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The Other Face of Cancer by Dr Manu Kothari and Dr Lopa Mehta
Causeless And Unpreventable
The medical finger accuses almost
everything as cancerogenic and having accused, moves
on to accuse still more. From the time Percival Pott
suggested the relationship between soot and scrotal
cancer in chimney-sweeps, the central theme in
cancerology has been the postulated causal relationship
between cancerogens and cancerogenesis, an endless search
for the culprit cancerogens, 48,49 resulting
in a publication explosion that fills innumerable pages
in scientific cancer literature. Very few thinks have
raised any objection against the search for cancerogens
which is really like asking a blind man to go into a dark
room to find a black hat which is not there. A certain
note of disdain may be seen in Kaplan’s 50 words:
‘I would like to question just why it is desirable
to find more cancerogens when we already seem to be
plagued with them?’ The cancerogens that we know
about, from experimental and clinical data, are by now
legion. Boyd51 poses a simple question, as to
how, with cancerogens all around us most of us escape?
The latest accused is the human sperm, with the charge
that, apart from occasionally fertilizing human ova, it
fertilizes the cells of the cervix in the female to
induce the much-feared cancer of the cerviz.52
Thus arises the sweeping conclusion that ‘untold
numbers of husbands bear some measure of responsibility
for initiating malignancies (cancers) in untold numbers
of wives.’22 Should a woman with cancer
of the cervix sue her present/former husband/ lover for
having given the wrong sperm? Hypothetical as this may
seem, it may become a reality today. 53
The gains of this rabid cancerogenism have been
nil; the harm done is a global cancerophobia; should
people eat, drink, breathe, or make love. ‘
Unfortunately, when it comes to cancer, American society
( and the many societies which follow, as a matter of
faith) is far from rational.’10 For this
state of panic, fear, irrationality, and paranoia -
‘CANCER! ALARM! CANCER !’ - gripping us all,
Ingelfinger10 blames doctors, cancer
societies, and of course, the media who specialize in
converting all the trivia on cancer into sensational
matters.
How do we cure ourselves of this? The voluminous and
evergrowing statistics on cancerogens cannot be matched
by counter-statistics. Inundated by the floodtide of
cancerogens, no one has been bold enough to perceive and
proclaim the very absurdity of anything and everything
maliciously cancerizing mankind. The burden of the
disproof is on the disbeliever. If a claim is made that
drinking tea or running at the Olympics causes cancer,
the possibilities are only two -right, or wrong. The
‘rightness’ of the proposition depends on the
claimer’s conviction and some statistical data. The
‘wrongness’ has to be proved beyond doubt,
without taking recourse to statistics. For, till such
time that some statistics favourable to the proposition
exist, the counter-statistics are connived at by
scientists and people biased in favour of the causation
of cancer.
However, where statistics cannot help, logic can. The
proposition that a cancerogen causes a cancer is
invalidated by the latter occurring without, and refusing
to occur despite, the former. This conundrum of a
cancer-causalist could be expressed as follows: X
causes Y, but why does Y occur without, and not occur
despite, X?
No cancerogen has yet proved the causa sine quo non
of any particular cancer, in humans or in animals, in
vivo or in vitro. Citing Hume, Fuller54
puts down, as the earmark of causality, an invariant
relation of events in which the cause must precede
its effect and the effect must follow its cause, in time.
‘It is this sense of must which distinguishes
causal connection from coincidence.’54
Further, Fuller54 emphasizes, the effect must
immediately follow the cause: ‘Causality can no more
jump gaps in time than it can gaps in space.’ The
concept of ‘latency’55 that allows
as many as thirty-six years between the exposure to the
postulated cause and the occurrence of cancer is, because
of the irreconcilable temporal gap, clearly against the
causalism of cancerogenism.
This brings us to the Bombay razor (cf. the one proposed
by William of Occam): Any causalistic proposition that
A causes B must in the same breath explain how A
fails to cause B, and how B manages to
occur without A. To take but one example, the
authenticated statistics are that on an average, of 740
smokers, one gets lung cancer.56 Such being
the case, the onus of providing /explaining how cancer
failed to occur is, for the causalists, 739 times greater
than to prove how it did. No causalistic proposition, be
it heart disease, hypertension, or cancer, has been able
to meet the logical sharpness of the Bombay razor. No
wonder the causes keep on changing, like ladies’
fashions. For cancer of the cervix, for example, it was
smegma yesterday, but is sperm today. For lung cancer,
too, smoking is going out, and some unexplained
predis-position is coming in. And this parade will
continue till we accept the universal intrinsicality
of cancer.
Way back in 1918, Bertrand Russell57 delivered
a devastating judgement against causalism: ‘All
philosophers, of every school, imagine that causation is
one of the fundamental axioms of science, yet oddly
enough, in advanced sciences such as gravitational
astronomy, the word cause never occurs.’ Causalism
survives, nay thrives in medicine probably because either
it is not science, or it is not advanced or it isn’t
both. Russell57 gives some other reason for
its survival: ‘The law of causality, I believe, like
much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of
a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because
it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.’
Cancerological causalism, having presented mankind with
hysterical cancerophobia, marches on regardless. This is
despite the fact that even the much-vaunted virus and
smoking have lost their cancerogenic value. Viruses have
been held as lab artifacts that have nothing to do with
human cancer5, and smoking has aptly been
declared as the leading cause of statistics.58
Koestler 59 has alluded to the
perversity of scientists. Such perversity reaches its
climax when patients are purportedly ‘cured’ by
the very agents known as causing cancer - irradiation,
chemicals, and hormones. Viruses and immunity had
hitherto escaped this cancerological disbolism of what
causes, cures cancer. However,viruses have been
mooted as curative60 while immunity, our last
hope against cancer, has been incriminated61
as not only cancerogenic, but also cancerotrophic.
Diagnostic procedures (mammography62 right
now) are not exempt from the cancerogenic scare. All that
is done to cure cancer, appears to cause cancer.
The noble aim behind the hunt for the cause is the
promise of the prevention. ‘Since so little is known
about the origin and development of neoplasia, it is not
surprising that many cancers can be neither prevented nor
cured.63 What if much is known? Reviewing a
book ambitiously titled The Prevention of Cancer, Jelliffe64
concluded that, although the various authors provide an
excellent analysis of the large amount of data related to
the causation of different cancers, no reasonable
means are provided anywhere for prevention. ‘For
example,’ Jelliffee64 remarked,
‘after twelve erudite pages on breast cancer, the
reader can discover no practical alternative to
prophylactic bilateral mastectomy at an early age.’
Harvey Cushing65 exclaimed that, like many
other catchwords, prevention can be overworked:
‘There is only one ultimate and effectual preventive
for the maladies to which flesh is heir, and that is
death.’ Life’s close link with cancer means the
only way to prevent cancer is to prevent life. And, in a
way, the only truly effective remedy for cancer is death.
The realization that cancer is not caused, and
therefore, is not ‘preventable’ is a
mixed blessing. The happy part is that the all- pervasive
cancerophobia will disappear and we shall be able to sip
coffee and enjoy a smoke without the subconscious feeling
of committing slow suicide, by inviting cancer. The
bitter part is that some of us - one in five - would
always be doomed to cancer, no matter what. Sad? But that
is how Nature operates
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