PUNTING ON A CURE
Saturday night I was watching the World Series at a local tavern with my fellow coach Duane after our team's hockey game.
Major League Baseball has embraced the MasterCard marketing campaign Stand Up for Cancer. If you've watched any TV recently you've probably seen celebrities getting involved being pictured holding their little placards with the name of a loved one affected by Cancer. What's not to like? Right?
Well my new buddy Duane, a 55 year old guy who's been around the block several times over, shakes his head, saying it's all a bunch of Bullshit.
"Really?," I say, knowing that Duane is a man devoted to family and God, hardly a radical cynic. But Duane rails on about the pink accessories that most of the NFL is wearing for the entire month of October to increase awareness of breast cancer, and he stated that it's all a ridiculous money grab. "Really?"
He proceeds to tell me what he has learned about Cancer, and the monumental finances at stake for the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, Big Pharmaceuticals and the whole medical industrial complex itself. He then told me an anecdotal tale about how he advocated for a loved one with cancer and how he located a doctor who had a practice in Texas with an amazing success rate battling cancer using holistic methods, mainly nutrition. How he got in touch with those close to the doctor and discovered that he was basically blackballed and chased out of the United States. The practice resurfaced in Tijuana, Mexico. Duane told me about how he had to sneak his uncle across the border for treatments. I didn't take any notes, but Duane shared a lot he learned about dealing with cancer, and explained in layman terms how vital it is to battle it organically, to get one's body involved in the fight through boosting the immune system, and how chemo and radiation are so poisonous. I left thinking that he made a lot of sense, but that it was still his passion, not mine.
The next night I'm watching the World Series over at my ex-wife's house with my son with his step-family, and see a huge TV pitch for Stand Up for Cancer integrated into the live telecast, more immediate and impacting than a paid commercial. I didn't have enough facts or passion to tell the living room audience that Stand Up for Cancer is simply an exploitive money grab. But it was impossible not to think about it after previous night's conversation with coach Duane.
I bid farewell around 10 pm and began scanning radio channels during my drive home. I landed on an independent station in New York, and as if on cue, one of those fundraisers was going on where they play clips from a documentary as an enticement to contribute. I sat in rapture as I heard the century-long history of how the American Medical Association has been demonizing holistic Cancer cures to boost the profits of their publication and the medical industry as a whole. They spoke at length about a Dr. Gerson who was having some amazing results curing cancer mainly through nutrition, but only one of his many studies got published before the magazine was threatened and Gerson was blackballed. The documentary went on about how advocates for Gerson used the Freedom of Information Act to read the alleged findings of medical malfeasance by Gerson and other holistic doctors, only to find that the report didn't exist, even though it was being cited frequently by an AMA "assasin" Dr. Fishbein.
The report continued, detailing the demise of Dr. Gerson, and how he and his practice had to flee to Mexico. I was almost sickened to learn how humanity's #1 killer has been subjugated by the medical industrial complex to keep the massive profits flowing. The documentary and coach Duane's bar spiel were in perfect concert. The documentary spoke so logically about how mainstream treatment for cancer: cutting, chemo and radiation; hasn't changed in the better part of a century. There's simply too much money at stake for any change. The documentary actually quoted doctors as saying there was no way that a solution based on nutrition was going to replace traditional cancer treatments because of the financial implications.
I got out of my car at the end of the documentary clip, and looked into the night sky filled with stars, a glowing universe. Here we are on this planet, a planet that provides us with the natural remedies to fight this disease, and our country's lust for profits systematically run people with the knowledge to cure, people like Dr. Gerson, out of town, out of state, out of the country.
Uggh. Hard to swallow.
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