Drugs for preventing cancer — now everyone can be a customer!

Posted on 06/06/2011 by J. Morris Hicks

Big news in the New York Times on 6-4-11; “Drug can reduce risk of cancer, study says” was the title of the article by Andrew Pollack. Then on the NBC Nightly News the next evening, there was a lengthy segment devoted to this new wonder drug. Lester Holt excitedly asked the “expert” why this wonderful new drug should not be used by everyone. (See link to article below my signature.)

J. Morris Hicks, the "big picture guy"

This is a lot like screening for breast, colon or prostate customer; with a new “prevention drug,” now everyone can be a customer — and that’s real good for business. In a previous post, I reported the numbers related to screening for colon cancer with the ubiquitous colonoscopy. With a 7% risk of dying from colon cancer, our medical “system” has built a $50 billion business screening for it. Of course, in the NYT article, they pointed out that the drug was not for everybody — rather just those who are at high risk. From the article:

CHICAGO — A drug now used to prevent recurrences of breast cancer can also reduce the risk of it occurring in the first place, providing a new option for women at high risk of getting the disease, researchers reported here on Saturday.

The study involved 4560 post-menopausal women in the U.S. and Europe. Being at “high risk” was defined as being over 60 and a few other risk factors. That could very well include a very large percentage of women over 60 who have eaten the toxic western diet for all of those 60 plus years. But even with a “high risk,” the absolute numbers are tiny. From the article:

After a follow-up of about three years, 11 women getting the drug had developed invasive breast cancer compared with 32 of the women receiving a placebo. That is a reduction in risk of 65 percent….in absolute terms, 1.4 percent of women in the placebo group developed cancer compared with about one-half of 1 percent of women taking the drug.

Bottom Line. This will continue to be the kind of news that gets all of the hype on the evening news — as a new multi-billion dollar industry in our “war against cancer” is born. Are we winning that war? Depends on who you ask. If you’re measuring the money, the profits and the number of jobs that depend on cancer; then you would have to say that it is an economic home run — for those companies in the business. For the average citizen footing the bill — now approaching 20% of our GDP, it is a disaster. And it is simply unsustainable.

Sadly, despite overwhelming scientific evidence identifying our toxic diet as the primary driver of up to 80% of our chronic diseases like cancer, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease; there continues to be almost zero reporting of that crucial information. What will it take to change it? Unfortunately, that change will not be driven by our political leaders; just too many trillions of dollars and millions of jobs that depend on keeping us sick.

by Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell

The answer is education. Go see the movie Forks Over Knives and read The China Study now; then, start making better choices in what you’re eating. Climb aboard the 4-Leaf train – tell everyone you know about what you’re doing and, together, we can all start making a difference.

If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com

PS: Occasionally an unauthorized ad may appear beneath a blog post. It is controlled by WordPress (a totally free hosting service). I do not approve or personally benefit whatsoever from any ad that might ever appear on this site. I apologize and urge you to please disregard. 

Study Finds Drug Offers Option in Preventing Breast Cancer – NYTimes.com.

Posted in Cancer | 1 Comment

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg — only eating meat that he kills

Posted on 06/05/2011 by J. Morris Hicks

Mark Zuckerberg says that for 2011, he’s only eating meat that he kills.

Mark Zuckerberg, now killing goats, pigs, chickens and lobsters -- and eating vegetarian when in restaurants.

With the possible exception of Oprah, Mark Zuckerberg may have the ability to influence the behavior of more people than any other single person in the world. Facebook got some of the credit for the “Arab Spring,” will soon have one billion members, and everything its founder does is big news.

So what is Mark doing now? Well, it turns out that every year he likes to take on a new challenge. According to a recent Fortune article (See link below), he learned the Mandarin Chinese language last year and in 2009, he wore a necktie every single day. This year he has decided to only eat the meat he kills. According to the article:

It’s an odd dietary direction for the 27-year-old Internet billionaire, but since he has taken to killing goats, pigs and chickens, “I’m eating a lot healthier foods. And I’ve learned a lot about sustainable farming and raising of animals,” he says. “It’s easy to take the food we eat for granted when we can eat good things every day.”

As for wearing a necktie every day in 2009 and learning Chinese in 2010, I doubt that those “annual challenge” choices influenced very many people outside of a few of his employees. But, this latest challenge of only eating meat that he has killed — this one has the potential to change the world. But first he needs to learn what’s at stake. To help facilitate that process as efficiently as possible, I have written him a note — similar to the one I wrote to Oprah a few weeks ago:

J. Morris Hicks, the "big picture guy" when it comes to the food we eat and the enormous impact that it has on so many aspects of our lives on this planet.

Letter to Mark Zuckerberg; CEO, Facebook

Dear Mark,

First of all, I am very impressed with your amazing accomplishments. Like millions of others, I have seen “your movie,” am a member of Facebook myself, admired the generosity of your $100 million donation to the Newark Schools, and was amazed with the role that Facebook played in the demise of the Mubarak regime in Egypt. I also admire your ability to tackle an interesting challenge every year and with your ability to follow through with your commitments.

As for this year’s challenge of only eating meat that you kill; I imagine that it will have a positive influence on many people. Millions will hear about what you’re doing and will, as you did,  start eating a healthier diet and will learn more about sustainable farming and the ethical raising of farm animals.

And while these are good things that will benefit some, just imagine for a moment the enormous global impact that you could have if you leveraged your powerful influence by focusing on a singular effort that can benefit humankind and our planet home more than any other? What am I talking about? From the Introduction to my about-to-be-released BenBella book, Healthy Eating – Healthy World…

In a nutshell, this book is all about the single most powerful move that we humans can make to promote our own health, reduce obesity, lower the cost of health care, nurture our fragile environment, conserve our energy resources, feed the world’s steadily growing population and greatly reduce the suffering of billions of animals throughout the world.  Like a “blinding flash of the obvious,” the single most viable solution to all these issues is an aggressive move in the direction of consuming much more whole, plant-based foods—not necessarily becoming vegetarian or vegan.

My primary objective in writing this book was to outline in simple everyday terms the extent of the problems we face along with an explanation of how this all happened— and what each of us can do to make things better.  Fortunately, despite the incredible complexity of our current dilemma, the solution is refreshingly simple.  All we have to do is educate ourselves, start making better choices in what we eat — then share all that we have learned with everyone that we care about.  I am convinced that there has never been anything more important in the history of the world.

Unfortunately the book will not be in the stores until October, but there’s no need to wait. Being one of the smartest people in the world, I am almost certain that you will quickly grasp the “big picture” with regards to the enormous impact of what we are eating in the western world — a global impact that goes far beyond our own health. All you need to is take one hour a day for the next seven days — and do a little reading:

  • Read Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s world-changing book, The China Study. (about four hours) This is the book that influenced Bill Clinton and millions of others to radically change the way they eat.
  • Read every page and every single post on this site. (about three hours), beginning with the Best Of page, with particular attention to this post on my top-twenty list: Responsible eating…far beyond taste, cost and convenience

After reading all of the above, I am confident that you will know exactly what to do next. Your newfound knowledge coupled with your name, your company and your enormous wealth puts you in a singular position to change the world like no other person in history. Before you get started, you may want to give Oprah a call — just imagine what the two of you could accomplish together. JUST IMAGINE!

My nephew Shawn in the Arizona desert

One more thing, I have a nephew about your age who holds a PhD in Engineering and is now in his second year as a consultant with McKinsey in New York. While a student at Georgia Tech in 2005, he read one book that I gave him, his light went on immediately, and he adopted his new and improved life-long (not just one year) way of eating that same day.

Give me a call; Shawn and I would love to come out to Palo Alto and provide you with any support that you might need.

Sincerely, Jim

J. Morris Hicks

PS: It was actually Shawn who suggested that I write this blog about the Fortune article below. If you’d like to chat, please contact me at jmh@jmorrishicks.com or on my iPhone at 917-399-9700.

If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com

PS: Occasionally an unauthorized ad may appear beneath a blog post. It is controlled by WordPress (a totally free hosting service). I do not approve or personally benefit whatsoever from any ad that might ever appear on this site. I apologize and urge you to please disregard. 

Posted in Big Picture, Celebrities, Sustainability | Leave a comment

When the Nile Runs Dry; NYT Op-Ed — pretty scary

Posted on 06/04/2011 by J. Morris Hicks

As the unofficial beginning of summer took place on Memorial Day, I posted a blog about WATER the very next day. As we all know, water is not just for fun in the summer, it is that critical resource upon which life on this planet totally depends. And, it is a finite resource — there has always been the same amount of water on the planet. All creatures have drunk the same water for million of years.

But only in the past few hundred years have we begun testing our finite water supply. During that “blink of history” our human population has grown from less than one billion to the seven billion that we have today. And, as I mentioned in my post earlier this week, we have begun eating in a manner that requires an incredibly large amount of water per calorie of food — as compared to the “water-friendly” whole, plant-based foods.

The River Nile, providing the lifeblood of a huge multi-country region on the African continent

Our continued population growth coupled with our inefficient use of water to feed ourselves is beginning to take a serious toll — prompting an Op-Ed on 6-1-11 in the New York Times by Lester R. Brown. (See link to complete article below my signature.) He leads off that article with…

A NEW scramble for Africa is under way. As global food prices rise and exporters reduce shipments of commodities, countries that rely on imported grain are panicking. Affluent countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China and India have descended on fertile plains across the African continent, acquiring huge tracts of land to produce wheat, rice and corn for consumption back home…

…These land grabs shrink the food supply in famine-prone African nations and anger local farmers, who see their governments selling their ancestral lands to foreigners. They also pose a grave threat to Africa’s newest democracy: Egypt…

Then, he talks about population growth: Egypt’s plight could become part of a larger, more troubling scenario. Its upstream Nile neighbors — Sudan, with 44 million people, and Ethiopia, with 83 million — are growing even faster, increasing the need for water to produce food. Projections by the United Nations show the combined population of these three countries increasing to 272 million by 2025 — and 360 million by 2050 — from 208 million now.

J. Morris Hicks has always been a "big picture" kind of guy.

I encourage you to read his entire article. What he is talking about is a combination of too many people, too little land and too little water — all eventually leading to starving masses. At the end, he alludes to the deadly violence that will ensue when billions of people around the world begin to run short of these essential resources.

Clearly, in addition to curbing the world population growth, the single most powerful move that we can make to begin addressing the problem is an aggressive shift by the western world back in the direction of a water, land and energy-friendly plant-based diet. In that previous post about water mentioned earlier, I stated this powerful factoid that I learned from the movie HOME:

It takes 100 liters of water to produce one kilo of potatoes — compared to 13,000 liters of water to produce one kilo of beef.

With that thought in mind, I plan to get out on the water and enjoy my weekend. Be sure to read Mr. Brown’s Op-Ed below.

If you like what you see here, you may wish to join our periodic mailing list. Also, for help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4-Leaf page. From the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

If you’d like to order our book on Amazon,  visit our BookStore now.

—J. Morris Hicks…blogging daily at HealthyEatingHealthyWorld.com

PS: Occasionally an unauthorized ad may appear beneath a blog post. It is controlled by WordPress (a totally free hosting service). I do not approve or personally benefit whatsoever from any ad that might ever appear on this site. I apologize and urge you to please disregard. 

Egypt’s Food Supply in Danger – NYTimes.com — an Op-Ed by Lester R. Brown

Lester R. Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute and the author of “World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse.”

Posted in Big Picture, Water Pollution & Usage, World Hunger | 2 Comments