The War on Cancer: a reality-check
In the seventies, President Nixon declared an ambitious goal and called it the “War on Cancer. However, a few decades later, we have to admit that we fell short as cancer rates still haven’t gone done.
I am now 37 years old. When I go back in time, maybe just twenty years or so, I barely new anybody who had cancer. And if we go back even another few years, cancer rates were by far not as high as they are today.
My point is: every 7th or 8th women today in the United States will get breast-cancer this year. Go back in time and you will realize it wasn’t like that 20, 40, 60, 80 years ago.
You probably know one or more people diagnosed with cancer. And unfortunately, it is likely that there’s even someone in your family who got diagnosed.
In March of 2009 my wife Ann was diagnosed with breast cancer. My mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer only a few months later. And after I encountered blood in my urine, a CT-Scan result came back with another cancer diagnosis for our family. A larger tumor was found in my left kidney.
I just had my left kidney removed by a laparoscopic nephrectomy. My wife had to undergo 3 surgeries in total until the margins came back clear. Cancer is everywhere and it seems to grow out of control.
The page has turned. Cancer is growing, even though billions of $$ where poured into science and research to find the magic bullet, after Nixon proudly declared to battle it and to declare victory in record time. And when I speak of President Nixon, I certainly don’t mean to point my finger at the USA – the situation is the same everywhere in the Western World.
Or do I just imagine all that? Is my wife’s cancer, my mother’s cancer and my own cancer just a coincidence or is there more to the picture. And what about the other ten people I know who also all got diagnosed in 2009.
You may object to my standpoint as many people in fact do. They argue with statistics and data which – at least according to them – indicate that cancer, and especially breast cancer incidents, have been consistently going down over the past few decades.
I’m not a math-wizard. But since I am in a related profession, I do know how to read statistics, clinical studies and numbers in general. And therefore, I also know how easy it is to present the exact same numbers and data in many different ways. It’s like looking at the glass half full versus half empty.
I don’t want to discount the achievements of modern medicine. However, it’s time for a reality-check and look at the facts as they present themselves to us. We might have won a couple of battles, but the war is far short of being over yet.
I was diagnosed with Kidney Cancer and seven months later after my wife Ann was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in March of 2009. I created our Breast Cancer Homepage with the intention to share with you and to provide independent quality .