Let's Not Wait for a Cancer Cure

This editorial will have some harsh things to say about the efforts to cure cancer, and therefore I want it clear up front that my father, grandfather and several uncles and aunts died of cancer. I have the utmost compassion for people with cancer and especially those who love them and stand/stood at the bedside feeling helpless.

No one has to feel helpless in the face of a degenerative illness, despite what some medical practitioners have to say, and despite continual appeals for more money to find a cure for cancer.

For 50 years, the medical system has been working on finding a cure--or so they say. I no longer believe it and I refuse to contribute money to organized cancer research. I weep when I see what Terry Fox went through to raise millions for cancer research; all that money has produced practically nothing to cure cancer.

The Canadian Cancer Society is the wealthiest charity in Canada, with an $80 million take in 1997. Only $32 million was spent on research and $10 million was used for more fund raising.

Despite the fact that cancer is a preventable disease (which the Canadian Cancer Society acknowledges), less than five per cent of its budget is spent on "education" and none of its research money is devoted to prevention.

I was diagnosed in November of 1996 with a degenerative illness that could have meant the end of a productive life for me. My own doctor told me he dared not recommend a chiropractor for pain relief. He could lose his license for doing so by his College of Physicians and Surgeons. Even though I had terrible hip pain, my doctor could not write a letter absolving me from wearing a lap seat belt that pressured my hips beyond my endurance. His insurance company would not allow him to.

And my chiropractor, who was tremendously successful in treating patients others could not help, was continually harassed by his chiropractic association for using methods that were not precisely what he had been taught at university many years before.

Where is the common sense? May I suggest you read a book titled The Cancer Conspiracy by John J. Moelaert. Get your health food store to order his book from #408 1490 Garnet Road, Victoria, BC, V8P 5L1. You’ll find out why common sense went out the window about curing cancer.

Practitioners of even accepted forms of medicine dare not deviate from protocol, even to help someone who may die if only protocol is followed. Those medical practitioners who believe in natural supplements (instead of drugs), good nutrition, healthy elimination on a daily basis and new (or proven old) methods of assisting the ill, have to stay in hiding! Otherwise their own profession will turn on them and take their livelihoods away.

How many doctors have the courage to publicly say that herbal combinations like red clover flowers, burdock root, sheep sorrel, Turkish rhubarb root, slippery elm bark and milk thistle leaf will help the body heal itself of degenerative diseases (like cancer)? Not many. But I’m meeting more and more of them and I applaud them vigorously. It takes a person of great fortitude and strong convictions to stand up to the establishment and risk one’s livelihood.

So, first of all we must understand that members of the existing medical profession have their hands tied even if they want to try new methods of healing. Second, they were not trained in health--they were trained to identify disease and then treat it with outdated or even dangerous methods. Third, we must take responsibility for our own health so we do not fall prey to disease. And if we do get ill, we must have the courage to accept responsibility for our own well being.

Recently I spoke with a retired East Indian oncologist, trained in England, who practiced in a cancer clinic in Canada for many years. (She still donates her time here to provide a support group for women who have had breast cancer). She said she grieves for the patients who suffer from cancer, but has noticed that Canadians are short on gumption when it comes to educating themselves about health.

We are, aren’t we?

Perhaps it is time we Canadians shake ourselves loose from our lethargy about health before it is too late and we are ill. It is definitely time our education system includes healthy living as a mandatory subject from Grade 1 to the end of high school.

And for those of us out of school, we must search for the path to health ourselves. One of the ways of doing so is by reading this natural health magazine and the work of hundreds of brave souls who are daring to publish books on how to get and stay healthy. We have the means. We must use them.

Yours for health.