The War Against Cancer

The editor’s page in the January/February edition of “Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine” pointed out that western medicine has lost the war against cancer. This is based on data that shows that deaths from cancer are stable or increasing despite all the treatment therapies used to combat cancer. In 2005, cancer was the cause of death of 570,000 people in this country. This is the equivalent to one in three people having cancer in their lifetime.

It takes an average of thirty years for cancer cells to develop into the clinical manifestation of a solid tumor. This means that roughly 17 million Americans are walking around with cancer that is somewhere on the continuum from the nascent development of cancer cells to the clinical manifestation of a full blown cancer.

The article went on to point out that western medicine’s failure is because it enters the fight at the manifestation of cancer rather than earlier where the likelihood of preventing or reversing latent cancers would be far easier.

The editor recalled that when he rotated through oncology in medical school, he asked his professor what percentage of cancers was related to diet. He was shocked when his professor answered “70 percent”.

Having read this article, I was reminded of a lecture I heard while in school about a famous ancient Chinese medical doctor who theorized that most diseases originated in the digestive tract. At the time I questioned the validity of this famous doctor’s theory. Now, I suspect this ancient doctor’s theory was right

The simplicity and magic of Chinese medicine lies in its Taoist root that “maintaining order rather than correcting disorder is the ultimate principle of wisdom. To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one already feels thirsty or forging weapons after the war has already begun.”