Posted on 05/09/2010 5:50:48 PM PDT by neverdem
The President’s Cancer Panel is the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream, so it is astonishing to learn that it is poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies.
The cancer panel is releasing a landmark 200-page report on Thursday, warning that our lackadaisical approach to regulation may have far-reaching consequences for our health.
I’ve read an advance copy of the report, and it’s an extraordinary document. It calls on America to rethink the way we confront cancer, including much more rigorous regulation of chemicals.
Traditionally, we reduce cancer risks through regular doctor visits, self-examinations and screenings such as mammograms. The President’s Cancer Panel suggests other eye-opening steps as well, such as giving preference to organic food, checking radon levels in the home and microwaving food in glass containers rather than plastic.
In particular, the report warns about exposures to chemicals during pregnancy, when risk of damage seems to be greatest. Noting that 300 contaminants have been detected in umbilical cord blood of newborn babies, the study warns that: “to a disturbing extent, babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’ ”
It’s striking that this report emerges not from the fringe but from the mission control of mainstream scientific and medical thinking, the President’s Cancer Panel. Established in 1971, this is a group of three distinguished experts who review America’s cancer program and report directly to the president.
One of the seats is now vacant, but the panel members who joined in this report are Dr. LaSalle Leffall Jr., an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, and Dr. Margaret Kripke, an immunologist at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Both were originally appointed to the panel by former President George W. Bush...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Carcinogen identification and risk analysis is scientifically and mathematically flawed to the point of uselessness.
Spend a few hours reading about the concepts of threshold, lower bounds, multiplications factors and absolute risk. Until the EPA stops torturing the numbers, the politicians have no business regulating.
On top of that, the greenies would happily let a million real people die from food and water borne disease to prevent one mathematically predicted death. Just think of how many lives have been saved since the ban on DDT.
Remember, these are the same people that found that not smoking in a smoker’s house can be more deadly that actually smoking, I think they may have actually felt shame or at least embarrassment and walked that one back.
More horse-pucky aimed at alarming the public so the Obamatrons can save us yet again.
They should have checked with Agricultural people. It is a simple fact that the overall yields are less with organic foods. That is why they cost more. You cannot feed our current population purely on organic foods. Modern chemistry, mechanization and genetics have allowed us to increase yields to meet population demands. We would be back producing at 1900 levels without the progress we have made in these areas. Can’t go back.
“Carcinogen identification and risk analysis is scientifically and mathematically flawed to the point of uselessness.”
Yet, millions of dollars are paid out by industry for toxic torts.
I think it is a cost of doing business (in other countries we call it bribes): lawyers on both sides & the courts. They just pay up & nobody really pays any attention to the science.
Yes, it does..Amazing , isn’t it...especially as every minute we are being warned every second that WE ARE GOING TO DIE...
This must be the “report” which Dennis Prager referred to last week.....basically saying we should be raising our children in “bubbles”.....even the AMA or some other similar organization called this report over the top!
You are all going to die.
Having said that, let’s not allow these a-holes make our time ALIVE a living death.
Up yours, comrade Soetoro!
Is there one thing that they already don't?
This is an emotional witch hunt.
My original degree is in nutrition, as in the chemistry of foods and feed. “Organic” does not mean a damn thing in scientific circles. It’s a feel-good marketing ruse. Molecules do not have souls, some more virtuous than others.
American food is many times safer than what our great-grandparents ate before refrigeration became widespread. Food preservation was less than perfect, and eating was full of risk. Fresh foods and meats fit to eat were not easily come by all year. A 100 years ago dairy cows lived in cow hell-towers in cities fixed in stanchions where they lived and made milk until they died, because fresh milk could not be transported far.
Spoilage and breakdown by-products were commonly ingested. Prior to federal regulation, even canned goods could not be trusted, since dyes were added to make food appear “fresh”.
“Chemicals” are not demonic molecules. “Chemicals” include all the molecules known. Not even all pesticides are dangerous to humans—to make that point, one scientist consumed DDT straight, undiluted, but that did not suit the campaign to demonize DDT, which led to its ban and the deaths of tens of millions of black, brown and yellow people in places far away from the people who hysterically wanted DDT banned. They continue to die, for lack of cheap DDT.
Clean water has not always been available. The ability to drink freely whatever comes out of your tap is a great and wonderful thing—no microbial disease threat, no sulfurous odor. In many cases, it’s cleaner than the water people buy in little plastic bottles.
If one is to be hysterical about exposure to “chemicals”, then one should give up the use of makeup and hair dye, the use of shampoo, the use of cleaning solutions, and use only the simplest of soaps, forget the use of air fresheners, and bring nothing into one’s home that might outgas volatiles over time—including foam cushions, anything painted or varnished, and give up any kind of fried food, since that tends to create free radicals.
The sanest route is to exercise some good sense. Pregnant women probably should not handle toxic waste—but they should be just as careful not to develop fevers which might lead to fetal deformities.
Mainly due to reduced infant mortality, actually; but I agree in principle. IOW, DDT is a good thing.
My favorite is their trick of using zero exposure as a reference point to zero risk. Straight line from zero/zero to an effect level, cut that by a factor of 1000 or more for a safety cushion and you just got yourself a cancer causing chemical in very small doses...
Nobody really looks to see what kind of data supports a 1 in a million risk. They look even less closely at exposure type, duration, etc., that is needed to support a risk level.
Ignorance is grounds for panic, and regulation I guess...
Thanks for the link.
“Traditionally, we reduce cancer risks through regular doctor visits, self-examinations and screenings such as mammograms”
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What a crock!
All that does is increase your chance of paying a high price for a “medical” proceedure that is guaranteed to shorten your life!
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If 10% of that BS is true I would have been dead more than 50 years ago!
“So if Chemicals are so bad why is our life expectancy increasing every year?”
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It isn’t!
The upper life expectancy level hasen’t changed for 2000 years or more. The young risk takers changes in behavior will nudge overall statistics up or down from time to time, but the life expectancy of a person that shuns medical intervention has remained at 89 years for millenia.
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Thanks for the link.
Next week: the results of the Presidential Commission on the Elimination of All Sharp Corners.
It sounds as if the Administration is trying to advance their tyranny by hoping to take advantage of a widespread chemo-phobia.
“Everything we eat is chemicals.
Most occur in nature, some don’t.”
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Depends on what you mean by “eat.”
Prescription drugs are all un-natural and deadly, and putting them down your gullet is a form of eating.
“Some man-made chemicals are exact replicas of natural compounds.”
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A statement that omits 99% of the relevant facts.
Our bodies use just about every known naturally occuring chemical, but not in their pure state. We are designed to consume only once-living substances, that contain literally millions of different chemical compounds, but arranged in complex structures that are readily useable by our bodies.
Our bodies cannot synthesize nucleic acids from raw isolated compounds; we make our nucleic acid from the existing nucleotides in our food. If we ingest things that are not once living, we must destroy some of our own cells to deal with those substances. In most cases those destroyed cells are in our kidneys, where the non-life garbage must go to be dumped.
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This is just another method of the state to control the food supply and increase the public’s dependency on the government. It is the USDA who says what constitutes an organic food product and everyone knows that enemies of the state don’t grow safe organic food.
Look at Senate bill 510 the “Food Safety” bill. I’m sure everyone here knows just by the name it has nothing to do with food safety and more to do with controlling your lives.
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