More “Inconvenient Truth”
January 31, 2008 9:36 pm
My dear friend Jane Heaven just told me that her friend Yolanda Bain, a San Francisco yoga instructor, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last month and will be undergoing surgery in a few days. Friends have put together a website inviting people to be a part of Yolanda’s “healing team.” A very welcome way one can participate is by making a donation on the site to help defray her looming financial costs.
Yolanda is young, exercises regularly, eats well, doesn’t smoke or drink too much, and has a air of serenity that no doubt stems from her devotion to Buddhism. Why has she gotten cancer? I heard an interview recently on Fresh Air that might have the answer. To quote from the show’s introduction, “Epidemiologist and environmental-health expert Devra Davis writes in The Secret History of the War on Cancer that Americans have spent $40 billion in a war on cancer, fighting the wrong battles with the wrong weapons against the wrong enemies. She says the effort has focused on detecting, treating, and curing the disease, instead of looking at what causes it. Her book argues that powerful economic interests [to wit, the chemical industry] have steered money toward research on treatment rather than looking at how their own products may be causing the disease. Davis says we’re surrounded by potentially cancer-causing products we ought to be paying more attention to.”
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I’ve been afraid to see An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s documentary about Global Warming, because I know I will only get depressed. I am already well aware that the polar ice caps are melting, that changing weather patterns are adversely affecting animal migrations and causing natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, and floods to occur more frequently around the world. Why would I want to hear more about a subject I feel completely powerless to do anything about?
