Sounds and looks good but it doesn't smell nice!
1. Founded in 1933, the Switzerland-based UICC is run by a Board composed mostly of medical doctors and professors - notably the immediate past Chair of the American Cancer Society. For an international organization to last nearly 80 years without controlling the epidemic increase of cancer worldwide, they must be well funded! Well, just see who their partners are:
2. For more than a decade now, nothing that really matters has really come out of the PCHRD's "Five Year Health Research Priorities" as far as cancer control is concerned. Today, 1 in every 13 women in the Philippines will get breast cancer and this supposed scientific institution can not even declare the environmental links to breast cancer. They would rather focus on research and development of medicinal plants to be offered to the pharmaceutical industry to market. With a low state budget, the PCHRD relies on the cancer industry for its research programs. Guess there simply is no money in prevention!
http://www.pchrd.dost.gov.ph/index.php/news/494-pchrd-gruppo-medica-recognizes-outstanding-undergraduate-thesis-in-herbal-medicine
3.Unlike the USA's National Institutes of Health which has more than 50,000 search results about breast cancer, the Philippine's version of NIH has only one: that taking garlic supplements by mouth may improve symptoms of benign breast disease. So what about malignancies? And their vision is to be the country's recognized authority in health research and development and the key source of critical health information for national development in the Philippines and Southeast Asia??? No wonder the Philippines today has the highest incidence rate of breast cancer in Asia and the 10th highest worldwide!!!
4. How in the world can breast cancer be prevented by early detection??? This shows the mindset of the Cancer Institute Foundation. Despite the fact of 26,000 breast cancer cases in 2010 and only 7,000 of cervical cancer, the CIF's major focus is on cervical cancer. Why? Simply because of its partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, the makers of the cervical cancer vaccine.
5. In May 2008, I attended a Senate hearing on cancer where Dr. Llave lengthily presented her program for cervical cancer simply lobbying for more budget allocations. (I will be commenting on the cervical cancer program later on). Her thinking on prevention revolves around exercise (like running in polluted streets?), healthy diet (like eating vegetables grown with pesticides?), regular visits to a doctor (like waiting to be told you have breast cancer?), early diagnosis (like radiation exposure to mammograms?) and accessible treatment (like chemotherapy via health insurance?) to bring down mortality rates. This well meaning doctor still does not understand that breast cancer is an environmental disease and thus preventable by identifying these factors and eliminating as many as possible. By doing so, there wouldn't be a critical need for the deployment of primary and secondary caregivers, low-cost screening and treatment technologies as Dr. Llave pointed out.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/21831/cancer-is-not-just-a-%E2%80%98sickness-of-the-rich%E2%80%99
On the month of Mother's Day again, four years later during that "Moving as One" meeting, it was stated that health education n played almost no role in decreasing the incidence of cancer. Well, that's if it's coming from the UP Manila's National Institute of Health (UPM-NIH), the Philippine Council for Health and Research Development (PCHRD) and most of all from the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC).
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