In her seminal work on the environment, Rachael Carson in Silent Spring writes that at the turn of the last century, during the time of the Pastur’s and everything they brought to awareness of what generated sickness, for the first time fairly decent records were kept of the instances of certain diseases in society. Ms Carson notes that child cancer was something that was rare. “Now” she writes;” there are whole hospitals dedicated to child cancer” and that was back in the early sixties. What promoted this thought was in today’s Globe MIT president Susan Hockfield writes in her Gaining ground on cancer of the multi year, multi billion dollar effort to find a cancer cure.
This quote is what got my attention
While 2002 marked the first-ever yearly decline in US cancer deaths, more than 40 percent of Americans will still contract cancer in their lifetime.
As expected it is a call for patience with the enormous funding required to continue the research to seek a cure for cancer.
But nowhere in her article does she address the real culprit; What we are doing to our selves with the way had we chosen to live that a 40% cancer rate is now a reality? I recently read that there is a rise in women’s facial hair due to all the growth hormones in production beef and chickens bred for market. There was a report that prescription drugs are coming up in the water supply leading to (in one instance) male fish developing female attributes due to suspected concentrations of birth control pills. I could certainly go on with horror stories but will refrain to get to my point.
I pair this with last weekends Globe editorial (and post here on BMG) of Davie Whites Time for Criminal Sentencing Reform to make my point wherein David White suggests we step back and look at the cost of dealing with the aftermath of incarcerating prisoners for crimes that could be balanced by taking a tough look at the nature of what causes that criminal behavior in the first place.
Ever notice that when you walk down the aisle of your supermarket in the home cleaning section that your eyes burn a little bit. What does a life time of spraying and wiping and swifter dusting doing to you and your family? But how could we know when a commercial reminds us when the gaggle of soccer moms comes over for coffee, it is time for the hostess to set off the “Glade Air Freshener” newest scent and then they all ouu and awe at what wonderful things it does to the air. Begs the question (that is not asked) what is it doing to you lungs? So what caused this blindness in a day of “Going green” marketing that we still do not see the problem. I believe it is because we are a nation of addicts who have become addicted to the global reach of advertising. Marketed into submission where the glamour of a new flat screen TV is more important than the content of what is there. Feel that (as the commercial tells us) keeping up with the Jones green lawn, by dumping 50 lbs bags of Scott whatever seed, weed and feed that brightens up that green status symbol is the right thing to do ( cue sunny day and playing family) ignoring the fact that the children now play in a lush carpet of insecticide and herbicide.
Why would rational educated people do such a thing? But why, you might ask, do people get strung out on crystal meth, knowing full well how destructive it is? It is what psychologist would refer to as an addictive personality wherein the ability to see the personal cost is out weighed by the desire for whatever the person is addicted to in the first place. If we really want to deal with Cancer isn’t it about time we took that cultural cold shower and ask why we have become so addicted to a civilization that we may in fact be dieing from?
Discuss
11 Comments . Leave a comment below.Thank you for this post freshayer! You have articulated a compelling sympathetic problem.
If anyone is ready to move into action check in with the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow who have a strategic effective solution.
....of any one I know who had cancer. In the last 10 years I have known through work and my personal life 5 deaths and six cases of remission of serious cancers. At the ripe old age of 23 I had a minor melanoma removed which woke me up to sun screen and hats.
I went shopping yesterday and did my due diligence of taking that walk down the isle of the home clean products section of the store. As a construction manager if some where on my job site smelled like that I would shut it down until I determined the cause of the pollution.
The commercial that really gets me is the little squiggly germs writhing on phones and pens and things kids touch and what is the solution. To spray a clean scent fungicide on it like putting that in you mouth isn't a problem.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0... Let's make the cops look like impersonal military thugs.
The May issue is out! http://www.rockcreekfreepress....
Go Senator Johnson! http://infowars.net/articles/a...
Boogeyman propaganda video and how it endorses the globalist agenda. http://www.nwotruth.com/
More people die of cancer because fewer die of infectious disease. If huge numbers of people died of cholera, typhus, and TB, the cancer rate would be lower.
.... So your point is if they died of infectious disease they wouldn't live long enough to die of Cancer and the per capita cancer rates would go down?
More people die of cancer per capita than previously did. One of my friends who survived breast cancer with radical mastectomy has always exercised, eaten healthy, used environmentally sensitive cleaning products. It is as she said most poignantly "The environment did this to me". Imagine those who don't even try to live in a less toxic home envrionment(like say most of the rest of us)
CMD Go walk down that supermarket isle and report back.
I didn't say the supermarket doesn;t cause cancer, though that seems like a political position in search of a fact worthy of Greenpeace and unworthy of BMG.
I am saying that, if, out of a group of ten people, five would get cancer even in your perfect Eden, but in the real world, three of the five die of diptheria as children before they ever hear of cancer, your "rate per capita" just went up, even though nothing at all changed.
You're using Silent Spring, for goodness sake. That book is nearly 50 years old, and looks backward at cancer rates into the time before they invented anti-biotics. And before tobacco became a common consumer item after WWII. Of course the cancer rate per capita went up. That is because cancer rate is a grossly misleading statistic.
The use of it to make the hyperblic claims that you are pushing does violence to the environmental movement by causing much of the rest of society to suspect that it manufactures crises (Alar on apples! Dolphins in the tuna! Global cooling!) for political purposes.
If you are looking for more recent data on the links between our enviornment and our health check out the solid research from:
SILENT SPRING INSTITUTE is a non-profit scientific research organization dedicated to identifying the links between the environment and women's health, especially breast cancer....a groundbreaking collaboration of scientists, physicians, health advocates, and community activists, and a leading edge research institution using multi-disciplinary, state-of-the-art approaches.
...forgive me if I don't get it. We should ignore the impacts of agribusiness on world health? MIT President is wrong on the 40% cancer rate? Silent Spring isn't the pivotal work that woke people up to the incredible damage the industrial age has done to the world. That since infectious disease is "Organic" it rates with more efficacy than man made cancer? Help me out here for other than being a BMG whack-a-
Liberalmole devils advocate I have no idea of the point you getting at.That cancer rate per capita gives preceisely zero information, useful or otherwiose, about the effects of toxins in the environment.
« Blue Mass Group Front Page
Fri 24 May 12:53 AM