Blog - Joyful Curmudgeon - Blog
A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 

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Cancer – 22 June 2006
By Mary T. Hoffman

Last night I happened to catch a few minutes of a PBS “Independent Lens” program called “A Lion in the House,” Part 1 of 2. Here is the description given in the public TV-radio magazine: “This inspiring, harrowing and intimate series follows five children as they fight against cancer with the help of their families, nurses and doctors over a span of six years.”

As you can well imagine, watching the suffering of these children and the desperation of their families was heartbreaking. It is bad enough when adults suffer, but children are totally at the mercy of these adults whom they trust to do whatever is necessary to help them. Add to that my frustration with knowing that nothing was mentioned about the role nutrition may play in the search for causes or treatments of diseases such as cancer.

Isn’t it cruel to take a chance giving a child a new, unproven pharmaceutical and to try all sorts of technological innovations, but to ignore the possibility of something as simple as a healthful, whole food (unprocessed) vegan diet? Why give patients expensive pharmaceuticals that have all sorts of side effects while feeding them notoriously poor hospital food and never discussing a healthful lifestyle? And what about the possibility that diseases may be triggered by all the hotdogs, baloney, bacon, milk, cheese, ad nauseam (with all the additives, hormones, etc.) that the typical growing child eats?

Is it fair for doctors to assume that “patients would never change their eating habits anyway, so why bother to even suggest such a thing?” We reap what we sow: but is it fair to drag innocent children into toxic lifestyles because the adults are addicted to being lazy, passive, and self-indulgent?

How long will it take before people wake up and start taking responsibility for their health and the health of their families? Maybe we ought to take more seriously those ancient bits of advice from Hippocrates, the father of medicine: “First, do no harm.” and “Let food be your medicine.”

For more on health, see:
http://www.all-creatures.org/health.html   

Go on to: Applying God’s Word – 23 June 2006
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