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Cigarette Company Paid for Lung Cancer Study

  • April 19, 2008
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WARNING!

This is an older article that may not reflect Dr. Mercola’s current view on this topic. Use our search engine to find Dr. Mercola’s latest position on any health topic.

smoking, cigaretteIn 2006, cancer researchers were jolted by a controversial new study claiming that 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through widespread use of CT scans.

Small print in the study noted that it had been financed in part by a little-known charity called “The Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention & Treatment.” But a recent review of tax records showed that the foundation was underwritten almost entirely by $3.6 million in grants from the makers of the Liggett Select, Eve, Grand Prix, Quest and Pyramid cigarette brands.

Prominent cancer researchers and journal editors were stunned to learn of the association. Critics are now questioning the validity of the study, including its survival projections and its assumption that all lung cancer patients who were diagnosed by screening would have died without it.
 
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
If you have been reading this site for awhile the issue of a large multinational corporation funding research that intends to deceive you and sacrifice your health for their profits is no surprise.

“They want to show that lung cancer is not so bad as everybody thinks because screening can save people; and that’s outrageous,” said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, in the New York Times.

Of course, research that is sponsored by industry has a long and sordid history. It’s now clearly known that industry-sponsored research produces results that tend to favor the industry.

In one related study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, results showed that industry-sponsored studies were 3.6 times more likely to have results that favored the industry than studies with no financial ties to the industry.

This is why industry-funded research is now frowned upon, and often cannot get published at all. That is, unless they hide the funding source by disguising themselves as a charity or grass-roots organization. It is a classic case of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

So now the “major” finding that CT scans can help prevent lung cancer deaths is getting a second look. It turns out that both the study’s survival projections and an assumption that all patients would have died without screening are being called into question.

Also worthy of attention is the overlooked fact that CT scans have radiation risks in and of themselves, and sometimes they detect cancers that won’t progress, leading to unnecessary biopsies and surgeries, not to mention extreme emotional distress (which could actually trigger a cancer state in your body).

What Can Prevent Lung Cancer Better Than a CT Scan?

Lung cancer causes the most cancer-related deaths among men and women, and over 215,000 new cases are expected to be diagnosed in 2008, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The most common cause of lung cancer, according to conventional medicine, is smoking, but exposure to secondhand smoke, radon, asbestos, air pollution and other chemicals also contributes.

So if you are concerned about lung cancer, and you currently smoke, should you quit smoking immediately? This may surprise you, but my answer is no -- not until you get your diet right.

You see, cigarettes are made up of many drugs that speed up your metabolism, which causes you to burn calories quicker. When you stop smoking, there are reflexes that slow down your metabolism, which will increase your ability to gain weight. This also, in conjunction with many behavioral components, tends to cause people to reward themselves with sweets and desserts because they have done a great thing by giving up something like smoking. Well, sugar is actually more damaging to your body than smoking, and is one of the reasons why many people who are successful in stopping smoking gain large amounts of weight -- clearly not something that is good for your health.

So my advice to anyone who wants to quit smoking is to first address your dietary issues. Find out your nutritional type, read through my nutrition plan, and get to work limiting your intake of sugar and grains.

It's also vital that you exercise and sleep well, among other things like addressing your emotional challenges. And then once you're feeling good and healthy, you are going to spontaneously want to quit smoking. And this is the time to do it.

Get Ready to Open Your Mind

This may sound shocking, but according to the research behind Dr. Geerd Hamer’s German New Medicine (GNM), smoking will only cause lung cancer if you believe it will.

This is based on the principle that cancer is actually caused by emotional traumas. A traumatic emotional experience, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, a severe worry or any other threat or panic, causes you stress on a physical and emotional level. It also, according to Dr. Hamer, causes a brain lesion that can clearly be seen on a CT scan.

This lesion is confirmation to your brain of the shock you have experienced, and it then transmits a biochemical signal to the corresponding body cells that can result in tumor growth, visual or hearing impairment, paralysis, diabetes or any other disease (depending on the area of your brain affected). In the case of smoking, the emotional trauma is a “death fright” that can occur if you believe smoking can kill you.

Consider this study from the German New Medicine Web site:

“In a large-scale study that lasted over several years, thousands of hamsters were constantly exposed to cigarette smoke while control animals were not. The researchers discovered that not a single animal manifested a bronchial carcinoma or a lung cancer. They had simply missed the fact that hamsters live underground and have absolutely no fear of smoke. That's why they have no code in their brains, no warning light against smoke.

With house mice it is exactly the reverse. They suffer an acute death fright with the least amount of smoke and run away. In fact, in medieval times, when one saw a swarm of mice run out of a house, one knew that there was a fire somewhere. Some of these mice can indeed develop a lung cancer, triggered by the death fright.”

The solution is not to treat the physical symptoms of the disease, but instead to get to the bottom of the emotional conflict, and heal yourself emotionally.

For even more tips on how to prevent the physical, environmental and emotional triggers for cancer, check out my 12 tips to prevent cancer, which are outlined in this past article.

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