Cancer and Other Degenerative Diseases as we near the Harvest

[Monica]

these conditions have always been around, but so often will have been undiagnosed

from http://alternativecancerresources.com/page35.html

The National Cancer Institute reports a 28% rise in the incidence of childhood cancers from 1950 to 1988.
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Spokespersons for conventional cancer care frequently tout five-year survival rates as indicative of progress and money wisely spent. However, a critical analysis of these numbers reveals such claims to be illusory. The public relations experts of the American Cancer Society claim that more cancer patients are living at least five years after their diagnosis than ever before. The facts are that between 1974 and 1976 and 1981 and 1987, the five-year survival rates rose only 2%, from 49% to 51%, and for cancers of the liver, lung, pancreas, bone, and breast, rates are about the same as they were in 1965.

The five-year mark is used as a yardstick for "cure" by conventional oncologists. It doesn't matter if you die one day after the five-year mark, you are still counted among the cases cured. Since many people die not long after five years, this can be a highly misleading statistic. For example, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer is about 75%, but the extended survival rate is less than 50%. Similarly, while the five-year survival for prostate cancer is about 70%, the ten-year survival rate is only about 3 5 %.

Even the small overall increase in five-year survival for all cancers may be an exaggeration, since many diagnostic tests in use today enable earlier diagnosis, which makes the survival time only appear longer than in the past. For instance, consider the woman whose breast cancer is diagnosed an average of three years earlier because of mammography; today she might live for seven years. In 1985, using the older diagnostic and treatment tools, this same woman would have appeared to live only four years. Nothing has changed in terms of the effectiveness of conventional therapy, and yet the breast cancer patient appears to live longer, owing to the improved screening measures. The "success" exists only on paper.

These statistics, flawed and misleading as they are already, do not factor in the far longer survival times commonly produced by physicians using alternative modalities of cancer care. Nor do they account in any way for the radical degree to which alternative medicine applied to cancer care could profoundly shift the outcomes from dismal to successful. A rational person will ask why this isn't already so. Powerful economic and political forces are arrayed against alternative medicine—generally, and for cancer specifically—precisely because of its promise of remarkable success at less cost.