I got the poison.
I got the remedy.
I got the pulsating rhythmical remedy.
I got the poison.
I got the remedy.
I got the pulsating rhythmical remedy.
I got the poison.
I got the remedy.
I got the pulsating rhythmical remedy.
I got the poison.
I got the remedy.
I got the poison. I got the poison. I got the poison.
Yeah... Yeah... Yeah...
Yeah... (Boom...) Yeah... (Bah...

We turn up our noses and sneer at those dastardly low-life drug addicts that blight our society. They've got the poison and we think we know the remedy...abstinence, therapy or better still, a criminal record. Yet our streets are lined with Starbucks and Pubs, they're legal and we love it. So why when the worlds most popular drugs are street legal, do we hold such disregard for those seemingly "addicted" to less socially acceptable (depending on the circles you move in) drugs such as heroin or meth?

Are we better addicts? Do we deserve to live a better life? To be loved despite our self-medication? Their can be no doubt that suffering is a part of life, and our ability to adapt to this is what shapes us. Yet their can also be little doubt that  "addiction" is a form of suffering, and that If we attach the tag "addict" because you have a beer or bottle of wine every night, does that increase the belief that you need the substance and that you're suffering an infliction?  Addiction may not even exist, it may just be a biological response to some sort of suffering, a way to numb the pain, be it physical or emotional. Bang your knee and you'll self-medicate by rubbing it better. Starve yourself of food or a particular macronutrient under the guidance of any number of foodie/nutritionalists and you're likely to self-medicate with any number of "treats" when it all gets too much. You may label this an addiction, a cheat day, call it flexible dieting or even ignore it and promise to get back on the wagon tomorrow.

In the 1970's Dr. Bruce Alexander ran his now famous Rat Park experiments, tracking white laboratory rats housed in cages in close proximity to one another,  separated by the steel sides, only engaging in contact when lab staff brought food, water etc, basically solitary confinement. At other times they suffered prolonged starvation and were confined to skinner boxes which allowed for punishments and rewards (limited feeding and electric shocks etc). Inside the skinner boxes the rats reward themselves with pellets by pushing a lever on the side of the box. The metal allowed for administration of electric shocks in order to punish rather than reward. Eventually they considered addiction, and the rats were allowed to inject drugs by pressing the lever, a process that involving being tethered, cathetered (to allow the drug to enter the bloodstream). The results showed that the rats continued to use the lever to self administer heroin, morphine, amphetamine, etc. Thus it came to pass that drugs were labelled addictive to rats and naturally to humans as well. And so began the War on Drugs, and with it, harsh retribution for anyone caught with anything not allowed by the authoritarian state. 

Alexander however realised that rats are highly social, and that solitary confinement may drive them crazy which may increase the desire to self-medicate. He also realised that while isolated they had no real options, they couldn't escape the cage and pushing the lever if for no other reason than to stem the boredom seemed inevitable. Along with colleagues he undertook studies to compare the drug usage of rats in a fairly normal environment versus those in isolation. To do this he built a park environment filled with things to climb on, hide in, other rats (of both sexes) and adequate nutrition. Pretty much every experiment they ran showed that the isolated rats consumed more drugs no matter what variables they ran.

Despite the findings being replicated by other researchers it was largely ignored, and continues to be to this day. Addiction is an irresistible disease, something we're all susceptible to, something is claimed to have genetic risk factors. Is it too profitable to turn our backs on expensive long-term drug treatments and therapy, when it may be more useful to consider the socio-economic environment? Why do human become "addicted"? Do things make us feel caged or isolated?

Alexander went further, sadly he couldn't conduct Human Park studies due to ethical reasons, but he was to look back at historical data. Such as when our ancestors colonised various native tribes in Western Canada during the 18th and 19th century. The natives were broken, both economically and culturally, losing their homes and being forced to abandon their language. History shows us that alcoholism became rife, which was explained by the settlers as genetic vulnerability. In effect the natives were the rats, isolated, forced into a new culture and basically caged in an environment that they didn't wish to be in.

What causes your "addictions"? Do you need that wine to numb the pain of working in a job you detest? Is that drug addict that you look down on really just numbing the social and economic pain of being isolated in an environment that basically leaves them with no obvious way out. Are your food issues caused by the likes of Joe Wicks, Davina McCall, Weight Watchers or any other diet club or guru caging you in an environment that leaves you undernourished? Is Jamie Oliver freaking you out about sugar, causing you to create a cage in you restrain yourself from consuming an important fuel?

Are your addictions due to a cage that you have created for yourself? Or even one you have let someone create for you? It's time to escape your cages...

The news that "more than 170,000 people in the UK who were diagnosed with cancer up to 40 years ago are still alive", is a positive step forward suggests Macmillan Cancer.[1] Apparently "people are twice as likely to survive for at least a decade after being diagnosed than they were at the start of the 1970s". This it is suggested is due to better treatments and diagnoses. The report [2] Cancer Then and Now, suggests that long-term issues are a major factor in 'survival' and I would suggest that these long-term issues may become a factor in the future.

I've previously written about the "war on cancer" [3] and the statement from Macmillan just doesn't sit well with me;

"People are now twice as likely to survive at least 10 years after being diagnosed with cancer than they were at the start of the 1970s"

For a start, the statement is referenced with the Quaresma, Coleman, and Rachet's (2015) study, in which the assessment of progress in cancer control was based upon an observational study. In "patients diagnosed in 1971-72, the index of net survival was 50% at 1 year after diagnosis. 40 years later, the same value of 50% was predicted at 10 years after diagnosis."

"Predicted 10-year net survival adjusted for age and sex for patients diagnosed between 2010 and 2011 ranged from 1·1% for pancreatic cancer to 98·2% for testicular cancer."

"Net survival for the oldest patients (75-99 years) was persistently lower than for the youngest (15-44 years), even after adjustment for the much higher mortality from causes other than cancer in elderly people."

"The very wide differences in survival for different cancers, and the persistent age gap in survival, suggest the need for renewed efforts to improve cancer outcomes."
FUNDING: Cancer Research UK.

Further into the report, they "estimate that at least 170,000 people are living with cancer who were diagnosed in the 1970s and 1980s." 
Despite all these estimates, the death rates among adults seem to be steadily rising other than when you jiggle the figures and use age restandardisation, a point Ray brought up previously in his article on Breast Cancer. [5]

"Government officials, editors of the big medical journals, professors and broadcasters, have been able to get away with this huge statistical fraud. I suspect that they will soon feel encouraged to simply make up the data that they want, because eventually “age standardization” isn’t going to work to hide the actual increases in mortality. Since people with cancer usually die of something else, such as a stroke or heart failure, it will be no trick at all to make cancer mortality decline to be replaced by other causes of death. The precedent for such fabulizing of data exists in the FDA’s approval of AZT, and other less notorious drugs." - RP

​Whilst I'd like to bring the news that the headline is full of bright prospects, it is seemingly a propaganda piece aimed at keeping us focused on fighting the war on cancer. To keep morale high and convince us that we are succeeding. As I've stated previously, unless mainstream science admits some huge failings, the war will continue.   

​1. Cancer: Thousands surviving in UK decades after diagnosis http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36925974

2. Macmillian Cancer Then and Now report http://www.macmillan.org.uk/documents/campaigns/cancer-then-now-report-final-online.pdf

3. Craig, B. War on Cancer http://www.billycraig.co.uk/blog/war-on-cancer

4. Quaresma M, Coleman MP, Rachet B. (2015). 40-year trends in an index of survival for all cancers combined and survival adjusted for age and sex for each cancer in England and Wales, 1971-2011: a population-based study. Lancet. 2015 Mar 28;385(9974):1206-18. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61396-9. Epub 2014 Dec 3 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25479696

5. Peat, R. Breast Cancer http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/breastcancer.shtml