Page 27 - Winter2009

THE BANE OF CIVILIZATION who were honest without laws, who had no jails,
I’m not the first person to think this way. no poor houses, who keep the commandments
That is actually the title of one of my favorite without ever having read them or heard them
books, a book by Vilhjalmur Stefansson called preached from the pulpit, never swear, never take
Cancer: Disease of Civilization? (1960). The the name of God in vain, love their neighbor as
idea started some time before Stefansson in a themselves, free of religious animosity. I love a
lecture given at a Paris medical society in 1842 people who have never raised a hand against me,
by Stanislas Tanchou, a physician and one of or stole my property, when there was no law to
Napoleon’s surgeons. At that time France was punish them for either. I love a people who have
a primary center of science and medicine in the never fought a battle with white men except on
world. You have to remember where we were in their own ground. I love a people who live and
the world at that time: it was the era of scientific keep what is their own without locks and keys.
discovery and manifest destiny; white people And oh, how I love a people who don’t live for
were going to conquer and civilize the world the love of money.”
and make it safe for Christianity. Against this
political backdrop Tanchou in his lecture claimed UNCONTROLLED GROWTH
he could predict the exact incidence of cancer in The premise that we are examining is
all the major European cities over the next fifty whether cancer is a disease of civilization, but I
years, and it was all dependent on the percentage say that civilization is the cause of cancer. But
of grain in their diets. first we need to define civilization. We know
Tanchou’s numbers were all recorded and in what cancer is: uncontrolled growth of one of the
time they came exactly true—a certain cancer members of a community; that is, one cell type
percentage for Berlin, a certain percentage for deciding to grow at an excessive rate compared
Munich, and so on. The cancer incidence all to the rest of the community of cells. This civi-
depended on the amount of cereal grains in the lization project, if you want to call it that, which
diet. This set off a huge furor around the world started about ten thousand years ago, probably
since the great mission of the age was to civilize in the Tigris and Euphrates delta, is the process
every inch of the globe. Here was somebody in wherein humans decided to co-opt the natural
a center of civilization who declared that these resources of the land base and set off to grow
people who don’t eat grains, who have the more themselves at the expense of the rest of the com-
indigenous hunter-gatherer diet, never get can- munity. That is the definition of civilization, this
cer. co-opting of the resources of the land base, this
This provocative idea motivated many think- mining of the resources which is essentially min-
ers between 1842 to about 1950, as archeologists, ing the soil. If you go on long enough, you turn
anthropologists, medical doctors, missionaries productive soil into a desert, and the region of
and explorers took up the challenge of answering the Garden of Eden in the Tigris and Euphrates
the question. Whether he knew it or not, Weston delta is now a desert. It took ten thousand years,
Price’s research came as a result of Tanchou’s which is the blink of an eye in the overall picture The statement
fundamental question. Price focused on dental of humanity. that we are
health as a kind of proxy to the question, “Is it Civilization can also be seen as the process
true that cancer is a disease of civilization?” of extracting the resources from the earth in or- examining is
Another thinker who took up this challenge der to grow one particular species of the landed that cancer is
was George Caitlin, a mid-nineteenth century community, namely humans. a disease of
American lawyer and portraitist. Caitlin spent When I give that definition it might remind
twenty years of his life living and studying with you of the cancer process. We believe deeply in civilization,
Native Americans in indigenous hunter-gath- growth. In order to grow we co-opt the resources but I say that
erer populations all over the western part of the from the rest of the earth’s community. Given civilization
United States. About the people with whom he enough time, the rest of the community withers
lived, Caitlin noted: “I love a people who have al- and dies and this one particular species of the is the cause
ways made me feel welcome to the best they had, community grows more and more until it kills of it.

WINTER 2009 Wise Traditions 25