How to deceive People without telling a single Lie
Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), a Venetian monk, lawyer, statesman, historian, and scientist, was a friend of Galileo Galilei. I imagine he was speaking as a lawyer and a statesman when he once remarked: "I never tell a lie, but I do not tell the whole truth to everyone."
While reading through the pages of the website of the American Cancer Society, cancer.org, I am sorely tempted to think that those who are responsible for that site have taken that slightly tongue-in-cheek comment by Sarpi to heart, and made it their guiding principle.
But you may ask: Can someone quite effectively deceive you without uttering as much as a single lie? Of course they can. Consider the following situation...
Mary arrives home conspicuously late one night, and John, having already begun to doubt her fidelity, decides to ask a few questions...
John: "Mary, tell me the truth: you are seeing another man, aren't you?"
Mary: "Oh, honey, how could you ever ask such a thing? You should know that I love you very much!"
John: "But at that party we went to a month ago, I saw that you were flirting with Frank. Is he the one?"
Mary: "Frank? How could you ever think I would be interested in him? I married you, didn't I? That should show you whom I really love!"
John: "Give it to me straight: Are you sleeping with him?"
Mary: (Now crying): "Oh, you're terrible! I've loved you from the first day we met, and now..." (sobbing more loudly) "…you accuse me of such a horrible thing!"
John: (softening up upon seeing her cry so much). "Oh well, I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry. I guess I'm just a little too suspicious by nature. (He takes her into his arms to comfort her). "Now, now, don't cry. I'm sorry." (He smiles warmly) "Hey, why don't we get some sleep now? Tomorrow's Saturday. We can take a walk in the park, and then go to that nice little restaurant we noticed the other day, OK?"
Mary: (calming down). "Well... OK. But only if you promise to never again accuse me of being such a terrible person."
John: (relieved that she's no longer crying). "Oh, sure dear. I see now that you love me just as much as I love you!"
Happy ending, right? Yet you will notice that even if she was being unfaithful, she didn't tell a single lie: she may well love her husband very much, even though she did have an affair. Nevertheless, by not directly answering his questions, and by often answering them with other questions, she managed to successfully deceive him without telling a single lie.
So how does cancer.org go about doing its deceptive little dance around the truth, with the goal of withholding it − namely, the truth − from the public?
In this chapter, I will do an analysis of the cancer.org site, "reading between the lines" so to speak. I invite you to enter each page I discuss (I will provide the direct links), so you, too, can have a look, and judge for yourself whether what I say makes any sense.
We shall begin with their home page: cancer.org . About five seconds after clicking the link and entering the suite, we are greeted by a pop-up window that solicits our money:
Allow me to begin my critical analysis on this very first thing they present to us, their donation pop-up. The following critique will be expressed in a sort of "dialogue" form: "CO" stands for "Cancer.org"; "DB" are my initials. We shall begin with the very first sentence at the top. CO: "Help us attack cancer from every angle"
DB: Really? Every angle? Including those "alternative" angles that, if successful, would lose your industry billions of dollars per year?
CO: "Your donation helps fund breakthrough research, free rides to chemo, free places to stay near hospitals, and so much more." DB: Is that right? Let's take those points one by one...
1) "breakthrough research". If that is so, then why are you not doing serious research on totally natural treatment methods for cancer? After all, the discovery that one could cure cancer by diet, and a change of life-style alone, is a most worthy topic for research, is it not? If it is confirmed that such an approach works, it would save thousands of lives, and literally billions of dollars of the people's money every year.
Would that not be the biggest breakthrough in the entire history of the fight against cancer? So why aren't you focusing a lot of your resources on that kind of research? I'll tell you why you aren't: Because if it were confirmed that natural treatment methods worked, you, the "Cancer Industry", would lose the tens of billions of dollars yearly that the public would be saving.
2) "free rides to chemo".
DB: Why, how generous! One single session of chemo costs thousands of dollars; much more than enough to pay for a ride to the oncologist, I would say. It reminds me of a casino that offers free bus rides from the city center to the casino's location. Not that the casino owner is being "generous": he pays for the rides knowing it's going to pay off for him in the end. And considering the abysmal track record of chemo, the comparison with gambling is chillingly appropriate. Except with chemotherapy, it's not only your money, but your very life that's at risk.
Here's a question for you, cancer.org: Wouldn't it be a good idea to also pay for the "ride to the cemetery", once chemo has failed, and claimed another victim? The average funeral in the U.S. costs about $8,500; the average cost of chemotherapy over a period of eight weeks costs $30,000. So if chemo fails, and the person dies (maybe even prematurely due to the horrendous side effects of chemo), wouldn't it only be morally appropriate for the Industry to pay for those funeral costs? Now, that would be a sign of true generosity, would it not?
3) "Free places to stay near hospitals".
DB: Chemotherapy, that costs an average of $30,000 over only eight weeks, easily generates enough cash to justify paying for a place to stay near the hospital. Once again the casino analogy: whenever a "big player" shows up at his favorite casino, he will often receive his hotel suite for free. Sorry, cancer.org, but I don't see your offer of "free places" to be generous, but rather, it is along the lines of "Buy this $30,000 car, and we'll give you a free 24-inch TV set." In other words, it's a standard sort of sales pitch, and nothing more.
And besides: we are on the donation page here. So it is not really cancer.org who is paying for all these goodies, but you, the public, who are being asked for donations to pay for them. In other words, it's not enough that you, the patient, if you get cancer and chose chemo, will have to pay $30,000 for eight week's treatment; you will also, by donating to cancer.org, be paying for the "free rides to the clinic" and the other goodies they so "generously" hand out. But let's move on...
The donation buttons themselves suggest the amounts you should give. They start at $50. Why don't they just have that one "Other amount" box, and then the space to fill it out? Because they want you to give at least $50. For some of you out there, $50 is no small change. If you are one of the millions of people getting the minimum wage of $7.25 (as of 2017), $50 represents almost seven hours work time, or almost an entire work day. Of course, if you have a better position − for example, if you are the CEO of the American Cancer Society − you will earn $50 in about six minutes instead of the seven hours that a minimum wage worker needs to earn that amount. (An aside: In 2017, the CEO of the ACS – a so-called “non-profit organization” − will receive compensation and benefits totaling about one million dollars. That's an average of over $83,000 per month, or almost $4,000 per work day: about $500 per hour, or $8.3 per minute. Therefore, their CEO makes $50 in about 6 minutes, instead of the nearly seven hours you would need to work to earn that same amount. No wonder the lowest suggested donation on this page is $50: for those in the tax bracket of the CEO of the ACS, $50 is only chump change!)
There is also that button for "Other amount", so that if you can only give a few dollars, they will accept that as well.
Naturally, it could be the other way around: maybe you are wealthy, and desire to do more by donating a truly large amount of money. Yet no matter how much you wish to donate, you might want to know just how much of your money will be going to the good cause itself, and how much will be eaten up by organizational costs, salaries, fund raising efforts, and other expenses.
Daniel Borochoff, the president of "Charity Watch", a non-profit organization that helps donors make informed decisions, was quoted in a CNN article published in May, 2015. Here is an excerpt from that article:
"When it comes to vetting charity groups, watchdog organizations say follow the money.
The average annual American household contributed $2,974 to charities, and Americans donated $335.17 billion to charities in 2013 overall, according to recent statistics by the National Philanthropic Trust.
'Good charities give roughly 70% of their income towards the actual program and fulfilling their mission statement, while less than 30% of the cost should be allocated towards solicitations and operations costs,' added Borochoff."
Thus "good charities" spend only about 30% on "solicitations and operating costs", and 70% on their stated cause.
So how does the American Cancer Society measure up in that respect? Let's check it out!
At "Charity Navigator" we see the figures, under "Financial Performance Metrics": the ACS.
On this page, we see year-by-year ratings for the ACS, from 2001 through 2015. It would appear that instead of getting better and better marks, the American Cancer Society is getting worse and worse. In other words, they are becoming less efficient as time goes by. How else would you explain the fact that their rating dropped from 87.28% in 2001, to a dismal 71.48% in 2015?
If your child's grade average dropped from 87 (B+) to 71% (C-), wouldn't you be justifiably concerned?
Apparently, the ACS is spending an ever-decreasing percentage of its funds on valuable programs, and an increasing amount on salaries and fund-raising efforts. That latter area is, as we can see on this page (under "Financial Performance Metrics") exceptionally well-funded: a full 34.9% of the money you contribute goes for trying to get more money, of which over a third will also be spent trying to raise even more money, etc., etc.
True, in any capitalist country, big businesses spend a good portion of their capital on advertising. Car manufacturers, for example, spend many millions per year advertising their cars, in an effort to get you to buy one. And when you are convinced by a car commercial to get that type of vehicle, you pay the money, and end up with a fine new car.
And what do you get when you are persuaded by the commercials, magazine ads, fund-raising events, etc. of the American Cancer Society to give money to them? You get the assurance that they will do everything they can to help you, should you or a loved one fall prey to cancer. However, the elephant in the room here is the looming question: Are they really doing everything they can to conquer cancer, for instance, by exploring all the possibilities, including those that might turn out to be the least expensive, and the most healthy for you?
No, they are not. Instead, they are doing everything they can to encourage the development of treatment methods that are ridiculously expensive, and that in large part have side effects that may well make your health much worse, or even kill you before your time.
This is an accusation that you will find repeatedly in this book, and the weight of the evidence supports it fully, as we saw plainly in the chapter on the systematic review "the Contribution of Cytotoxic Chemotherapy". Additional damning evidence is the fact that despite the millions they spend on research, they still have apparently not done scientific studies on the possibility of treating, and perhaps even curing, cancer by using fully natural methods: proper nutrition, and a change in life-style.
And why don't they fund such studies, which could well lead to definitive scientific confirmation of the hypothesis that by using natural methods, many types of cancer could be totally cured with practically no financial expenditure on the part of the patient, or the insurance companies?
I've said it before, and will say it again, and again: Because if this were indeed proven, the Cancer Industry would lose billions of dollars every year. Despite the noble intentions of many individual physicians and other health care servers, for the Medical-Pharmaceutical Industry, the most important thing is not your health and well-being; it's their obscene profits that they continue to rake in year after year, by doing their utmost to convince you that only they hold the key to your health. And as the systematic review on chemotherapy shows us quite well, much of the industry propaganda is nothing more than a well-veiled lie designed to rob you of your money, no matter what the cost to your life.
Let me give you two links to articles about the American Cancer Society (ACS) that you would do well to read − and think about − before you accept what you see at cancer.org as being “the honest truth”:
Article one: The American Cancer Society (ACS), "More Interested in Accumulating Wealth than Saving Lives," Warns Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
Article two: Is it Time to Boycott This 'Anti' Cancer Charity?
I could easily move from page to page of the cancer.org site, and offer a critique every bit as biting as the one you've just read, but I think you probably already get the picture.
Instead, we will explore that site in a more general way, but from a fundamental, extremely important perspective: that of the poor soul who has just been diagnosed with cancer, or who has a loved one who has recently received such a diagnosis.
If you yourself are in such a situation, I'm sure you will be able to identify with our example, so please read on.