Not Looking For A Cure Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

I have, for you, a theory,
at least a partial answer.
to devastating misery,
the ravages of cancer.

The year was seventeen-fifty-three
James Lind watched seamen die
of a disease in agony
and no one figured why.

This SCURVY eats the body's flesh
and breaks down walls of cells
where collagen serves to enmesh
a trillion different shells.

HYALURONIDASE is made
by most malignant tumours,
it works relentless in the shade
and laughs at all the rumours

spread by the quacks of little brains
who recommend it often.
But, in the end, the only gain
is body cells that soften.

So what, you ask, will strengthen it,
prevent scorbutic change,
when uncontrolled and bit by bit
the healthy tissue range

just crumbles into useless swill,
it is quite unexpected,
the patient is extremely ill,
that's what James Lind detected.

Two hundred years, and to the day
a Scotsman and a Yank
they theorized ascorbate may
be money in the bank.

The battlefield of scurvy's void,
so similar to cancers,
it looks as if it's been destroyed
by drunken Cossack dancers.

And soon they found, ascorbate would
inhibit cancer spread.
Now Cameron and Pauling could
perhaps not raise the dead,

but stop the greatest single scourge
of practising its chilling
and uncontrolled satanic urge
to decimate by killing

the people, often in their prime,
with cruelty and greed.
Could one plain substance stop this crime
and turn this desperate need?

Now almost forty years have passed
and many millions died.
Yet I can feel the icy blast,
they will not save your hide.