President Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971 with the signing of the National Cancer Act. It allocated $1.6 billion in research funding over the next three years and the promise of a cure within 5 years. Fifty years and billions of dollars later, there has been no cure and questionable progress. In his book, Cancer and the New Biology of Water, Thomas Cowan, MD., explores why the war on cancer failed and what that means for more effective prevention and treatment. One in three people in the US can expect to battle cancer. For the majority of common cancers, we are still treating patients with the same triad of surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. It remains illegal for doctors to prescribe anything other than ‘standard of care,’ despite how dangerous that standard may be. Fortunately, there are more and more promising alternative treatments available. Cowan states the reason we will never win the war on cancer on the current path is that the current path represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of life and the nature of cancer.
Fifty years ago, the oncology community bet the farm on the idea that the root cause of cancer was to be found in the genetic mutations. They believed if we could find the mutated genes in an individual’s cancer cells or if we could find a specific mutation associated with a certain type of cancer, we would be well on our way to a cure. There was also a commitment to a concept of biology in which DNA controls our cellular function, and therefore, our health. Cowan states both theories are very flawed. Cowan agrees with Dr. Thomas Seyfried, cancer researcher and professor at Boston College, that cancer is a metabolic disease rather than a genetic disease. Modern oncology focuses almost entirely on the nucleus of the cell, where Cowan believes the cancer process and the healing is found in the cytoplasm, not the nucleus. The cytoplasm is the liquid water gel that fills the inside of the cells and is enclosed by the cell membrane.
In next month’s blog article I will share what Dr. Cowan believes contributes to the cause of cancer, why the progress in curing cancer has been so slow, and the five plant and mushroom medicines that Cowan believes have the potential to heal cancer.
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