The Secret History of the War on Cancer

December 12, 2012

Dr. Ben Kim, Guest Writer
Waking Times
For many years, I have explained to questioning family members and friends why I cannot support conventional cancer-fighting fundraising campaigns.
I am not completely against conventional medical treatment options for different types of cancer. For example, for a good number of people that I have worked with over the past several years, I have fully supported and encouraged surgical excision of malignant tumours. My wariness of the mainstream cancer-fighting industry pertains to what I believe is excessive and often times inappropriate use of chemotherapy and radiation, as well as the lack of attention that is given to relevant environmental and personal lifestyle factors.
At long last, a devastating and truly noteworthy book on this topic has been published. It’s called The Secret History of the War on Cancer, written by Devra Davis, PhD, MPH.
I am grateful to have the permission of Andrew Nikiforuk, a well known Canadian journalist, to share his helpful review of Dr. Davis’ book.
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Andrew Nikiforuk’s Review of The Secret History of the War on Cancer, written by Devra Davis, PhD, MPH.
In 1936, the world’s cancer experts assembled in Brussels to talk shop. The gathering heard a lot about workshop hazards and environmental toxins. A British scientist, who had studied identical twins, argued that cancer wasn’t inherited, but mostly the product of early chemical exposures in life. A meticulous Argentine showed how sunlight combined with hydrocarbons could sprout tumours on rats. Others explained how regular exposure to the hormone estrogen prompted male rodents to grow unseemly breasts. Everyone agreed that arsenic and benzene were workplace killers, too.
Since then, the cancer establishment has retreated from the truth faster than Canada’s commitment to a greener country. What began as sincere investigation into the economic root causes of a complex set of 200 different diseases quickly degenerated into a single-minded focus on treatments after the Second World War, argues Devra Davis, one of North America’s sharpest epidemiologists (her previous book, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, was a finalist for the National Book Award).

In the process, industry and its propaganda hit men have used every opportunity to discredit, dismiss or disparage information on cancer hazards in the workplace or at home. So let me warn comfortable readers here and now. This courageous and altogether horrible book is about as unsettling as it can get. It painstakingly documents such a persistently foul pattern of deceit and denial that I often wanted to throw it against a wall and scream.
Furthermore, Davis’s hair-raising investigation – in what is easily the most important science book of the year – will rob you of any lingering, Disney-like fantasies you might have entertained about the nobility of cancer fundraising campaigns. And if you have lost a relative or friend to a malignant tumour (odds are you have), Davis will make you weep again, knowing that fraud and outright criminal neglect have turned a 40-year-long medical war into a questionable $70-billion charade.
Even Davis can’t hide her own disbelief at times: “Astonishing alliances between naive or far too clever academics and folks with major economic interests in selling potentially cancerous materials have kept us from figuring out whether or not many modern products affect our chances of developing cancer.” She then diligently documents, for example, how some of the world’s most prominent cancer researchers, such as the late Sir Richard Doll, the epidemiologist who was instrumental in linking smoking to health problems, secretly worked for chemical firms without disclosing these ties when publishing studies.    read on...