by THOMAS on Jan 28, 2014 • 12:31 pm
I will readily admit that I am somewhat of a c-span junkie as I tune into the Washington Journal almost every morning. This morning’s show featured the representative from the state of Utah, Jason Chaffetz (R). After listening to the usual republican criticisms of the Obama distraction, I was struck by a statement made by rep. Chaffetz calling for a “tripling” of the funding for cancer research. He went on to sight some statistics regarding the number of friends and relatives of many Americans who have died of various forms of cancer and how the incidence of cancers in this country continues to rise. Now correct me if I am wrong but weren’t we supposed to have a “cure “ for cancer by the 1970’s?? I mean here we are in 2014 and the best we can come up with is a “burn down the house to kill the rats” approach to treatment, namely surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation? If the patient survives this treatment protocol, they are frequently left with permanent disfigurement, a compromised immune system, and financially bankrupt while at the same time being told they are cancer free….for the moment.
What we now know is that cancer is a failure of two defense mechanisms that we inherit from birth. One is the ability of our cells to self destruct when the cellular machinery goes haywire, and the other is the ability of the immune system to identify rogue cells and seek and destroy them. But let’s back up for a minute. What we really want to know is what is causing these cells to go”haywire” in the first place. If we could figure that one out, we would be miles ahead of the game. Well with all of the “research” going on in our various institutions of higher learning, you would think we would have discovered the “cause” a long time ago. Well as a matter of fact, the most recent studies of the subject are increasingly point to not one cause but many. The “many” are environmental toxins and they come in a variety of chemical substances. These toxins come to us through the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, our furniture, cars, food and food packaging materials. These toxins are actually being found in the umbilical cord blood of infants (232 at last count) and close to 500 (493) in people of all ages. These chemicals display a variety of ways in which they can influence the body’s physiological processes. Some of these chemicals damage cells directly, some act as endocrine disruptors, mimicking hormones made by our own bodies, and others can even influence the expression of genes. The disturbing fact is that the older we get, the more toxins our bodies accumulate. Another disturbing fact is that the incidence of degenerative diseases such as diabetes, cancers, heart disease, and strokes seems to be increasing in direct proportion to the increased incidence of exposure to chemicals in our environment.
So if we know the source of the problem, namely chemicals, then it would seem to me that the solution to this problem would be to simply clean up our environment and our food supply? Would this warrant the tripling of our research funding for cancer? Some food for thought eh?