Show me any other illness, even a simple cold, do we go ask the doctor for something to further suppress/attack our immunity in the hope it will make us better of course not! We go to the Doctor in the hope he can make us better by elevating our immunity, the problem is most antibiotics further lower your immunity which brings me to the question, the medical profession synical as it may sound don’t really want us cured of anything they would be out of a job if that happened. It’s like the Justice system doesn’t want crime or criminals stopped if we had a crime free country job losses would be colossoal. Chemotherapy earns trillions of dollars yearly it’s simply too lucrative to eradicate it, where is all the trillions of dollars in funding going in terms of cancer research? I do not believe the cancer industry is actively seeking a cure I believe they are seeking other pills and potions that promise a cure but deliver nothing as this will keep the funding rolling in. Docotrs typically use scare tactice to get you to sign up for chemo a typical approach is if you don’t subcribe you will die very soon. Bullshit you have had cancer for years by the time its diagnosed the next few months aren’t vital in terms of living or dying what is vital is you have the guts to say to an Oncologist to keep your hands off me I’m taking back control with or without your assistance. That takes guts. I wish your partner well and if you need any dietary advice let me know I have an obsession with the disease and trying to be it naturally. The Gerson Therapy google it if you haven’t already some interesting stuff. Also Dr.Burzynski watch the movie on Youtube you might think differently afterwards.

So you expect Gp’s to work for free?
If you qualify for a medical card then the state will cover you. Outside of that gp!s are a private practice and need to be paid so they can run the practice and employ the staff at reception, practice manager etc who run the business so they can concentrate on patients.

But seriously people avoiding going to the gp when a consult costs less than a night out or a beauticians appointment, You would spend more on a mechanic for your car but seem to put less value on a doctors opinion.

Dear Ed,
No one expects doctors to work free. However, the state, which spends around 8% of the GDP on health care anyway, should share the cost or offer subsidised check ups in existing public surgeries.

To rebut a potential “who’s going to pay the bill” question, the money that will be saved by treating diseases in earlier stages where curing is simple (combating hypertension is far cheaper than a heart surgery, the removal of a small tumor is cheaper than a long chemotherapy and so forth). Oh yeah, healthy people also tend to be more productive than those who are dying in hospitals.

Moreover, people in Ireland pay handsomely on health care (in PRSI, USC and other taxes), which benefits the very poor (a money transfer which is reasonable) and the very rich who are able to pay the premium that is required to enjoy the facilities erected by public money.

Paying a €100 for a GP visit might not sound a lot, but in a country where so many people fall behind on their mortgage and most households report that they’re unable to save any disposable income after paying their bills people try to save wherever they can. Medical care is an obvious candidate to be the first to be cut off the family expenses.

So yes, “seriously”, the state’s role is to promote the wellbeing of its people, first and foremost their health and life. At present, flaws in the system, which can easily be fixed, cause the exact opposite.

There’s no chemical ‘boogie man’ you can blame for your poor choices in life, no matter how much the population would rather live in denial

I can’t understand why people still think there is one cause for cancer and when we find it all cancers will be cured.

Cancer is primarily a genetic disorder and considering how genetically complex each cell type is and how cancer cells are so “smart” at evading our body’s efforts to suppress unregulated growth and subsequent cancer treatments sometimes, there is no one size fits all solution.

Mary, the reason we focus on the 35% is because they are preventable and identifiable. If we can prevent illness due to awareness then that reduces the bill, making more time available for those with what would appear to be “luck of the draw” type cancer.

I understand what BlackQueen & James Connolly are saying but the point I am making is that when we take the 30% of cancers caused by poor lifestyle there is still a huge number of people affected, which on the face of it there doesn’t seem to be any definitive cause. Of course time & money need to be spent on educating the public on the known risk factors but it is so sad to think that after all these years of research there is still such a blank area in relation to what causes 65% of cancer diagnosis. I know there are so many factors at play here that it would be impossible to pinpoint x number of factors that cause all cancers, that won’t ever happen I imagine but I wonder what data is being collected from cancer sufferers to try & find common threads & thus maybe give a better idea of likely causes, God it’s such a complicated disease that so much more research needs to be done to try and solve the whole puzzle that is cancer.

I do not think that cancer is mainly genetic at all. It is about damaged cells. There are many processes that enable those damaged cells to grow faster, to develop blood vessels, to metastatise, and I believe that our lifestyle feeds into all of this. Obviously smoking and chemicals in the environment have a big effect, so think about minimising the chemicals you expose your body to in cleaning products and cosmetics and non-organic foods. Oncologists will tell you that diet, being a healthy weight, and exercise will likely have most effect on whether you develop cancer or not. The diet they recommend is a lot of vegetables and fruit, cut out red meat, low salt etc. An anti-oxidant diet and a healthy immune system are vital in not developing cancer cells and in the body’s natural killer cells killing them. There are also a lot of phyto-chemicals that have anti-cancer actions that are no longer in much of our food, because non-organic growers simply don’t care about the health of our soil, or are destroyed by cooking. If you buy any so-called fresh and healthy smoothie in the chilled cabinet, it will have been pasteurised, which involved heating to a high temperature – give those to your children and they may get some vitamins but they will not get the phytochemicals that have been killed by pasteurisation. Some food substances that are agreed by the mainstream health system to have effects against cancer cells include: mainly vegetarian low fat diet, particularly cut out saturated fat – go for omega 3, garlic (raw and chopped 20 mins before eating) and other alliums like onion, turmeric (eat with black pepper and oil for absorbtion), cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, bok choi etc – but if you boil them in water no good – eat raw, or else briefly stir-fried, or very lightly steamed), lots of fibre from stuff like vegetables and pulses, berries, orange and red vegetables, mushrooms like shitake, aromatic herbs, wholegrains rather than white, low sugar, etc. A lot more raw food is a good thing… when you think of it, it makes sense!

Where did you get your facts – the Beano? If fluoridated water caused cancer I think they would have discovered it by now.

Bang on Matthew

Funny that…highest digestive cancer rates in the EU and higher than Northern Ireland. One thing in common- they keep their fluoride where it should be, in their toothpaste and not the bloody drinking water. Wait for the next Irish food scandal to kick off when the French and Germans start testing our food exports for Fluoride residue.

Fluoride supplementation is an essential part of dental hygiene in a population.

People with less than average dental hygiene are at 70% greater risk of heart disease… Statistically heart disease kills 30% of the population while cancers kill 14%. If your claims are true (which I don’t believe they are) your suggesting swapping one disease for 3.5 times the risk of another that kills twice as many people

Andrew, that is an example of correlation of statistics rather than the showing the cause of heart disease. To put it bluntly, if someone has less than average dental hygiene, chances are they don’t give a shite about what else they do to their bodies, thus leading on to a significant increase in heart (and other) problems. Looking after your own teeth properly is one of the simplest things you can do.

Sadly by looking at the red V’s green about 95% agree with you… That’s very, very scary… Do some research before you total discredit the facts… Fluoride is poison, I drink little or no tap water anymore, we are one of a handful of countries world wide that fluoridate our water… Canada just last week copped on , Ireland will. When it’s late.. Usually standard .

What about , eeeeeermmmmm, brushing your teeth… Meh

Given the majority of EU countries don’t fluoridate their drinking water therefore they should have far more heart disease but guess what they don’t. Look the bottom line is it makes zero sense adding a cosmetic chemical to drinking water- have you mot considered what happens in you’re body after the chemical whizzes passes your teeth- is you stomach, brain or colon a good place to process a non essential chemical. What happens? Where’s the safety studies… Guess what there are any. Neither the department of health nor the the Irish Medicines Board have any safety assessments on fluoride safety, who are drinking fluoride for? Certainly not the kids with holes in their teeth as they’re not drinking the water, they’re drinking sugary drinks. Mass fluoridation is an outdated and failed experiment. Dental health has improved over the last 50 years in Ireland as a result of better dental hygiene, education and toothpastes. Ireland is still down on the European average when it comes down to dental caries. All the countries above us don’t add fluoride to their drinking water.

Can someone kindly post an academic, peer reviewed paper to show that fluoride in water gives us all cancer?
Also, someone might want to tell that to Singapore, where 100% of population has access to fluoridated water, as opposed to Ireland’s mere 75%.

James,

this is a paper in a peer reviewed journal that looks at a particular bone cancer that has been discussed numerous times in relation to drinking water fluoridation in Ireland.

http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10552-011-9765-0

“One hundred and eighty-three osteosarcoma cases were recorded on the island of Ireland between 1994 and 2006. No significant differences were observed between fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas in either age-specific or age-standardised incidence rates of osteosarcoma.

The results of this study do not support the hypothesis that osteosarcoma incidence in the island of Ireland is significantly related to public water fluoridation. However, this conclusion must be qualified, in view of the relative rarity of the cancer and the correspondingly wide confidence intervals of the relative risk estimates.”

I’m interested Marian is it available
In Ireland

The sheer irony of your statement made me lol

Chemotherapy (poison) was first investigated by the US. Not as you imply, the Germans.
Also all chemotherapeutic agents occur naturally in the environment… Like on trees or plants… Like with many drugs…
But don’t let the sensationalism get in the way of a good back story.

Yes, prevention is the ideal, but once you have cancer and especially particular kinds, then you have a choice: use chemotherapy, which does work, and risk the side effects or have a high chance of dying. Chemotherapy should only be used for cancers that other therapies do not work with – eg immunotherapy and other innovative targeted therapies. If diet alone worked with certain cancers that are not superficial, then wouldn’t we all do that? My partner reviewed all the EVIDENCE and opted for chemo because of the type of cancer he has. After that we will be back to building up the body and all of the dietary and lifestyle approaches we know about…
Wondering do you have personal experience of surviving cancer with lifestyle approach only and if so would be interested to hear more of your experience.

By the way I agree about the prevention. We are both vegetarians, buy organic food, never ever use chemicals in the home, and really into that lifestyle. I believe the 30 years of smoking was what led to my partner’s cancer. It is an aggressive and likely to spread kind that cannot be treated locally. Some cancer cells evade the immune system unfortunately. However, I totally agree that our disgusting environmental degradation, lack of nutrients in our non-organic food, wrong diet, and huge amount of toxic chemicals in the air, in the water, everywhere, contribute to cancer development. Our diets need to change too to be mainly vegetables and fruit, often raw, and there are many cancer-fighting foods such as alliums, cruciferous vegetables, berries, herbs…

I believe that this is going the rounds about what oncologists said and it is in fact not true… I will try to find the links… I am saying this as an alternative type that believes in a dietary and lifestyle approach to not getting cancer and also to fighting it. However, my partner had an advanced and particular type of cancer and chose to have chemo, which we will now follow up with the whole dietary and lifestyle approach. All cancers are different – some are now being treated with immunotherapy and other less destructive targeted approaches. My partner’s cancer was not one of those. The fact is with certain types of cancer, although chemo is destructive to the body, if you think it is the only thing that will help you to stay alive, you will do it and then follow up with your own diet and lifestyle approach… people with some cancers do use lifestyle to battle it; other types are so aggressive that people who choose not to have chemo and do the lifestyle thing simply die.

http://anaximperator.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/do-75-of-doctors-refuse-chemotherapy-on-themselves/
It seems the survey was asking would they have a particular drug (Cisplatin) that was quite new in the circumstances of palliative care (which means in advanced cancer with no chance of a cure) – many people in this case of terminal cancer would of course say no to chemotherapy – it is a totally different thing if you think, no matter how awful the possible side-effects, it may kill your cancer cells and help you to recover or live much longer.
I wonder if you have been in the position yourself of having a cancer diagnosis? If so, what did you decide to do? We were definitely hugely conflicted about chemo and it has indeed been awful, but if it works it will have been worth it, and then the big lifestyle changes will get under way…

Fags are not the problem!!!! what rock have you been hiding under the last 50 years.

I agree with you Marian , we don’t know have of what we’re eating or drinking , because of people’s busy lifestyle home cook meal are nearly in the past and it’s ready made meals now with chemicals and preserves that make it last longer then it should ever. Smoking has a lot to do with older people dying of cancer now because of the lack if knowledge known in relation to it years ago but the problem is there putting the same chemicals in to our food now so don’t expect a change until this is addressed

Familiar Chemicals in Cigarettes

Chemical

Found in:

carbon monoxide

car exhaust

nicotine

bug sprays

tar

material to make roads

arsenic

rat poison

ammonia

cleaning products

hydrogen cyanide

gas chamber poison

cyanide

deadly poison

acetone

nail polish remover

butane

cigarette lighter fluid

DDT

insecticides

formaldehyde

to preserve dead bodies

sulfuric acid

car batteries

cadmium

used to recharge batteries

freon

damages earth’s ozone layer

geranic acid

a fragrance

methoprene

a pesticide

maltitol

a sweetener not permitted to be used in foods in the U.S.

Sources: Dr. Joel Dunnington, Tobacco Almanac, Revised, May 1993.

I think fags AND our food production and chemical environment are both the thing! My husband got bladder cancer, and there is a strong correlation to smoking – indeed he did smoke for 30 years, though not for the last four years. There are many many nasty chemicals in cigarettes that you take into your body every day for years – how is that not a problem? I agree about all the chemicals in the environment, in our food, in our cleaning products, in our cosmetics (well not in mine!) – it is a huge scandal. And further, our agricultural system means that a lot of the phytochemicals that should be in our foods are not there, and many of the boost the immune system, which can target and kill cancer cells. Even if you do try to eat a natural human diet of mainly vegetables and fruit, more raw food, etc. if it is not organic you will selling your body short. If supermarkets were forced to declare the pesticide residues that were in the fruit and veg they share, I swear people would not buy them, but they are still ingredients!