The real war on cancer (maybe)

The South African media seems to have blissfully ignored one of the most important health stories of the decade — last week’s report by President Obama’s Cancer Panel (PCP) which, finally, has turned the tables on the entire cancer industry from within.

While the PCP report focuses on the cancer epidemic in the US — everything in it is of relevance to us and humanity at large: finally they admit we are being systematically poisoned to death by carcinogenic chemicals and industrial radiation.

This may come as no surprise to those of you who follow the natural health paradigm — but it represents a profound shift for the orthodox medical fraternity.

The message from the PCP to President Obama (and leaders everywhere) is loud and clear: if we hope to reduce cancer rates, we must eliminate cancer-causing chemicals in foods, medicines, personal care products and our work and home environments.

“The panel urges you (Pres Obama) most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water and air that needlessly increase healthcare costs, cripple our nation’s productivity and devastate American lives,” said the PCP.

Of course the American Cancer Association and the chemical industry have waded into the PCP report; they have been in deliberate denial about the causes of cancer for decades. For them cancer is in the genes or just bad luck in the roulette of life, and they keep on spewing out — and defending — the toxic nightmare across the planet.

The PCP report points out that Americans (as well as the rest of us who live in big cities) are daily exposed to about 80 000 industrial and agricultural chemicals (and dozens more new ones each year) yet only a few hundred of them have ever been safety tested.

Many of these chemicals are known or suspected carcinogens or endocrine-disruptors. They are in the foods we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe; they are in our shampoos and mascaras, our furniture, baby bottles and our cars; they are everywhere.

Many are totally unregulated and where there is enforcement, it is weak. In virtually all cases, says the PCP, safety regulations fail to take multiple exposures and exposure interactions into account. Nor, might I add, do they take into account the “synergistic” effects of all these toxins.

The PCP says we are also poisoning the unborn: numerous environmental contaminants can cross the placental barrier and, to a disturbing extent, babies are being born “pre-polluted”.

The PCP report is groundbreaking because the panel comes from the heartland of orthodox medicine in the US, not the fringe of homeopaths and natural healers who have (correctly) been blaming cancer on industrial pollution for over a century.

So, finally, it seems, the orthodox medical community is being dragged (albeit kicking) into the 21st century and that the war on cancer will now focus on what’s really important: not the pharmaceutical “cures” but the causes. And we don’t have to look far for the culprits.

Having watched my father die a sordid death by cancer some months ago, and having witnessed how the orthodox medical system profited so handsomely from his terror with drugs and deceit, this report offers a glimmer of hope for the future — it has placed the spotlight firmly on preventative health and healthy lifestyles, and away from the sickening pharma paradigm that has dominated and harmed the cancer discourse for so long.