Types Of Cancer

How to control run-away industrial technologies?

We are losing the winnable war against cancer. Over recent decades, the incidence of cancer in Europe, the US and other industrialized nations has escalated to epidemic proportions, with lifetime cancer risks in some nations reaching 1 in 2 for men and 1 in 3 for women.

The overall increase of all cancers in the US from 1950-1995 was 55%, of which lung cancer, primarily attributed to smoking, accounted for about 12%.
Over the same period, non-smoking cancers increased as follows: prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple mylemo, 200%; testis cancer, 110%; brain and nervous system cancer, 80%; and childhood cancer, 10%.

Meanwhile, our ability to treat and “cure” most cancers with the notable exception of some relatively rare cancers such as pediatric, has remained virtually unchanged in spite of periodic misleading and exaggerated claims to the contrary

What is the predominant cause of the modern cancer epidemic? The answer is based on a strong body of scientific evidence incriminating the role of run-away industrial technologies, particularly the petrochemical, whose exponential growth since the 1940s has, to varying degrees in different nations, outstripped the development of the means to control them.

Resultantly, our total environment, air, water, consumer products – foods, cosmetics and toiletries, and household products including pesticides – and the workplace, has become pervasively contaminated with a wide range of often persistent industrial carcinogens. As a consequence, the public at-large has been and continues to be unknowingly exposed to avoidable carcinogens from conception to death.

Meanwhile, cancer institutions – governmental, charitable and academics with their national networks of cancer centers – have failed to provide government, regulatory agencies and the public with available scientific information on a wide range of avoidable carcinogenic exposures, so that appropriate legislative, regulatory, and self-protective personal action has not yet been taken.

These policies reflect institutional mindsets fixated on damage control – diagnosis and treatment – with virtual indifference or minimalist priorities and budgetary allocations to prevention. These mindsets are compounded by conflicts of interest, particularly between the American Cancer Society, and the cancer drug and other industries.

A series of 6 legislative proposals these critical concerns. While one or two of these are, to varying degrees, under consideration in various Parliaments worldwide, most appear unprecedented.

While primarily directed to cancer and avoidable and involuntary carcinogenic exposures, it should be recognized that the majority of carcinogens also induce other chronic toxic effect (including reproductive, endocrine-disruptive, neurotoxin and immunotoxic).

1. Prohibit the authorization of new carcinogenic products and Untested new technologies

The first line of defense against risks from avoidable carcinogenic and otherwise toxic exposures is an absolute prohibition of further increasing the burden of current exposures due to the authorization of new carcinogenic products and processes. Such a prohibition is based on the obvious Precautionary Principle that preventing new risks and that zero risk policies are essential for public and environmental protection.

This principle further absolves citizens and regulatory agencies from the heavy burden for proving risks in response to industry challenges and allows the banning of suspect-products in circumstances of scientific uncertainty.

The raw data on the basic of which industry claims of safety are based, apart from their interpretation, must be fully disclosed to non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This is essential to exclude bias or manipulation. An illustrative recent example is afforded by the 1996 review of 161 studies in the National Library of Medicine files on 4 heavily regulated industrial chemical – formaldehyde, perchloroethylene, atrazine, and alcohol. While only 14% of industry studies reported toxic or carcinogenic effects, such effects were disclosed in 17% of independent studies.

2.    Reduce use of toxics

The second line of defense is the phase-out of carcinogens in use in the wide range of petrochemical and other products and processes already established in commerce. Strategies based on toxics are used reduction – phasing out the manufacture, use and disposal of carcinogenic chemicals, couple with their replacement by safe alternative technologies – are not only practical but cost-effective as evidenced by the success of the practical but cost-effective as evidenced by the success of the “Toxics Use Reduction Act” passed unanimously by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1989.

The implementation of such strategies, however, requires the establishment of an explicit schedule for the shortest feasible phase-out time, and for monitoring industry compliance. Toxics-use-reduction legislation further exemplifies the Precautionary Principle of risk prevention rather than “risk management”.

The active interest of mainstream industry could be further encouraged by granting tax incentives for the urgent development of safe alternatives to conventional toxic-based technologies and tax penalties for failure to adopt available safe alternatively technologies.
3.    Right to know

The right to know is, or should be, an inalienable and fundamental democratic principle with the possible exception of national security concerns.

Claims of confidentially and trade secrecy by industry are often a serious deterrent to the recognition of potential risks from carcinogenic and otherwise toxic, products.

There is thus an urgent need to development legislation to restrict claims of confidentially to what is unarguably essential to protect independently validated non-health proprietary information, exclusive of any health considerations.

All other information on the identity of carcinogens in products, pharmaceutical drugs of processes, must be automatically and fully released and made fully available to the public.

It must be stressed that labeling is no substitute for a moratorium or ban. Labeling is discriminatory to the uneducated and lowers socio-economic population groups.

Right to know initiatives must be directed to the totality of human exposures, besides ecological impact including consumer products – food, cosmetics and toiletries and household products, prescription drugs and environmental and occupational exposures.

4.    Expert committees and regulatory agencies

Key governmental decisions and policies are generally determined by recommendations of cancer institutions, designated expert scientific committees and regulatory bodies. Their independence, integrity, expertise and accountability are thus matters of critical concern.

Legislation to ensure full accountability and transparency of all cancer institutions involved in cancer research and related activities is long overdue.

Legislation is also needed to ensure that cancer institutions direct the highest priorities, with minimally half their budgets specifically allocated to research and outreach on primary cancer prevention.

The membership of many international regulatory committees reflects disproportionate representation of US senior regulatory officials and veterinary and food scientists, with minimal if any involvement of independent experts in preventive medicine, public health and carcinogenesis. The European Commission Scientific Conference reflects such imbalance representation.

FAO/WHO advisory committees clearly represent a sanitized front for powerful industry interests and pre-determined regulatory decisions, rather than sound science and consumer safety.

Clearly, legislation is needed to require that expert scientific committees, such as JEFCA and regulatory agencies, such as the Codex Alimentarius, International Office of Epizootics, Food Agency Organization and WHO/ILO dealing with health and environmental concern conform to basic requirements to ensure unbiased and sound scientific findings and appropriate subsequent regulatory decisions.

Examination of the structure of the WHO/ILO committee on asbestos over recent years is illustrative of extreme pro-industry representation, bias and reckless indifference to occupational safety and health.