The Politics of Cancer

Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., author of "The Politics of Cancer," wrote the following:

"Cancer is caused mainly by exposure to chemical or physical agents in the environment...

"Just as germs cause infections, so do certain chemical and physical agents -- carcinogens -- cause cancer"...

"Athough environmental carcinogens are the predominate cause of human cancer, the evidence of cancer in any population of humans or animals exposed to a carcinogen may be influenced by a variety of factors"...

"There is no known method for measuring or predicting a 'safe' level of exposure to any carcinogen below which cancer will not result in any individual or population group.

"That is, there is no basis for the threshold hypothesis which claims that exposure to relatively low levels of carcinogens is safe and therefore justifiable"...

"This book has been shaped by the author's long-standing scientific involvement in toxicology and carcinogenesis."

Former U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) wrote:

"No word in the English language is more chilling than cancer. It's hard to imagine anyone not wanting 'war' waged against this disease."

"Yet those closely associated with the National Cancer Program and our regulatory efforts to control cancer-causing chemicals have found it increasingly difficult to agree on how that war should be fought."

"The chemical causation of cancer was hardly mentioned when Congress was debating the National Cancer Attack Act (decades ago)."

"It has been generally accepted that the majority of all cancer is caused by chemicals and environmental factors -- what we touch, breathe, eat, drink, work with and otherwise absorb.

"Some of the factors occur naturally in the environment, most do not. THEY ARE PUT THERE BY MAN.

"Those same factors also cause other damage. For example, recent research relating to birth defects suggests that many cancer-causing chemicals also cause heritable mutations."