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An alternate take is that, from a certain point of view: 1: Cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of death in Rich Countries, specifically the US [1] 2: Your chances of dying from either cancer or heart disease, given no other incidents claim your life first, asymptotically arrive at 100% [2] So, yes, cancer is not infectious, but our bodies are prone to two classes of diseases (neither cancer nor heart disease are actually a single disease, but more correctly disease families) that have environmental and hereditary causes. Our tools for treating both are crude, but getting more and more effective year-over-year. By advocating against the state-of-our-current-art in treating either disease (informed criticism is fine, and in fact, encouraged), the end result is that many people suffer and die when they could merely suffer, then live years of their lives before succumbing to a relapse or other causes of death. Perhaps the headline is hyperbole, but the argument is analogous: By advocating against chemotherapy and replacing it solely with a hard-to-follow diet and exercise regimen, the cull of older people dying from treatable disease can look something like the cull of younger people dying from preventable disease due to advocating against vaccination against infectious diseases. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800750/
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2016/16_0211.htm |