Cancer: disease of civilisation

Introduction

There are many conditions in Western industrialised societies today that were unheard of, or at least very rare, just a century ago. The same conditions are still unheard of in primitive peoples who do not have the 'benefits' of our knowledge. There is a very good reason for this: They eat what Nature intended; we don't. The diseases caused by our incorrect and unnatural diets are those featured on these pages.

Part 1: Introduction

Unlike the prevention of many other diseases the prevention
of cancer requires no government help, and no extra money.
DR OTTO WARBURG

Recently, Cancer Research UK placed advertisements on TV in the United Kingdom showing three young girls, one after the other, captioned 'Teacher', 'Lawyer', 'Cancer'. What they were saying was that, after 50 years and countless billions spent on research, one in three people will get cancer. Indeed they admit that after all that expense, 'Cancer is a major public health problem in the UK with over 250,000 people developing cancer each year and over 150,000 dying of the disease.'[1]
As cancer is so widespread and the subject of so much research effort, it may come as a surprise for you to learn that, despite the introduction of radiotherapy in the 1920s, of chemotherapeutic drugs after the Second World War and the advances in chemotherapeutic drugs since, the proliferation of X-ray machines, scanners, computers and the rest of our high-tech equipment, plus the advances in other branches of medicine, the sacrifice of millions of animals (and people) in research, and the spending of billions of dollars, pounds and other currencies on studies to broaden our knowledge of how cancers start and how to combat them, we really have little more idea of how to cure or treat cancer at the beginning of the twenty-first century than we did at the beginning of the twentieth; that overall chances of survival haven't really changed all that much.

It is one of the great medical myths that, because the medical profession has been so successful in curing other diseases, more people live long enough to get cancer and we need to spend more money to combat this disease. This is total nonsense! Cancer has nothing to do with our extended longevity ? our children get cancer, and other human cultures in which there is no cancer at all live as long as we do.

Cancer is a word we dread. Not so long ago the word was taboo. If you or a member of your family had cancer you kept the fact within the family. It was as if people feared that, if it were known that they had cancer, they would be socially unacceptable. Others seemed to fear that if 'cancer' were mentioned, they might get it too. But then, until comparatively recently, cancer was a comparatively rare occurrence and little understood.

Today all that has changed: over the last few decades we have all become much more aware of cancer. For today, cancer is no longer the rarity it once was; it's is a disease that affects us all.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century about one death in 50 was due to cancer. By the beginning of the twentieth that number had almost doubled to one in 27. Thirty years later it had doubled again to one in 12 and by 1960 - another 30 years - it was one in 6. Based on statistics in 1992, the American Cancer Society predicted that by the end of the twentieth century the number would be one in 2. They were not far out: As Cancer Research UK's advert shows, one in 3 people will get a cancer and that cancer will kill more than one in 4.[2]

Many books have been written about cancer and how to avoid it. They vary widely in their advice. Some have a pecuniary bias: published by a pharmaceutical or medical concern to boost sales; others report 'miraculous' cures by people who have had a remission and want to tell others how (they believe) they achieved it; and still more are by peddlers of weird and wonderful potions that have been around for so long that 'there must be something in it'. The more than 600 cancer charities in the UK soak up billions of pounds every year from people who fear cancer and hope that their charity might help them one day. It's a mirage.

In 1971, America's President Richard Nixon declared War on Cancer and promised a cure by the USA's bicentennial in 1976. Billions upon billions of dollars and other currencies have since been allocated to, and spent on, finding a cure. Without success. We're still assured that a cure may be found any day now - it all depends on how much money is raised for the research (Scientists have been making those promises, almost word for word, for a century). And so we keep raising money, more and more every year, while the numbers of our friends and family members who fall victim to this hideous disease continue to grow.

The truth is that cancer is a long way from being beaten. The vast amount of time, money and resources spent on drugs, together with innovative advances in highly sophisticated diagnostic machinery have done practically nothing to alleviate the suffering from cancer.

What is cancer?

My dictionaries, both English language and medical, agree on a definition of cancer. It is 'any malignant tumour arising from the abnormal and uncontrolled division of body cells that then invade and destroy the surrounding tissues'.

But that really doesn't tell us a lot.

The problem is that, although cancer is now so widespread throughout the world, our knowledge about it is really incomplete and the question, What is cancer? is actually quite difficult to answer.

We know that cancer has no single cause. We know that it isn't a disease you can 'catch' like flu. It is generally believed that we all have cancer cells within our bodies, probably many thousands of them but that, in the healthy body, our immune systems deal with them before they develop into tumours. For us to get cancer, then, it seems that some factor is required which suppresses our bodies' immune system leaving it in too weakened a state to resist the growth of a tumour, together with a trigger which causes a malfunction in one or more cells. It could be a stressful event, an environmental, medical, dietary or emotional crisis, a food or medication - indeed anything which lowers our body's defences and allows a small focus of cancer cells to develop to the stage where the immune system can no longer combat it.

Cancer begins when a cell divides. No matter how many birthdays you have had, very little of your body is more than about eight years old. This is because of a process of programmed cell death (apoptosis) and renewal that goes on throughout our lives. Apart from the obvious signs of parts of the body continually growing - hair and finger- and toe-nails - most body cells have a programmed life. At the end of that life they die and are replaced. When this happens, a process of cell division called mitosis makes new cells. In the process of mitosis, one cell divides to form two cells. First the DNA, the genetic blueprint in the nucleus of the cell which is in the form of a double helix, 'unzips' itself, dividing into two strands, each with half of the original genetic code. Then each of those strands reconstructs the original other half. This 'replication' process produces two identical sets of genetic information and allows the one cell to produce two genetically identical daughter cells. In this way is the body first made, grown during childhood and then, throughout adult life, repaired.

As it is in dividing cells that cancers start, it may be assumed that the parts of the body most prone to cancers are those that divide most frequently. And so it proves.

If anything should disrupt or change the genetic code when this DNA replication takes place, it can lead to mutations and, in some cases, the deregulation we call cancer. This deranged cell may be so genetically damaged that the gene that would normally bring about its death by apoptosis no longer functions. As time passes, the cell does not die but reproduces itself over and over again to crowd neighbouring cells and form a tumour. At this stage it is said to be benign. However, it may continue to grow out of control and metastasise (spread) throughout the body. It is at this stage that it changes from benign to malignant. This is the danger period for, once a tumour has metastasised, conventional medicine has very little answer for it and the prognosis is bleak.

References

[1]. From Cancer Research UK's Memorandum and Articles of Association, 2001.
[2]. Mortality statistics: cause, England and Wales, 2002. Series DH2 no.29 HMSO, London, 2003.

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4: Part5

"One must attend in medical practice not primarily to plausible theories but to experience combined with reason." Hippocrates

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Cancer: disease of civilisation

Introduction

Part 1: Introduction

What is cancer?

References

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