The new Preventive Medicine
Preventive medicine is becoming more popular in today’s media, but western doctors approach preventive medicine in an odd way. Take breast cancer for instance. A national agenda led to the recommendation to increase screenings for breast tumors. Studies showed that such a proposal would increase the detection rate for breast tumors, and thus they would get treated at an earlier stage leading to lower mortality. This works, but tackles the problem half-way through. The women who would potentially be saved would have already had a breast tumor. Ideally, preventive medicine would stop this tumor from developing in the first place.
Prevention for cancer should involve analysis into the causes of cancer. It is clear from history that cancer is not a natural means of death, and that it is a man-made disease. The chemicals we have added and other changes we have made to our environment cause our cells to mutate eventually leading to cancer. For example, smoking tobacco mutates the cells in our lungs. Once the mutations build up over a long enough period of time. One cell will develop the combination of mutations that lead to the inability for the cell to stop itself from growing. The cell then multiplies exponentially leading to a tumor that eventually spreads to the rest of the body severely compromising the normal function of the body. Here we have a known cause of a mutagen (tobacco smoke) that leads to cancer. Eliminating tobacco smoke would result in fewer deaths from lung cancer. Therefore, good preventive medicine includes advice to stop smoking.
Research should look for other mutagens in our environment that are under our control. Many western medicines are known mutagens. Hormone replacement therapy led to numerous cases of breast cancer. Thus, good preventive medicine would remove hormone replacement therapy from people’s environments. There are so many mutagens in our environment that it is small wonder that cancer rates are so high. What are the most common mutagens that lead to cancer? This would be a good first step to good preventive medicine.
In the broader sense, ask the question: What causes disease? and What can we do to remove the causes of disease? These two questions should be the basis for national plans to develop preventive medicine.
