MEAT DIET DOES NOT CAUSE CANCER

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19154, 21 August 1930, Page 1

MEAT DIET DOES NOT CAUSE CANCER

“ IT IS NOT WHAT WE EAT, BUT THE WAY WE EAT IT.”

(Special to the “ Star. ") SYDNEY. August 9. Some plain speaking on cancer research marks Professor Welsh’s recent delivery of the Halford oration, which has just been published in booklet form. Not the food we eat, but the way we eat it, may give rise to cancer. Among “discredited causes of cancer/' Dr Welsh, who is Professor of Pathology at Sydney University, places food, civilisation, and germs, thus wiping out at one stroke the Barnard and Gye .theory, the meat hypothesis and the idea that the primitive life protects the savage from tremours. A vegetarian diet does not protect against it, nor does a flesh diet predispose to it. Many grass-eating domestic animals are only saved from cancer because we kill and eat them before they reach the cancer age. Not Infectious. Cancer is neither infectious nor contagious. Doctors have handled it for hundreds, of 3*ears, yet there is not one single authentic case on record of cancer having'"t>een transmitted from one person to another. This knocks cut the “cancer house,” “cancer home,” and “cancer hospital/’ But there is evidence to show that cancer may run in families. Anyone belonging to a , cancer family should be on the qui vive for the earliest signs of it. Asking for Cancer l The risk of cancer is greater with advancing age. But there are thousands of cases at the cancer age which would never have occurred had greater care been taken to protect the tissues from local irritation and damage. The man who cherishes an unhealing sore in.his mouth or who irritates his stomach with 1»oo hot or too pungent food and drink is simply extending an invitation to the enemy.

Of the many inexplicable facts in cancer-growth. Professor Welsh stressed its decline and death. Occasionally, cancers “cure themselves”—that is, retrogress for some unknown reason. If a patient who has been told by a doctor his case is hopeless, happens to be taking some quack remedy at the time, he attributes his cure to the drug, whereas his cancer was merely a growth of low vitality which could not survive. Early treatment is the one sure cure for cancer. A danger signal is always flown-—the red flag of haemorrhage, a lump in the breast, an unhealing sore, persistent dyspepsia. Professor .Welsh ends on a note of hope. • People a re/alive and well to-day long after early cancers have been removed. Some people gamble on the chance "that serious symptoms may not bo due to cancer. But it is ‘better to be sure than sorry.