Yes to Life

Two and a half years ago I set up the charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk) to directly assist cancer patients in obtaining information, consultations and treatment with non-toxic alternatives. At that time I would have considered myself pretty 'green' in relationship to the chemicals I exposed myself to. I had been a vegetarian for about 35 years and had to a large extent sought to avoid the move towards preprepared, pre-packaged foods.

Then I started to read, in fact to devour, material on cancer and the environment, as part of a personal education for the sake of my mission with Yes to Life. And along with this education came the realisation of quite how many things I took for granted or downplayed in my everyday life which are in fact major carcinogens (cancer promoting substances).

For example, although I had been aware of the development of 'green' household and personal hygiene products, I actually thought they were only for the seriously faddish. But the more I have read, the more I have come to realise the urgency with which we need to embrace all such moves away from bathing ourselves and our homes in chemical cocktails, both for our own sakes and our families', and for the sake of the wider environment, which we are fast turning from friend to foe.

Once you really start looking, you quickly become aware of the fact that we are building carcinogens into the fabric of our homes, buying furnishings that exude them, cleaning with them, washing in them, drinking them, eating them, breathing them. Due to the worsening situation babies now start to be exposed before leaving the womb and young children have the same levels of carcinogens as my generation has accumulated in a lifetime. I was going to say that we are rushing headlong into a health crisis - but the truth is, from where I stand in a charity working with the casualties, we're right in the thick of it.

My generation, that spawned the hippie movement in the sixties, sowed the seeds of many of the 'green' initiatives that are at last beginning to become world players, and so a certain 'wholefood' mentality is part of our make up. But we also grew up in a fifties baby boomer world where you could trust (or I should say 'thought you could trust') air, water, soil, food manufacturers, doctors, pharmaceutical and chemical companies, even governments, and the world was a huge place with an unlimited capacity to digest our garbage. It has been a major and unsettling psychological shift to leave this completely behind for the reality of our toxic and increasingly hostile world. In contrast, I'm aware that today's children are increasingly exposed to these realities, but also to the concurrently exploding commercial pressures to distract them from this truth, and to keep them aboard the gravy train of consumerism. Amongst the gloomy predictions for the future of their world, they are in fact living with fast dwindling security - what legacy will their children inherit?

The statistics for cancer and chronic disease are devastating. Massive public resources are continually thrown at attempts to solve the problems within the same framework of toxicity that created them. The escalation of cancers owes a lot to 'scientific advances', for example in agriculture, food manufacture and packaging. As a result we now live in an increasingly toxic environment which produces degraded and toxic food. Where does science turn for a cure to the resulting cancers? - highly toxic chemicals and radiation. Unsurprisingly, and despite the hype to the contrary by both government and industry, it's not working.* The good news is that the public is proving its intelligence by voting with its wallet, and the sales of organic, non-toxic, recyclable products continue to rise apace against a background in which our leaders are still held in the thralls of biotech companies that threaten to irrevocably disrupt the very sources of our wellbeing for commercial gain. Interest in complementary and alternative medicine is growing exponentially despite the aggressive opposition of 'Big Pharma'. The need to question the whole direction taken in our name by the unholy trinity of science, commerce and government has never been greater. A new found respect for the indescribably delicate natural interconnections that sustain our continued existence as a species must provide the basis to direct those who represent us, to make decisions that are in the interests of mankind as a whole, if we are to turn the toxic tide.

Which brings me back full circle to my 'personal revolution'… This is the place it really happens, within each one of us. We have to wake up, to educate ourselves and start to care enough to make changes. It really does matter what goes in our shopping basket. I'm glad I've started, but also aware that I still have a way to go.

* Morgan G, Ward R, Barton M. The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies. Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol).
2004;16(8):549-60. This metastudy concluded that a generous estimate of the contribution of all chemotherapy to 5-year survival is just over 2%. This is starkly at odds with the confident picture of steady progress and regular 'breakthroughs' painted by doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

Author: Robin Daly, Yes to Life www.yestolife.org.uk