Peter Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week.
Then US President Richard Nixon declared a “War on Cancer” in 1971.
Fifty three years later cancer is winning.
In New Zealand the Cancer Society says 71 people are diagnosed every day. That’s 26,000 a year or about 350 per 100,000 of population, a number well above the global average (200/100,000) although below that of the US and Australia.
The figures come from World Cancer Research Fund International and are skewed by the inclusion of non-melanoma skin cancer which is relatively minor and usually can be easily treated.
But that aside, a paper published last April in the Cancer Epidemiology journal disturbingly predicts New Zealand’s annual cancer cases will increase to 45,100 within the next 20 years. So by 2044 there’ll be 378 New Zealanders out of every 100,000 with a cancer diagnosis.
Those numbers say that more and more of our spending on sickness health will go to cancer treatment. Currently it’s around 10 per cent of the health budget.
The current cancer statistics have led more and more medical professionals to suggest the primary way to start winning the war on cancer is through prevention, particularly through education on our diet.
At a recent gathering in Christchurch hosted by New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science, the experienced South African born, American domiciled, physician Paul Marik lamented the dreadful state of the American population’s health and its ever increasing demand on drugs.
“The US has four per cent of the world’s population but consumes 55 per cent of the world’s pharmaceuticals,” he said.
Marik has effectively lost his career because of ‘unapproved’ advice to patients – especially around Covid – but is now on a campaign to improve the health of Americans and indeed all people who have the privilege to enjoy an affluent and Western lifestyle.
He says his latest book Cancer Care: The Role of Repurposed Drugs and Metabolic Interventions in Treating Cancer is banned from Amazon, presumably under pressure from the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies. That he says is a badge of honour, although the book – aimed at medical professionals and cancer care providers – is highly scientific and extensively referenced.
Marik speaks from experience about disease and poor health. A balding and somewhat pudgy 66-year-old, he cured himself of type-2 diabetes, not through drugs, but through diet.
That’s where he wants to refocus the war against cancer. The message he’s preaching should apply to New Zealand as much as in the US.
“Instead of drugs we need to concentrate on prevention. Cancer is a disease of modern mankind. Chimpanzees share 98.8 percent of our DNA. Chimpanzees don’t get cancer.”
While lamenting that cancer is now a $200 billion dollar industry, Marik wants us to have a good long look at what type of food we eat, how much we eat and how often.
“I’m a rehabilitated food addict. I started intermittent fasting. Only one meal on some days and my hypertension and diabetes went away.”
He even quoted Mark Twain during his presentation in Christchurch. The acclaimed 19th century writer maintained even back then “a little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors”.
That philosophy will undoubtedly be fiercely denied by many medical professionals today but Marik is a proponent of restricted eating habits.
“You should not eat when you wake up and you should not eat within four hours of going to bed.”
It is much easier said than done. The concept of breakfast being the most important meal of the day is now regarded as a great marketing ploy by breakfast cereal manufacturers, particularly Kelloggs. Those cereals and their ever increasing amount of sugar are among the foods in Marik’s firing line.
“We have to move from processed food to real food.” The difference he says is whether or not the food comes out of a packet. While that seems a massive oversimplification, Marik produced some statistics designed to shock his audience about what Americans eat.
He claims 10 per cent of disposable income in the US is spent on fast food, processed foods make up 70 per cent of the US diet, the average American consumes 60 kilograms of sugar each year and a third of all US adults are obese.
As a third of all New Zealand adults are also obese, according to official Ministry of Health statistics, then those other depressing facts about the American diet may also be replicated here.
Marik therefore is pushing the case for a healthier diet. He wants home-cooked meals with vegetables and fruit, a serious reduction in sugar and the cutting out of oils from seeds like sunflower and canola.
While we’re at it, he says we should cut back on alcohol, stop smoking, get regular exercise, plenty of sunshine (he maintains melanoma is not caused by sun exposure, a theory actually backed by research), lots of sleep, reduce stress and supplement your diet with vitamins C and D.
What Paul Marik is saying is nothing new. Cancer has been described as a ‘lifestyle disease’ for at the least 30 years, if not longer.
But if we are to reduce the incidence of cancer in this country, shouldn’t there be more public education on healthy lifestyles?
As this column has stated before, it’s missing from all media channels whether mainstream or social. Ministry of Health public advice and advertising about staying well in New Zealand seems to start and end with vaccinations. Covid, flu, HPV and shingles are all being pushed in various ways at the moment.
Where is the lifestyle advice? Where is the diet advice? If we want to rein in our ever increasing annual spend on health – this current financial year it will be $29.4 billion – then we have to become a healthier population.
Physicians like Paul Marik seem to be regarded as a threat by the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry. Half a century after Nixon’s war was declared, the numbers say little progress has been made outside of early detection and screening programmes.
Maybe Marik’s idea to address what we eat and how we live should be considered really seriously, not just in the US but here as well.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
