Precautionary Principle

As I drive by "Cancer Center's of America" their flashing sign really makes me consider the medical industrial complex. Advertisements for such places make cancer treatment sound like a blue light special at the Kmart. With all the marketing that goes on cancer treatment must be big business and therefore why would anyone in that industry want to prevent cancer. Most corporations big and small in the United States focus solely on the bottom-line and frankly the business of cancer prevention just does not pay as well as cancer treatment. Other parts of the world embrace the Precautionary Principle, which promotes the idea of proving something is safe prior to its release in the world. This means manufacturing processes and resulting end products are conducted in manners proven safe to humans rather than waiting until millions are diagnosed with incurable cancer. If we in the United States embraced this idea, cancer treatment would not be a growth industry but rather a last resort measure for the few unfortunate in which cancer was not preventable.

A good movie highlighting the harmful effects of the chemical industry is Blue Vinyl

Glance at Oklahoma from the Past

Here is a great quote from one of the first field guides on Oklahoma, Washington Irving's Prairie Sketches.

In the often vaunted regions of the Far West, several hundred miles
beyond the Mississippi, extends a vast tract of uninhabited country, where
there is neither to be seen the log house of the white man, nor the
wigwam of the Indian. It consists of great grassy plains, interspersed with
forests and groves, and clumps of trees, and watered by the Arkansas,
the grand Canadian, the Red River, and all their tributary streams. Over
these fertile and verdant wastes still roam the Elk, the Buffalo, and wild
horse, in all their native freedom. (Irving, 1835)