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The Secret History of the War on Cancer

A very vicious circle

Devra Davis
Basic Books, 505pp, £16.99,

Jervoise Andreyev on the new book by Devra Davis

This book is startling, original, enormously disturbing, horribly unscientific but compelling. Did you know that Dachau housed the world’s first and largest organic garden, established to produce various foods, including honey, for the German elite? Or that to find a ‘healthier cigarette’, 12 billion were manufactured using asbestos filters? Production stopped because the filters removed too much of the taste, not because of increased delivery of cancer-causing agents to the body. And who says history doesn’t repeat itself? In the UK, the care of the elderly infirm has long been dumped on local authorities and this government now plans to restrict specialist help for patients with chronic diseases. It is sobering to read that similar schemes were developed in prewar Germany to rid the state of the burden of looking after non-productive citizens.

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