October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month - as if you hadn't noticed!! There's a sea of pink going on, with fundraising gala events, pink ribbon breakfasts, products sporting the logo, sport teams wearing pink, fun-runs, and so on.
I absolutely 100% support any woman who is currently fighting, has fought, or will fight, breast cancer. My hat goes off to you, and I wish you all the courage and strength in the world.
But I do not wear pink ribbons. And I don't buy pink ribbon products.
I'm a conscientious objector, and here's why...
One. Why is October even called Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
Why is it not called Breast Cancer Prevention Month?
Even the World Health Organization now admits that 70% of all cancers are preventable (personally, I feel that the true amount is much higher than this. Adequate amounts of Vitamin D alone, can prevent up to 77% of cancers.)
Do you realise that much of the money raised from Pink Ribbon Month will go towards encouraging women to have mammograms, or providing free mammograms. Now that sounds good doesn't it? After all, we're told that early detection is the key...
But wait a minute.
Are mammograms really the way to go, seeing as a mammogram can not actually tell the difference between a benign cyst, and a malignant cancer?
A large study of 500,000 women in North America found that for every woman whose life was extended by mammogram, there were 10 others who were forced to endure unnecessary and painful treatments, only to find that they didn't have cancer after all.
And some studies suggest that as many as 1 in 4 breast cancers are NOT picked up by mammography. So not only do they give false positives, but false negatives, too.
Not only that, but if you did have a cancerous growth in your breast, putting it under pressure, in the way a mammogram squeezes a woman's breasts, is quite possibly the worst thing you can do. This can cause cancer cells to dislodge and move to other areas of the body (metastase).
I could be wrong, but the push to have women subjected to mammograms (which, by the way, have been proven to cause tumours because of the high levels of concentrated radiation) might have something to do with my next point...
Two. Breast Cancer Awareness Month was started by AstraZeneca.
AstraZeneca sells breast cancer drugs. 'Nuff said.
Three. Some of the products that sport the pink ribbon, such as beauty items, have ingredients in them that are known to cause cancer!!! Is this really about finding a solution to breast cancer, or is it about improving their image, and increasing their sales (and therefore profits).
Because if they were serious about fighting cancer, then they would remove the cheap, nasty ingredients that contribute to cancer, and they'd kick up a big stink, until all the other cosmetic companies followed suit.
I notice that a dry-cleaning company is now in on the action....Never mind that some of the chemicals used in dry-cleaning are also carcinogens (a fancy word for saying that they are known to cause, or contribute to, cancer).
Four. The "war" on cancer was declared in 1971. Since then we've raised and donated $200 billion towards finding a cure. I'm sorry, but it must be said....We don't have very much to show for the time and the money spent.
Roughly 1 in 8 women will still find themselves in the fight of their life with breast cancer, and that rate is rising by 1 - 2% every year. The rate for all cancers is now about 1 in 3.
Imagine if we had spent the last 30 years, and $200 billion dollars on
- banning all food and cosmetic ingredients that are known carcinogens (It seems unbelievable in such an "advanced" society, that we can buy products off the supermarket shelf that lead to our demise. We actually pay for the privaledge of destroying our health.). Diet sodas, processed meats like ham, hotdogs, and bacon, tap water, ALL have ingredients in them that are KNOWN to cause cancer, yet they are still sold without any warnings, and most people are none the wiser.
-banning crappy, processed foods that are full of additives and toxins, in our school canteens, and instead teach children how to grow their own organic food, not only is it teaching them a life skill, it sets the foundation for a healthy life.
- setting up free exercise and stress-reduction programs or free yoga classes,
- finding a better alternative to the birth control pill (also known to increase risk of cancer),
- massive education programs from school right through to aged care homes, to teach people the basics of good health. It is unforgiveable that in an educated society such as ours, the majority of people do not understand the basic tenets of health and well-being.
For example: most people do not even know how to breathe correctly!
Do you think that you suck your tummy in, when you breathe in??? If this is how you breathe, you are depriving your body of oxygen, because you are not getting air into the bottom half of your lungs.
When you breathe in, your stomach should come outwards, to allow extra room for the lungs to expand fully. Your stomach should come back in as you breath out, and push the air up out of your lungs.
If you watch a baby breathing, they do this instinctively, but somehow we seem to lose this instinct as we grow older.
(A chronic lack of oxygen affects all systems in the body, and cancer seems to like an environment lacking in oxygen.)
Even our basic "food pyramid" is incorrect, for goodness sake!! Apparently, we are supposed to eat more cereals and grains, than fruit and vegetables. W-R-O-N-G.
Five. There are already cures for cancer. Exept they are all natural products that won't make anyone rich. And they've been completely dis-credited, even without fully researching them, to back up the anecdotal evidence.
(Read here about my uncle who cured himself of Stage 3 prostate cancer, using bicarb of soda.)
You would think that if we were serious about finding a cure, we would really look into anything that showed promising results, wouldn't you?
But this is not the case.
It seems that we are only looking for a cure that is a man-made drug. Anything else is written off, and completely discredited by all sorts of "credible" sources. Just look on the internet at people beating up on the Gerson therapy, calling it a "scam" and run by "quacks", despite very little independant research ever being done.
They love to point out cases where the patient "didn't make it", but they fail to mention that many of the patients who go to the Gerson clinic are classified as terminally ill, and have been told by their doctor that "there is nothing more we can do".
(I personally know a lady who went there to study their methods, and was so impressed with what she witnessed and the case studies she reviewed, that she brought back a revised version of the program to Australia.)
I'm sorry, but all this just reeks of profit motives to me.
In fact, in America it is now ILLEGAL to say that anything is a cure, unless it is a man-made drug. So if I was to say that a kiwifruit can cure scurvy (which it can. There, I said it - so sue me!!), the powers-that-be could have me arrested and locked up. Is this not THE most ridiculous thing you have ever heard?
(Bear in mind, that natural products can not be patented, and therefore have very little value to the trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry.)
And here we are, still using out-dated and inhumane treatments like masectomies, and chemotherapy, that subject women to horrendous side-effects. Just not good enough.
Six. If they ever do manage to find a drug that can cure cancer, do you think they'll give it away for free? Of course not. It will be hideously expensive, like all other cancer treatments, and drug companies will make another fortune from it.
Drug companies are some of the richest companies in the world, and yet every time we donate money for "cancer research" we are paying their Research and Development costs for them.
If it wasn't so sickening, I'd applaud their clever business acumen...
So, I won't be wearing a pink ribbon this October, or any other October. It's not because I don't care, but because I don't agree.
I believe we are focussed on the wrong thing entirely, and that the time has come to shift our medical paradigms, and to hold the drug/food/cosmetic/chemical industries to account for knowingly harming people in the name of profits.
I'll be showing my support by campaigning the government for tougher laws on food and cosmetic ingredients, learning everything I can about keeping healthy, and sharing what I know with anyone who'll listen.
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