According to historian James Patterson, Mary, and her little lambs,virtually ruled the health agenda of America. The National Cancer Institute has the large government funding and credentialed researchers, but it is the ACS who has the political clout. They are the tail that wags the NCI dog.� From 1952-1961, because of the Mary Lasker lobby, the NCI's budget went from 18 million to 110 million. Half went to chemotherapy research.
The big payoff came in December 1971, when President Nixon signed into law the war on cancer. Nixon owed Elmer Bobst because Bobst had arranged for Nixon tobe hired at a wall street law firm in the 1960's.This was Bobst's payback. During the decade of the 1970's Mary Lasker and prominent private cancer research hospitals such as Sloan Memmorial Kettering ruled the national cancer program. That means researching only man-made patentable drugs.
Mary Lasker decided it would be a good idea to screen woman for breast cancer. The ad-slogan dreamt up by the PR gurus at the ACS was, "Control cancer witha check-up and a check." Between 1973-1978 54.6 million was spent on screening.The NCI provided 46 million of the total cost. Subjecting a quarter of a million woman to x-ray radiation, without informing them of the risks, is in my opinion, at the least highly unethical.
In December 1974 Professor Malcolm Pike wrote to the NCI and stated that a number of specialists had concluded that,"...giving a woman under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical.".The ACS keeps an "Unproven Methods List" which is used as a political hit list, used against anybody threatening their cancer profiteering. For many years the ACS collaborated with the AMA to coordinate attacks on alternative treatments.
As Samuel Epstein says in "The Politics of Cancer Revisited" �
"Periodically, the committee updates it's statements on unproven methods which is then widely disseminated to clinicians, cheer-leader science writers, and the public. Once a clinician or oncologist becomes associated with unproven methods, he or she is blackballed by the cancer establishment. Funding for the accused quack becomes inaccessible, followed by systematic harassment.
According to journalist Ruth Rosenbaum they, (from The Healing of Cancer), "...Form a network of vigilantes prepared to pounce on anyone who promotes a cancer therapy that runs against their substantial prejudices and profits."
What happens to the hundreds of millions the ACS collects every year. Peter Barry Chowka's 1978 investigation found;
"ACS is hoarding and investing for profit many millions of dollars contributed by thepublic to fight cancer, while the society claims that vital research is going begging forfunds....Of the money ACS spends to 'fight cancer,' 61 percent goes for staff salaries,executive travel, office supplies and other expenses; less than 5 percent is allocated toassisting patients."
In September 1990, Dr. James T. Bennett of George Mason University published an essay that appeared in several newspapers.
"The American Cancer Society...had a fund balance of $426.2 million in 1988,and it held net investments (after depreciation) in land, buildings and equipmentof 69 million. That same year, the ACS spent only $89.2 million, or 26 percent of it's budget on medical research."
The American Cancer Society is famous for hyping so-called new miracle drug breakthroughs and being on the verge of a major development. This is extremely helpful around fund raising time. On March 15 1987 the ACS officially announced,
"Caught early enough, breast cancer has cure rates approaching 100 percent."
There is no such thing as a cure in cancer treatment. They talk about 5 year survival. Breast cancer cures (20+ years) have never been anywhere near a 100%. This kind of selfserving hyperbole is the backbone of the ACS's fundraising campaigns. As Dr. Dean Burk says, "They (ACS) lie like scoundrels."
This is appalling. The ACS fires up its advertising campaigns and picks the pockets of Americans who think� they are helpnig people suffering with this deadful disease. All the while the majority of the money goes to large salary's, benefits, expenses, advertising and land investments. Pat McGrady sums it up best when he says;
"Abolish the ACS....That institution is a disgrace."��
The ACS and NCI have been intertwined since the 1950s. About half of the ACS board is comprised of oncologists, radiologists, clinicians and others with a vested interest in traditional cancer research.
Key ACS and NCI officials often sit on each others committees. ACS board members and their colleagues receive grants from one or both institutions. This old boys network maintains the status quo and guarantees that the vast majority of funding stays within orthodox medicine.