Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
Never Fear Cancer Again: How to Prevent and Reverse Cancer
by Raymond Francis
HCI
Paperback: 384 pages, August 1, 2011, ISBN-13: 978-0757315503
It would be a mistake to view Raymond Francis’ Never Fear Cancer Again as a book solely about preventing Cancer. What the book is really about is health and how to maintain it. Right from the start, Francis makes it clear that all disease originates in the cells, and that the only path to health — whether that’s curing Cancer or any other disease — is to heal the cells. This is the central tenet of the book, which is all about how to avoid or cure cellular malfunction and thereby maintain or regain wellness.
Francis is extremely critical of the modern medicine, particularly what he calls the Cancer industry. The book cites alarming statistics about conventional medicine’s lack of success with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, all of which, Francis states, cause and promote, rather than heal, Cancer. It’s pretty shocking stuff, as is the statement that conventional medicine in general is some 100 years behind biological science and that most modern doctors are irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst. While this may be a big statement to take on-board, the Six Pathways, framework is clear and easy to understand and on an intuitive level alone, makes excellent sense in terms of living a high quality, healthy, disease free long life. It also aligns perfectly with Max Gerson, Victoria Boutenko and other proponents of self-healing through diet, exercise, reduction of stress, etc.
The first part of the process is to eliminate what’s making you sick – remove what Francis calls “The Big 4” from your diet – that is sugar, white flour, processed oils, and dairy/excess animal protein, replacing processed, highly toxic foods with organic, unprocessed fresh fruit and vegetables, legumes, sprouts, raw nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Other ways to get healthy include removing the toxins from our life. This is suprisingly difficult, since nearly everything in our houses, from the carpets to our toothpaste, our water, our clothing, and even our vehicles is toxic. I found this chapter a little alarming, and while there are certainly alternatives available for many of the toxic items Francis points out, it can be paralysing to think about how many alternatives to what we’re already using are required. Exercise, visualisations, getting adequate sunlight, and avoiding drugs and surgery at all costs are also key paths to wellness.
The simplicity of the Beyond Health model makes it very attractive, and certainly for those of us who are interested in staying well and avoiding diseases of all kinds the advice in this book is easy to accept and very worthwhile. Eating less junk food and more fresh vegetables and fruit and raw healthy grains, sprouts and nuts can only do us good, as can reducing our exposure to toxins and perhaps supplementing with a good multi-vitamin and fish oil at least. Few people, including medical doctors, would argue that the traditional Western diet is severely deficient, or that most people don’t get enough exercise, fresh air and sunlight, and live lives that are chronically stressful.
Beyond that, a difficult choice has to be made. Do you accept that modern medicine has it terribly wrong, not only with the ubiquitous treatment of Cancer, but with the treatment of ailments of all kinds, from diabetes to asthma, heart disease to the treatment of infection, and simply stop asking for treatment for these conditions, instead going the full hog with alternatives? That’s a question that each individual will have to answer for his or herself and it’s not easy to buck the entire medical establishment, eschewing everything from antibiotics to vaccinations. I haven’t yet made up my mind on this point, and I’m sure I’ll be hedging my bets for some time to come. In the meantime, the healthier you are and the closer you follow advice like Francis’, the less chance there is that you’ll have to make that difficult choice. Prevention certainly, as Francis points out many times in Never Fear Cancer Again is much easier than cure.
About the reviewer: Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry book Repulsion Thrust, the novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book, The Art of Assessment, Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse , She Wore Emerald Then , ,Imagining the Future, and Deeper Into the Pond.
Article first published as Book Review: Never Fear Cancer Again: How to Prevent and Reverse Cancer by Raymond Francis on Blogcritics.