Monday, February 19, 2007

Can Cancer Be cured Without Drugs?

All any drug amounts to is tweaking the incoming data. And you have to be really self-centered or pathetic to be satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data.
- William Gibson, science fiction writer (1948- )

What is he talking about? Does Gibson mean prescribed drugs or illegal drugs?

He means both. Medical doctors know and everyone else should know that all medical science does is to help the body do what it doesn't do for itself. Furthermore, the brain controls virtually all activity in terms of protecting the body from invaders and ridding the body of invaders that manage to pass its primary defences.

Most drugs that a doctor prescribes tweak some part of the brain to get it to do what it should have done without the drug, but did not. Usually this involves the immune system, but often it involves other organs that have not produced enough of some kind of chemical to defend the body against something that doesn't belong inside of us.

Anyone with enough control over their own brain should be able to coax the brain to do what it should do without taking medication. The catch is that most of us do not have this much control. Some people can control their heart rate and blood pressure, for example, while most of us cannot.

Could we control cancer within our own bodies? Some say yes, but medical science won't admit to anything that almost everyone can't do without much effort. In other words, we may have the power within us to cure our own cancer, but since everyone can't tap into that power (and the power itself does not require any pharmaceuticals) it's unlikely that we will learn much about this power in the near future.

When it comes to illegal drugs, the mind-altering kind, they simply provide an excess of one or more chemicals that the brain provides for naturally. Again, anyone with enough knowledge and control of their own brain could produce the same kinds of effects that mind-altering drugs do. Few do. Pharmaceutical companies will suppress or vigorously oppose any initiative to teach us how to produce our own versions of what they sell for profit.

Runners and those who do strenuous exercises develop a state known as "runner's high" which mimics the effects of marijuana and other feel-good drugs. Nuns deep in prayer to God (a state likened to a trance) have been found to have brain activity in the reward centre, meaning that the brain has provided the kind of relaxation and feeling of well-being that some drugs give. Their communion with God is a natural high.

It is possible to make our own brain work for us to do what it hasn't necessarily been required to do before. That requires considerable study and practice.

This is not to suggest that doctor-prescribed rugs have no value. On the contrary, prescribed medications do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves, given our present circumstances. Most of us don't know how to use our brain effectively to make ourselves healthy.

Gibson wonders if we should be "satisfied with simply tweaking the incoming data," meaning in an artificial way by taking drugs. It might serve us better to learn how to tweak our own brains to get them to provide the full services for which they were designed and are capable.

On the other hand, Gibson, American-born but living in Canada for nearly four decades, best known for his novel Neuromancer , as a science fiction writer might be suggesting that we take our natural brain abilities and enhance them ourselves to become something more than we are now.

Coiner of the term cyberspace and father of the cyberpunk subgenre of scinece fiction, Gibson knows that our brain is the least understood and most underutilized part of our body. He sees its potential but doesn't want that potential destroyed or depreciated by drugs.

"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet," he said. The future won't become widely distributed by our increasing dependence on drugs.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the potential of the future a little clearer than it is with drugs.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/

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