Cancer: Civilization's

Cancer: Civilization's
No. 2 Killer

There is no disease in existence which is, most assuredly
easier of prevention than cancer; yet there is no malady
which, when once it has established its presence,
is so difficult to subdue.
   Robert Bell, MD FRFPS
   Late Vice-president of the International Society of Cancer Research
   Late Superintendent of Cancer Research, Battersea Hospital
   Member, Cosmopolitan Society of Cancer Research

   Cancer is a state of cellular growth which occurs when some normal cells in the body become abnormal and multiply abnormally. It is characterized by the ability of the abnormal cells to subdivide and multiply outside of the constraints that automatically limit the subdivision and growth of normal cells. It is resultant of imperfect blood chemistry and does not occur in properly nourished and vigorously healthy humans. While cancer is unknown among various primitive populations throughout the world, it is common in modern countries, being responsible for one in every four deaths, and is still increasing.

   When the epidemiological facts are considered, even briefly, it becomes apparent that the 'diseases of civilization', of which cancer is only one, are directly caused by faulty living habits practised by the supposedly more civilized populations, and when the different dietary and other living habits are compared, it soon becomes further apparent what the main faults are. And to understand how these faults (mainly dietary) lead to the chronic toxemia which provokes once-healthy cells to change form, only a rudimentary knowledge of elementary biology is required, together with the acceptance that all life forms are capable of adaptation to a changed environment if necessary for survival.

What Causes Cancer?

   For a start, it has been proven that germs and viruses do not cause cancer. Present cancer research is working on the supposition that cancer is caused by toxins of various kinds which one way or another find their way into the body and in some locations cause damage to the nucleus of a cell, turning it into a cancer cell. The presumption is that a gene within the DNA structure of the cell becomes altered so that the cell begins to multiply. Such a change to the cell's DNA is called a mutation. Also suspected of being able to cause cancer in this way are various forms of radiation, and any substance or influence that either causes cancer or tends to cause cancer is called a carcinogen. This hypothesis is a simple one, and if it were true it should be easy to prove, but although it is well known that certain substances can be carcinogenic, they are not always so, and the mechanism by which they are supposed to work has never been demonstrated. The hypothesis therefore remains only guesswork, and in the minds of most doctors cancer remains a mystery.

   However, there is a theory on the causation of cancer which has been proven--one which accords to all known facts and biological laws and has been demonstrated in the laboratory. This theory, called the De-differentiation Theory of Cancer, developed from knowledge accumulated about how aerobic cells generate energy by the respiration of oxygen, and is best explained in the books of four of the 20th Century's greatest medical scientists: Dr Otto Warburg, Dr Max Gerson of Germany, Dr William F. Koch of the USA, and Dr Cornelius Moerman of Holland.

   Dr Otto Warburg (1883-1970) was Director of the Max Planck Institute of Cell Physiology in Germany. The holder of many international honors, Dr Warburg was considered by Dr Dean Burk, head of the Cytochemistry Department of the US National Cancer Institute at the time, to be the world's greatest biochemist. In 1931 Warburg won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the oxygen transferring enzyme of cell respiration, and was voted a second Nobel Prize in 1944 for his discovery of the active groups of the hydrogen transferring enzymes. Conferred honorary degrees by the universities of Harvard, Oxford and Heidelberg, he was a member of the Royal Society of London, a Knight of the Order of Merit founded by Frederick the Great, and was awarded the Great Cross with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Bundesrepublik. Although Jewish, he was unmolested by the Nazis, and in the subsequent invasion of Germany by the Russians he was accorded protection and special consideration by the Russian High Command. Warburg's research spanned more than sixty years, and he was the author of over 500 published research papers and five books. His description of the experiments in which he transformed normal cells into cancer cells was contained in his lecture at the meeting of Nobel-Laureates on 30 June 1966 at Lindau, Germany. This lecture, titled 'The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer', was reproduced in English by Dr Dean Burk and published by Konrad Triltsch, Wurzburg, Germany.

   Dr Dean Burk (1904-1988) was a foundation member of the US National Cancer Institute and former head of its Cytochemistry Department. For his work in cancer research he received honors from France, Britain, Germany and Russia. Formerly Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Cornell University, he worked in cancer research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany and at the USSR Academy of Science, Moscow. Dr Burk was the recipient of the Domagk Prize for cancer research, a Knight Commander of the Medical Order of Bethlehem, and a Knight of the Mark Twain Society. He was co-author of the books Cancer, Approaches to Tumor Chemotherapy and Cell Chemistry and author of over 250 published scientific papers. Dr Warburg said Burk's outstanding and decisive discoveries in cancer research were: 1) the metabolism of the regenerating liver (1941); 2) that the malignancy of cancer was proportional to the fermentation rate of the cells (1956); and 3) that in vivo growing hepatomas produced in vivo by carcinogens were similarly more malignant the higher the fermentation rate (1964).

   Dr Max Gerson (1881-1959) was Jewish but didn't enjoy Warburg's standing. He was forced to flee Germany in 1933, spending the last twenty odd years of his life working in the USA. Best known for his successful dietary treatment of migraine, lupus, tuberculosis, diabetes and cancer, Gerson was the author of more than fifty published research papers and four books. Whereas Warburg was supported and honored for his full-time research, Gerson's great work was ignored by the medical establishment. He worked alone devoting his efforts mainly to the treatment of his patients, most of whom had been given up as hopeless cases by other doctors. Under Gerson's care, Dr Albert Schweitzer, double Nobel Laureate, completely eliminated his diabetes and Schweitzer's wife her tuberculosis using Gerson's dietary methods. After Gerson's death Dr Schweitzer said of him: 'I see in him one of the most eminent geniuses in the history of medicine.' Notwithstanding recognition by such medical greats as Dr Schweitzer and Dr Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Gerson's work received no recognition by the medical establishment, which considered him an unorthodox threat to the medical system.

   William F. Koch, BA MA Ph.D MD, was Instructor in Histology and Embryology at the University of Michigan from 1910-14, Professor of Physiology at the Detroit College of Medicine from 1914-19, and Director of the Koch Cancer Clinic from 1919-49. Like Gerson, Koch was considered unorthodox and a threat to the established medical system, and despite adoption of his methods by independent doctors in the USA and Canada, he was continually persecuted by the American Medical Association, run at the time by a criminal who called himself Dr Maurice Fishbein but whose medical credentials were false. (Fishbein's dictatorial control of American medicine finally ended when he was kicked out at the AMA Convention in Atlantic City on 6 June 1949.) Koch was author of numerous publications concerned primarily with the biochemistry of immunity and of cancer, his best-known book being The Survival Factor in Neoplastic and Viral Diseases, published in 1961. Dr Willard Dow, founder of the Dow Chemical Company, described Dr Koch as the greatest biochemist of the age and so far ahead of his contemporaries that they could not understand him.

   Dr Cornelius Moerman graduated in medicine in 1930 and since then has devoted his entire professional life to cancer research and treatment. His theory of cancer, which he called the Metabolism Theory, he developed independently, but because his reasoning was based on the new knowledge about the respiratory processes of cells and the enzymes necessary for their accomplishment, his conclusions of course inevitably coincided with those of Warburg, Gerson and Koch. The English translation of his book A Solution to the Cancer Problem was published in 1962 by The International Association of Cancer Victims and Friends Inc., Los Angeles.

   Although doctors Gerson, Koch and Moerman each separately arrived at the same conclusion and demonstrated the theory by their successful treatment of human patients, it was Dr Warburg who demonstrated visually in the laboratory the actual changing of normal cells into cancer cells.

   In fact, Dr Warburg was not the first to demonstrate that cancer arose from cells whose normal respiration had been disturbed. P.G. Seeger had proven this in 1936, 1937 and 1938 but it was F. Windisch in 1947 who succeeded in changing normal cells into cancer cells by intermittently withholding oxygen from them, an experiment repeated in 1953 by H. Goldblatt and G. Cameron. Dr Warburg's experiments, however, actually measured the degrees of respiration and fermentation involved in the transformation of cells, and actually measured the oxygen pressures inside tumors in the living body.

   Dr Warburg did not physically interfere with the experimental healthy cells in any way, and he did not employ chemicals, heat or radiation--he merely reduced their supply of oxygen. When he reduced the oxygen needed by the cells for normal respiration by thirty-five per cent, they de-differentiated to become cancer cells.

   How can cells in the human body with an unrestricted air supply be deprived of oxygen? Answer: toxemia (unhealthy blood).

   Blood carries oxygen to the body's cells together with the nutrients the cells need to utilize the oxygen (the vitamins and minerals from which respiratory enzymes are made). Unhealthy blood is low both ways and sluggish in its flow. Dr Warburg's experiment in the laboratory took only days, but in real life cancer may take years, maybe few, maybe many, depending on the degree of toxemia, but when the critical point is reached the end result is the same.

   Thus cancer, as with heart disease, can to a large extent be predicted just by observing a person's dietary and other living habits. A proper blood test which took into account blood viscosity and oxygen levels as well as the usual factors would be more precise. As previously explained, in conditions of toxemia before symptoms of impending disease become apparent, there appear in the blood microorganisms which increase in numbers as the milieu interieur further deteriorates. These are the pleomorphic microbes described in Chapter 5. The relationship between this indicator of toxemia and the subsequent incidence of cancer was observed in a study of twenty-five patients over a twenty-year period by Dr Guy Owens, a surgeon in Amarillo, Texas. He said in 1979:

   'We selected 25 cases from my practise where the organism was repeatedly found during blood counts. They were run of the mill office cases, being male, female, old and young, but apparently in average good health. Over a 20 year period, 23 of these people came down with malignancy of one kind or another . . . proven by surgery and proper pathologic examination. Two cases were lost from our records although one was known to have died from an obscure abdominal condition.'

   It is easy to understand why researchers concentrating on studying one disease can easily be led to false conclusions having identified a microbe present at the scene, and why the cancer/virus controversy went on for years. However, Dr Owens knew that all people carry within them these organisms and that it was their multiplication and behavior that indicated a pathological condition. What he did not know was how the pathological condition caused normal body cells to change into cancer cells.

Differentiation and De-differentiation

   In brief, the transformation of normal cells into abnormal (cancer) cells is a predictable, biological event, obeying natural biological laws in circumstances that give the cells no other choice if they are to survive individually. In Chapter 3 it was explained how in conditions of constipation, normal aerobic bacteria in the colon are forced to change into anaerobic bacteria. In a similar fashion, when body cells are deprived of oxygen or the enzymes necessary to utilize oxygen they will endeavor to survive by anaerobic means, and to do this they must change in form, ie, de-differentiate, to a more primitive form.

   Differentiation is the process that takes place in a developing embryo during pregnancy by which primitive, unspecialized embryo cells, as they multiply, change in form to the different specialized cells required to form the different organs of the baby's body. At conception, when egg and sperm unite to form one cell which then subdivides and multiplies, the new cells--called embryonic cells--are all the same: they are primitive in form, largely anaerobic, and multiply rapidly without constraint. And although they are different to the mother's own body cells and therefore foreign to her body, because of what is known as 'blocking factor' they are not challenged by her immune system.

   When the embryo attaches to the mother's circulatory system and begins to receive nourishment and oxygen from the mother's blood, the embryonic cells become fully aerobic, ie dependent on oxygen. As the embryo continues to grow, the embryonic cells change in form: they become different from each other in order to construct the different organs of the new body, so that they are identifiable as bone cells, muscle cells, skin cells and so on. They are differentiated.

   In understanding cancer, the points to remember are that embryo cells are initially primitive, undifferentiated, largely anaerobic and multiply without constraint, whereas fully differentiated, specialized cells in normal tissues are aerobic and their subdivision and growth is strictly constrained.

   When bacteria, which are single primitive cell organisms, are deprived of oxygen they are capable of survival by reverting to the process of fermentation of nutrients in order to produce the energy they need. This process, called glycolysis, was the process used by primitive cells billions of years ago before oxygen became freely available in the sea and air, and is still part of the aerobic respiratory process employed by oxygen-using cells of living creatures today.

   Glycolysis is an inefficient process which liberates only small amounts of energy from a given amount of blood sugar, leaving a residue of pyruvic acid which is converted to lactic acid and eliminated. Oxygen-using (aerobic) cells still retain glycolysis in the initial stages of their respiratory cycle but are immensely more efficient because they are capable of taking the pyruvic acid resultant from glycolysis and combining it with oxygen, which process not only liberates about fifteen times more energy but at the same time leaves only carbon dioxide and water as by-products, substances which are completely harmless and easily eliminated.

   In order to survive by fermentation, aerobic bacteria must change into a more primitive form, and because fermentation is so inefficient, more fuel (blood sugar) must be consumed and a lot of acid produced. This process occurs in the mouth when the natural bacteria there are deprived of oxygen by food residues stuck between the teeth, and the acid so produced eats away the tooth enamel to make the cavities we call tooth decay. Similarly, aerobic bacteria normal in the colon (bowel) change into anaerobic bacteria when putrifying residues of protein and fat cause constipation and acids and other toxins are produced, many of which find their way into the bloodstream.

   When lipotoxemia and acidic conditions of the blood result in deterioration of the lymph which sustains the tissue cells of the body, the cells may be deprived of oxygen or deprived of the enzymes they need to utilize oxygen. When this occurs the milieu interieur , polluted, is referred to as the cancer milieu.

   Like bacteria (which are cells), the cells of the human body are similarly capable of reverting to a more primitive form when forced to by interference to their normal respiration, and the more their aerobic respiration is curtailed, the more primitive they must become in order to survive. Thus, for a normal fully differentiated cell, eg a lung cell, to change into a more primitive form it must de-differentiate, and in degrees lose its identity as a lung cell, and resemble more and more the primitive embryo cells from which the body originated. The degree of dedifferentiation is proportional to the degree the cell is dependent on fermentation to survive, and when the cell reaches a certain stage of primitiveness it forgets its allegiance to the body as a whole and starts to reproduce as primitive cells do, heedless of the body's normal constraints. This unrestrained growth of increasingly dedifferentiated cells is cancer, and the tumor at the site of origin is called the primary tumor.

   The degree of de-differentiation determines the primitiveness of the cells and therefore their rate of growth, which means that the malignancy of the cancer is directly related to the degree of de-differentiation, fermentation and production of lactic acid. Thus the cancer growth proceeds in a vicious circle because the lactic acid and other waste products of the cancer cells worsen further the cancer milieu which started the process off in the first place. Moreover, because the cancer cells resemble embryonic cells in structure and function they are to some degree capable of producing the same blocking factor embryonic cells do, which inhibits the immune system from attacking them.

Metastasis--The Main Danger

   Cells do not have to be fully de-differentiated to grow as cancer, and therefore pathology tests can usually identify them with the tissue of their origin. Thus, when cancer cells migrate in the blood and lymph and start secondary tumors elsewhere in the body (metastatis), the site of the primary growth can usually be determined by examination of cells from the secondary. The secondary growths are the most fast growing, because although at the tissue of their origin the normal constraints to growth still tend to control the primary cancer, away from the tissue of origin the constraints do not exist. Primary tumors therefore are usually slow growing, and it is only when metastasis occurs that cancer is considered to be terminal.

   As the cancer growth proceeds, the process becomes a vicious circle in which more and more of the body's supply of blood sugar is squandered in the wasteful production of lactic acid and so the entire body, poisoned and starved of sustenance, wastes away in the condition known as cachexia.

Important--Note Well

   When primary tumors liberate stray cancer cells into the circulation, for metastasis to occur such cells must first escape destruction by the immune system, and then lodge in a location where the circulation is blocked by a thrombus (fibrin clot). This was demonstrated by Dr Summer Wood of Boston in 1958 (AMA Archives of Pathology, Vol. 66, October 1958). About the same time, Dr L. Michaels of Canada reasoned that if no clots were allowed to form, then metastasis from a primary tumor could not occur, and that people with only primary cancers would in that case be in a much safer situation. This he proved to be the case. He studied the medical histories of a large number of heart and stroke patients kept on permanent anti-coagulant drug treatment to protect their blood circulation, to ascertain the incidence of cancer deaths among them, and found the incidence to be only one eighth of the expected number. The study covered the equivalent of 1569 patient/years and there was not a single case of death by cancer metastasis in the group. Thus it is easy to understand why fat is a major factor in most cancers and why herbal anti-coagulants such as garlic, aloe vera and so on assist people on high-fat diets to avoid cancer.

   The major factor underlying the cancer process is improper diet. The incidence of all kinds of cancer is related more to the high intake of cooked food containing fat, protein, cholesterol, salt and preservatives than to anything else, although anything at all detrimental to the purity of the bloodstream must one way or another contribute to the problem. The deprivation of oxygen to the cells is caused not only by high blood viscosity, poor circulation and low oxygen levels, but also by the absence of the enzymes needed to process the oxygen. The respiratory enzymes may be absent because of nutrients missing from the diet*, or the respiratory enzymes may be inhibited by carcinogens in the bloodstream derived from sources such as food, smoking, alcohol, putrefaction in the colon and poisons from infected teeth.

*See 'Mineral Deficiencies', Chapter 15, which outlines Dr Maynard Murray's prevention of cancer in mice.

   Dr Joseph Issels of Germany, who has researched and treated cancer for fifty years, asserts that poisoning from infected teeth is one of the prime causes of cancer, and this viewpoint is supported by Dr Mulhim Hassan of Lebanon in his book Prevention and Cure of Cancer.

   However, of all the many factors which in one way or another contribute to the deterioration of the milieu interieur and predispose the body to cancer, constipation appears to be by far the worst. It is important to remember that a regular daily bowel movement does not mean the absence of constipation; what counts is the time food residues take to transit the digestive tract. On the traditional Western diet of mainly cooked unsuitable food the transit time is about seventy-two hours, which means that 'regular' or not, there are always stagnant putrefying residues occupying the colon producing carcinogenic substances, some of which provoke local problems and some of which perfuse back into the bloodstream. Sir William Arbuthnot Lane,* the famous British surgeon, repeatedly emphasized he had never known a single case of cancer that had not been preceded by prolonged intestinal stasis.

*Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, BART CB; Consulting Surgeon to Guys Hospital; Consulting Surgeon to The Hospital for Sick Children, London; President of The New Health Society; author of The Prevention of the Diseases Peculiar to Civilization (1929).

   In his surgical practice, Sir William noted that so common were diseased colons he was forced to conclude the colon to be the seat of most chronic diseases, and for some time he specialized in the removal of diseased colons. This procedure confirmed his ideas because most of his patients' chronic disorders cleared up very quickly after losing their colons, and their overall health improved. Eventually he realized that the colon was not, itself, a troublesome organ, and became diseased only because of the kind of food people ate, and that the resulting disorders were the result of what he called 'auto-intoxication'. It was at this time in his career he became converted to the concept of natural health and thereafter concentrated his efforts on educating patients rather than cutting pieces out of them.

   Professor Aviles of the Biochemistry of Cancer Department, Guadalajara, Mexico reported that out of 7715 cancer patients examined by him over a fifteen-year period, at least ninety-nine per cent had suffered from constipation and that the degree of malignancy was parallel to the degree of constipation. Doctors Dennis Burkitt and Hugh Trowell, who both spent twenty-five years working in rural Africa, agreed that in those areas where the diet of the natives consisted almost entirely of fruit and vegetables, the 'transit time' of the natives was about twenty-four hours, there was no such thing as constipation and cancer was non-existent. Dr E. H. Tipper in his book The Cradle of the World and Cancer (1927) said:

   'Cancer has been suspected of being a disease of civilization. judging from my experience in general practise in London, twenty years in West Africa, and again in rural England, I am convinced that this is true. It is due to the conventionalism and bad feeding of civilization, and is an exact index of the degree to which the alimentary tract has deviated from its natural and normal state of health. In the case of cancer, constipation and excessive meat-eating should be the two suspects, when they are present cancer is rife, where absent there is none.'

   However, despite the foregoing, a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet is no guarantee against cancer unless toxemia from other sources is avoided, and such toxemia is possible on a high-protein vegetarian diet containing excessive quantities of grain products and lentils. The author's observations of cancer occurring among conscientious followers of the Pritikin diet led him to suspect the heavy dependence on grain products, having previously noted the exacerbation of arthritis which accompanied excessive intake of these foods. These suspicions were confirmed by the results of the US Government's six-year Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT), evaluated in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in Janunary 1987. The trial was conducted to evaluate the risk factors involved in coronary heart disease, in particular the relationship between blood cholesterol levels and heart attacks among the 12,000 male participants. As expected, the group with the lowest cholesterol levels (below 4.3) suffered only one quarter the death rate from heart attacks than the group with the highest cholesterol but, surprisingly, this low cholesterol group suffered just on fifty per cent more deaths from cancer than all the other groups (whose death rates from cancer were all about the same as each other), which led some doctors to believe that low cholesterol levels could actually favor the onset of cancer. But this did not make sense because all previous knowledge showed low cholesterol to be protective against cancer.

   However, bearing in mind the acid-producing effects of excessive consumption of grains and other high-protein vegetables, we can explain the apparent anomaly. As Nathan Pritikin had already demonstrated before the MRFIT trial began, the only way to achieve such big reductions in blood cholesterol is to eliminate almost entirely from the diet all cholesterol-containing foods and in their place substitute cholesterol-free foods such as grain products, lentils, vegetables and fruit. This diet works wonderfully to lower cholesterol and to improve circulation, but because too little fruit is eaten and because vegetables are eaten mostly cooked and are less satisfying, and because grain products and lentils are not limited and are satisfying, it is the grain products and lentils that are consumed in excessive quantities capable of producing acid toxemia, despite the fact constipation may no longer exist. Pritikin advised the intake of copious quantities of raw salad to offset the acid formed from the grains, but it's a fact that most people just don't like eating a lot of salad and would rather stuff themselves with rice, oats or spaghetti, all of them acid forming.

   The cancer process, like atherosclerosis, may take many years to develop, and the onset of the cancer growth itself usually appears in middle age or later when the vital organs have degenerated to the stage they can no longer maintain a reasonable degree of purity of the milieu interieur . In the years preceding the appearance of cancer as a growth, the tissues pass through a stage known as pre-cancer, and while the body's immune system is capable of reasonable function, any cancer cells that form, at least in the early stages, may be quickly destroyed by the immune system's white cells, providing of course that the white cells are capable of reasonable function. It should be noted that fat and cholesterol in the blood severely inhibit the white cells' activity.

   Dr Max Gerson, referring to experiments with animals, said that whatever chemical assault was necessary to cause cancer in them the cancer never commenced until after the liver function became impaired, 'together with pathological changes in the kidneys, spleen and lymphatic apparatus'. Gerson illustrated this point with an experiment in which he completely eliminated cancer in a rat simply by interconnecting its blood circulation with that of a healthy rat whose liver was fully functional.

   Primary cancer occurs mainly in tissues which in their day-to-day function have a constant wearing out and renewal of cells: tissues such as the skin, the lining of the digestive tract, the respiratory tract and the female genital canal. Apart from the fact that the cells in these tissues tend to rapidly reproduce anyway, these tissues are exposed to irritation of various kinds which promotes normal renewal growth. New growth requires temporary dedifferentiation of cells in any tissue, and if the tissue is in a pre-cancerous state any irritation or injury may be sufficient to trigger partially de-differentiated cells into becoming cancer cells. It has been postulated in the past that irritation or injury may be a cause of cancer, a postulation which of course in incorrect because irritation or injury cannot trigger cancer in healthy tissue.

   Cancer is often also linked with emotional factors such as worry and grief. The two factors, physical injury and emotional stress, time and again precede the appearance of cancer, separately or together, and have often been thought to be primary causes of cancer. However, it is clear that cancer occurs only in tissue that is pre-cancerous beforehand and that irritation and emotional stress are only secondary factors, irritation by its effect on triggering cell growth, and emotional stress by its effect on depressing the cancer-fighting ability of the body's immune system. Probably in the same way emotional stress favors the onset of cancer, it has long been observed by physicians that people with melancholy personalities seem to be more prone to the disease, it being proposed there is such a thing as a 'cancer personality'. On the other hand, it would seem more likely that the melancholy disposition is not a cause of cancer but, like the cancer itself, just another symptom of a toxic bloodstream.

   Hormone imbalance may also enter the picture; breast cancer is often associated with high levels of estrogen, the female growth hormone, and it should be noted that overproduction of estrogen is caused by high levels of fat in the diet. As Nathan Pritikin explained, it is the abnormal production of estrogen due to fat in the Western diet that accounts for the premature sexual development and bigger breasts of today's young girls.

   Smoking is considered to be the primary cause of lung cancer, but research has shown that its role in producing lung cancer is mainly that of an irritant triggering new growth in tissue already pre-cancerous. Asbestos causes similar irritation. The role of smoking as a real primary cancer cause is its effect of introducing carbon monoxide into the bloodstream and reducing available oxygen to the tissues. Strong sunshine is thought to be the prime cause of skin cancer, but it is no such thing; it is an irritant which triggers new cell growth it is true, but skin cancer only eventuates in skin which is pre-cancerous, and when people adopt a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet they find the skin cancers no longer occur.

   Billions and billions of dollars have been spent on desperate research to find a cure for cancer, a quest doomed to failure from the start even though doctors talk about various rates of cures obtained by surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. A person is regarded as cured of cancer if after the operation the cancer does not re-appear in five years, and all through that anxious five years or in the next maybe less anxious five years (if the patient lasts that long) nobody knows if and when the cancer will 'strike' again.

   Cancer can be considered 'cured' only if the causes underlying it are understood and permanently removed, so that the affected tissue can become healthy again by the process of natural healing, called a spontaneous remission in medical parlance. The simple solution to the cancer problem is to stop doing the things that cause cancer. At the meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany on 30 June 1966, Dr Otto Warburg concluded his address as follows:

   'Nobody today can say that one does not know what cancer and its prime cause be. On the contrary, there is no disease whose prime cause is better known, so that today ignorance is no excuse that one cannot do more about prevention. The prevention of cancer will come there is no doubt, for man wishes to survive. But how long prevention will be avoided depends on how long the prophets of agnosticism will succeed in inhibiting the application of scientific knowledge in the cancer field. In the meantime, millions of people must die of cancer unnecessarily.'

Note: For additional hope and understanding of cancer see 'Recommended Reading on Cancer' in the Appendix.