I am VERY anti-cancer

Sorry if I am dense - but am I missing something cos I don't quite understand what this post means? Could you please expand?

Ava x

Not sure about the specific mailing, but the trend in 'pinkwashing' everything is a real racket.

Take a look at the [url]KFC pink bucket[/url] it's quite nauseating, and I don't just mean the food.

There are now whole sporting events that require donations for 'the cause' in order to participate.

What do funds raised get used for? Mammogram programmes and drugs. Nothing about health awareness, nutrition, prevention. But detecting tumours, many of which would never be problematic, and treating them unnecessarily. There's very little evidence that any lives are being saved this way, and the sums are collossal. It's market expansion.

In 2002 I had a letter from Cancer Research Campaign (as it was then) asking for funds for a research programme on medicating with tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer. I wrote the the CE asking why they wanted to give healthy women a drug that could cause cervical cancer, couldn't the funds be allocated better if preventing cancer was the objective - eg discovering better was to disseminate existing knowledge about prevention, exploring known potential avenues, such as links to diet, underwire bras, antiperspirant,medication, household chemicals, stress etc etc.

The reply was totally unsatisfactory, it effectively said that was not their field. They assumed that the fate of women with a family history was largely beyond anyone's control, and that their interest was this line of research. So this is not about saving lives, it's about supporting certain people's chosen occupation.

After that I read those CRUK posters around London very carefully - 'I shouldn't be here', implying that thanks to Cancer Research UK making a discovery, lives are being saved. They are very carefully worded, in fact they do not say that CRUK has contributed anything to that person's survival.

Not wishing to denegrate the work and of many well-intentioned workers and fundraisers, but at some level there's a great deal of cynicism in cancer science.

So keep running marathons and eating margarine...

I stand shoulder to shoulder with kcat.

I am very against today's 'Pinkwashing', for me it's the bandwagon of profiteering through fear!!

These companies who go pink, do so for selfish reasons, not out of the goodness of their hearts….as they would like you to believe!

It's me, me, me self promotion every step of the way by whatever means.

What do funds raised get used for?

From [url]Breast Cancer Campaign[/url]:

What areas of breast cancer do you research?

Campaign will fund research into any aspect of breast cancer and supports research across a wide range of areas:

• Prevention: to know more about the relationships between diet, environmental and lifestyle choices and breast cancer
• Genetics: to gain a greater understanding of the genetics of breast cancer, learning more about genes we already know are involved in breast cancer and to find new ones
• Breast cancer development: to discover more about the basic biology of breast cancer, to learn more about how breast cancer actually forms
• Growth and spread: to find out more about how cancer grows and survives in the body, as well as how it then spreads around the body
• Diagnosis: to help develop new, quicker, more accurate and cost-effective ways of discovering breast cancer
• Treatment: to determine new ways of treating breast cancer and to improve our current therapies
• Impact of breast cancer: to better understand the affect that breast cancer has on people's lives and how they can best be supported
• Education: training healthcare professionals to help them provide the best care and treatment possible for breast cancer patients
• Patient care: to understand what factors can affect how breast cancer patients are looked after and what treatments they will receive

Myarka

Ava, it's about the 'pinkwashing', as stated by kvdp and Louisa. It's all about the $$$$$$$$$$. Nothing but a HUGE marketing ploy-well stated,kvdp. Don't forget to pick up your yogurt after you stop for the 'health-giving greasy chicken' !!! It's a vast 'money pit' that continues to grow. Even cancer survivor Lance Armstrong has questioned what real gains have been made in this area. Seriously, what do you think people in this profession would do if cancer was cured? It's just not going to happen,folks, These cancer sites proliferate throughout the USA. Cut, burn, radiate and intimidate are still the order of the day. People are digging their own graves, one forkful at a time. That 'cancer bug' isn't flying around-it has the potential to exist in all of us.

kvdp, I prefer to call it the Susan G. Komen 'run for the money'. The non-invasive methods for detecting breast cancer don't generate enough money for those involved, not to mention the misdiagnosis for so many woman who undergo this terrible surgery.

kcat

Myarka, I just had a look at that website, and the bit about diet and environment appears to be lip service. I downloaded their 'gap analysis document', and under prevention it says nothing about these things.

The proof of the cake is in the eating, how many people get call-ups for mamograms, and how many get a leaflet discussing any other aspect of prevention. Dietary advice from GP surgeries is usually limited to a very dumbed-down message of five a day (which is considered deficient in many countries' advice) and the grossly out of date 'fewer calories more jogging' message.

Meanwhile, under prevention they say;
'6) prevention (strategies to prevent oestrogen-receptor negative tumours and the long-term effects of chemoprevention for oestrogen-receptor positive tumours)'

Which sounds like medicating the healthy to me. As a strategy for health I just don't buy it. As I say, this is their research interest, it's not necessarily a sincere effort to defeat cancer whatever is required.

I do have a personal axe to grind, of course, my father died of cancer, and it was another 20 years before the true extent was clear about how he was killed by medicine. His long-term prior medication for a chronic disease effectively meant he was doomed from long before he received the cancer diagnosis.

He was on those drugs until the day he died, and he never had a chance, I just wish they had told us this before cutting out his organs, his cancer treatment was totally futile and unnecessarily brutal.

As a result of this, and of looking after people in hospital and at home, and of ten years of studying and working in health, I do not have faith in the big-medicine understanding of health and disease to cure anything. Forty years of Government research failed to spread a cold, let alone cure one, and yet from what we read you'd think that the cure for cancer was just around the corner. Well, it always has been 'just around the corner'.

Next time you hear of a new medical breakthrough on the news, listen to the words they choose - an effective treatment from these results is always 'five to ten' years away. Well that's somebody's job safe.

There comes a point where we have to ask 'time to see the results from all this money we've given you'.

Hi

I'm not buying into this pinkwashing myself. Whenever some one I know in doing a charity run for CRUK, I have to tell them that I can't support such a charity, it's just an industry, and that prevention is better than cure and there isn't enough of that in healthcare, too much emphasis on slash and burn.

In fact I'm having lazy afternoon in pixieland and reading an article titled: Some Big Lies of Money, Medicine & Science by Denis G. Rancourt, PhD, a professor of physics that got fired from a Canadian university for questioning the established orthodoxy. He makes an intersting comment: "Since medicine can do little for heart diease and cancer, and since medicine has only a small statistically positive impact in the area of trauma interventions, we conclude that public health would increase if all MDs simply disappeared"....."In professional yet remarkable reversals of logic, doctors prescribe drugs to remove symptoms that are risk indicators rather than address the causes of the risks, thereby only adding to the assult on the body".

RP

Hi RP, in a similar vein, Robert Mendelsohn notes that when doctors go on strike, death rate fall.

It's an interesting sleight-of-hand to say that early detection is the best prevention - if it's been detected, however early, then it hasn't been prevented!

Hi K, oh yes I have read that before about doctors going on strike and the fatality rates drop in proportion.

Hi Everyone, one of my facebook friends was into getting everyone to pink there profile pictures, then in a sudden change of mind she stuck up this link on her wall. have a look, it's very interesting:

RP

I am against the pink campaign, especially the push for mammography. The US has not backed off of mammography at all, even though it has been proven to cause cancer. Alternatives are available, doctors do not inform women of this fact. Most American women believe an annual mammogram is essential to their well-being. It is all about the money. There is a lot of profit in the annual mammogram industry.

I am 58. I have not had a mammogram. A microbiologist at the University of California Berkeley did a study about fifteen years ago. He found that people in rural areas, where there are few doctors, tend to live longer and healthier lives because these people rarely visit a doctor's office. The conclusion of the study was that the overuse of X-rays is a primary culprit in causing the myriad forms of cancers which plague modern society.

But this is an awfully big ship to turn around. And I wonder if it ever can be?

People want medication. They go to their GP and ask for antibiotics for their 'flu. They want hydrocortisone creams for their eczema. They want Ventolin for smoking-aggravated asthma. They want laxative medication for constipation. They want Viagra for inability to maintain an erection. They even want Propetia for their male-pattern baldness. Do people want to be cutting down their tobacco and alcohol consumption, looking at the labels of their antiperspirant/hairgel/bodyspray/skincare, increasing their fruit and vegetable consumption, addressing their stress levels? People go to their doctor and expect to receive a drug. I work with medics. It's water-cooler conversation stuff: patients want medication. They want drugs to cure their ailments - and pharmaceutical companies are only too happy to spend government and charity funding in order to oblige.

The prevention models exist already, but we are not seeing people take personal responsibility for their health. Prevention isn't the answer... it's public health education that is needed. There is a real disconnect between behaviour and consequences which needs to be addressed. A little quote from today's The Times (it's a paid-for subscription, hence not including a link):

"From time to time we still have conversations about diet. “You know, you really shouldn’t be eating eggs and chips the whole time,” I say. “Well, we’ve been eating them for our whole lives and it’s never done us any harm,” says my dad. “You don’t think that the fact you had cancer of the rectum and have had a colostomy counts as harm?” “Get away with you,” says my dad. “That was nothing to do with that.”

Ava x

kvdp, even at this length of time, accept my sympathies on the death of your Father. My Father died from prostate cancer in 1983. I am forever indebted to those who kept me away from doctors early in my diagnosis with cancer. I have always felt that I had a debt to repay by helping those similarly afflicted, but, for the most part, it has fallen on deaf ears like my friend who is dying from cancer now. I was asked recently why people who have seen me and know my history don't consider trying some of the things that I have done. I in no way look like anyone who was diagnosed with cancer 70 months ago by the grace of God. I told the person asking the question that it is now and will always be about the money.

kcat

dogwoman, Amen to all you have said !!!!!

Yes, agree with everyone re "think pink".

After having had ca I began helping out at the "charidees".

Saw enough to put me off for life.

And.......would prob decided different treatment for myself too if I could go back.

Bit of a mixed bag of thoughts from me this evening.......my hubby has prostate cancer and now 4 years on has not had surgery or given chemo & radiotherapy a second thought, his choice and decision, but each time he has a check up at with the hospital they do suggest that he does but he declines say thanks but I will leave it to nature to take it's course. He isnt a 100% fit, but happy with his decision.

Although a lot people will grasp at any treatment, give it a go and lets see what happens, each to their own.

His Dad, recently passed away, but it was old age rather than his lung cancer, he also declined any treatment and due to heart problems the doctors also agreed that he wouldnt have survied the treatment.

But a very good friend, my cousin and a number of colleagues have had breast cancer, they had chemo, radiotherapy, tamoxafin (sp) and now over five years later they are cancer free, stopped all treatment and tablets and living life to the full.

So, it comes down to individual choice, weighing up the pros and cons of what to do when it happens to you, making an informed decison.

Fudge

P.S. To be honest we keep getting told to cut and paste 'for everone who has cancer ......' to be honest I've stopped cutting and pasteing as as they seem to say everyone is dommed to die from it and in a short time. But I know so many people who are still here, treatement or no treatment.

Hi Patchouli - long time no see - glad to have you back!! 😀 You have been missed 🙁

Yes, I agree with the above posts and have stated elsewhere I want nothing to do with anticancer treatments if the occasion arises.

I thought kvdp's statement "It's an interesting sleight-of-hand to say that early detection is the best prevention - if it's been detected, however early, then it hasn't been prevented! " put it in a nutshell. It's all to do with confusing people and making the biggest profits.

I have had mammograms and I found them excruciating. My brother died of cancer about 10 years ago and I'm sure the chemo destroyed his immune system. Since then I have learned there are other ways of dealing with this disease - too late for him though.

Wow.

I feel quite strongly about this subject, so make no apologies if this reply is quite passionate. I wish to put across a different point of view.

The brother of a very close friend of mine is currently fighting advanced brain cancer. An elderly lady who I treated as an extra grandmother recently died of stomach cancer. My dad has had basal cell carcinoma. My grandmother on my dad's side died of breast cancer because there wasn't the treatment of knowledge of the disease that there is today. Those scientific advances are the reason my mum is still with us today.

Mum had breast cancer 4 years ago - well, its been 4 years since the treatment ended. Mastectomy, Radiotherapy, Chemo, tamoxifen, other drugs, the works.

The brother of the friend is fighting his with all his might, using both traditional medicine and reiki from a group of us. He is far from out of the woods but since having healing his sight has come back, and he has amazed the cancer care nurses by generally being in a state he shouldn't have been in. Traditional medicine alone failed him - but so far using a combination of reiki and traditional has at the very least extended his time with his family.

I have done the race for life. I buy those pink products - and Mum does the same. I don't feel they incite fear - they bring a message of empowering hope to me and my family.

I know the drugs industry/NHS etc is flawed, and as an ex- marketing manager I can assure you I know exactly the PR credentials for turning your product "pink" to support such a campaign.

Incidentally, it is Cancer Research UK who are running a long term study on the children of those who have had cancer, looking at their whole lifestyle.

I am doing my darn best to prevent myself from getting cancer by living healthily, not overusing anti-perspirants etc, but I'm also not going to get too het up in the quest to avoid it - that would be more invoking of fear to me than seeing cancer research products and marketing messages around.

I understand and subscribe to many if not all of the messages from the therapies included on this website and more; I've used a lot of them personally! I agree with a lot of concepts behind them, including that its better to catch things early and treat them in as natural a manner as possible, and I see the problems with the pharmaceutical industry and the tendancy of the NHS to prescribe artificial drugs left right and centre.

.. still wouldn't rule out taking those drugs and having that treatment myself if I were ever in the situation myself. and I'd be damn grateful for the research that went into refining them over the years.

Naturally

I guess what it ultimately boils down to is - 'If you want to keep getting what you're getting, keep doing what you're doing'-in my case, I didn't want to keep getting what I was getting.......

kcat

There's a saying in aviation that a good landing is anything you walk away from. I take that to mean that even a narrow escape is considered success. Whether or not doing things a different way would have improved your chances of a better outcome is at one level irrelevant, at another level impossible to determine.

So if you're happy with the way things are going, better not to interfere, I suppose. It is entirely possible that those who survive do so in spite of their treatment, not because of it.

This possiblity is not tested, because they don't do placebo controlled trials of cancer patients. It is considered unethical to leave a control group untreated to see if they fare worse or better. The reason: because it is already assumed that they will do better with treatment, even without testing this hypothesis. Which is illogical - it's like saying 'because we guess it works, we'd better not test it'. And given the fear and emotional blackmail around subjects like cancer, who would be happy to be in the control group? And yet they might be better off if they were. We don't know. That's the conundrum.

I say it's equally unethical to put people through a potentially harmful treatment regime without evidence that it will improve their chances.

However, there is some evidence that less invasive treatment is better - survival rates for cancer were better 200 years ago than 100 years ago, whether this trend continues I do not know. According to Phillip Day, survival increases with distance lived from a cancer treatment centre, which is interesting.

And then there's the whole issue of what we think cancer actually is. To one point of view it is a survival mechanism against toxicity, a last ditch attempt at wound repair etc etc, in other words a survival response of some kind.

The toxic conditions in the body that exist in a patient are not replicated in a lab mouse, who is genetically altered to express cancer without the whole contextual situation (eg environment). So when they test drugs on the mouse, the cancer goes away, because the mouse is otherwise well.

In the human patient, the drugs are less effective, because the patient is in different circumstances, that require the presence of the tumour or whatever.

Put another way, a tumour is not a cancer, it is just a symptom of cancer. Cut out the tumour, and the cancer remains - it's necessary to deal with the disease state behind the tumour, and that's another whole story.

I would say that being decisive is important - whatever treatment protocol you choose for your beliefs - give it everything you've got. Commitment is important, because the body needs every little chance it has.

Mixing and matching therapies does not give the best of all worlds. There is some evidence that people on chemotherapy do worse when on natural therapies at the same time. The reason, as I see it, is that these are two competing philosophies - the chemo works (if it does) by the use of poison. The natural therapy works by helping the body to deal with the toxic state that has created the cancer.

For some this is an argument against natural treatment. It could just as easily be an argument against chemotherapy.