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According to the most recent issue (2010) of the Cancer Statistic Report published in American Cancer Society's bimonthly publication CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, cancer is a leading cause of death among the US population, second only to heart disease (which I am currently reading about and hope to write about soon.) The 2008 issue of this annual report informs us, that in 2005 alone, the total number of deaths in the U.S. due to cancer was upwards of 559,000 people.
This number increased to over 562,000 in 2007, as reported in this year's report, which is more than 10,000 deaths a week. To put it in proper perspective, that is over three times more than the number of deaths that resulted from the September 11 attacks. The numbers are not going down either. In the same report (Cancer Statistics 2010) we read the following:
This number increased to over 562,000 in 2007, as reported in this year's report, which is more than 10,000 deaths a week. To put it in proper perspective, that is over three times more than the number of deaths that resulted from the September 11 attacks. The numbers are not going down either. In the same report (Cancer Statistics 2010) we read the following:
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There is an army of people working in what Ralph W. Moss would call Cancer Industry. In an earlier post, I wrote a little bit and provided some references about the politics of cancer and some prominent scientists, researchers and reporters who have argued about the facade officially known as the "War on Cancer," including Professor Devra Davis of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois, Chicago, author of several books on cancer, including Cancer-Gate, and recipient of the 1998 Right Livelihood Award in 1998. In a 2000 proposal authored by Dr. Epstein, entitled "Legislative Proposals for Reversing the Cancer Epidemic and Controlling Run-away Industrial Technologies" and published in International Journal of Health Services, we read the following:
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| Link to the Full Article |
The Wikipedia entry on Epidemiology of Cancer cites reports indicating that cancer is responsible for about 25% of all deaths in the United States, and that it is a major public health problem in many parts of the world.
In a witty article entitled "Making the World Safe for Cancer", health writer Alison Rose Levy points to a recent (2009) report by President's Cancer Panel (an Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health) and then lists a number of ways in which the so-called "War on Cancer" has been a major SUCCESS. That is, if the intention were to make world safe for cancer. Here is how the article starts off, just to whet your appetite:
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| See the Full Article Here |
Interestingly, the most recent (2010) version of the annual report by the President's Cancer Panel seems to have taken things more seriously as a reported in Washington Post and elsewhere. The report indicated that "the true burden of environmentally induced cancers has been grossly underestimated" and strongly urged action to reduce people's widespread exposure to carcinogens. The panel advised President Obama "to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase health care costs, cripple our nation's productivity, and devastate American lives."
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Highly encouraging and commendable. Yet, I would be curious to know where would the financial backing, political will and support come from to guarantee these recommendations are going to be carried through? The only "special-interest" group who would benefit from carrying through the recommendations of the President's Cancer Panel is the public, who is masterfully kept in the dark by a network of experts, strategists, media spin doctors, and Reality TV, by what some may call entertainment to death (in the true sense of the word;-), journalist Chris Hedges calls Celebrity Culture, and political scientist Michael Parenti calls Make-Believe Media.
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The current collective consciousness of the masses seems no match to pose any significant challenge for the moneyed interest and the creativity it can buy and pay for! The amazing proliferation resulting from information super-highway and web-technologies do not seem to offer much help either, as explained by Noam Chomsky during his talk at Google, though the potential may be there. As amazing as it is to be able to hop on the keyboard and do a search, and spend countless hours rambling around the various web-sites, blogs, and with the advent of personal gadgetry and mobile technology, it seems to me that we are more often than not getting dumber and dumber, with each turn of the creative wheel, an inadequate education system that cares more about our grades than our critical thinking skills, understanding and creativity, and what Steve Roberts author of a wonderful little book of essays calls "our cultural addiction to blame, intolerance, and denial." Interestingly enough, Steve suggests that "Everything is a Gift", including cancer! He might be right!
Many factors, including a highly trained and effective Public Relations industry (profiled and exposed here and here), a deficient education system, the lack of public financing for political campaigns, increasingly more expensive, intense and meaningless political campaigns by politicians (and their armies of PR, political, and media advisers) with hopes and aspirations to be reelected, a highly concentrated for-profit mass media and the intense competition among producers for corporate sponsorship and advertising just to name a few, provide a greatly fertile ground to be exploited by the polluters and pillagers. And with the recent U.S. Supreme Court Ruling to remove the limit on corporate spending on the political campaign the deal is made even sweetened for the major polluters and corporations to ensure any meaningful attempt to carry out the recommendations by the President's Cancer Panel are stifled most rigorously. However, the problem is even deeper than that, once we consider that one of the largest polluters is part of the US government itself, guess which one! And so, this puts the blame back on us (remember? We the People ...)! After all, everyone knows that we elect the government, or do we? Time for a break from serious stuff and hear some words of wisdom from one of my favorite social critics, the late George Carlin.
No wonder there is hardly any public out-cry about the devastating rate of cancer in society and the huge number and amount of toxic chemicals in the air, water and the environment (see for example Toxic Release Inventory data at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's website.) Yet, it seems that there is hardly any American household in which no one has watched at least one of the video clips in this set. The Europeans seem to be much more judicious and thoughtful in this (as well as other) respects. I think it is up to us collectively to grow out of our collective ignorance, apathy, and addiction to blame others for what we are here to do, if anything.
With all the pain and outrage that reading the above might cause, I think it is important to end this piece on a positive note. So, let's go out with three pieces of wisdom: a profound and positive statement about the future, a memorable and witty clip, and a beautiful song.
The first is an amazing read attributed to late Quentin Crisp in response to the question "Do you believe in God?":
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| Copyright ©1984 by Quentin Crisp, from The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp |
The second is another hilarious stand-up skit by George Carlin, and finally a couple of very nice songs (Stand by Me, and One Love) masterfully crafted by Playing for Change to demonstrate that we are all one and co-dependent! The politicians, comedians, advertisers, spin-masters, experts, health-care industrialists, patients, and all! After all, we are all in this together. Make this planet uninhabitable, and in the process we are all going to suffer. These and many other so-called cancer-profiteers are but sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, ... of those who suffer the consequences in the form of devastating cancer and other diseases.
Some even go further than that and suggest that each of us is the world! Late Philosopher and KPFA Radio host Alan Watts explains this in a very interesting audio collection Out of Your Mind, a portion of which can be heard here and elsewhere on google video. Author, Ken Wilber has an interesting book entitled "No Boundary" exploring this subject.
Have a wonderful, peaceful and enjoyable holiday season filled with love.
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| Peace and Love Greetings |
5 comments:
Amir, Thanks for your writtings. I found it very eye opening for me. First I like to add that I do not beleive the statistics with respect to source or cause of cancer. I do agree that industrilization of our society has alot to do with cause of cancer.
I wonder what are the impacts of all the footprints of vehicles...rubber aginst the roads..what happends to the energy lost from tires? Smoke and air and food ofcourse are major contributors, but I wonder if they are not telling us some of the sources....
Also, ote this article by David Servan-Schreiber, a founding board member of Doctors Without Border, and Author of the book "Anticancer: a new way of life":
We can stop the cancer epidemic
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/opinion/19iht-edservan.1.16308287.html
Couple of very interesting points from the article
1. A landmark New England Journal of Medicine study showed that children adopted at birth by parents who died of cancer before the age of 50 had the cancer risk of their adoptive parents, not of their biological ones
2. We continue to invest 97 percent of our cancer research funds in better treatments and early detection. Only 3 percent is invested in tackling causes.
I am in the middle of reading Christopher McDougal's very interesting book entitled "Born to Run".
Here is a short talk that might also be relevant as he talks about how our culture and behavior seem to have transformed over time, and thus may have contributed to many of our problems, mentally, emotionally as well as health-wise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3XTHevPXDY
This article by Samuel Epstein, Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, University of Illinois, Chicago -- who is also cited in this blog post -- is also pretty interesting:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-s-epstein/the-american-cancer-socie_b_568292.html
It discusses what at first may seem strange: The ciriticism by the American Cancer Society (ACS), of the President's Cancer Panel and their report, saying that the report exaggerates avoidable cancer.
The article goes into some of the suspicious positions ACS has taken over the years, and exposes the many conflicts of interest issues that undoubtedly has influenced the positions taken by the ACS over the past several decades, and will likely continue to do so in the future.
Very interesting! Amazing, as it is, the American Cancer Society seems to not like the fact that President's Cancer Panel has weighed on the side of precaution and prevention. New York Times reports that the American Cancer Society criticized the 240-page report, saying that the "government experts are overstating their case." Here is the NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/health/research/07cancer.html
The Times' article also discussed the following very revealing, informative, and reasonable observation of the report:
"Nearly 80,000 chemicals are in use in the United States, and yet only a few hundred have been tested for safety, the report notes. It criticizes the nation’s regulatory approach, calling it reactionary rather than precautionary, which means that the government waits for proof of harm before taking action, instead of taking preventive steps when there is uncertainty about a chemical. Regulation is ineffective, the panel says, in part because of inadequate staffing and financing, overly complex rules, weak laws, uneven enforcement and undue industry influence."
The Times article, also reveals how the American Cancer Society dislikes the report. For example, we read:
"Dr. Michael Thun, an epidemiologist from the cancer society, said in an online statement that the report was “unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer,” and had presented an unproven theory — that environmentally caused cases are grossly underestimated — as if it were a fact."
As I read the Times' article, Dr. Samuel Epstein's expose of the American Cancer Society rings very true and to the point, when he says "American Cancer Society is More Interested In Accumulating Wealth Than Saving Lives". See the following link for more:
http://www.wnho.net/acs.pdf
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