By Robert Ryan, B.Sc.
CANCER IS INCREASING
Once quite rare, cancer is now the second major cause of death in Western countries such as Australia, the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom. In the early 1940s cancer accounted for 12% of Australian deaths. (1) By 1992 this figure had climbed to 25.9% of Australian deaths. (2) The increasing trend of cancer deaths and incidence is typical of most Western nations. It has been said that this increase in cancer is just due to the fact that people now live longer than their ancestors did, and that therefore the increase of cancer is merely due to the fact that more people are living to be older and thereby have a greater chance of contracting cancer. However, this argument is disproved by the fact that cancer is also increasing in younger age groups, as well as by the findings of numerous population studies which have linked various life-style factors of particular cultures to the particular forms of cancer that are predominant there.
THE ORTHODOX ‘WAR ON CANCER’ HAS FAILED
“My overall assessment is that the national cancer programme must be judged a qualified failure” Dr. John Bailer, who spent 20 years on the staff of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and was editor of its journal. (3) Dr. Bailer also says: “The five year survival statistics of the American Cancer Society are very misleading. They now count things that are not cancer, and, because we are able to diagnose at an earlier stage of the disease, patients falsely appear to live longer. Our whole cancer research in the past 20 years has been a total failure. More people over 30 are dying from cancer than ever before…More women with mild or benign diseases are being included in statistics and reported as being ‘cured’. When government officials point to survival figures and say they are winning the war against cancer they are using those survival rates improperly.”
A 1986 report in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed progress against cancer in the United States during the years 1950 to 1982. Despite progress against some rare forms of cancer, which account for 1 to 2 per cent of total deaths caused by the disease, the report found that the overall death rate had increased substantially since 1950: “The main conclusion we draw is that some 35 years of intense effort focussed largely on improving treatment must be judged a qualified failure.” The report further concluded that “…we are losing the war against cancer” and argued for a shift in emphasis towards prevention if there is to be substantial progress. (4)
MOST CANCER IS PREVENTABLE
According to the International Agency for Research in Cancer “…80-90 per cent of human cancer is determined environmentally and thus theoretically avoidable.” (5) Environmental causes of cancer include lifestyle factors such as smoking, a diet high in animal products and low in fresh fruit and vegetables, excessive exposure to sunlight, food additives, alcohol, workplace hazards, pollution, electromagnetic radiation, and even certain pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures. But unfortunately, as expressed by medical historian Hans Ruesch, “Despite the general recognition that 85 per cent of all cancers is caused by environmental influences, less than 10 per cent of the (U.S.) National Cancer Institute budget is given to environmental causes. And despite the recognition that the majority of environmental causes are linked to nutrition, less than one per cent of the National Cancer Institute budget is devoted to nutrition studies. And even that small amount had to be forced on the Institute by a special amendment of the National Cancer Act in 1974.” (6)
PREVENTION IS NOT PROFITABLE TO INDUSTRY
According to Dr. Robert Sharpe, “…in our culture treating disease is enormously profitable, preventing it is not. In 1985 the U.S., Western Europe and Japanese market in cancer therapies was estimated at over 3.2 billion pounds with the ‘market’ showing a steady annual rise of 10 per cent over the past five years. Preventing the disease benefits no one except the patient. Just as the drug industry thrives on the ‘pill for every ill’ mentality, so many of the leading medical charities are financially sustained by the dream of a miracle cure, just around the corner.” (7)
DESIRED: A STATE OF NO CURE
In fact, some analysts consider that the cancer industry is sustained by a policy of deliberately facing in the wrong direction. For instance, in the late 1970s, after studying the policies, activities, and assets of the major U.S. cancer institutions, the investigative reporters Robert Houston and Gary Null concluded that these institutions had become self-perpetuating organisations whose survival depended on the state of no cure. They wrote, “a solution to cancer would mean the termination of research programs, the obsolescence of skills, the end of dreams of personal glory, triumph over cancer would dry up contributions to self-perpetuating charities and cut off funding from Congress, it would mortally threaten the present clinical establishments by rendering obsolete the expensive surgical, radiological and chemotherapeutic treatments in which so much money, training and equipment is invested. Such fear, however unconscious, may result in resistance and hostility to alternative approaches in proportion as they are therapeutically promising. The new therapy must be disbelieved, denied, discouraged and disallowed at all costs, regardless of actual testing results, and preferably without any testing at all. As we shall see, this pattern has in actuality occurred repeatedly, and almost consistently.” (8) Indeed, many people around the world consider that they have been cured by therapies which were ‘blacklisted’ by the major cancer organisations.
Does this mean that ALL of the people who work in the cancer research industry are consciously part of a conspiracy to hold back a cure for cancer? Author G. Edward Griffin explains “…let’s face it, these people die from cancer like everybody else…[I]t’s obvious that these people are not consciously holding back a control for cancer. It does mean, however, that the [pharmaceutical-chemical] cartel’s medical monopoly has created a climate of bias in our educational system, in which scientific truth often is sacrificed to vested interests…[I]f the money is coming from drug companies, or indirectly from drug companies, the impetus is in the direction of drug research. That doesn’t mean somebody blew the whistle and said “hey, don’t research nutrition!” It just means that nobody is financing nutrition research. So it is a bias where scientific truth often is obscured by vested interest.” (9) This point is similarly expressed by Dr. Sydney Singer: “Researchers are like prostitutes. They work for grant money. If there is no money for the projects they are personally interested in, they go where there is money. Their incomes come directly from their grants, not from the universities. And they want to please the granting source to get more grants in the future. Their careers depend on it.” (10)
MONEY SPENT ON FRAUDULENT RESEARCH
A large portion of money donated to cancer research by the public is spent on animal research which has, since its inception, been widely condemned as a waste of time and resources. For instance, consider the 1981 Congressional Testimony by Dr. Irwin Bross, former director of Sloan-Kettering, the largest cancer research institute in the world, and then Director of Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research, Bufallo, NY: “The uselessness of most of the animal model studies is less well known. For example, the discovery of chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of human cancer is widely-heralded as a triumph due to use of animal model systems. However, here again, these exaggerated claims are coming from or are endorsed by the same people who get the federal dollars for animal research. There is little, if any, factual evidence that would support these claims. Indeed, while conflicting animal results have often delayed and hampered advances in the war on cancer, they have never produced a single substantial advance either in the prevention or treatment of human cancer. For instance, practically all of the chemotherapeutic agents which are of value in the treatment of human cancer were found in a clinical context rather than in animal studies.” (11)
In fact, many substances which cause cancer in humans are marketed as “safe” on the basis of animal tests. As expressed by Dr. Werner Hartinger of Germany, in regard to cancer-causing products of the pharmaceutical-petro-chemical industry, “Their constant consumption is legalised on the basis of misleading animal experiments …which seduce the consumer into a false sense of security.” (12)
IMAGINE WHAT COULD BE ACHIEVED
The next time you are asked to donate to a cancer organisation which promotes the cancer industry, bear in mind that your money will be used to sustain an industry which has been deemed by many eminent scientists as a qualified failure and by others, as a complete fraud. If you would like to make a difference, inform these organisations that you won’t donate to them until they change their approach to one which is focussed on prevention and study of the human condition. We have the power to change things by making their present approach unprofitable.
(1) d’Espaignet, E.T. et al., Trends in Australian Mortality 1921-1988, Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS), Canberra, 1991, p. 33
(2) Australian Bureau of Statistics, Causes of Death, Australia 1992, ABS, Canberra, 1993, p.1
(3) Dr. Bailer, speaking at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in May 1985, as quoted in Bette Overall, Animal Research Takes Lives – Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer, NZAVS, 1993, p.132
(4) Robert Sharpe, The Cruel Deception, Thorsons Publishing Group, Wellingborough, U.K. 1988, p.47
(5) Robert Sharpe, op. cit. 1988, p.47
(6) Hans Ruesch, Naked Empress – the Great Medical Fraud, CIVIS, Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland, 1992, p.77
(7) Robert Sharpe, op. cit. 1988, p.65
(8) as quoted in Hans Ruesch, op.cit. 1992, p.65-66
(9) G. Edward Griffin, The Politics of Cancer, (audio cassette) American Media, 1975 available from CAFMR $14.
(10) Sydney Singer, Medical Demystification (M.D.) Report, Vol.1 No.1 p.5., Medical Demystification Crusade, 1992, CA, U.S.A.
(11) Irwin Bross, as quoted in Robert Sharpe, op.cit., 1988 p.179
(12) Dr. Werner Hartinger, in a speech given at the 2nd International Scientific Congress of the Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experiments (D.B.A.E.), London, 24 Sept. 1992.
From the Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research website: www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr . P.O. Box 234, Lawson NSW 2783, Australia. Phone +61 (0)2-4758-6822.