In what can only be described as the latest cancer industry propaganda push, mainstream news outlets are declaring triumphantly “More than 1.5 million cancer deaths averted in last two decades” (CBS),  “Cancer death tolls fall, millions saved” (ABC), and “Could Healthy Living Prevent Millions Of Cancer Cases?” (Science World Report).

Really? What is this based on?

 Media flourishes like these are supposedly based on a report just published in the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians titled, “Cancer treatment and survivorship statistics, 2014,” which analyzed cancer treatment data from 3 sources: the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), the SEER-Medicare linked database, and the SEER*Stat database.

However, if you take the time to read the report itself you will find it does not justify these optimistic characterizations. In the abstract summarization of the results, the first line reads:

“The number of cancer survivors continues to increase due to the aging and growth of the population and improvements in early detection and treatment.”

Early detection refers to national screening programs such as x-ray mammography for breast cancer and PSA screening for prostate cancer, which we now know have not resulted in reduced mortality despite dramatically expanding ‘cancer diagnoses’ in the past few decades: a sure sign that the ‘cancers’ being diagnosed were never life-threatening and did not ‘save’ anyone from premature death; to the contrary, breast and prostate screenings have been the subject of great controversy because they have not reduced breast- and prostate-specific cancer mortality, which is the only true measure of whether they are of benefit to populations undergoing screening. What screening programs have done is to dramatically increase the sheer quantity of cancer diagnoses in healthy individuals, resulting in the illusion that they have been ‘saved’ through early detection, when in fact they have survived overdiagnosis and overtreatment and not cancer itself.

Consider that a ‘cancer survivor’ is anyone who was diagnosed with cancer who is still alive 5 years later.

Whether that person was overdiagnosed is not accounted for in these statistics. In other words, if a person who was identified to have life-threatening cancer actually had a benign lesion, but was ‘treated’ anyway and did not survive cancer but survived unnecessary surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, they are lumped into the ‘survivor’ category nonetheless, even if they should be considered a victim of iatrogenesis and medical abuse.

Last year a study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealing that in the past three decades 1.3 million women in the U.S. were wrongly diagnosed with breast cancer when in fact they had a benign condition known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS).  DCIS lesions rarely if ever progress to cause harm nor death, but this was not factored into the data analysis.  The report stated that “14.5 million Americans with a history of cancer were alive on January 1, 2014,” but did not qualify the statement by acknowledging the great burden of cancer diagnoses that are now known to be intrinsically benign, e.g. ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) “breast cancers” and high-grade intraepithelial prostatic neoplasia (HGPIN) “prostate cancer” which a National Cancer Institute commissioned expert working group identified in 2012 as being essentially misclassified as “cancer” and which should be considered benign lesions of epithelial origin better left untreated.

What this essentially means is that instead of take responsibility for the medical-induced harm (iatrogenesis) that breast and prostate screening incurs, the conventional medical establishment counted these false positives as successes, despite the untold harm, physical and psychological, these diagnoses and subsequence unnecessary treatments exacted on their victims.  This unethical ‘oversight’ resulted in expanding the number of ‘cancer survivors’ far beyond those who were actually ‘saved from cancer.’

The report stated:

“The 3 most common prevalent cancers among males are prostate cancer(43%), colorectal cancer (9%), and melanoma (8%), and those among females are cancers of the breast (41%), uterine corpus (8%), and colon and rectum (8%).”

Considering that the primary cancers afflicting women (breast) and men (prostate) are the most overdiagnosed, the truth is that this report falsely represented the data, essentially covering up the medical tragedy that is still ongoing.

The report did acknowledge the extremely high survivorship rates of those diagnosed with so-called ‘early stage’ (aka localized) breast cancer:

“The 5-year relative survival rate for women diagnosed with localized breast cancer is 98.6%”

Why is that? One view is that localized (i.e. ductal carcinoma in situ) isn’t breast cancer at all, and therefore the relatively high 98.6% survivorship reflects the fact that these woman aren’t surviving cancer at all, rather, unnecessary treatment for an intrinsically benign condition. They are, in essence, surviving medical abuse.

The propaganda evidenced by this report, and the mainstream media amplifications of it, are extremely misleading. Trillions of dollars of liability rests on the shoulders of the conventional cancer industry for falsely diagnosing and (i.e. abusing) women and men with cancers they never had. Additionally, those who have fallen victim to unnecessary treatment often suffer from Stokholm syndrome, identifying with their aggressors, and then becoming willing brand ambassadors of ‘early detection’ via pinkwashing styled fund-raising campaigns (e.g. Susan Komen) to fear, for instance, other healthy, asymptomatic women to subject their breasts to highly carcinogenic x-ray wavelengths in the interest of ‘finding cancer early.’

In a world dominated by what can only be described as violent, pornographic marketing copy, e.g. Susan G. Komen sponsored PINK fracking drill bits, and KFC ‘Buckets for the Cure,’ it is the responsibility of all of us to take back control of our health and read behind the increasingly absurd mainstream news headlines. If you believe your breasts, prostate, thyroid, or whatever body part is increasingly targeted for cancer screening, are more than just an inevitable locus of carcinogensis, please join the growing movement to take back control of your health, starting with acknowledging with clean food, water, and air, health is your birthright.