Paradigm Shift Necessary for Cancer War
A major political paradigm shift is critical to winning the cancer war. Congress, the FDA, the NIH/NCI, the ACS, as well as prominent cancer centers and medical schools must accept the viability of natural, non-toxic, complementary treatment options. They must be convinced that these options are a necessary and integral part of the overall war strategy. They need to take a hard, honest look at the lack of progress in our ability to overcome the disease over the past several decades. Such a shift would begin with the medical establishment acknowledging the failures of the last half-century and that headway could be made by looking beyond the exclusive traditional, conventional treatment options. They have to realize the public relations benefit of less emphasis on profit and corporate survival and more priority on healing and a potential cure. Even though research and development of most complementary therapy proposals would not result in a product market priced to generate the lucrative return on investment that they are accustomed to, certified laboratories should conduct the testing anyway for the greater good. The testing would have to be absolutely unbiased under the strictest of controls. Some of the unnecessary restriction on the clinical trials would have to be relaxed to accept a certain level of risk.
Sound like a pipe dream? Maybe. But so did a lunar landing in the early 60s and victory in World War II in the early 40s. Yet, the ingenuity of America and the shifting of focus from prosperity to necessity made it happen. It can happen again. We must have the resolve to put our minds and hearts to it both at the corporate level, the government level, and the grass roots level. It will take a wholesale change of attitude and action for us as a society to move from the traditional to the unconventional in order to defeat this disease that is thus far winning the war.