sick, we "need" their drugs. That last point is, I believe, key. Pharmaceutical companies do not want to cure anything. There's no money in health; but there's billions and billions in "treating" illness. I'm certain that, of the budgets for research, none goes toward prevention.
You're also right: we should read the labels on everything we eat. Eat organic whenever possible. Grow what food you can. Eat live food (enzymes are critical to health).
As far as curing cancer goes, I firmly believe we can cure anything. But, not by going to the doctor. Too many people want to pass off the responsibility for their health on someone else. We must take responsibility for our own health; in this regard, when we get sick (such as with cancer or some other chronic illness), we must look to eliminate the cause. As you've said, the cause is virtually always in our environment, and mainly from our food (if you can call what most people eat "food"). But we can remove the cause, i.e. the toxins from our bodies. Your husband should do a very intensive detox. In my opinion, many of the so-called detoxes we read about only scratch the surface (for example, a 3-day juice fast). A proper fast takes time, especially for serious and deep-rooted illnesses such as cancer. A thirty day fast is in order. No juice, just water during the fast. It will get right into the very core of every cell, providing the deep cleansing necessary. Part of the fast should include coffee enemas every day, to rid the body of the toxins as they accumulate in the colon and the liver. Also, drink lots of reverse osmosis water (or any water free from fluoride or chlorine). I have no doubt this will reverse the progression of cancer in your husband's body.
Hope this helps.
Vic
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