Is cancer really necessary?

When I was younger, death from cancer was an uncommon event.

We didn’t have vitamins, drugs were quite primitive, diets were not particularly well balanced or nutritious, and we used cleaning solutions, cosmetics and soaps that contained whatever manufacturers cared to use.

In our brave new world, we have vitamins and prescription drugs galore, recommended guidelines for diets and a vast structure of federal agencies to protect us from harmful foods and drugs. However, cancer has become a major threat to be reckoned with.
Approximately one in three people in the US will contract cancer during their lifetime, if the figures I have been reading are correct. The CDC maintains a website which show the incidence of cancer by age, sex, race and geography. You can dig around in there for hours and draw your own conclusions. I came up with 30,287 out of 100,000 for all ages and sexes.

All I know is that too many of my friends and loved ones are threatened with this implacable enemy of survival.

When I look to see what has changed in my lifetime, I see the presence of thousands of new chemicals in everyday articles and additives in our foods and general environment.

There are so many additives now in our toothpaste, soaps, cosmetics, laundry detergents, pet foods, etc. that it seems more than carelessness for agencies like the FDA to mount heavy attacks on supplements instead of stepping up testing of DEA, a widely used ingredient of toxicological concern.

On the other hand, supplement sales probably cut heavily into sales of pharmacuticals. Could it be that the drug company grants paid to high level FDA staffers are affecting their judgement?

Additives allow foods to remain apparently wholesome longer. They provide all sorts of desirable qualities to the soaps and shampoos we use. They make things looks better and they cover up undesirable smells. Additives are a huge business, probably larger than the tobacco business. Unfortunately, too many additives like Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, and DEA are not very good for the body.

I’m sure no additive manufacturer wants to poison people, but I would bet that they operate on a don’t ask, don’t tell basis when it comes to long term effects of substances like DEA on the human body. If the FDA doesn’t tell them to stop, how can they justify dropping a profitable product like DEA to their stockholders?

I don’t think the solution will come from medicine. The doctors I have met are highly motivated individuals who care for their patients, but they are focused on drugs and operations as a remedy for diseases like cancer. Nutrition is a secondary concern.

I think the solution is to remove more toxic substances from our individual environments. There are practitioners who espouse this course of action, but they are a small minority at present and their voices are drowned out by industry lobbyists.

Watching the incidence of cancer grow from an occasional event to a one in three certainty in my lifetime makes me feel like I’m out on the tracks watching an oncoming train.

Surely there must be somebody else adding up the inconsistencies in the current approaches. It sounds like no one has done a root cause analysis, or they didn’t like what they found.

In any event, it will get worse unless some one starts thinking outside the box. Perhaps we should discard the box entirely and do some correlation between the introduction of new chemicals to the environment and changes to the incidence of cancer. We may have to roll back the clock in some areas and eliminate some harmful inventions.

What do you think?