A prominent cancer researcher is challenging the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to treatment options by advocating the use of dietary alternatives to fight the deadly disease.
Colin Campbell – a professor of emeritus in nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University – says changes in diet can not only prevent certain types of cancer, but can also be used as a potential cure.
“Diet can be used to prevent and reverse cancer just like it prevents and reverses heart disease,” Campbell was quoted as saying. “A diet high in animal protein increases the amount of carcinogens going to the cells. It increases the enzyme MFO (mixed function oxidase) that causes increased carcinogenic activity.”
Campbell – who has been researching in the nutrition field for more than five decades – says that traditional cancer treatment methods should be reconsidered as the only way to fight cancer. “Chemotherapy is really not a good approach. Radiation and surgery are not the best approach. We’ve been on the wrong track,” he said. “The public is being misled with tragic consequences.”
Campbell has suggested that consumption of animal products - including meat, fish and dairy - triggers chronic diseases and can impact health and pose a greater risk than heredity or environment. He has also linked casein, a protein in milk, to breast cancer.
However, those assertions are being disputed by the country’s National Dairy Council. “The weight of the evidence indicates that a healthy, balanced diet includes fat-free and low-fat milk, cheese and yogurt,” said the council’s Executive Vice President, Greg Miller.
“Researchers have examined the potential of milk and milk products and many of milk’s components (e.g. casein, calcium and vitamin D) to be associated with specific cancers such as colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and prostate cancer. The research overall is inconclusive,” he added.
Understandably, Campbell’s conclusions are being criticized by many in the medical community. But he emphasizes that his more than five decades conducting laboratory research - much of it publicly funded – has led to findings the public has a right to know about.
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