Cancer and the Way We Live
Cancer and the Way We Live It became ever more apparent, in the early 1970s, that 70 to 90 per cent of all human cancers have environmental causes. Yet the cancer establishment, in its "war on...
...The lung cancer death rate among nonsmokers has approximately doubled since 1958...
...The cancer debate often proceeds on another erroneous assumption—that lifestyle exposures to carcinogens are voluntary, while workplace and environmental exposures are essentially involuntary...
...the strong implication is that if you get cancer, it's probably your own fault...
...As Schneiderman has commented, "Cancer has been increasing in both incidence and mortality after age, sex> and race are accounted for...
...Some of the lifestyle theorists also cite diet—notably excess fat consumption—as a major risk factor in cancer...
...It is possible to allow industrial chemicals their share of the blame without dismissing the role of smoking, which is certainly the major single factor contributing to cancer...
...Yet while cancer rates are not skyrocketing, they are rising...
...The food industry spends much more for advertising to hook the public on processed convenience foods and fast-food restaurants offering menus of dubious nutritional value...
...But "personal choice" is a misleading term to apply when young teenagers are lured to an addictive and potentially lethal habit by the cigarette industry's ingenious use of $500 million worth of annual advertising...
...For nonwhite males, lung cancer is actually increasing more slowly than cancer at some other sites...
...As one cancer researcher has observed, occupational hazards and toxic waste dumps are the production side of the cancer problem, while smoking, alcohol, improper diet, and polluting automobiles are the consumption side...
...When the National Cancer Institute joined these and several other agencies in reporting that from 20 to 40 per cent of all cancers "are (or will be in the next several decades) attributable to occupational factors," industry scientists characterized these statistics as wild exaggeration and intensified their promotion of the lifestyle doctrine...
...Thus the burden of responsibility falls entirely on the individual...
...Decades of pesticide overuse have left us with little or no protection against many agricultural pests...
...But when the dominant role of environmental factors could no longer be dismissed, apologists for industry finally themselves embraced the idea, and, with the remarkable flexibility that they often display, turned it to their own advantage...
...Industrial emphasis on the lifestyle theory escalated during the Carter Administration, as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency stepped up efforts to reduce industrial carcinogens...
...But it is wrong to give the lifestyle factor too much importance...
...Albert L. Huebner (Albert L. Huebner is a member of the physics faculty of California State University at Northridge...
...Careful examination of trends in production points up an even more important error in dismissing the effect of industrial chemicals...
...There is, then, only an artificial division between fighting industrial carcinogens to control cancer and changing lifestyle to control cancer...
...Recent cancer rates reflect exposures beginning fifteen years ago...
...That judgment provides a perfect rationale for the Reagan Administration's attack on "unnecessary" regulation of carcinogens in the workplace and the environment...
...But production and use of such known carcinogens as benzene, perchlo-roethylene, and acrylonitrile have reached extremely high volume only since the 1960s...
...Diet also exerts an influence, both positive and negative...
...Yet the cancer establishment, in its "war on cancer," concentrated on treatment and a search for an elusive virus...
...Epidemiologist Marvin Schneiderman, former chief of science policy at the National Cancer Institute, estimates that less than half of the increase in cancer incidence in recent years is due to smoking...
...While these and other carcinogens with similar production histories may have had only a small effect on cancer rates thus far, their influence could become pronounced in the future...
...The lifestyle theorists virtually dismiss the influence of industrial chemicals, arguing that the feared cancer epidemic due to increased production after World War II just hasn't developed...
...The rates of cancer incidence, a more important measure of causation, show the same trend among white males and among both white and nonwhite females...
...A recent analysis of the data by epidemiologist Samuel Epstein indicates that the link is highly uncertain...
...An effective war on cancer will have to be fought on both fronts...
...But dietary fat may turn out to play a role in causing cancer...
...Nor have other petrochemicals developed since World War II done much to meet social needs...
...This traditional medical approach was congenial to industries contaminating workplaces and the environment...
...Perhaps, as eminent British epidemiologist Richard Doll and other researchers have suggested, it acts as a vehicle for fat-soluble pesticides and industrial chemicals...
...The major element in the lifestyle argument is that the continuing rise in cancer rates can be attributed to the pronounced relationship between smoking and lung cancer...
...Despite sharp reductions in stomach and cervical cancers, an increase in cancer mortality rates includes higher rates for many sites other than the lung...
...In studies linking smoking to cancer, the tendency to ignore occupational exposure to carcinogens leads to overestimating smoking risks and underestimating occupational influences...
...But the evidence just does not bear out this key argument of the lifestyle doctrine...
...Elizabeth M. Whelan, executive director of the American Council on Science and Health, is representative: "Were it not for the sudden and continuing upswing in lung cancer deaths starting in 1930, the overwhelming proportion of which are the result of cigarette smoking, the age-adjusted American cancer death rate would be declining slightly...
...Cancer that can be blamed on a virus raises no cries for greater industrial regulation and presents no threat to industrial profits...
...Of the 100,000 lung cancer deaths in the United States annually, 20 per cent are nonsmokers...
...As for industrial carcinogens, many that enter the environment, far from being unfortunate by-products in the production of goods essential to the consumer, ultimately benefit only the producing corporation...
...They took the accurate observation that personal habits play a role in causing cancer and expanded it into a full-fledged doctrine: Smoking, a high-fat diet, excessive exposure to sunlight, and excessive use of alcohol are virtually, they say, the only environmental villains...
...The following statement by Dr...
...as Barry Commoner has argued convincingly, they have often merely displaced materials that did the same job quite well, simultaneously displacing labor and aggravating chronic unemployment...
...I prefer language less alarming than epidemic, but I think that is really a question of language rather than of fact...
Vol. 45 • November 1981 • No. 11
