Quoting from Chapter 13 of my book:
We read frequently about early detection of breast cancer, but never a word about concer prevention. Click here for another example.
According to Dr. Linus Pauling, “Everyone should know the war on cancer…” initiated in 1971 by President Nixon, “… is largely a fraud.” This is because fifty percent of cancers are diet related, while only one percent of the anticancer budget is allocated to diet research. (Linus Pauling, quoted in P. Chowka, “Cancer Research—The $20 Billion Failure,” by John Robbins in John Robbins describes the irony:
The three cancer treatments most fashionable today are surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Each is invasive; each has devastating side effects; each treats only symptoms. And their rate of success is thoroughly underwhelming.
And, I might add, each is expensive. Physicians and drug companies could provide education and counseling in how to change one’s diet, which would be much more effective than these standard treatments, but there would be little profit in it for them.
Occasionally cures are declared, however, “cure” is defined as survival for five years after treatment. The person whose cancer recurs in the sixth year and who then dies is still counted among the “cured.”
Changing to a plant-based, low-fat diet that is rich in raw, green vegetables is the best way to prevent cancer. Cancer is easier to prevent than to cure. As John Robbins says, it makes much more sense to erect a fence at the top of the cliff than to park more ambulances at the bottom.
Although orthodox medicine has had relatively little success in curing cancer, there is evidence that changing to a plant-based diet—in some cases and so long as the cancer is not too far advanced—can actually reverse cancer.
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In early 1997 there were dozens of articles in the newspapers about early detection of breast cancer. There was debate over whether insurance companies should pay for mammograms beginning at age 40 or at age 50. However, in not one single article was there any mention whatsoever of the possibility that cancer could be prevented. The silence reveals just how conventional science writers can be.
Dr. Kradjian highlights the absolute absurdity of the current medical paradigm as it is applied to breast cancer. The American Cancer Society and the media focus on early detection of breast cancer. It is true that mammogram x-ray tests can detect a tumor too small to detect through palpation. However, it is also true that for a cancer to be of sufficient size to be detected by mammograms—whether detected at age 40 or 50—, the cancer will already have divided 30 times, producing a tumor with billions of cells. To reach this size, the typical tumor will already have been growing for nine years! Most women who have breast cancer do not die of breast cancer itself, but of the cancer that has spread from the breast to other organs. Thus, it would seem that women might be interested in knowing how to prevent breast cancer in the first place. Is it possible to prevent most breast cancers? Absolutely. Dr. Kradjian marshals overwhelming evidence from hundreds of unbiased studies that a diet that is high in vegetables and extremely low in animal fat—meaning little or no meat, milk, or eggs—dramatically reduces incidence of breast cancer and most other cancers. (Save Yourself From Breast Cancer, p. 30 f.)
The American Cancer Society actually publishes a booklet on cancer prevention that generally agrees with Dr. Kradjian, but it distributes it only upon request. (American Cancer Society, Guidelines on Diet, Nutrition, and Cancer Prevention: Reducing the Risk of Cancer with Healthy Food Choices and Physical Activity, 1996, 800-227-2345.)
Is it correct to presume that most women would not be willing to make the dietary “sacrifice” necessary to prevent breast cancer? Is the eating of meat, milk, and eggs so pleasurable that around 3.6 percent of our women would knowingly choose to die for it? Shouldn’t women at least be provided the relevant facts so they could decide for themselves?
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Prevention is the appropriate paradigm, not early detection. We know how to prevent breast cancer—with a low-fat, high-fiber diet. The rate of breast cancer in countries were women eat such a diet is a small fraction of what it is in western countries.Although most medical doctors say older men should have prostate exams on a regular basis, Dr. John A. McDougall, M.D., says that by the time such tests can detect prostate cancer it will have spread to other organs. For prostate cancer to be detectable by a PSA test, it will be six years old and contain a million cells, but it will be only the size of a pencil point. Only after ten years will it be large enoughto be detectable by digital rectal examination or ultrasound. He says that prevention, through eating a strictly vegetarian diet, instead of early detection, through expensive testing, makes more sense. (Journal of the American Medical Association 272:773, 1994; “Ask Dr. McDougall,” Veggie Life, January, 1997, Vol. 4:5, Issue 23.)
It’s not just our women who are dying unnecessarily from cancer. Among men 30 to 40 years old, 30 percent have slowly-growing, latent cancer cells in their prostates, and by age 50 this rises to 40 percent. Prostate cancer waits for body chemistry to decline to the point where it can blossom into a more virulent form. It waits until the immune system is collapsing and is unable to destroy it. Men who eat a low-fat, plant-based diet harbor latent prostate cancers at a much lower rate than men in general, and their latent cancers are much less likely to become active. It is said that every man would die of prostate cancer if he could live long enough and not die of something else first. However, this clever saying is not true of those who eat a plant-based diet. (Neal Barnard, Eat Right, Live Longer, p. 121; P. Hill, “Environmental Factorsof Breast and Prostatic Cancer,” Cancer Research (1981), 41:3817; Jerry Bishop, “Study Points to Another Tentative Link Between Red Meat and Prostate Cancer,” Wall Street Journal, February 16, 1994.)
