FAT AL'S CANCER CLINIC AND MORTUARY (C)1992 Alan M. Schwartz The War on Cancer, characteristically waged with the unrestrained budgetary munificence of the Federal government, was declared during the Nixon administration a quarter century ago. Much like the Devil and the Catholic Church, after 25 years and billions upon billions of tax dollars granted, porkbarrelled, and charged as overhead and fees, the enemy is prospering nicely - and our medical field marshals need even more money to just retain their hold on the important accomplishments to date. Porkbarrels of money would be required to even find those alleged gains. The overall national mortality due to cancer, excepting lung cancer, is about the same as it was 25 years ago. Lung cancer is gaining, especially among women whose liberation was smokily blown into the faces of male chauvinist pigs. You've come a long way, baby, all the way to chemotherapy, radiation, and ablative surgery. For all the millions of square feet of refereed journal pages published, we can point to little in the way of substantive breakthroughs except for the correlation between specific genetic anomalies and predisposition to some cancers. Broad screening of the population for genetic cancer influences has been litigated into illegality. It is discriminatory. The Federal government annually spends millions of dollars to discourage teenagers and adults from using tobacco products. In Fiscal 1990, that same government, our government, subsidized tobacco farmers to the tune of $980 million. The thought of opium poppy growers, marijuana farmers, cocaine cultivators, alcoholic beverage brewers and distillers, or clandestine methamphetamine laboratories requiring government aid to turn a profit is ludicrous. Tobacco producers just cannot seem to wring that bottom line from their sea of addicts. Or do you think there might be corruption in government? The inevitable progression to death of the finally untreatable cancer patient is an excruciating scourge of pain, disfigurement, and hopelessness. As long as the insurance reimbursements pay for intensive care, prolonged survival is all but assured. Dying terminal cancer patients are protected by our government from heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and other illegal Schedule I drugs that might alleviate their torture because the use of these substances is addictive, pleasureful, and against God's will. I have recovered from 40% second and third degree burns, including more than 200 square inches of skin grafts. Pain is deeded to the patient. Medicine and government have more important venues. In excess of 100,000 plant extracts have been screened for therapeutic pharmacological benefit by the National Institutes of Health. If the only reason for not plowing under this planet's rainforests is the presumptive existence of some mystical botanic cancer cure elixir, let the bulldozers roll! Vincristine and vinblastine, from the periwinkle plant, were known in the 1950s. Add taxol from the Pacific Yew, native to Washington state and Oregon, and we have summarized 25 years of further progress. A major porkbarrel is rolling in our forests, reducing to wood chips and sawdust a few hundred thousand of the century old and rather rare trees, since yews contain only a few parts per million of taxol. That a more useful derivative may be claimed from trimmings of ornamental yews has been published and ignored. It lacks the majesty of a national crusade, and its kickbacks. As tallied in 10 November 1990 by "The Economist," the US retains 960,000 licensed real estate agents 756,000 practicing lawyers 580,000 medical doctors, and 33,704 registered political lobbyists Throw in CPAs, MBAs, and government employees and realize that the engine of our economy is roaring flat out pedal-to-the-metal, albeit with the clutch pedal depressed. The War on Cancer thunders along under the same benign paternalistic philosophy as the expertly planned Soviet economy. National health care is too important to be entrusted to the private sector. It must be centrally guided, and milked. Welcome to Fat Al's Cancer Clinic and Mortuary! Fill out these insurance claim forms and we will begin immediately! Our doctors wear only the whitest and most perfectly starched lab coats. When your affliction gets really gritty and you scream into the night, they will be by your side, meticulously awaiting the prescribed time when your next pain shot is government mandated.