$1.5 Trillion Dollars we could have spent on a real War Against Cancer [View All]

[Mike03]

Last night I was listening to the Ray Taliafero program and he said we have now squandered $1.5 Trillion on the Iraq war. People laughed at the Michael Milken Institute when it predicted similar up front costs for this war three years ago--and the future costs will be equal if not worse.

The money allocated by our government to cancer research continues to be cut year after year.

I've spent the last six months, approximately eight to twelve hours a day, doing nothing but researching cancer--from the etiology to the concept of chemo-prevention. And I'm sick of seeing families, like mine, decimated by cancer.

Our government agencies that are assigned with the task of protecting our health are completely useless. They have known for over one hundred years that dioxins and benzenes were carcinogens, yet they pretended that more evidence was necessary in order to make this determination. Same for poly-vinyl chlorides, PCBs, heavy metals, solvents, resins, artificial plastics, petroleum derivatives, right down to the coating on the inside of a fast-food box that contains our french fries and the interior sealant of canned goods. They withheld the Pap Smear for decades; they bickered while women died unnecessarily of cervical cancer. Government agencies have conspired with chemical, paint, and agricultural companies to suppress knowledge about some of the most egregious and obvious carcinogens--many of which have been banned in more enlightened countries in Europe. These include not only the chemicals named above but pesticides, fungicides, plasticizers, and now even genetically modified agriculture and some cloned mammals and their edible proteins.

They are fiddling while Rome burns.

Anyway, the conclusions I have come to are that:

1. We know about 95% of what causes cancer.

2. The corporations that produce carcinogenic products have influenced the rate at which we find out the dangers of the products we use. They don't want most consumers to be educated about the risk factors for cancer, because it would impact the bottom line of so many major industries.

3. Until our health-related agencies only permit on their panels and boards scientists who are not morally compromised or on the payroll of gigantic offenders like Monstanto, DuPont, Dow, and so forth, we can not rely on them to determine what is a safe chemical.

4. As long as the chemical companies that manufacture the chemicals are permitted to test and report on the safety of their own chemicals, with no oversight whatsoever, the reports of their safety is worthless.

I would love to see an honest "Manhattan Project" type effort to deal honestly with cancer. The money we have wasted in Iraq, and even the SHAMELESS $500 million being spent on the ludicrous George W. Bush Library could fund real research into cancer.

Cures are not that far away. Every day the results of some important clinical trials are reported (for example on Medical News Today website). I know that the pharmaceutical companies are not saints, but they have created some miraculous drugs over the past decade, now that the humane genome is becoming more comprehensible.

My skeptical nature tells me that there are some people in power who would just as soon be content to see tens of millions perish of cancer after undergoing expensive but useless procedures.

It's just a shame. Sorry to rant.