> In message <Pine.GSO.4.02.9901231545000.11742-100000 at chuma.cas.usf.edu>,
> Frances Bolton (PHI) <fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu> writes
> >On Sat, 23 Jan 1999, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> >> >some point in their lives, not necessarily in the calendar year 1999. And
> >> >the figures are correct, and will almost certainly continue to rise in the
> >> >foreseeable future -- they have been rising steadily in the postwar period.
> >>
> >> Has the figure been rising because of our longer life expectancy?
> >>
> >Rising prostate cancer rates are partially a result of longer life
> >expectancy. Don't know about other kinds.
>
> I would have thought that the rise in cancer rates is precisely the
> changing profile of disease that comes with longer life expectancy. Many
> cancers, like breast cancer, prostrate cancer, are associated with what,
> to our ancestors, would have looked like old age.
Sure, this is part of the picture -- but only part.
In *Living Downstream, An Ecologist Looks At Cancer and the Environment*, Sandra Steingraber deals with this a number of times.
For example, discussing Rachel Carson's argument in *Silent Spring* linking cancer and the environment, she notes five lines of argument, the third of which is the rise of cancer incidence in the general population:
"At the time of Carson's writing, the postwar chemical era was less than two decades old--less than the time required for many cancers to manifest themselves. Carson prdicted that the full maturation of 'whatever seeds of malignancy have been sown' by the new lethal agents of the chemical age would occur in the years to come. She also believed that the first signs of catastrophe were already visible. At the end of the 1950s, death certificats showed that a far greater proportion of people were dying of cancer than had been treu at the turn of the century. Most ominously, children's cancers, once a medical rarity, were becoming commonplace--as recealed both by vital statistics and by doctor's observations."
-- *Living Downstream*, p. 28
Later she notes (p. 40) that the combined incidence of cancer in the US rose 49.3% from 1950 to 1991. Exclude lung cancer and the increase falls to 35%. Furthermore, more of the overall rise occured in the past two decades. Excluding lung cancer the rise from 1973 to 1991 the cancer incidence rose 20.6%. Furthermore, she notes, "increases in cancer incidence are seen in all age groups--from infants to the elderly."
The statistics she cites are uncontroversial. Her view that corporate chemical pollution is a major cause *is* controversial. Her book is pretty darn compelling, though.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"