The Cancer War and A New Direction

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 bur 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.

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.

No one has a simple answer. Some sources blame the growing chemical contaminants and additives in our foods. Others blame the increasing contaminants and industrial waste showing up in our drinking water. Still others point to the polluted air which many of us breathe. All of these situations do seem to be getting worse, with a horde of both initiators and promoters being released into our environment. Our diet of generally highly processed, fat-filled and sugar-laden, nutrient-depleted foods has also been implicated. Others point the finger at our low fiber and high fat consumption in America. I believe all of these are involved in one degree or another in our current cancer increase.

In the history of warfare it has always been an axiom that if you are losing the battle, change tactics! Consider this statement from Dr. John C. Bailor of the Harvard School of Public Health aptly says, “The main conclusion we draw is that some 35 years of intensive effort focused largely on improving treatment must be judged a qualified failure. The reasons for this failure need to be carefully assessed, but in the meanwhile it may be that our approach to cancer needs to be changed. The most promising areas are in cancer prevention.”

The real key to winning the war on cancer is not better treatment as we have attempted for so long but better prevention. Look at it this way. If smoking is responsible for 83 percent of lung cancer, and what we eat or do not eat is responsible 50 percent of all cancer, doesn’t it make sense that if we all stopped smoking and paid close attention to our nutrition, we could

reduce our chance of cancer by at least 50 percent! The goal of this book is to give you solid nutrition information, so you can try to attain that very possible 50 percent reduction.

THE NEW BATTLE PLAN

There are literally hundreds of valid studies from allover the world proving the power of diet modification and proper food supplements on cancer prevention! The victory potential is that by manipulating our diets, we can reduce our risk of a number of forms of cancer. Evidence continues to pour in daily concerning the success of dietary modification and the reduction of cancer risks. The American Institute of Cancer Research aptly reports. “A growing body of scientific evidence clearly shows that most cancers can be prevented not through medical breakthrough but simply the way we live.”

The war against cancer is a winnable war. We just need to change tactics from seeking the “magic bullet” cure to aggressively pursuing prevention. Always remember, in any disease, prevention is better than a cure.

We do not know the exact mechanism of these nutrients, but for that matter we do not know the exact mechanism of most drugs, even aspirin. It’s certainly interesting to learn the exact nature of diseases and the exact mechanism of prevention or cure. Unfortunately, we cannot risk the time to wait 20 or more years; we need to act now! If valid evidence shows something is relatively harmless and it works, use it now and then later find out how and why it worked.