I have heard people say to me that they think there is currently a cure for cancer but the pharmaceutical companies do not want us to know about it because they make so much money treating cancer.
I think this is absolutely not true. If you think about it, everyone knows someone with cancer. I think the researchers, doctors, and those in the pharmaceutical industry would want a cure to be known to help their own families and those they know fighting the disease. It only makes sense.
The most important thing to remember is that cancer is not one single disease, but many diseases. It is possible to find a cure for one cancer but be no where near a cure for another.
Pharmaceutical companies do like to make money, so does every other business out there in the world. I like the fact that they are competing with one another. This makes it a challege for them to be the first one with the breakthroughs. Hopefully we will soon find THE breakthrough but until then I'm confident that there isn't a secret cure out there!
1. The cancer treatment field probably is not exactly hiding known cancer cures. But the industry has essentially no interest in cancer prevention, and managers of some cancer-related businesses would have financial reasons to dislike the concept of prevention, as it would reduce their volume. Few businesses exist for doing good deeds. money is usually the main objective of business. For example, many cancers can be prevented by maintaining adequate circulating levels of vitamin D metabolites (such as vitamin D and its metabolite 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This is not hard to do, with adequate oral intake of vitamin D3, or even with 10-20 minutes in spent cautiously in the sun around noon with adequate skin exposure, scaling down the time to prevent any reddening of the skin and always wearing a hat or cap with a 7-inch brim, largely shading the face. Such an approach could potentially reduce rates of many important cancers including those of the breast, colon, pancreas, ovary, kidney, and probably the prostate, by 35-50%. (see Garland CF et al. The role of vitamin D in cancer prevention. American Journal of Public Health, February 2006, vol. 96 no. 2, pages 252-6.) The history of medicine reveals that compounds that are discovered to prevent a disease are also sometimes contribute to making it milder when it occurs (ascorbic acid for scurvy; and niacin for pellagra are some examples from history). Vitamin D has not been shown to be not a cure as such. That would be far too much to hope for now. But is helps prevent many types of cancer, and it is probably a wise adjunct to standard care for people with normal calcum levels. It can help prevent a new primary cancer, and it may enhance survival. The patient should discuss this with a cancer surgeon or oncologist, and provide a copy of the above article, as a focus for the discussion. Many doctors will offer help with deciding, and may possibly order screening tests (for serum 25-ydroxyvitamin D level, and for urinary system risk factors for renal calculi, such as a screen for urinary oxalate level, and excessive circulating uric acid or urinary urea, both of which can be treated with diet and sometimes with medicine.) Ask your doctor and take the article (available in any medical library worldwide) along for a health care professional her to read before advising the best prevention for you.
There are many more articles on this topic, including papers by W. Grant, E. Giovannucci, M. Holick, G. Schwartz, R. Vieth, and other outstanding scientists. The Vitamin D Council has more information, too. CFG
Posted at 10:33AM on Dec 22nd 2006 by Cedric Garland, DrPH, FACE