Frequent Guests |
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ROSEMARY DE CUIR
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SIBYL FARSON
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER |
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Side-by-Side
(Click for Previously Archived Discussions below)
Question: Richard Nixon started the “War on Cancer” more than
30 years ago. Have we gotten any closer to a cure for this dreaded
disease?
--Henry in Brea
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DR. MASON
Response from Dr. Mason
After spending more than $100 billion
fighting cancer, taxpayers are being told
that the battle isn’t going well and that
any positive reports are the result of
cherry picking mediocre results.
Newsweek, Fortune and Penthouse
contend the much-touted War on Cancer
is being lost. The New York Times reports
only a very modest 5% reduction in
cancer deaths. Even the US General
Accounting Office has accused the
National Cancer Institute of artificially
inflating “true progress”.
To better understand how statistics
can be distorted, compare two patients
being treated with equally worthless
drugs. If a malignant tumor is discovered
years earlier in one than the other, then
the treatment given the first will appear to
have significantly prolonged that
individual’s life. And too, if small
carcinomas (especially in the breast and
prostate) are detected early and treated
aggressively, what is then listed as a
“cure” may have been nothing more than
a false alarm.
The truth is that we still don’t know
the cause of most cancers. Smoking is
certainly related to lung cancer but that
makes it difficult to understand a death
rate in men that continued to increase into
the 90’s while tobacco use started to
decline in the 70’s. What’s more, females
still haven’t registered the same benefit as
males when they give up cigarettes. Why
is that?
Stomach cancer has been declining
since the 30’s. How come? Obviously,
there is still a long way to go in
combating this dreaded disease and one
may wonder if we’ve been going in the
right direction? For additional
information, see an article by Reynold
Spector, MD in the Jan/Feb Skeptical
Inquirer
Contact Dr. Mason by email at
DrSBMason@aol.com.
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KRISTIN
Response from Kristin
If finding the cure for cancer is a
“war,” then it is guerilla-type warfare, at
best. There are so many kinds of cancer
and reportedly from such a multitude of
causes, even as we are making gains—like
early detection and more powerful
“smart” drugs—another type of cancer
seems to become more prevalent, and
often more evasive. For instance, deaths
from breast cancer are now down, but
pancreatic and brain cancer is up.
I am interested in whether your
question is intellectual curiosity or if it is
growing out of fear or concern for
yourself and loved ones.
When gerontologist Dr. Arnold Bresky
recently appeared on our show, he said
next to Alzheimer’s, the C-Word is the
most feared diagnosis one can receive.
Perhaps that’s because the general
population still believes it’s a death
sentence. However, stop and think: we
all know people who have survived, even
against great odds.
I believe part of the fuel of fear is
coming from so much independent
research and conflicting media reports.
Every day there’s another report on
something causing cancer—everything
from stress to the air we breathe to eating
too many peanuts.
I’m not advocating that cancer research
should cease, but rather we shouldn’t
believe with all our hearts and souls
everything we hear. Instead, just like in
other areas of our lives, let’s concentrate
on winning one battle at a time, not the
whole darn war.
Contact Kristin by email at
bettertimesafter50@hotmail.com.
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Archived Discussions
December 2009
October 2009
September 2009
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