I have spent most of this morning listening to the BBC giving us news that breast cancer deaths have fallen in the UK, since the 1980's. Apparently French researchers have shown that the UK breast cancer rate has dropped by about one-third - "thanks to better care and speedier diagnosis".
Wonderful news - a triumph for ConMed?
Well, no, not really. What was never mentioned was that the cause of much breast cancer, certainly from the 1980's until a few years ago was that most women were given HRT for menopausal symptoms, and one result of this was a major epidemic of breast cancer. Then, as always happens, after decades of prescribing a dangerous treatment, ConMed discovered that it was dangerous, and stopped prescribing it.
So what is happening here? ConMed gives us a drug that causes an epidemic. Then withdraws it. Then claims that it has stopped an epidemic. It is marvellous propaganda, which the mainstream media is willing to pass on to us, without question! But it is an enormous lie!
It is a well-known technique however, which ConMed has often used. ConMed, for instance, claims to have been so successful it has led to increased longevity. That is, we are all living longer because of ConMed drugs! What they have actually done, of course, is to take as its baseline a time when death rates were higher than they have ever been (early and mid-19th century, when all the ravages of the agrarian and industrial revolutions had resulted in high population density, non-existant sanitation, poisonous water supply, squalid housing, poor diet, and dangerous working practices, et al), and compared it with today, when public health measures, and 150 year of social policy, have removed many of those lethal factors.
So whilst everyone is led to believe that ConMed has transformed our lives, it is merely taking credit for public health policies, for which it deserves little credit. ConMed has indeed reduced breast cancer - but only by being forced to withdraw one of its most profitable drugs
