Small, Grey and Beautiful

All of us can remember occasions when we’ve been in a restaurant with a group of friends and when the meals are served we look enviously at the other plates. It’s human nature – the other man’s grass is always greener. Comparison is something we do continuously both consciously as individuals and unconsciously throughout the body. Our immune system spots and removes intruders or rogue cells and when working well knows the difference between ‘Us and Not us’. It does not overreact to benign abnormalities and can tolerate non-threatening difference. We depend on our ability to compare for our very existence and yet, we now know the importance of maintaining the health of our intestinal microbiome whose bacterial cells outnumber our human cell count by a factor of 10:1. We have a tendency for recognising only black and white choices and by so doing we can miss out on the beauty of grey. In Thomas Seyfried’s book ‘Cancer as a Metabolic Disease’ he presents the science of his investigations of over 30 years into the causes and properties of cancer. The central tenet is that cancer is – ‘a disease of respiratory insufficiency coupled with compensatory fermentation’. Seyfried is among a handful of independent researchers who have chosen to expand on the work of Nobel Prize-winner Otto Warburg. His approach to cancer is different from that of the pharmaceutical pack who continue to search for a patentable superdrug based on the genetic properties of tumour cells. Seyfried, as with Warburg before him, believes that cancer develops in response to mitochondrial dysfunction. The mitochondria are the energy generating organelles within every cell of the body. They supply the energy needed to deliver the function of the organ, in which they reside, according to its needs. The cancer cell produces energy both through normal ‘carburettor action’ of burning fuel with oxygen as well as through an inefficient fermentation process which requires vastly more fuel (glucose) resources than properly functioning mitochondria. Yet, such is the complexity of our immune system that the body can often heal itself when the optimum environment is restored. Life changing surgery and poisonous, indeed carcinogenic, chemotherapy agents can often be avoided. At a cellular level we live in a very grey world. Just as the mitochondria produce energy for cellular function so our businesses create employment opportunities and revenues within our communities. Capitalism is essential for the development of best practice and innovation. But mitochondria don’t exist in isolation. They exist to serve the needs of the cell. Similarly, businesses serve the needs of their community. It is dangerous when they act exclusively in their own self-interest. Socialism is essential to ensure that the health of the whole is protected. It’s not a black and white choice between Capitalism and Socialism, both are necessary for healthy societies. Grey is beautiful. Perhaps it’s our tendency to polarise that has led to our political distortions. Socialism is the natural way for humankind but it got corrupted by Communism into inefficient fiefdoms dominated by self-serving elites and dictators. Capitalism encourages society with the promise that effort is rewarded. Sadly, the Corporatism that dominates international business today is a grotesque distortion of Capitalism and has led to extremes of wealth and poverty. So my plea is that we work with nature rather than against it. Keep it small – healthy smallholding farms with multiple crops and livestock. Keep it grey – resist the oversimplification of black and white choices and grow tolerance for benign differences. Keep it beautiful – maintain this planet clean as our only home and keep it fit for future generations