Reversing The Cancer Epidemic

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 confidentiality 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 develop legislation to restrict claims of confidentiality 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 or processes, must be automatically and fully released and made fully available to the public.

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

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

Reversing The Cancer Epidemic

2 Reduce use of toxics

The second line of defence is the phase-out of carcinogens in use in the wide range of petrochemical and other products and process already established in commerce. Strategies based on toxics use reduction - phasing out the manufacture, use and disposal of carcinogenic chemicals, coupled with their replacement by safe alternative technologies - are not only 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 alternative technologies.

How To Control Run-Away Industrial Technologies

1 Prohibit the authorisation of new carcinogenic products and untested new technologies

The first line of defence against risks from avoidable carcinogenic and otherwise toxicexposures is an absolute prohibition of further increasing the burden of current exposures due to the authorisation 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.

Reversing The Cancer Epidemic

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 industrialised 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 myeloma, 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 caners such as paediatric, 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.

Resultingly, 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.

Safer Cooking Methods

If you must eat meat, the NCI advises that you adopt less risky cooking methods.

According to the NCI:

• Oven roasting and baking are relatively safer than frying or barbecuing as they are done at lower temperatures.
  
• Stewing, boiling or poaching are done at or below 212 F, which is also quite safe.

If possible, avoid making gravy from meat drippings.

Avoid Meat

Traditional wisdom decrees that one should always cook meat throughly to kill any food poisoning bacteria that may be present. But this recent study has indicated that cooking meat thoroughly can lead to cancer.

Eating meat is thus a case of between the devil and the deep blue sea! Not only that, meat consumption can also result in high medical bills, as was the case in the US.

According to a 1995 report in Preventive Medicine by a doctors group, Americans spends between US$28.6 bil (now worth about RM109 bil) and US$61.4 bil (now worth about RM233 bil) a year in medical costs for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, cancer and other illness attributed to meat consumption. (The report also says that eating meat is comparable to smoking tobacco and the health threat is "of a similar magnitude when you keep it up over a lifetime".)

With all these evidence, some of you might want to avoid meat completely. If so, take heart. You can still get protein from other food sources like beans and bean products. tofu, tempeh, lentils, seeds and nuts.

And here's another consolation: Study after study have confirmed that vegetarians are healthier than meat-eaters. So, why not start today?