by LMM » Wed Aug 08, 2012 6:06 pm
Beforewisdom, you've entitled your blog post about Dr Jane Plant's book 'Quit Milk, Survive Cancer'; have you read Dr Plant's 'Your Life in Your Hands', her first book?
Plant, who is a geologist not a medical doctor, claims she defeated breast cancer by dropping dairy from her diet, and that her tumour began to shrink within days of giving up dairy.
It's odd, but most people who want to believe Plant's theory fail to notice that, by her own account, she was undergoing a course of chemotherapy when she began her dairy-free diet and noticed her tumour shrink. I didn't notice it myself the first time I read the book in 2003, and I too found her work empowering; I felt almost smug, actually - another hideous disease my vegan diet was protecting me from!
I felt a great deal less bloody smug when I read it again about 8 months later - I'd just been diagnosed with breast cancer that turned out to be advanced and aggressive.
I'm still a vegan, I'll always be a vegan. But I think Plant's claims, and those of anyone who claims avoiding dairy will either prevent or cure any type of cancer, are demonstrably wrong and potentially very dangerous; at worst they could lead to people deciding against evidence-based treatments - something Plant herself didn't do.