Cancer - Are Chemicals To Blame?
CategoriesCancer may be largely to blame on man made chemicals in our environment, rather than on smoking and diet, the factors that are emphasized by medical experts. The article reporting the Canadian study was printed in the Penticton Herald, a relatively obscure paper and I haven't seen it taken up by other press outlets so far.
A separate study of scientists from the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine blames prolonged exposure to gasoline, vehicle exhaust and kitchen smoke, as reported by Xinhua news agency and published in the Shanghai Daily.
There is no agreement on what really causes cancer, and in fact cancer itself is not well understood as a friend from the Netherlands has pointed out. Whatever the real cause - or rather the combination ...
of causative factors - for cancer, environmental pollution would seem a good place to start "reducing the load", taking away one by one the factors that may be to blame, before we know for sure.
Here is the Canadian article, with two comments below, and a link to the Chinese report.
If you have a comment, I would be happy to hear it.
Soaring cancer rates blamed on chemicals
(Penticton Herald - original here)By The Canadian Press OTTAWA -- Man-made chemicals in air, water, food and the workplace are largely to blame for a devastating cancer epidemic which will strike 41 per cent of Canadian males and 38 per cent of females, says a study released Wednesday.
Genetics and lifestyle factors such as smoking and diet can't explain the soaring cancer rates of recent decades, says the report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
From 1970 to 1998, the incidence of the dreaded disease increased by 35 per cent for men and 27 per cent for women after the effects of population aging have been discounted, say authors Lissa Donner and Robert Chernomas.
When lung cancers are removed from the statistics, the rates still increased by 23.9 per cent for males and 17.1 per cent for females over the period.
The toll is more dramatic when considered over a longer time: In 1921, cancer killed 6.6 per cent of males and 8.6 per cent of females, but now the death rate has risen to 27.4 per cent for men and 23.1 per cent for women, says the report. There has been a great deal of controversy about the role of environmental contaminants in cancer, and mainstream medical organizations have tended to downplay their importance. The Canadian Cancer Society estimates that only five per cent of cancers can be directly linked to contaminants in the environment, which would represent about 6,400 cases a year in Canada. But dissidents, such as U.S. scientist Samuel Epstein, author of several books on cancer, say 80 to 90 per cent of human cancer is determined environmentally.
Authors Donner and Chernomas say the medical profession is fixated on screening, diagnosis and damage control rather than prevention.
"Mainstream medicine places the blame for cancer on lifestyle and genetics -- and emphasizes research into changes at the individual level. It identifies symptoms and treats them, while largely ignoring the root causes of disease.
"We believe that successful cancer prevention requires a very different approach." They note that more than 18 million kilograms of known carcinogens were released into the Canadian environment in 2001, according to the federal government's National Pollutant Release Inventory.
Donner conceded in an interview that many carcinogenic chemicals are useful and would be hard to replace. For example, chlorine is vital in water treatment, but can interact with organic materials to form carcinogenic chemicals known as trihalomethanes.
But she rejects the view that rising cancer rates are an inescapable fact of life in the modern era.
"That kind of resigned attitude is not going to create a healthy society," she said in an interview.
"We need a strategy, to pick and choose and figure out where to go next."
A comment on the article received from a friend by e-mail:I’d say that the causes of soaring cancer rates are multiple. I realize that that’s a rather safe statement, but from the top of my head, I’d say: devitalized – dead – food; disrupted food patterns; alcohol consumption, mental stress, mental impact events are significant factors. However, the most serious problem is that the commonly accepted definition of cancer (the appearance – presence – of a tumor) is a “too little too late” definition that misdefines the disaese by its end-phase phenomena and not by its onset-phenomena. Most often, many years (6 to 8) lie between the onset of cancer and the tumor. Compared to a 1 day’s 24 hours period, what everybody calls “cancer” makes up only the last couple of minutes of the “cancer day.” Naturopathy, the Germans were good at it (Enderlein) provides methods (dark field microscopy) to detect cancer at its onset. Even deviations of something as simple as the blood’s pH can serve as a marker.
My comment to this:True that we regard cancer only as the end stage of the disease, the visible tumor which is really an attempt to get rid of whatever it was. The fact remains that we ARE poisoning ourselves and that it is getting harder and harder for our bodies to cope as the poisons are more widespread.There is also another German (Hamer) who says that cancer is a body program that's triggered by an unconfronted emotional trauma of great impact and that each kind of trauma produces a cancer in a specific organ or a cancer of a specific kind. Very interesting and it seems to work.
Of course the soaring cancer rates imply that something that causes cancer is on the increase. And a good candidate for that is environmental pollution, which in fact has been increasing in huge steps. Huge amounts of chemicals are being put into the environment. Cars are run on fuel that is without lead now, but we added benzene, a known carcinogen to "green" gasoline, and we require catalytic converters based on platinum, vapors of which remain in the air and are known to increase lung cancer risks. Traffic based pollution is present just about everywhere, it is saturating our cities.
Agreed that dead food, stress and mental impact events could play important roles. As you say, the causes are multiple, but we could very well start taking off some of the load that leads to the huge numbers of cases, and pollution is a good place to start.
And a further comment from my friend received 12 March (2004):I guess you’re right. It would be interesting to see if cancer in animals living in “civilized” environments – not pets - show a similar increase in cancer rates. They are exposed to the the same new chemicals as we are and they feed on polluted food. The Hamer theory fits. A friend of mine, who treats cancer patients, standardly finds an unconfronted emotional impact some 6 to 10 years before the tumor arises.
See also related links:
Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer - A Review of Recent Scientific Literature - Prepared by Boston University School of Public Health and the Environmental Health Initiative, University of Massachusetts Lowell. (PDF)Drug Manufacturers Avoid Scrutiny of Chemical Causes of Cancer by Promoting Mammography & Tamoxifen
Cancer, Chemicals and History by Jon Wiener
Twenty of the biggest chemical companies in the United States have launched a campaign to discredit two historians who have studied the industry's efforts to conceal links between their products and cancer. In an unprecedented move, attorneys for Dow, Monsanto, Goodrich, Goodyear, Union Carbide and others have subpoenaed and deposed five academics who recommended that the University of California Press publish the book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner.Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - Pharmaceuticals help selves first - By Kevin Leahy
Soaring Cancer Rates Blamed On Chemicals
Ludhiana, September 7, 2004 - Hindustan Times
Cancer cases: Pesticides the culprit - Megha Mohan
PGI study finds pesticides turning this cotton belt of Talwandi Sabo block into a 'cancer belt'Cancer: It's a Growth Industry
An interview with Dr. Samuel EpsteinMonthly Newsletter www.cancer-coverup.com - August 2004 - KATHLEEN B. DEOUL
The evidence suggesting a link between toxic chemicals and the nation's cancer epidemic seems impossible to ignore. A study of female chemists found they had a 65% higher chance of dying from breast cancer...
Chemical Contaminants and Human Disease: A Summary of Evidence
Soaring cancer rates blamed on chemicals
Driving, pollution may cause lung cancer, scientists say
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