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.