by Jon Barron

On May 27th, the American Cancer Society announced that 650,400 U.S. cancer deaths were avoided from the early 1990s through 2005. The headline on their release was Cancer Death Rates Steadily Declining. As might be expected, the media promptly picked up the story, and ran it over and over again with virtually identical headlines:

• More Than 650000 Cancer Deaths Avoided
• More Than 650,000 Cancer Deaths Avoided
• Etc.

If you read the stories, you learned tidbits of information such as:

• The decline in cancer death rates has been greater for some groups than for others
• People with more education generally had bigger declines in their cancer death rates
• Access to cancer screening and medical care is part of the reason for that discrepancy

But overall, what you learned from reading the story or listening to it on the news is that 650,000 lives have been saved over the last 15 years and that the drop is driven in large part by better prevention, increased use of early detection practices, and improved treatments for cancer.

This is thrilling, exciting, and, oh yes, absolutely unsupported by the evidence at hand. To learn the real story, read the complete newsletter at: http://www.jonbarron.org/baseline-health-program/2009-06-08.php.

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND ... STATISTICS -

[This is a terrific article. Go to the site to read the entire article!] By Judith Hatton

" We are told that 120,000 people in Britain die a year as a result of their smoking. Where does this figure come from? It doesn't come from death certificates "

"Professor Alvan Feinstein, of Yale, a world authority on epidemiology (the study of the causes of disease), has said firmly that death certificates are merely "passports to burial", and for more than 50 years, "passports to burial", and for more than 50 years, every time someone has studied the causes of death listed on the death certificates, the conclusion has been that the information is 'grossly inaccurate and unreliable"

"The Smoking Epidemic" (a catchpenny title), gives its figures as coming from "estimates" drawn from two major surveys, one by the American Cancer Society, and the other the famous doctors' study, by Doll and Hill, in Britain.

"Both of these were self-selected, in that some groups of people were asked to give information about their smoking habits, and those who didn't want to didn't reply, these being more than 30% of the total in each case. A very distinguished scientist, Professor Eysenck, has said roundly:

"No relevant conclusions regarding causality can be drawn from studies of this kind."

"Obviously, unless you know why one in three of your subjects hasn't bothered to answer, your information will be inadequate. And in the US Surgeon General's report on smoking, a very strange fact emerged: it appeared that in the 5 studies that mentioned the number of people who didn't reply, the death-rate among the non-smokers who didn't reply was more than 38 times as high as that among those who did, but among smokers it was only 1.8 times as high. What on earth this means, apart from smokers being 20 times more likely to politely answer correspondence, no-one could imagine, but it is plain to anyone that it would skew the results to the point of making them meaningless."

"The Smoking Epidemic", perhaps wisely, doesn't try to go into the curious affair of the different rates of "smoking related" diseases among other nations. The Japanese are the second heaviest smoking nation in the world, and have a low rate of lung cancer (at one time the lowest in the world) and the world's longest life expectancy. And no, this isn't because they didn't start smoking until 1948, as has been said by an anti-smoker expert; they started in 1542. The American Indians smoke a good deal more than other Americans, and have half the rate of lung cancer. There are many more such anomalies.

"The Greeks, with Cyprus, have the highest rate of cigarette smoking in the world, and one of the world's lowest cancer rates. They also had for years the highest life expectancy in Europe, and are still up there in the first five. It is also interesting that they have one of the world's lowest rates in respiratory disease in general, and Singapore, with a third of their smoking rate, has the world's known highest. Very few Chinese women smoke, perhaps no more than 2%, but they have one of the highest lung cancer rates in the world. Asians living in the US smoke more than the other races, in some cases up to 90% of the men, but on average they live 7 years longer than these others.

"Sir Kenneth Calman, formerly the government's chief medical officer, approved for publication a report stating that 30% to 70% of all cancer cases are linked with diet. He said:

"Diet is 10 times more important than the effect of occupational causes and of smoking on all cancers."

"Since we are always told that 90% of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, does this mean that 900% are caused by diet?"

http://www.forces.org/writers/hatton/files/lies.htm

"Bush's argument that "African American males die sooner than other males do, which means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people. And that needs to be fixed" is inaccurate. " By age 65, when Social Security's full retirement benefits start to be paid, the difference between life expectancy for the average African American and white male is less than two years. " The statistic Bush is citing is skewed by high death rates of African Americans children and youth adults ."

http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/08/republican_part_1.php

"African-American life expectancy is low primarily due to high infant mortality rates and, generally, dying at a young--like not even close to retirement--age. Actually, once African-Americans reach retirement age, on average they live longer than whites ."

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/lying_about_lif.html

"Statistics depend on collecting information. If questions go unasked, or if they are asked in ways that limit responses, or if measures count some cases but exclude others, information goes ungathered, and missing numbers result."

http://www.sierraclubbooks.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10053/10053.ch01.html

"First, the article maintains that women—and their doctors!—don't understand the simple straightforward "one in nine" statement and believe, for instance, that they have a one in nine chance of getting cancer during the next year. But is it really that hard for women to understand that the one in nine figure refers to the chance of getting breast cancer at some point in her lifetime?

"Second, the article got the facts wrong: The American Cancer Society estimates that a female born today has a 1 in 9 chance of developing breast cancer by the age of 85, not 110 as the article states."

http://www.bcaction.org/Pages/SearchablePages/1992Newsletters/Newsletter012A.html

Average life expectancy is usually quoted to make it sound like everyone died by age 50 in 1900. Not so!

Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2003

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

"Your chance of increasing your life span after the age of 35 has not been increased one iota in the past 100 years!"

http://www.geocities.com/harpub/rodaleAge.htm

"Now what could a man look forward to if he was 50 years old in 1947? According to the life expectancy tables, this would be about 22-1/3 years, so that while a baby has gained 19 years of life, a 50 year old man has the advantage of only about two years more to look forward to. Something has happened in between the age of zero and 50 which has destroyed practically all the advantages of our vaunted medical and health setup, our antibiotics, cortisone, insulin, our improved surgery, and what not!"

"In January, 1952, Wilfred N. Sisk, M.D., physician in charge of Industrial Health for Upjohns, the great pharmaceutical concern, wrote a brilliant article in Organic Gardening, a publication of which I am editor. It brings to light a startling discrepancy in the general conception of the mortality figures. Dr. Sisk said,

"The table which we usually see in the newspaper is the table of life expectancy at birth. That means that the average length of life for all babies born for example in 1950 in the United States will probably be 68 years. The similar average for 1850 was approximately 35 years. (Exact figures are not available for this period.) In 1900 the average was not much better -- about 41 years. "If a child one day old dies of a streptococcic septicemia he takes away from the life table many man-years of time. In order to have an average life expectancy of 35 years as our country did in 1850, it means that some other child must live to be 70 years of age. Now that is exactly what happened many times over in 1850. And it is this table of life expectancy at birth which has shown so much improvement. Better medical practice has contributed to the really remarkable improvement in the lot of children and young adults.

"But what of the individual who has already reached the age of 40 years? Here the picture is not so pleasant. In fact, when carefully analyzed the picture is downright discouraging. As I stated above, life insurance companies keep expectancy tables for all ages. Let us see what a representative table means. A fairly complete table is available for white males in the United States from 1850 to 1947.

"At birth white males could expect to live, on the average, 38 years in 1850, 48.2 years in 1900 and 65.2 years in 1947. This is a clear and really gratifying increase of 27.2 years. Let us compare that with the life expectancy at age ten. In 1850 a child who reached ten years of age could expect to live to be 58 years of age, in 1900 the expectancy was for 60.6 years, and in 1947 for 68.1 years. For the children who reached ten years of age there was a gain of only ten years.

"The figures below mean of course that much has been done in the improvement of the health of small children. Let us contrast that with the expectancy at age 40. In 1850 white men who lived to be 40 years old could expect on the average to live 27.9 years longer or to a total age of 67.9. In 1900 the expectancy had actually decreased to 27.7 (total age of 67.7) while in 1947 it had only increased to 30.6 (total age 70.6).

"Thus we can see that for men who lived to be 40 years of age the life expectancy had only increased 2.7 years in virtually 100 years. This is certainly not much to be proud of. At age 50 the life expectancy table is no better. In 1850 a man age 50 could expect to live 21.6 more years (to a total age of 71.6 years) whereas in 1900 he could expect 20.8 years (total age 70.8 years) and in 1947 the expectancy was 22.3 years (total age 72.3 years). In almost 100 years we have improved the picture for age 50 by only 1.3 years. As you will see from the table for age 60 and 70 we have actually lost ground. The death rates in 1850 were better than those today."

"Why is all this concealed from us? Ask the average physician if we are getting healthier and he will tell you that we have added about 17 years to a man's life span, and yet a person who is fifty years old today has only one year more of life span to look forward to. But the physicians and the medical agencies continue to reiterate that we have added greatly to our length of life. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in a bulletin dated November 17, 1947, said, "The average length of life in the Western World has increased about 25 years in the past century". What they mean is that the average length of life of babies has increased 25 years.

"Dr. Victor Heiser, author of An American Doctor's Odyssey, in a speech delivered before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1939 said, "Your chance of increasing your life span after the age of 35 has not been increased one iota in the past 100 years!"

"In the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (October 5, 1952) Dr. Walter L. Palmer, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago said. (quoting the newspaper), "There has been less success in treating the diseases of old age. In 1850, a 60-year-old man in Massachusetts could look forward to an average of 15 years and six months of life, but nationally today he can only expect an average of 15 years and five months.''

"...We must admit one thing. There are more older people in the population today than there were in 1900, but this is due to the fact that fewer babies are dying. More of them are therefore living to older ages. This is due, not to the fact that modern babies are healthier or stronger than the 1850 babies, but that they are being protected against diptheria and other killing contagious diseases by various methods. Unhygienic conditions used to kill babies by the millions through dysentery, for example. There is much evidence to show that older people today suffer far more from chronic diseases than did their old time counterparts. They are weaker, they doctor more. They are operated on more. How many people are going around without their gall bladder? How many women have had their ovaries removed? They live and they suffer! They have only one or two years more of life, but how they suffer for it! The people were basically healthier in past centuries and lived longer provided they were not knocked off in infancy or mowed down in later life by some contagious disease like diphtheria or tuberculosis."

"Let us look at the ages of some of our Revolutionary War figures: Benjamin Franklin lived to be 84, Jefferson 76, John Adams 91, John Quincy Adams 81, Washington 67, Madison 85, Monroe 73, Morris 72, Martha Washington 70, John Hay 84, Betsy Ross 84, Lafayette 77, General Gates 78, Andrew Jackson 78, John Marshall 80, and Tom Paine 72."

NewsTarget.com printable article

Originally published May 3 2006

Lying with statistics: How conventional medicine confuses the public with absolute risk vs. relative risk

Which drug would you rather take? One that reduces your risk of cancer by 50 percent, or another drug that only eliminates cancer in one out of 100 people? Most people would choose the drug that reduces their risk of cancer by 50 percent, but the fact is, both of these numbers refer to the same drug. They're just two different ways of looking at the same statistic. One way is called relative risk; the other way is absolute risk.

Here's how it works: Let's say that in a trial involving 100 people, two people would normally get breast cancer during the trial duration, but when all 100 people are put on the drug, only one person gets breast cancer, meaning the reduction of breast cancer is one person out of 100. Yet the pharmaceutical industry will exclaim that the relative risk reduction is 50 percent because one is 50 percent of two. In other words, the risk is cut in half from a relative point of view.

The headlines promoting this drug, therefore, will always talk about the relative risk -- "A whopping 50 percent reduction in risk!" -- and these headlines will be parroted by the mainstream press, medical journals, the FDA, doctors and drug marketing reps who are always pushing and exaggerating the supposed benefits of their drugs while minimizing their risks. Because, you see, even though this drug may help one out of 100 people, its side effects create increased risks to all 100 people. Everyone suffers some harm from the potential side effects of the drug, even if that harm is not immediately evident. Yet only one out of 100 people was actually helped by the drug.

When you look at drug claims, especially new miracle-sounding claims on drugs like Herceptin, be aware that these statistics are routinely given as relative statistics, not absolute. The numbers are distorted to make the drugs look more effective than they really are. Herceptin, for example, produced only a 0.6% absolute reduction in breast cancer risk, yet the medical hucksters pushing this drug are wildly screaming about it being a "breast cancer cure!" and demanding that practically all breast cancer patients be immediately put on it. Yet it's not even effective on one person out of a hundred. See my Herceptin Hype article for more details.

Reverse the perspective for natural treatments

At the same time, when conventional medicine promoters want to discredit a natural substance, an herbal remedy or the effects of nutrition on health, they always talk about absolute risk. If taking green tea supplements reduce the risk of cancer by that same 50 percent, eliminating cancer in one out of 100 patients, the news about that supplement would be something like this: "Green tea doesn't work. Only helps one out of 100 patients."

In fact, a study comparing some anti-cancer drug with green tea might report: "New breakthrough drug reduces cancer risk by 50 percent! Green tea only helps one out of 100."

It's the old joke about an Olympic race between the United States and the old Soviet Union. In the race, there were only two participants. The Soviet runner came in first, the U.S. runner came in second, but the U.S. newspapers reported, "U.S. Wins Silver Medal, Soviet Union Comes In Next to Last."

Now you know how drug companies, the FDA, the popular press and many doctors lie with this numerical shell game. It's a clever way to promote the minuscule benefits of pharmaceuticals while discrediting the enormous healing effects of natural remedies.

Now, do you want to hear some real statistics on cancer? I'll share a few. Out of every 100 women who might get breast cancer, 50 of them can avoid breast cancer by simply getting adequate levels of vitamin D in their body, and that's available free of charge through sensible exposure to natural sunlight, which produces vitamin D. This vitamin, all by itself, reduces relative cancer risk by 50 percent, which is better than any prescription drug that has ever been invented by any drug company in the world.

Combine that with green tea, and your prevention of breast cancer gets even stronger. Even the World Health Organization says that 70 percent of all cancers are preventable, and in my view, that number is conservative, because if you combine sunlight therapy and green tea with anti-cancer herbs, anti-cancer foods such as garlic, onions, raw broccoli and raw sprouts, plus some rainforest herbs that are well-known for inhibiting the growth of cancer cells, then you can boost your cancer prevention success to well over 90 percent.

There's nothing in the world of pharmaceutical medicine that even comes close. Yet the only thing you'll ever hear from the drug company-controlled mainstream media, medical journals, the FDA and most old-school doctors is that natural remedies are useless, but prescription drugs have all been scientifically proven. Sure they have, if you fall for the relative risk gimmick and can't do basic math.

------------------------------------------------------------------

All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. Newstarget.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NewsTarget.com/terms.shtml

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com

HOW MANY AMERICANS REALLY DIE OF THE FLU EACH YEAR?

OCTOBER 22, 2004. Ask the American Lung Association. Better yet, read their own report from August of 2004, titled, "Trends in Pneumonia and Influenza/Morbidity and Mortality."

This report comes from "Research and Scientific Affairs/Epidemiology and Statistics Unit." At the bottom of the document, the source is listed as: National Center for Health Statistics, Report of Final Mortality Statistics, 1979-2001.

Get ready for some surprises, especially since the CDC keeps trumpeting flu-death annual numbers as 36,000.  Like clockwork. Year in and year out. 36,000 people in the US die from the flu every year. Killer disease. Watch out. Get your flu shot. Every autumn. Don't wait. You might fall over dead in the street.

Here are the total flu deaths from the report. From 1979 to 2001, the stats were released every two years.

1979:     604

1981:  3,006

1983:  1,431

1985:  2,054

1987:     632

1989:  1,593

1991:  1,137

1993:  1,044

1995:     606

1996:     745

1997:     720

1998:  1,724

1999:  1,665

2000:  1,765

2001:     257

Don't believe me?

Here is the page: www.lungusa.org/atf/cf/%7B7A8D42C2-FCCA-4604-8ADE-7F5D5E762256%7D/PI1.PDF

Get there and go to page 9 of the document. Then start scrolling down until you come to the chart for flu deaths as a separate category.

TTommy Thompson, head of US Health and Human services, stated that 91 percent of the people who die from the flu in the US every year are 65 and older. So you might engage in a little arithmetic and figure out how many people under 65 are really dying from the flu each year.  But no matter. The raw all-ages stats are low enough. Quite low enough.   Quite, quite.

Do you see what is going on here? You can go into my archive and read recent pieces on this subject and find my argument for those who blithely claim, "Well, harumph, you see, uh ah, flu often leads to pneumonia and THAT'S why we have to be so careful about the flu. Deaths from pneumonia are large numbers, harumph, blah blah blah..."

It's a straight con, folks. The CDC is on a streetcorner with a little table, and there are shills walking around repeating the 36,000 death figure while the PR flacks at the table are working the vaccine angle.  The crowd is getting restless. A man shouts, "Where is my flu shot? We're all going to die!"

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Congress planned a measure that will guarantee vaccine manufacturers annual billion-dollar payoffs no matter how many doses are left over, unused.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com