War has many faces: wars on terror, drugs and cancer.
Some benefit while others suffer. While high motives are propagated,
obfuscation, secrecy and denial tend to be the tools of beneficiaries to cloud
the eyes of those who pay the costs.
Take the war on cancer. Citizens via governments and charities pay millions of
dollars “fighting cancer”.
Debra Davis, a leading researcher in environmental health and founder of the
Centre for Environmental Oncology in Pittsburgh states that the lies, blindness
and corruption have made it largely a war of smoke and mirrors.
We are led to believe that science will produce a drug to cure cancer. However,
ways to prevent cancer are being ignored, concealed and denied while detection
and treatment are promoted for profit.
Davis reveals “the dirty underbellies of industry, politics, medicine, science
and the tragic human consequences of what is almost institutional dishonesty”.
Examples include the medical support for tobacco companies and chemical
companies failing to provide basic protection for employees, young children
knowingly being exposed to carcinogens, whole communities being polluted and
cancer societies being infiltrated by people determined to protect organizations
rather than address the issues.
Imminent scientists are being funded by companies they should be exposing. This
corrupt research may enter the scientific literature to become “received wisdom”
forming the basis of far reaching political decisions affecting the lives of us
all.
Nor is the law on the side of justice when employees and neighbours of chemical
plants claim compensation for cancer. We are, it seems, responsible for a lot –
avoiding exposure to dangerous chemicals, nourishing our bodies with wholesome
food and our souls with ideals that can both prevent and cure illness. “There's
got to be a better way to build our world than waiting for enough bodies to drop
or sicken before we decide we've got it wrong,” says Dr. Davis.
