Denver, CO

In order to maintain public and private safety, we have certain policies and procedures, rules and regulations, requirements and such in place to ensure fire prevention to the best of our ability. Should a fire take place in a public building, we have the fire department, fire extinguishers on site, evacuation plans, etc., to minimize damage and danger to humans. These methods fall under a category of treating the fire once it has begun, but it is always better to prevent the fire in the first place.

Cancer.

Cancer is said to affect 1 in 3 Americans. What type or form of cancer depends on the person and their lifestyle or habits, environment that led to cultivate the cancer. Our U.S. health industry recognizes cancer as a concern and there are many organizations in place that are actively seeking a cure and better treatment for most every cancer in existence within our medical knowledge. Millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars are funneled into cancer research each year. But did you know that a fair amount of the cancer research money is provided by the alcohol and tobacco industries? In fact, these same industries started some of the most notable cancer research programs out there. In the world of Public Relations, this is an obvious campaign of trying to position Tobacco and Alcohol as the ‘good guys.’ And, in a way, since they are providing dollars and support for research, these industries have - for years - been taking blame and focus away from some of the greater cancer causing agents (alcohol and cigarettes) and shifting the focus on making it easier for people to live with cancer and trying to cure what their products create.

What if we handled fire safety in the same way and only focused on how to treat, control, and contain building fires instead of working on preventing fires in the first place? Shouldn’t there ought to be a strong measure and campaign towards preventing cancers in the first place instead of simply making it easier and more tolerable to live with cancer and that, hey, one day there may be a cure for all this terrible stuff, some of which is a byproduct of poor choices and buying into an evil industry (alcohol and tobacco). An evil industry is, in this sense and in the author’s opinion, an industry that contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths, acknowledges it, but does virtually nothing of their own accord to curb the death they leave behind. Gotta pay the mortgage right? Provide jobs and keep the economy moving, right?

Information assimilated from research and readings in The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Lee Davis

picture from http://www.geneeskundeboek.nl/zoek.cgi?Zoekop=thema&q=Medisch%20Oncologie&taal=en
more to come in this the about-Denver special report: Health Care