[Fwd: The Politics of Cancer]

William S. Lear rael at zopyra.com
Sun Jan 24 21:53:39 PST 1999


On Sun, January 24, 1999 at 23:56:13 (+0000) Jim heartfield writes:
>In message <36AB795B.4B1A at gte.net>, Paul Henry Rosenberg <rad at gte.net>
>writes
>
>>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.
>
>Not in my view. For sure the chemicals that we are exposed to will have
>an effect, but most of it is positive, like disinfectants and
>antibiotics. You would have to gas America to put a dent in the
>increased life expectancy due to those medical advances.
>
>More to the point, the desire to find a villain to blame for what is
>unavoidable, our mortality, is immature. I'm all for tackling specific
>problems of poisoning and health, but when somebody starts saying that
>our entire modern way of life is killing us, I tend to think that that
>is someone who lacks perspective.

Who said "our entire modern way of life is killing us"? And who is trying to avoid mortality? This sounds like the sort of straw-man accusation that a PR hack for W.R. Grace would make.

*Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly* (REHW) looked at "The Truth About Breast Cancer" (#s 571, 572, 573, and 574 [November 6, 13, 20, and 27, 1997], and #575 [December 4, 1997]). They told of more than just "disinfectants and antibiotics":

If you look for a group of chemicals that is causing more than

its fair share of grief, you would probably pick organochlorines.

Very few organochlorines exist in nature, and then only in

relatively small amounts; the vast majority of organochlorines

were created by humans starting around the year 1900 but gearing

up big-time after World War II.

Today there are 15,000 different organochlorines but they all

tend to have three similar characteristics. First, they tend to

persist in the environment (because nature does not break them

down readily), so once created they stay around. Second, they are

not very soluble in water but they tend to be soluble in fat ---

so they tend to enter food chains and bioaccumulate as they move

upward toward the big predators, like eagles, polar bears, and

humans. And third they tend to be toxic and in many instances

carcinogenic. Recently, it has been shown that several of them

interfere with hormones in wildlife --- and probably in humans

--- causing many other problems besides cancer. [#572]

They go on to spell out a few of the nasty properties of organochlorines:

There are at least three aspects of hormone-disrupting chemicals

that make them exceedingly difficult for science to study:

1. Chemicals that interfere with hormones may only be effective

at a particular moment in the development of a baby in the womb.

In the laboratory, exposing a pregnant rat to dioxin on the 15th

day of pregnancy dramatically affects the sexual characteristics

of her male offspring after they mature. Dioxin exposure on other

days has no such effect. (See REHW #290.) It may be that exposure

to organochlorines or other hormone-disrupting chemicals at a

particular moment in the womb primes a baby girl's breast cells

for later growth of cancer.

2. Furthermore, some hormone disrupters (such as the common

pesticide, atrazine) only stay in the body for a few months or a

few years. By the time a baby grows into childhood or adulthood,

these chemicals are gone and can't be studied. DDE and PCBs are

convenient to study because they remain in the body for a long

time, but they are not necessarily important chemicals for breast

cancer. The important ones may well be gone by the time the

research begins.

3. Many of these chemicals work in combinations. Their effects

are additive. Two chemicals present at ineffective levels may

combine to produce an effect. This has been conclusively

shown. Scientists almost never study combinations of chemicals

--- and most of us have combinations of HUNDREDS of different

organochlorines and other xenoestrogens in our bodies, as a

result of continuous chemical trespass by corporations. [#575]

Perhaps Jim should pay a visit to the victims of the W.R. Grace Company in Woburn, MA (subject of the film "A Civil Action") who also no doubt were derided as ignorant naysayers fretting unreasonably about their "mortality" who simply failed to recognize the (entirely irrelevant) wonders of such chemicals as "disinfectants and antibiotics".

Bill



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