The War Against Cancer

The War Against Cancer has been going on since it was officially declared by President Nixon in 1971. Billions of dollars in research funding, given largely to Big Pharma to test out various drugs in cancer killing combinations were spent. Also, more tests and imaging studies were devised to find more cases of cancer to treat. And, the War goes on. I suppose it’s better than spending the money for the arms industry to provide us with more bombs and (somewhat) depleted uranium tank shells for the International War on Terror. 

In a previous Gadfly essay, I proposed that we attack the cause of epidemic of cancer, and even suggested a likely candidate — the chemical laden environment since WW II. No one in the research community has questioned the wildly increased incidence of breast and, especially, prostate cancer since the fifties, but neither has anyone suggested that the cause of the increase was the soup of artificial chemicals we live in. There seems to be a gentlemen’s agreement not to point fingers, especially at the agriculture industry.

This past summer I met Fouad, an Egyptian born researcher who has worked on prostate cancer for his whole professional life. Fouad is acknowledged as a principal research scientist at his institute in Scotland and the world over. He says that the farmers of Scotland who were exposed to high levels of pesticides and herbicides had the highest incidence of prostate cancer in the general population. Logic, of course, would have it that anything that is toxic to bugs and weeds is at least somewhat toxic to humans.

Add to my observations at City Hospital and to Fouad’s research, the experiences of the Vietnam veterans who came back from Agent Orange and settled in California. They were part of the back-to-the-land movement of the sixties and early seventies, but those knowledgeable about the herbicide and its effects on themselves and their comrades would not touch any farming that was not organic. They became the spearhead of the explosion of the organic farming movement. They worked not for temporary yield per acre, but for regeneration of the soil and sustainable farming.

Meanwhile, the chemical industry wasn’t  satisfied with selling pesticides and herbicides to family farmers who might question the toxic effect of the chemicals on themselves and their families. Neither did the public relations campaigns popularize the various uses of the chemicals. “Miracles through Chemistry” didn’t happen often. Nor was “Quick Henry, the Flit” without problems as DDT produced too-fragile eagle egg shells and an endangered eagle population.

So, the chemical industry encouraged large monocrop farms, often with corporate ownership. Anything less would be un-American or, at least, anti-capitalist. The number of man-made chemicals in the environment increased to the hundreds of thousands. A blood test would reveal dozens of such chemicals in our blood and, assumedly, in our tissues and organs, including our brains. Is it any wonder that Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise, as is dementia and memory loss. What will become of the Baby Boomer generation, already too sedentary?