I heard of Chinese of long ago paying their medicine man when they were healthy and stopped paying when they were sick. I don’t know if this is true, but we Americans do the opposite. Amazingly, even with the most feared diseases like cancer, we seem to ignore prevention and wait until we get it and complain when there is no cure!

We are far from having magic bullets to cure cancer, but yet we are ignoring medicines which prevent two of the most devastating cancers–breast cancer and prostate cancer.

Think I am talking about taking your vitamins, getting exercise, and eating a healthy diet? No. I am talking about medicines backed with clinical trial data. Earlier, I wrote about losing the war on cancer and that it is all about money, but that was focused on cures.

How can this be? See “Medicines to Deter Some Cancers Are Not Taken” in the New York Times November 13, 2009. Clinical trials on the generic drug finasteride show the efficacy of this $2 per day regime and for breast cancer two drugs (tamoxifen and raloxitene) can cut the risk in half.

Thus, we do not seem to believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Photographer: Bull Frog Getty Royalty Free Image

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Healing, Uncategorized, health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.