War on Cancer

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In 1971, many sponsors of the War on Cancer predicted a cure by 1976. Instead, this multibillion dollar research program has proven to be a failure.

Cancer for profit

The age adjusted total cancer mortality rate climbed steadily for decades until the early 1990s, when the rate started to fall slowly, due largely to reduced smoking. To encourage continued support for cancer research, now exceeding two billion dollars annually in the U.S. alone; researchers and administrators have misled the public. In 1987, theU.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the statistics from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) "artificially inflate the amount of 'true' progress", concluding that even simple five-year survival statistics were manipulated. The NCI termed five-year survival a "cure" even if the patient died of the cancer after the five-year period. Also, by ignoring well known statistical biases, the NCI falsely suggested advances had been made in certain cancer therapies. [1]

Failure of toxic "therapies"

In 1971 when the U.S. declared war on cancer, scientists still hadn't identified the immune defense system. Doctors and scientists, along with the American Cancer Society, continue to refer to a non-contagious condition with no incubation period or identifiable foreign invader as a "disease". Scientists have requested and received billions in grants from the federal government, non-profit organizations, corporate and private donors. However, according to critics, like the New England Journal of Medicine, the "war on cancer" is a failure. According to John C. Bailar III, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman of the Dept. of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at McGill University:

"Despite $30 billion spent on research since 1970, cancer remains undefeated, with a death rate not lower but actually higher than when they started. The effect of new treatments for cancer has been largely disappointing. The failure of chemotherapy to control cancer has become apparent even to the oncology establishment." [2]

The late Professor of Medical Physics, H.B. Jones, was a leading U.S. cancer statistician. In a 1969 speech to the American Cancer Society, he stated that studies had not proved that chances of survival were improved by early intervention. In fact, according to his studies, untreated persons with cancer lived up to four times longer and with a better quality of life than treated ones. He was not invited back. According to the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet:

"If one were to believe all the media hype, the triumphalism of the medical profession in published research, and the almost weekly miracle breakthroughs trumpeted by the cancer charities, one might be surprised that women are dying at all from breast cancer." [3]

According to the oncologist, Glen Warner, M.D.:

"We have a multi-billion dollar industry that is killing people, right and left, just for financial gain. Their idea of research is to see whether two doses of this poison is better than three doses of that poison." [4]

NCI & clinical trials for hydrazine sulfate

According to "The $200 Billion Scam", published in Penthouse in 1997:

"In the 25 years since the federal government declared War on Cancer, an estimated $200 billion has been spent by U.S. taxpayers and private investors on research that has produced so little bang for the buck that it makes the Pentagon's $600 toilet seats look like bargains for every American home. The cancer industry has become a huge jobs program for brilliant, even highly motivated, doctors and other scientists, whose efforts are misguided by the economic forces behind the industry. Directly put, it's in the interests of all the fat cats in government and private enterprise who earn their living and status from what is largely a failed enterprise, to stick with it. That is why a drug like hydrazine sulfate is dumped on by the cancer establishment, instead of given legitimate support and honest evaluation."

The General Accounting Office (GAO) defied logic, reason, and science to give its blessing to the NCI's deliberately biased testing of hydrazine sulfate which produced false results to make it appear ineffective. NCI higher administrators who wrote the report also and ignored evidence pointing to rigged clinical trials. [5]

American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society ACS is largest non-religious charity in the world. As of the fiscal year ending in August of 2007, the ACS had a net revenue 1.17 billion dollars. [6] ACS's daily expenditures exceed one million dollars with only approximately 16% going into patient cancer programs. The rest is funneled into expensive research and bureaucratic overhead. Meager prevention programs are designed not to offend the industry. The average American diagnosed with cancer spend upwards of $25,000 of their savings on cures to save or lengthen their lives. However, claims of 'progress' include many people with benign diseases. Those in remission for longer than 5 years are declared cured, although many of those will die from either cancer or treatment after five years. [7] Corporate donors include processed food and pharmaceutical industry giants like Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, AstraZeneca, Novartis and Walmart as well as Metropolitan Life Insurance. [8]

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

A look at financial relationships between large facilities such as the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and corporations making billions in profits from chemotherapy drugs, is extremely telling as to its continued use in the face of such failure. Furthermore, expensive laboratories and diagnostic equipment have already been paid for by large corporations. James Robinson III, Chairman of the MSKCC Board of Overseers and Managers, is also the director of Bristol-Myers Squibb, the world's largest producer of chemo drugs. Paul Marks, MD, MSKCC's President and CEO, is the director of Pfizer. Another board member, Richard Furlaud recently retired as Bristol Myers' president. [9] The late Richard Gelb was Vice-Chairman of the MSKCC board as well as CEO of Bristol-Myers. [10], [11]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency in the U.S. government conducting and funding medical research. MSKCC Director Thomas Kelly, M.D., Ph.D. serves on the both the NIH Advistory Committee and Scientific Management Review Board. [12]

Cancer United

Cancer United is a pharmaceutical industry front group established by the Weber Shandwick public relations firm. It is funded entirely by Roche. [13]

Cancer & animal testing

More is spent on cancer than any other medical problem. There are more people living off of cancer than cancer sufferers. Millions of laboratory animals, including rats, mice, monkeys, guinea pigs, cats and dogs have been injected with cancerous material or implanted with malignancies.[14], [15] Why hasn't progress been commensurate with the effort and money invested? One explanation is the unwarranted preoccupation with animal testing. Crucial genetic, molecular, immunologic and cellular differences have disqualify animal models as an effective means to a cure. Mice are most commonly used, although "Mice are actually poor models of the majority of human cancers"; according to the industry's own laboratory animal publication. According to leading cancer researcher, Robert Weinberg, "The preclinical (animal) models of human cancer, in large part, stink… Hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted every year by drug companies using these models." [16]

A widely discussed 2004 article in Fortune magazine entitled "Why We're Losing the War on Cancer" [17] laid the blame on animal research. The basic approach in the 1970s was to grow human cancer cells in a lab dish, transplant them into a mouse whose immune system had been tweaked to not reject them and throw experimental drugs at them to see what happened. However, few successes in mice are relevant to people. According to Fran Visco, who founded the National Breast Cancer Coalition four years after being diagnosed with cancer in 1987, "Animals don't reflect the reality of cancer in humans. We cure cancer in animals all the time, but not in people."

Newsweek combed through three decades of high-profile successes in mice for clues to why the mice lived and the people died. According to oncologist Paul Bunn, who leads the International Society for the Study of Lung Cancer, "Animal models have not been very predictive of how well drugs would do in people. We put a human tumor under the mouse's skin, and that micro-environment doesn't reflect a person's—the blood vessels, inflammatory cells or cells of the immune system." Human tumors that scientists transplant into mice and then attack with their weapon du jour, almost never metastasize. For decades, scientists ignored metastatic cells (which are responsible for 90% of all cancer deaths) because metastasis didn't occur in animal models. Throughout the 1980's and 90's, researchers focused on increasingly detailed molecular mechanisms, instead of looking into the real problem. [18] See also Micheal Berens.

Articles & sources

SourceWatch articles

References

  1. ↑ A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation: A. Selected Diseases: 1. Cancer, Medical Research Modernization Committee, 2006
  2. ↑ Cancer, Information for Transformation, accessed February 2009
  3. ↑ Cancer, Information for Transformation, accessed February 2009
  4. ↑ Dr. Glenn A. Warner, M.D. (1919-2000), Whale, accessed February 2009
  5. ↑ Jeff Kamen, "The $200 Billion Scam", Penthouse Magazine, September 1997. (pp.52-57)
  6. ↑ American Cancer Society, Inc., Hoovers, accessed February 2009
  7. ↑ Katy Schiel The war on cancer is a fraud: The 'Cancer Establishment' is lying to you., Disinformation, July 2002
  8. ↑ About ACS: Corporations Committed to the Cause, American Cancer Society, accessed February 2009
  9. ↑ Boards of Overseers and Managers Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 2007
  10. ↑ Paid Notice: Deaths Gelb, Richard L., New York Times, April 2004
  11. ↑ Chemotherapy Report: Do We Need a New Approach to Cancer?, Alternative Cancer Treatments, accessed February 2009
  12. ↑ Advisory Committee to the Director, National Institutes of Health, April 2009
  13. ↑ Sarah Boseley, Concern over cancer group's link to drug firm, Guardian, October 2006
  14. ↑ Cancer, Information for Transformation, accessed February 2009
  15. ↑ Patricia Haight, Ph.D., Shaynie Aero The Failed Research of Micheal Berens, Liberation Magazine, accessed February 2009
  16. ↑ A Critical Look at Animal Experimentation: A. Selected Diseases: 1. Cancer, Medical Research Modernization Committee, 2006
  17. ↑ Clinton Leaf, Doris Burke Why We're Losing The War On Cancer (And How To Win It), Fortune magazine, March 2004
  18. ↑ Sharon Begley We Fought Cancer ...And Cancer Won. After billions spent on research and decades of hit-or-miss treatments, it's time to rethink the war on cancer., Newsweek, September 2008

External articles

External resources

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