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Cancer Research - A
Super Fraud?
by Robert Ryan, B.Sc.
"Everyone should know that most cancer research
is largely a fraud and that the major cancer
research organisations are derelict in their duties
to the people who support them." - Linus Pauling PhD
(Two-time Nobel Prize winner).
Have you ever wondered why, despite the billions of
dollars spent on cancer research over many decades, and
the constant promise of a cure which is forever "just
around the corner", cancer continues to increase?
Cancer Is Increasing
Once quite rare, cancer is now the second major cause
of death in Western countries such as Australia, the
U.S.A. and the United Kingdom. In the early 1940s cancer
accounted for 12% of Australian deaths. (1) By 1992 this
figure had climbed to 25.9% of Australian deaths. (2)
The increasing trend of cancer deaths and incidence is
typical of most Western nations. It has been said that
this increase in cancer is just due to the fact that
people now live longer than their ancestors did, and
that therefore the increase of cancer is merely due to
the fact that more people are living to be older and
thereby have a greater chance of contracting cancer.
However, this argument is disproved by the fact that
cancer is also increasing in younger age groups, as well
as by the findings of numerous population studies which
have linked various life-style factors of particular
cultures to the particular forms of cancer that are
predominant there.
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The Orthodox "War on Cancer" Has Failed
"My overall assessment is that the national cancer
programme must be judged a qualified failure" Dr. John
Bailer, who spent 20 years on the staff of the U.S.
National Cancer Institute and was editor of its journal.
(3) Dr. Bailer also says: "The five year survival
statistics of the American Cancer Society are very
misleading. They now count things that are not cancer,
and, because we are able to diagnose at an earlier stage
of the disease, patients falsely appear to live longer.
Our whole cancer research in the past 20 years has been
a total failure. More people over 30 are dying from
cancer than ever before . . . More women with mild or
benign diseases are being included in statistics and
reported as being 'cured'. When government officials
point to survival figures and say they are winning the
war against cancer they are using those survival rates
improperly."
A 1986 report in the New England Journal of Medicine
assessed progress against cancer in the United States
during the years 1950 to 1982. Despite progress against
some rare forms of cancer, which account for 1 to 2 per
cent of total deaths caused by the disease, the report
found that the overall death rate had increased
substantially since 1950: "The main conclusion we draw
is that some 35 years of intense effort focussed largely
on improving treatment must be judged a qualified
failure." The report further concluded that ". . . we
are losing the war against cancer" and argued for a
shift in emphasis towards prevention if there is to be
substantial progress. (4)
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Most Cancer IS Preventable
According to the International Agency for Research in
Cancer "...80-90 per cent of human cancer is determined
environmentally and thus theoretically avoidable." (5)
Environmental causes of cancer include lifestyle factors
such as smoking, a diet high in animal products and low
in fresh fruit & vegetables, excessive exposure to
sunlight, food additives, alcohol, workplace hazards,
pollution, electromagnetic radiation, and even certain
pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures. But
unfortunately, as expressed by medical historian Hans
Ruesch, "Despite the general recognition that 85 per
cent of all cancers is caused by environmental
influences, less than 10 per cent of the (U.S.) National
Cancer Institute budget is given to environmental
causes. And despite the recognition that the majority of
environmental causes are linked to nutrition, less than
1 per cent of the National Cancer Institute budget is
devoted to nutrition studies. And even that small amount
had to be forced on the Institute by a special amendment
of the National Cancer Act in 1974." (6)
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Prevention - Not Profitable to Industry
According to Dr. Robert Sharpe, " . . . in our
culture treating disease is enormously profitable,
preventing it is not. In 1985 the U.S., Western Europe
and Japanese market in cancer therapies was estimated at
over 3.2 billion pounds with the 'market' showing a
steady annual rise of 10 per cent over the past five
years. Preventing the disease benefits no one except the
patient. Just as the drug industry thrives on the 'pill
for every ill' mentality, so many of the leading medical
charities are financially sustained by the dream of a
miracle cure, just around the corner." (7)
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Desired: A State of No Cure?
In fact, some analysts consider that the cancer
industry is sustained by a policy of deliberately facing
in the wrong direction. For instance, in the late 1970s,
after studying the policies, activities, and assets of
the major U.S. cancer institutions, the investigative
reporters Robert Houston and Gary Null concluded that
these institutions had become self-perpetuating
organisations whose survival depended on the state of no
cure. They wrote, "a solution to cancer would mean the
termination of research programs, the obsolescence of
skills, the end of dreams of personal glory, triumph
over cancer would dry up contributions to
self-perpetuating charities and cut off funding from
Congress, it would mortally threaten the present
clinical establishments by rendering obsolete the
expensive surgical, radiological and chemotherapeutic
treatments in which so much money, training and
equipment is invested. Such fear, however unconscious,
may result in resistance and hostility to alternative
approaches in proportion as they are therapeutically
promising. The new therapy must be disbelieved, denied,
discouraged and disallowed at all costs, regardless of
actual testing results, and preferably without any
testing at all. As we shall see, this pattern has in
actuality occurred repeatedly, and almost consistently."
(8) Indeed, many people around the world consider that
they have been cured by therapies which were
'blacklisted' by the major cancer organisations.
Does this mean that ALL of the people who work in the
cancer research industry are consciously part of a
conspiracy to hold back a cure for cancer? Author
G.Edward Griffin explains ". . . let's face it, these
people die from cancer like everybody else. . . [I]t's
obvious that these people are not consciously holding
back a control for cancer. It does mean, however, that
the [pharmaceutical-chemical] cartel's medical monopoly
has created a climate of bias in our educational system,
in which scientific truth often is sacrificed to vested
interests . . . [I]f the money is coming from drug
companies, or indirectly from drug companies, the
impetus is in the direction of drug research. That
doesn't mean somebody blew the whistle and said "hey,
don't research nutrition!" It just means that nobody is
financing nutrition research. So it is a bias where
scientific truth often is obscured by vested interest."
(9) This point is similarly expressed by Dr. Sydney
Singer: "Researchers are like prostitutes. They work for
grant money. If there is no money for the projects they
are personally interested in, they go where there is
money. Their incomes come directly from their grants,
not from the universities. And they want to please the
granting source to get more grants in the future. Their
careers depend on it." (10)
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Money Spent on Fraudulent Research?
A large portion of money donated to cancer research
by the public is spent on animal research which has,
since its inception, been widely condemned as a waste of
time and resources. For instance, consider the 1981
Congressional Testimony by Dr. Irwin Bross, former
director of the Sloan-Kettering, the largest cancer
research institute in the world, and then Director of
Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for
Cancer Research, Bufallo, NY: "The uselessness of most
of the animal model studies is less well known. For
example, the discovery of chemotherapeutic agents for
the treatment of human cancer is widely-heralded as a
triumph due to use of animal model systems. However,
here again, these exaggerated claims are coming from or
are endorsed by the same people who get the federal
dollars for animal research. There is little, if any,
factual evidence that would support these claims.
Indeed, while conflicting animal results have often
delayed and hampered advances in the war on cancer, they
have never produced a single substantial advance either
in the prevention or treatment of human cancer. For
instance, practically all of the chemotherapeutic agents
which are of value in the treatment of human cancer were
found in a clinical context rather than in animal
studies." (11)
In fact, many substances which cause cancer in humans
are marketed as "safe" on the basis of animal tests. As
expressed by Dr. Werner Hartinger of Germany, in regard
to cancer-causing products of the pharmaceutical-petro-chemical
industry, "Their constant consumption is legalised on
the basis of misleading animal experiments . . . which
seduce the consumer into a false sense of security."
(12)
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Imagine What Could Be Achieved
The next time you are asked to donate to a cancer
organisation, bear in mind that your money will be used
to sustain an industry which has been deemed by many
eminent scientists as a qualified failure and by others,
as a complete fraud. If you would like to make a
difference, inform these organisations that you won't
donate to them until they change their approach to one
which is focussed on prevention and study of the human
condition. We have the power to change things by making
their present approach unprofitable. It is only through
our charitable donations and taxes that these
institutions survive on their present unproductive path.
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References:
- d'Espaignet, E.T. et al., Trends in
Australian Mortality 1921-1988, Australian
Government Publishing Service (AGPS), Canberra,
1991, p. 33
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Causes of
Death, Australia 1992, ABS, Canberra, 1993, p.1
- Dr. Bailer, speaking at the Annual Meeting of
the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in May 1985, as quoted in Bette Overall,
Animal Research Takes Lives - Humans and Animals
BOTH Suffer, NZAVS, 1993, p.132
- Robert Sharpe, The Cruel Deception,
Thorsons Publishing Group, Wellingborough, U.K.
1988, p.47
- Robert Sharpe, op. cit. 1988, p.47
- Hans Ruesch, Naked Empress - the Great
Medical Fraud, CIVIS, Massagno/Lugano,
Switzerland, 1992, p.77
- Robert Sharpe, op. cit. 1988, p.65
- as quoted in Hans Ruesch, op.cit. 1992, p.65-66
- Edward Griffin, The Politics of Cancer,
(audio cassette) American Media, 1975 available from
CAFMR $14.
- Sydney Singer, Medical Demystification (M.D.)
Report, Vol.1 No.1 p.5., Medical Demystification
Crusade, 1992, CA, U.S.A.
- Irwin Bross, as quoted in Robert Sharpe, op.cit.,
1988 p.179
- Dr. Werner Hartinger, in a speech given at the
2nd International Scientific Congress of the Doctors
in Britain Against Animal Experiments (D.B.A.E.),
London, 24 Sept. 1992.
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