The "Race For The Cure???"

To tremendous numbers of Americans, the “Race For The Cure” is a wonderful humanitarian enterprise, something that, if they don’t take part in every year, at least is an event they approve of and think to be exceptionally worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the truth about the “Race For The Cure” is very different. There will be no “cure” for cancer.By that I do not mean there will not be individuals who recover from cancer. Obviously, there are and will continue to be such people. But the concept that some scientist will one day cry, “Eureka! I’ve found the cure for cancer!” similar to Jonas Salk discovering his polio vaccine, is sheer fantasy.

Those who promote “The Race For The Cure” mislead the public into thinking that “the cure” is just around the corner. In fact, “the cure” they pretend to be working on is nowhere to be found, nor will it ever be found. Here’s why:

Finding“the cure” for cancer is a fantasy because, while polio and other infectious, communicable illnesses are caused by a bacterium or a virus, cancer is a degenerative condition, an illness one does not “catch,” the way one catches or gets infected with polio, measles or mumps. Though a particular bacterium or virus may play a part in the development of a few cancers, cancer is very much a condition that develops over time, due to a person’s lifestyle. It does not, as many people believe, "strike out of the blue," regardless of how you live। Getting cancer is not like some kind of "bad luck" lottery, in which mere chance determines whether or not you receive a cancer diagnosis.

Tobacco, alcohol and drug use, wrong diet, lack of fresh air and poor breathing habits, under or over-exposure to sunlight, poor sleep habits, lack of exercise, overweight, certain sexual behaviors and prolonged stress are some of the most common reasons a person develops cancer. There are genetic reasons, as well, but the genetic tendency to develop cancer can be lessened or eliminated by living a cancer-preventive lifestyle. Dr. Matthias Rath, a long-time colleague of Dr. Linus Pauling, has said, “Genetics may load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger.”

Most everyone now recognizes that tobacco use is responsible for a significant percentage of cancers, but precious few people know that diet is responsible for even more cancer than tobacco use! Authorities such as the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute estimate that diet is responsible for at least 35% of all cancers, and that 80% of all cancers have a “dietary component.” Other authorities estimate that diet is responsible for far more than 35% of cancers.

There is therefore a deadly irony in seeing someone wearing a "Race For The Cure" T-Shirt in the grocery store check-out line waiting to pay for a cart full of cancer-causing groceries. The carcinogenic items in the cart generally include: doughnuts, pepperoni and sausage pizza, white bread, white crackers, white spaghetti, white flour, white pastries, white sugar, hot dogs, candy, cookies, pasteurized, homogenized milk, potato chips, high fat cheese and pasteurized processed cheese food, ice cream, soda-pop,(diet or not, makes no difference), anti-biotic and hormone-laden beef, chicken and pork, foodstuffs that contain "hidden" trans-fats, and plenty of boxed, canned and bottled preservative-laced, processed foods. In among those items may be scattered, as tokens of health, a head of iceburg lettuce, some oranges, apples and bananas, a bunch of celery, some onions, a sack of potatoes and a few tomatoes.

It's bad enough that so many shoppers harbor in their minds the lie that given enough money and time, researchers will find "the cure" for cancer--- that one day, because of money raised by "The Race For The Cure," the scourge of cancer will disappear, similar to the scourges of polio and smallpox. But worse than that is the fact that shoppers have no idea that most of the groceries they're buying,(as well as the groceries they're not buying), have far more to do with the possibility of them or a family member dying of cancer than does all the money that's been raised by the "Race For the Cure."

Simply put:

1. If you buy groceries like the average American, one of your biggest risks of developing cancer is right there in your shopping cart.

2. Unless the groceries in your shopping cart differ radically from the groceries in the carts of nearly all the shoppers in line with you, you're feeding yourself and your family carcinogens, and you're passing up many groceries that have anti-cancer properties.

Right now, anyone who gets cured of cancer gets treated individually, based on the kind and location of the cancer, the stage of the cancer, the aggressiveness of the cancer, the age of the person diagnosed, and other personal, case-specific factors. Because cancer presents in so many different forms, and attacks so many different organs, that will continue to be the case. That is another reason that “the cure” for cancer will never be discovered.

Happily, though, there IS a "cure" for cancer---the same "cure" that all but wiped out typhoid here in the United States. It's called "prevention."

Typhoid was wiped out by establishing public health departments throughout the land with powers of enforcement to eliminate the conditions which led to outbreaks of typhoid fever---conditions such as locating water wells and sanitary facilities too close to each other and the expulsion of raw human waste into streams and rivers.

Similarly, during the building of the Panama Canal, the incidence of malaria was greatly reduced by getting rid of and poisoning the breeding places of the mosquitoes that were spreading malaria.

Therefore, if you wish to avoid developing cancer, you must identify and eliminate the conditions in your life that are "breeding grounds" for the cancer. You already know tobacco use greatly increases your chance of developing cancer. If you don’t smoke, or if you have quit smoking, that's excellent, but you need to do more than that; you need to identify and eliminate the other areas in your life that are promoting your chance of developing cancer.

The "Race For The Cure" myth needs to be replaced by the truth of "The March For Prevention." It's only through a concerted effort to educate the public about PREVENTION that deaths from cancer in this country will be significantly and permanently reduced.