DR: If we can’t explain this major epidemic of cancer on the basis of smoking, increased longevity, genetics, or a fatty diet, what are the reasons for it ?
SE: They fall into three general categories. The first relates to consumer products. By consumer products, I mean things you can buy in a store which include food, cosmetics and toiletries, and household products. In all of these areas, the consumer, once given the information on which of these pose cancer risks, could boycott them and shop for safer products.
Animal and dairy products are highly contaminated with a wide range of pesticides and other industrial, chemical carcinogens. Take meat for instance. Apart from the pesticides and industrial carcinogens, you have the sex hormones. Cattle in feedlots, 100 days to slaughter, are implanted with sex hormones, from which high residues are left in the meat that you eat. These are very important risk factors for reproductive cancers-testicular cancers in men, breast cancers in women- and leukemia in children.
Children love hot dogs. Hot dogs are dyed pink and red with nitrite and the nitrite reacts with certain amines-chemicals naturally present in food-to produce highly potent carcinogens known as nitrosamines. We have the chemical data showing that nitrosamines are found in nitrite-dyed hot dogs. We also have what’s called epidemiological studies showing that children who eat nitrite in their dyed hot dogs-which are the standard hot dog-have up to about a three- to four-fold increased incidence of brain cancer and about a six- to seven-fold increased incidence of leukemia.
Apart from that, most of the milk in this country is contaminated. It comes from cows that have been injected with a genetically engineered growth hormone to increase their production of milk and this hormone increases levels of a natural growth factor, known as IGF1. The milk becomes supercharged by this growth factor, which in high levels has been clearly associated with breast, prostate, and colon cancer.
Aside from food, cosmetics and toiletries are a witches’ brew of undisclosed carcinogens. When you look at the label on the back of a bottle of shampoo, you see about 20 chemicals listed. This means nothing to anybody because there’s no indication as to which of these chemicals are carcinogens.
These chemicals fall into three categories. There are ingredients that are carcinogenic themselves like talcum powder. For example, women, particularly pre-menopausal women that dust their genital areas with talcum powder after showering and bathing, have up to a three- to four-fold increased incidence in ovarian cancer. There are also other ingredients that themselves are not carcinogenic, but which break down to release carcinogens like formaldehyde. Lastly, you have ingredients, which interact with each other to form carcinogens. Are woman informed? Not at all.
One other area of consumer products, besides foods, cosmetics, and toiletries, is household products. For instance, there’s a deodorizer a lot of people use in their toilets, bathrooms, and elsewhere called Para. Para is composed of dichlorobenzene, which is a highly volatile, highly potent carcinogen. But there’s no warning whatsoever about this.
Pesticides in the home, lawn, or garden are very risky indeed. If you use pesticides in and around the home, your dog will have a five-fold increased risk of getting a not uncommon cancer in dogs called canine lymphoma. More importantly, there are major excesses of childhood cancers where pesticides are used in and around the home, lawn, or garden, and where pet collars containing carcinogenic chemicals are used.
So these are the three areas of consumer products for which the consumer, given a choice, could reduce his or her risk, but they are denied this information by the cancer establishment-a fundamental violation of the democratic right to know. So that’s the first category in which the public could easily reduce their risk of cancer.
The second is medical drugs given to you by your doctor. There is the requirement for informed consent. When your doctor gives you a drug, you are entitled to be given the basic information as to the dangers of these drugs. But in general, you’re not. The drug companies do not provide doctors this information or the information is trivialized. They’re not provided this information by the cancer establishment.
Ritalin, for instance, is a drug widely used for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in children. We use about 10 times more per capita in the U.S. than any other country in the world. If a child misbehaves in school, the parent is told that the child has ADD and the doctor prescribes Ritalin, which is a highly dangerous carcinogenic drug, which also has been shown to induce very aggressive liver cancers in rodents.
Then you’ve got Evista or Raloxifene, which is the trade name. It is widely prescribed by Ely Lily for osteoporosis-millions of women the world over get it. There’s clear-cut data, which Ely Lily has admitted in its own internal confidential information, that Evista induces ovarian cancer.
When estrogen-based drugs are used for estrogen replacement therapy, particularly the estrogen drug alone without the testosterone, you get risks of uterine cancer in 1 in every 100 women after 10 years. This is a very high risk. It’s much greater than the 1 in 250 annual incidence of lung cancer in heavy smokers.
Let’s move on to the third category-domestic, chemical terrorism. The petrochemicals and other industries have contaminated our environment-air, water, workplaces, and foodstuffs-with a wide range of petrochemical and other carcinogens. They have done this knowing full well that these chemicals are carcinogenic. This relates not only to the petrochemical industries, but also to the mining and other industries, particularly in medical radiation. Why are we being subjected to these risks? It is for the profit of corporations that could relatively easily, by what’s called “toxic use reduction,” phase out the use of chemical carcinogens and substitute them with much safer chemicals.
I really haven’t dealt sufficiently with labor, but occupational exposures to carcinogens are the single most important cause of cancer in the country not only for men, but also for women. We know that probably one million women are exposed in the workplace to chemicals that induce breast cancer, that also, as I mentioned earlier, lead to cancers in children.
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