Alternate Therapies, Cancer

Thank you very much, Frank.

Hello, everyone. This is my 15th Cancer Control Society convention and it's great to be back. This is indeed about the pioneers of alternative cancer therapies. There were and in some cases still are brave men and women, I should say these were, and in some cases still are brave men and women of science and medicine who stood up for their new and innovative ideas, often in the face of terrible odds and disfavor.

Quite simply, we would not be here today without them. Like all great history, their lives and their work can help us to understand the present and maybe to better confront an uncertain future.

Cancer In Politics

Now, despite my youthful appearance, I've been reporting for over 25 years on this subject as an investigative journalist and a medical political analyst. And I've personally known and interviewed many of these cancer pioneers, of course not all of them are here, I have only about 28 minutes.

By the way, this is one of the first articles I did on cancer in early 1977, proving who profits from the business of cancer. And typical of the reporting over the years, this Life Magazine cover from 1958; Fresh Hope on cancer, 12 pages of propaganda using words like the brink of breakthroughs. Well, today of course, the situation is still virtually the same. Cancer deaths continue to rise, the cancer death rate has gone up. The 5 year survival rate has largely remained stagnant. And even some journalists ask, where's that promised cancer cure?

But most of the mainstream media, like in 1980 with Time Magazine and the inteferon hype or even more recently in the 1990s, hope in the war against cancer, the propaganda, the spin from orthodoxy continues without. And year after year, hope, we're on the brink of breakthroughs, well, where is it? It's only been about 42 years now since the propaganda started.

Meanwhile, cancers, of course, are highly political. Every U.S. president gets involved. Here's Ike raising money for the American Cancer Society. Richard Nixon in the White House, 6 months before I take this photograph, actually declared the official war on cancer and said it would be cured in time for the bicentennial in 1976. We know now, of course, that medicine is very, very political with the Clinton Health Care Reform Plan and the discussion this year in the presidential race of Al Gore, wanting to socialize American medicine. And here is a shot I took of President Clinton on the campaign trail. The picture of health, wouldn't you say? Yes. Let's let him lead us into our healthy future.

Well, a lot of Americans