Making a Killing...

A close friend lost his father to cancer recently.

It had been detected in a late stage and his demise was rapid, within a few months.

From the day of the diagnosis, my friend left no stone unturned, trying to find a possible cure. Well meaning friends, relatives and even acquaintances provided information of all sorts of treatments they had heard of - often half-facts and anecdotes, each of which my friend tried diligently to track down.

Homeopathy provided some relief from the pain and restlessness initially, but that repreive too was limited.

When his father finally passed on and I called my friend to commiserate, he only said, "We could not do much for him..."

I felt for him, at our helplessness in the face of this disease and wondered... how far had we had gotten in the global 'fight against cancer'?

In a world of uncanny coincidences (or, if you prefer, the amazing ability of the conscious mind to suddenly spot whatever the subconscious might be occupied with,) I opened The Hindu a few mornings back to find this article.

The article is short, well written and makes a simple, first-person case for a more humane approach - not just to cancer patients, but to cancer itself. Please read it.

It highlights how, by using terminology like "fight" and "battle" and "war", pharma companies (and the politicians who are bankrolled by them) hijack cancer research to suit their ends.

The article resonated with me, echoing of something else I had read a long time back. I could only recall that the fragment of memory I was trying ferret out also had to do with chemicals.

Thanks to the world wide web of memory, a zillion times more powerful than mine, I was able to track down what I was looking for - environmental scientist Dr.Vandana Shiva's views on the subject of how seed and pesticide giants word wide go about peddling their wares.

I have cut-pasted a couple of paragraphs for you below from the relevant article:

"The issue of violence is important because the entire technology paradigm as it’s emerging and the economics paradigm of globalization are based on warfare. You begin to genetically engineer a seed. Where does that begin? It begins with gene guns. You make genetically manipulated organisms by shooting genes with a gene gun. All the language in genetic engineering is a language of warfare. Cargill uses the language of warfare to talk about preventing bees from usurping the pollen. It’s a war against the pollinators.

Monsanto uses the language of creating herbicide-resistant crops to prevent weeds, which in our view is diversity and biodiversity essential to our health, our food, to vitamin A sources, they call it “stealing the sunshine.” It’s a war against the weeds. It’s a war for sunlight, which you can never have restricted. It’s in such abundant quantities. The entire WTO regime is based on one single concept of trade wars, turning trade from being a mutual, cooperative arrangement of selling and buying what you really need into a coercive arrangement of being forced to buy what you don’t need and being forced to sell what you should be using domestically. India is being forced to sell millions of tons of grain."

Clearly, for the human race (or at least the for the uglier half of us), the martial metaphor still evokes something primal we find hard to resist.

Mark Marqusee has made a compelling case for what he believes would be a more holistic approach to cancer research and treatment.

For a similar non-violent, holistic, approach to agriculture, and I believe, pretty much all of life, find and read this little treasure from a real Master.

It's called "One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka. What really moved me when I read it first, and still does, every time I pick it up, is its quiet reliance of first-hand experience over anything else.

You can read more about Fukuoka's philosophy & work here

In India, you can order the book online here

Amazon stocks it too.

I look forward to your thoughts.