There are lots of things I don't know

Several people have commented to me lately that a lot more people seem to have cancer or are dying from cancer, and they’ve even asked me if I know why that is.

Well, no, I don’t exactly know. I read a review recently in The Globe and Mail by Andrew Nikiforuk, about a book entitled The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Dr. Devra Davis. She’s the director of The Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and the former director of The Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the National Academy of Sciences, and her book as has caused quite a bit of controversy, seeing as it’s indicated that several researchers “switched sides” and worked for companies that produced tobacco (for example) well after it was known that smoking causes cancer. She also points out that regular people are supposed to make lifestyle changes to prevent cancer (eat better, live better) while big business goes about spewing known cancer-causing pollutants. This is a simplification, of course. I think that what’s important is that we’re all contributing to our cancer-infested world, both by lousy lifestyle choices and by breathing the air and driving our cars and smoking and wanting everything to be easier and to look nicer. I’m not saying that the companies who, say, ignored the fact that benzene is a cancer-causing chemical, should be pardoned.

I haven’t read the book, but certainly I know that a lot of the chemicals I’ve worked with over the last 20 years cause cancer. I also know that relatively few (I only know of two, and one was a heavy smoker) of my colleagues have or have had cancer, but this is just my sampling of the 200 – 300 people I know of in academic chemistry departments. This could be ignorance on my part, and I make no claim that chemistry professors get less cancer than anyone else.

The Freakonomics colum at The New York Times did a Q&A with Devra Davis in November. I’m including one of the comments/questions here because I think it’s indicative of how our language gets altered to indicate that we’ve contracted a sickness, rather than the fact that we’ve been subjected to injury:

I started researching cancer in 1980. By 1985, I predicted the current cancer epidemic. By 1990, I predicted the diabetes epidemic that is going to be far worse.

The one thing everyone gets wrong is in thinking cancer and diabetes are “diseases”. They are not. They are injuries.

Understanding that these and other conditions commonly thought to be “diseases” is crucial to how these injuries are treated.

When you consider them rightly as injuries - even the hereditary forms of cancer, you can treat the conditions very differently in terms of looking for causes. It becomes much easier to correctly determine a cause for chemically induced cancer when you think this way. You can also identify who is responsible for the injury in many cases. That allows for legal action and that is why these conditions are not correctly labelled as injuries.

Diabetes is always a self inflicted injury and sugar abuse is always the cause despite what the sugar-funded science community says.

To have a doctor finally able to throw off the muzzle as Devra Davis has takes immense courage and no small amount of luck to be able to continue in her work without being amputated from her profession. It has happened to others who have dared to speak out against powerful industrial lobbies that fuel cancer, diabetes and other degenerative illnesses.

— Posted by John Newell

Another commenter pointed out that if you replace “oil companies” for “pharmaceutical companies” in some of the passages of the book, you have the same arguments against global warming.

Legal wrangling has made it very difficult to argue that a complicated mixture (like processed tobacco) causes cancer, or that interactions with that complicated mixture are the sole cause of cancer in a particular individual. It is known which components of the mixture cause cancer. It is also known that if you don’t smoke, you’ll likely reduce your chances of being injured by cancer (if I may stray into the vernacular of Mr. Newell – and I assume Doctor, but that’s not indicated – above), just like if you don’t inhale asbestos you won’t become injured by the very particular cancer that is related to that activity. Most of the people I know who currently have cancer don’t smoke and have never worked with asbestos, they’re just regular people living lives, ingesting food and drink, taking care of their families. Normal stuff, and yet they also have become injured by cancer.

I’ve said to some people who ask me that perhaps there’s more cancer because we are living longer, and in so doing we “have time” to suffer cellular mutations that lead to tumors and other cancers. That idea probably holds a little bit of water, except that the two people I know of right now who have cancer are fifty and sixty years of age, and many people who are young have various cancers invade their bodies.

I’m not quoting statistics here, since the stats are available all over the place and if you’re thirsty for numbers you can go look them up. Cancer researchers, according to Dr. Davis, focus their efforts on curing the cancers rather than on preventing them; I’m sure that’s not exclusively the case, and I don’t think she presents it quite that way. She also says that companies get information about how their products cause cancer, and then spend a lot of money to suppress that information. This isn’t news, but it’s disconcerting. I’ve spoken to former employees of pharmaceutical companies who say that they were pushed into signing off on things that they knew would solve one problem but would cause a whole host of others.

My own anti-cancer regime follows along the line of not eating too many prepared foods (although I love chips and my salt intake and the chemical intake of whatever is put on the chips du jour is sometimes through the roof), reducing the use of products with parabens in them (many cosmetics. Alkyl derivatives of parabens are known cancer-causing agents. I still use mascara. Vanity has no limit.). We don’t have shampoos or body washes with lauryl or laureth sulfate salts in them, because while these are the things that provide lots of soapy bubbles, they are also very harsh chemicals that likely cause your dandruff, if you have it. They’re harsh chemicals anyway, shouldn’t be used on skin….good for dish soap (if you wear gloves to wash the dishes. Yeah, I don't either.). I used to know someone who used Sunlight dish soap on her hair, and claimed it did “just as good a job” as regular shampoo. Yes, of course it did, because it’s pretty much the same as cheap shampoo, just different scents. I'm also a bit concerned about the whole Nalgene problem (bisphenyl-A) and I'm getting rid of the plastic bottles and turning to Sigg bottles instead to carry our water. Not that it'll really make a huge difference, but I was never a fan of Nalgene to begin with.

I also don't breathe very often, I wash my clothes in the snow (avoiding the yellow stuff, since Katie also uses the backyard as her toilet) and only eat every three days. Less chemical intake that way.

Really. No.

If you’re interested, Health Canada has a list of prohibited and restricted cosmetic ingredients, which of course you will find listed on the back of all the little bottles in your cupboard. It may or may not make a difference to your lifestyle, but the next time you ask me why so many people have cancer nowadays, the answer might be in the cream you slather on your face, the stuff you wash your dishes with, the gasoline you put into your car (or the exhaust that comes out of it), the air you breathe or the new carpet you had installed yesterday. It’s a bunch of things, it’s a whole host of “new” products and their ingredients that make your life easier, and maybe it’s your disposition to cancer.

As you can see, I haven’t much of a clue as to why lots of people have cancer.