WEB POSTED 4-26-2000

DIGGING OUR GRAVES WITH OUR TEETH

The headline on the "Health & Fitness" page of a recent issue of THE NEW YORK TIMES read "Breast Cancer in Blacks Spurs Hunt for Answers". Part of the text read, "At a time of unprecedented advances, when overall death rates from breast cancer are declining, Black women are 12 per cent less likely than white women to get breast cancer, but far more likely, once they contract the disease, to die from it.

"Among women with breast cancer, African-Americans are 50 per cent more likely than whites to get the disease before the age of 35, when tumors are more aggressive. They are also 50 per cent more likely to die of breast cancer before they turn 50."

Dr. Otis Brawley, a Black man who directs the Office of Special Population Branch of the National Cancer Center, states flatly, "This gap didn�t exist 25 years ago, and the genetics of Black folks didn�t change in the last 25 years."

All intelligent people know that nothing "just happens". That is why, when I first heard The Honorable Elijah Muhammad say, "The most important of all questions you can ask is "WHY?�", my mind flashed back to the day, more than 50 years ago, when I was introduced to the Principle of Causality, which states: "Everything that exists has an adequate, efficient cause".

A National Cancer Institute study reported in November that the racial mortality gap is widening, in that, a Black woman�s risk of dying from breast cancer was slightly lower than a white woman�s in 1980, was 16 per cent greater in 1990, and that by 1995, that gap had jumped to 29 per cent. Another study, by Dr. Sue A. Joslyn, an epidemiologist at the University of Northern Iowa, found that Black women with breast cancer were 67 per cent more likely than whites to die of their illness.

An article on the "COMMENTARY" page of the CHICAGO TRIBUNE of March 15th, entitled "Eating All The Wrong Foods", states that "A kid eating glazed donut breakfasts and double cheeseburger dinners, with 42-ounce soft drinks for refreshment, is a kid headed for trouble--for diabetes, kidney and pancreatic damage, heart disease, osteoarthritis, stroke, gall bladder disease or sleep apnea."

Some of the benefits of eating the right foods are just being uncovered, but that does not mean that they have been unknown. When some of those who worship the dollar happen to be in the food business, they are not going to cut their profits just to save lives.

I am going to have to conclude this topic in next week�s issue. I don�t want to omit the seemingly miraculous effect tomatoes have on various cancers, especially prostate cancer; or of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, which are particularly effective against cancer of the bladder. And, as if that were not enough, I find, among my source material, an article that appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE over a year ago, entitled "How the BEAN Saved Civilization".