It's Movember. Good for you for caring to do something. But did you know that your money will not go to helping anyone avoid cancer but to Big Pharma to help them make money out of you.
Mustaches are everywhere this November. In October we are all pink and Running for the Cure. But please think a bit please. BTW I was one of a small group of CIBC Executives that started Run for the Cure - so I am not just being a Grinch here. I have many family members with Prostate Cancer and others with breast cancer - so I am not just sitting on the fence throwing rocks today.
"The Cure" is the business model of medicine. There is no business is helping you avoid cancer. So medicine does not do health.
Please remember that medicine is above all a business. A business that makes its money by selling us tests and treatments. A conversation that you will never have when you meet your oncologist for the first time is how you got cancer. The conversation that you will never have is how to reduce your risks - other than by taking more medication.
Do you know how to avoid cancer? Did you know that only 7% of women who are diagnosed have the gene and even then only a few of them get it? Did you know that if you are a woman in the UK you have a 42% chance of getting breast cancer?
When your PSA level is high or you have a cancerous lump, no doctor will tell you that this may not kill you. No one will tell you that most men over 65 have prostate cancer and die of something else years later.
Did you know that early testing, mammograms and PSA tests have done nothing to reduce the overall mortality rate?
If you want to avoid cancer then please start to discover the wealth of information that talks not about the CURE but about how we get it and how to avoid it. It is in your power to reduce your risks. Become part of the new revolution in health where the research looks not for the silver bullet but at the complex system that it our health.
Please don't just be a well intentioned supporter of a multi billion dollar industry.
