Survey Finds Remarkable Cancer Cluster Near Nuclear Power Station

[Guest guest]

" Chris Gupta " <chrisgupta

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 23:24:35 -0400

[electroherbalism] Survey Finds Remarkable Cancer Cluster

Near Nuclear Power Station - Cancer Institutes Ignore Risks

 

 

 

 

" " We have a very serious lack of information of

how to go about preventing these diseases,

because we haven't had enough information. " For

these reasons, the experts called for a " National

Children's Study " over the next 20 years at a

cost of $50 million annually. However, this

proposal trivialized substantial and longstanding

available scientific information on avoidable

causes of childhood cancer, of which the public

still remains uninformed by the cancer establishment. "

 

Yes of course more studies are needed ad

infinitum if a the desired out come is not met,

and only one contrary study is needed if it

supports the mainstream view. And they call this science? What a joke!

 

Here yet again is a typical scenario showing how

cancer research and similar organizations,

continually cow tow to the industry. They ignore

preventative and/or cost effective solutions and

measures to keep the funding gravy chain in tact;

while encourage the regulatory bodies to throw

roadblock after road block on any effective health measures.

 

" Survey Finds Remarkable Cancer Cluster Near

Nuclear Power Station: Cancer in women younger

than 50 is more than 15 times UK national average. " See:

 

<http://www.llrc.org/trawsrept.pdf>Cancer near

Trawsfynydd - New report shows risks doubled with

15-fold risks in women under 50

 

With the announcement that Britain is going to

possibly build more nuclear power stations,

<http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/Chernobyl-UK.php#>this

map is timely and shows the fall-out and hot

zones following a similar accident to Chernobyl.

Click on each radiation icon to see the fall out.

 

This should be a wake up call for all.

<http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/getinvolved/item.shtml?x=925>Please

Take Action here to: Say No to Nuclear Power in

Ontario Canada where currently the industry is

trying to usurp efforts against the building of more nuclear power

stations.

 

This information is vital for all please send far and wide.

 

Thanks,

 

Chris Gupta

http://tinyurl.com/ajgut

------------------

 

<http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/nci/nci_fails_to_share.htm>U.

S. National Cancer Institute

 

Fails to Share Evidence on Cancer Risks

<http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/nci/nci_fails_to_share.htm#violations>Viola\

tions

of the National Cancer Act

 

The U. S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) has

instant access to the media, Public Relations

operations, and close contacts with Congress.

Fully utilizing these outreach resources NCI

issues a prodigious ongoing stream of

information, press releases, databases, and

public educational materials. The latter include

the Comprehensive Public Cancer Database System

dealing with screening, diagnosis, clinical

research, and the latest claimed advances in

treatment. In sharp contrast, NCI makes little or

no effort to warn the public of well-documented

risks, based on experimental and/or

epidemiological evidence, from unknowing exposure

to a wide range of industrial carcinogens,

including those in consumer products, food,

cosmetics, toiletries, and household products. As

importantly, the National Cancer Institute has

also failed to warn of potential carcinogenic

risks on the basis of incomplete or suggestive,

although not definitive, evidence and also to

direct high priority to research and advocacy on

such risks. Such failure disregards fundamental

principles of public health and the scientific

basis of the Precautionary Principle. This

mandates the categorical responsibility of

industry to provide unequivocal evidence on the

safety of any new candidate product or process

before its introduction into commerce, thereby

ensuring that it does not pose potential or

recognized human or environmental risks.

 

Denial of Citizens' Right-to-Know

 

The U. S. National Cancer Institute has not

attempted to develop a registry of avoidable

carcinogenic exposures, including body burden

data (p. 19), and make it available to the

public. This is in striking contrast to the

extensive user-friendly public educational

outreach programs of NCI and ACS on cancer

treatment and screening. Until such a registry

becomes available, in the absence of an acute

emergency, patients should specifically request

full documentation on the risks of any drug,

available in the Warnings and Precautions section

of the annual Physicians Desk Reference. This is

also in striking contrast to the misleading May

1998 response by past NCI Director Klausner to a

question by Congressman Obey whether NCI's Cancer

Information Service provides the public with a

registry of avoidable carcinogens. NCI's silence

effectively denies U.S. citizens of their

fundamental democratic Right-to-Know of

information on avoidable causes of a wide range

of cancers which could empower them to reduce

their own risks of disease and death. In this,

the cancer establishment appears to make common

cause with the chemical industry.

 

This longstanding denial of citizens'

Right-to-Know impacts disproportionately on low

income black and other ethnic minorities, besides

raising serious concerns on environmental

justice. These population sub-groups are at

particularly high risk in view of their general

discriminatory location near petrochemical

plants, hazardous waste sites, municipal

incinerators, and nuclear reactors. However, the

cancer establishment has rarely, if ever,

undertaken epidemiological cluster analyses of

claimed excess incidences of a wide range of

cancers in such communities, let alone

investigate their relation to local exposure to industrial carcinogens.

 

The cancer establishment's denial of

Right-to-Know extends to failure to provide

Federal and State agencies with scientific data

on carcinogenicity on which regulatory decisions

are critically based, claiming that this is not

their responsibility. However, regulatory

agencies are charged with a wide range of other

responsibilities. They also lack the authority

and wealth of scientific and educational

resources specifically directed to cancer which

are heavily invested in the cancer establishment;

regulatory agencies are also susceptible to

industry lobbying and, more importantly, pressure

from pro-industry administrations. Most

critically, NCI and ACS have rarely, if ever,

provided such data to Congress as a necessary

basis for developing appropriate legislation and

regulatory authority, apart from failing to

inform the public-at-large (12, 34).

 

It should be stressed that NCI's silence on

primary cancer prevention is in violation of the

1971 National Cancer Act's specific charge " to

disseminate cancer information to the public. "

This silence is in further denial of the 1988

Amendments to the National Cancer Program (Title

42, Sec. 285A), which call for " an expanded and

intensified research program for the prevention

of cancer caused by occupational or environmental exposure to

carcinogens. "

 

The silence of the ACS and its track record on

primary prevention (Appendix V) is in contrast to

their misleading claims for advocacy, as

emphasized in its Cancer Facts and Figures 2002:

" Cancer is a political, as well as medical,

social, psychological, and economic issue. Every

day, legislators make decisions that impact the

lives of millions of Americans who have been

touched by cancer. To affect those decisions

positively, the Society has identified advocacy

as part of its mission and as one of its top

corporate priorities, and works nationwide to

promote beneficial policies, laws, and

regulations for those affected by cancer. "

 

Avoidable causes fall into four categories,

posing widely differing types of empowerment,

ranging from the personal to political:

 

Consumer products: NCI and ACS have failed to

inform the public of available information on

common carcinogenic ingredients and contaminants

in food, cosmetics and toiletries, and household

products. They have also failed to provide such

information to Congress, and to urge regulatory

agencies to require explicit identification and

warning labels for all such carcinogens. Such

market place pressures would then enable

consumers to boycott those industries marketing

unsafe products in favor of socially responsible

businesses, which are increasingly marketing safer products.

 

Medical: A wide range of carcinogenic drugs are

commonly prescribed to patients in the absence of

legally-required informed consent, and of any

safe alternatives. The cancer establishment has

failed to systematize such information and

circulate it to all physicians and the public,

and to recommend explicit warning labels on all

carcinogenic drugs. Patients should thus request

their physicians to provide them with any such

evidence (experimental and epidemiological) of

cancer risks, as identified in the Warnings and

Precautions section of the annual Physicians Desk

Reference (PDR). For drugs so identified,

patients should request available non-carcinogenic alternatives.

 

There is now strong evidence that allegedly " low

dose " ionizing radiation from diagnostic

procedures, particularly CT scans and

fluoroscopy, poses significant risks of cancer.

These risks are avoidable, as average doses can

be substantially reduced without any loss of

image quality. Emergencies apart, patients should

seek radiologists who are increasingly practicing

dose-reduction imaging procedures.

 

Environmental: The cancer establishment has

failed to collate and systematize avoidable

information on carcinogenic contaminants in air

and water on an ongoing basis, and to make this

readily available to the public (12). This

information has now become available, at

community and zip code locations, in the

Environmental Defense's Scorecard (p. 17). Such

information would enable activist citizen groups

to take political action at the state level in

efforts to reduce these carcinogenic exposures.

It should be stressed that neither NCI nor ACS

have considered, let alone initiated,

epidemiological analyses to investigate possible

cancer clusters in highly polluted communities.

 

Occupational: There is substantial information on

a wide range of carcinogenic products and

processes to which some 11 million men and 4

million women are exposed (12). While industries

employing more than 10 workers are required, by

the Occupational Safety and Health

Administration, to supply them with Material

Safety Data Sheets, such information is generally

inadequate and often misleading. While some

unions take aggressive action to reduce

occupational carcinogenic exposure, this is by no

means the rule. Furthermore, plants employing

less than 10 workers, generally lower

socio-economic ethnic minorities, are virtually

exempt from any such protective measures. Again,

NCI and ACS should systematize such information

and make it fully available to unions and workers on a national basis.

 

Finally, the cancer establishment's massive

funding of a nationwide network of research

institutes and hospitals virtually ensures the

silence or reticence of their captive

epidemiologists and other scientists on primary

prevention. These constraints were strikingly

exemplified in a widely-publicized May 2002

Public Broadcasting Service television report,

<http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript117_full.html>Kids

and Chemicals, on the relationship between

chemical exposures and childhood cancer, and

other diseases. The program featured

well-qualified experts, some funded by the cancer

establishment, who expressed strong concerns

while misleadingly stressing the inadequacy of

current information. One stated: " We suspect that

children who are exposed to pesticides are at

greater risk of childhood cancer than other

children. But mostly we don't know. " Another

claimed: " We have a very serious lack of

information of how to go about preventing these

diseases, because we haven't had enough

information. " For these reasons, the experts

called for a " National Children's Study " over the

next 20 years at a cost of $50 million annually.

However, this proposal trivialized substantial

and longstanding available scientific information

on avoidable causes of childhood cancer, of which

the public still remains uninformed by the cancer

establishment. Additionally, no mention was made

of the primary responsibility of the NCI and ACS,

whose funding is more than adequate, to undertake

further research on avoidable causes of childhood cancer.

 

REFERENCES

 

1. Ries, L.A.G., Eisner, M.P., Kosary, C.L.,

Hankey, B.F., Miller, B.A., Clegg, L., Edwards,

B.K. (eds). SEER Cancer Statistics Review,

1973-1999, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, 2002.

 

2. Dinse, G.E., Umbach, D.M., Sasco, A.J., Hoel,

D.G., Davis, D.L. Unexplained Increases in Cancer

Incidence in the United States from 1975 to 1994:

Possible Sentinel Health Indicators? Ann. Rev. Public Health

20:173-209, 1999.

 

3. Edwards, B.K., Howe, H.L., Ries, L.A.G., Thun,

M.J., Rosenberg, H.M., Yancik, R., Wingo, P.A.,

Jemal, A., Feigal E.G. Annual Report to the

Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1973-1999,

Featuring Implications of Age and Aging on the U.S. Cancer Burden.

Cancer, 94(10):2766-2792, 2002.

 

4. Davis, D., Hoel, D. (eds.). Trends in Cancer

Mortality in Industrial Countries. New York

Academy of Sciences 6001:1-347, 1990.

 

5. Bailar, J. & Gornik, H.L. Cancer Undefeated.

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6. Clapp, R.W. The Decline in U.S. Cancer

Mortality from 1991 to 1995: What's Behind the

Numbers? Int. J. Health Services 28(4):747-755, 1998.

 

7. Greenberg, D. Science, Money, and Politics.

University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2001.

 

8. Clegg, L.X., Feuer, E.J., Midthune, D.N., Fay,

M.P., Hankey, B.F. Impact of Reporting Delay and

Reporting Error on Cancer Incidence Rates and

Trends. J. Nat. Cancer Inst. 94:1537-1545, 2002.

 

9. Begley, S. New Statistics Show Increase, Not

Decline in Cancer Rates. The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2002, p.

1537.

 

10. Kolata, G. " Test Proves Fruitless, Fueling

New Debate on Cancer Screening. " The New York

Times, April 9, 2002. (See also Gøtzche, P.C.

Commentary: Medicalization of Risk Factors. BMJ 324:890-891, 2002.)

 

11. Fellers, L. " Taxol is One of the Best Cancer

Drugs Ever Discovered by the Federal Government:

Why Is It Beyond Some Patients' Reach? " The

Washington Post Magazine, May 31, 1998.

 

12. Epstein, S.S. The Politics of Cancer,

Revisited. East Ridge Press, Fremont Center, NY,

1998. (Extensive scientific information on the

causes and prevention of cancer and public policy.)

 

13. Doll, R. & Peto, R. The Causes of Cancer:

Quantitative Estimates of Avoidable Risks of

Cancer in the U.S. Today. J. Nat. Cancer Inst. 66:1191-1308, 1981.

 

14. Stallones, R. A. & Downs, T.A. A Critical

Review of Estimates of the Fraction of Cancer in

the U.S. Related to Environmental Factors. Report

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15. Landrigan, P. Commentary: Environmental

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16. Anderson, S.J., Culver, A.A., Dorfman, M.H.,

Hughes, A.S. Expanding the Public's

Right-to-Know: Materials Accounting Data as a

Tool for Promoting Environmental Justice and

Pollution Prevention. INFORM, Inc.,

<http://www.informinc.org>www.informinc.org , New York, NY, 2000.

 

17. Greaves, P., Goonetilleke, R., Nunn, G.,

Topham, J., Orton, T. Two-Year Carcinogenicity

Study of Tamoxifen in Alderley Park

Wistar-Derived Rats. Cancer Research 53(17):3919-3924, 1993.

 

18. White, J. (CEO Canadian Cancer Society),

Letter to Guelph Mercury, Ontario, Canada, April 9, 2002.

 

19. Kliewer, E.V., Smith, K.R. Breast Cancer

Mortality Among Immigrants in Australia and

Canada. J. Nat. Cancer Inst. 87 (15):1154-1161, 1995.

 

20. Lichtenstein, P., Holm, N., Verkasalo, P.,

Iliadou, A., Kaprio, J., Koskenvuo, M., Pukkala,

E., Skytthe, A., Hemminki, K. Environmental and

Heritable Factors in the Causation of Cancer:

Analyses of Cohorts of Twins from Sweden,

Denmark, and Finland. New Eng. J. Med. 343(2):78-85, 2000.

 

21. Willett, W.C. Balancing Life-style and

Genomics Research for Disease Prevention. Science 296:695-698, 2002.

 

22. Epstein, S.S. Evaluation of the National

Cancer Program and Proposed Reforms. Am. J. Ind. Med. 24:109-133, 1993.

 

23. Baker, B.P., Benbrook, C.M., Groth, E.,

Benbrook, K.L. Pesticide Residues in

Conventional, Integrated Pest Management

(IPM)-Grown and Organic Foods: Insights from

Three U.S. Data Sets. Food Additives and Contaminants 19(5):427-446, 2002.

 

24. Epstein, S.S., Hauter, W. Preventing Food

Poisoning: Sanitation not Irradiation. Int. J.

Health Services 31(1):187-192, 2001. (This

publication was endorsed by over 20 leading

international scientists, besides consumer groups.)

 

25. Tourgeman, D.E, Amezcua, C., Boostanfar, R.,

Stanczyk, F.Z., Felix, C., Paulson, R.J.

Agonistic Effects of Raloxifene on Ovarian

Adenocarcinoma (OVCAR-3) Cells. Abstract.

Presented at the 17th Annual Meeting of the

European Society of Human Reproduction and

Embryology, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 1-4, 2001.

 

26. National Toxicology Program, Toxicology and

Carcinogenesis Studies of Methylphenidate

Hydrochloride in F 344/N Rats and B6C3F1 Mice.

Technical Report Series No. 439, July, 1995.

 

27. International Agency for Research on Cancer. Atrazine, 73:59-113,

1999.

 

28. Hayes, T.B., Collins, A., Lee, M., Mendoza,

M., Noriega, N., Stuart, A., Vonk, A.

Hermaphroditic, Demasculinized Frogs After

Exposure to the Herbicide Atrazine at Low

Ecologically Relevant Doses. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 99(8):5476-5480, 2002.

 

29. Wilson, D. Fateful Harvest: The True Story of

a Small Town Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret.

Harper Collins, New York, 2001.

 

30. Busby, C., Bertell, R., Schmitze-Feuerhake,

I., Cato, M.S., Yablokov, A. 2003 Recommendations

of the ECRR (European Committee on Radiation

Risk). Health Effects of Ionising Radiation

Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection

Purposes. Regulators' Edition, Green Audit,

Brussels, 2003; supported by over 40 leading

international radiation experts.

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31. Gould, J.M., Sternglass, E.J., Sherman, J.D.,

Brown, J., McDonnell, W., Mangano, J.J.

Strontium-90 in Deciduous Teeth as a Factor in

Early Childhood Cancer. Int. J. Health Services 30(3):515-539, 2000.

 

32. Havas, M. Biological Effects of Non-ionizing

Electromagnetic Energy. Environ. Rev. 8:173-253, 2000.

 

33. Epstein, S.S. GOT (genetically engineered)

MILK! The Monsanto rBGH/BST Milk Wars Handbook.

E-book and Print on Demand book, Seven Stories

Press, <http://www.sevenstories.com>www.sevenstories.com, 2001.

 

34. Epstein, S.S. Legislative Proposals for

Reversing the Cancer Epidemic and Controlling

Run-Away Industrial Technologies. Int. J. Health

Services 30(2):353-371, 2000. (Based on an

invited address to the Swedish Parliament

following receipt of the Right Livelihood Award,

aka The Alternative Nobel Prize).

 

Excerpted from

<http://www.preventcancer.com/press/pdfs/Stop_Cancer_Book.pdf>Stop

Cancer Before it Starts: How to Win the War on

Cancer, 2003 by Samuel S. Epstein, M. D.

 

CONTACT:

 

Cancer Prevention Coalition

University of Illinois at Chicago

School of Public Health

2121 W. Taylor St., MC 922

Chicago, IL 60612

 

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