Imagine declaring war on an enemy you know very little about. This could result in a bad situation and it did. On January 22, 1971, President Richard Nixon declared total war on cancer. Many predicted a very swift victory. If we could put a man on the moon, surely with all our knowledge and technology we could whip cancer.
In the quarter of a century since Nixon engaged America in the battle with cancer, the National Cancer Institute has spent over $29 billion with little results. Many critics call this a “medical Vietnam.” USA TODAY in July 2002 reported that more than 1.3 million Americans will discover they have cancer. By the year 2050, if the trend remains the same, 2.6 million will be diagnosed with the disease. If this trend continues, cancer will overtake heart disease as the number one killer of Americans.
According to the Malaysian Ministry of Health, “In the year 2000, there were 40,244 admissions for cancer into government hospitals, up 54% from the 26,142 admissions 10 years ago in 1991. The number of deaths due to cancer in our hospitals had also gone up 29% from 2,196 deaths in 1991 to 2,832 deaths in 2000.” (The SUN, Tuesday, 1st October, 2002)
There is good news and bad news. The good news is that the death rate has actually decreased in the last year. This is attributed to a 50 percent drop in smoking by men, to being aware of sun damage, to early detection and to treatment. But this drop in death rates is just a pause. Here is the bad news. The incidence of new cancers is still on the increase. This means death rates will once again go up as those with the new cancers begin to die.
THE TOP TEN CANCER KILLERS
In all but a very few instances, the number of deaths from cancer have risen markedly since 1971. In addition, the incidence is also on increase.
| Men | Women | ||||
| 1971 | 1996 | 1971 | 1996 | ||
| 1. Lung | 54,931 | 94,400 | 1. Lung | 13,686 | 64,300 |
| 2. Prostate | 17,772 | 41,400 | 2. Breast | 29,969 | 44,300 |
| 3. Colon/rectum | 22,410 | 27,400 | 3. Colon/rectum | 23,924 | 27,500 |
| 4. Pancreas | 9,967 | 13,600 | 4. Ovary | 9,978 | 14,800 |
| 5. Lymphoma | 7,577 | 13,250 | 5. Pancreas | 7,945 | 14,200 |
| 6. Leukemia | 8,206 | 11,600 | 6. Lymphoma | 6,016 | 11,560 |
| 7. Esophagus | 4,599 | 8,500 | 7. Uterus | 12,216 | 10,900 |
| 8. Liver | 4,711 | 8,400 | 8. Leukemia | 6,263 | 9,400 |
| 9. Stomach | 9,421 | 8,300 | 9. Liver | 7,945 | 6,800 |
| 10. Bladder | 6,075 | 7,800 | 10. Brain | 3,518 | 6,100 |
Better detection and aging cannot adequately explain the phenomenal increase in cancers since 1971. It’s obvious that this increase is better explained by changes in exposure to various cancer-causing substances and lack of intake of cancer-preventing nutrition.
Japanese women have a totally different diet than do American women. If we had their breast cancer death rate, only 11,000 women would have died from breast cancer instead of the astounding 46,000. Is it genetics? When Japanese women move to America and assume our diets, they quickly attain the same breast cancer death rates as American women.
These data, taken alone, provide absolutely no evidence that some 35 years of intensive effort and billions of dollars aimed at attempting to improve the treatment of cancer have had much overall effect on the most fundamental measure of clinical outcome… death. Actually, with respect to cancer as a whole, we have slowly but surely lost ground in the battle. This is shown by the rise in age-adjusted mortality rates in the entire population.
Extracted From “Cancer” Dr. Bruce Miller
