The statistics, according to the Canadian Cancer Society, are mind blowing:
In Canada, 1 in 2.3 men and 1 in 2.6 women will have cancer in their lifetime.
In Canada, about 14 million kilograms of carcinogens are released into the environment every year.
Moreover, over the next 30 years, the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control estimates:
Almost 6 million Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer.
About 3 million will die from cancer.
Direct cancer healthcare costs will be more than $176 billion.
Over $248 billion in tax revenues will be lost because of disability due to cancer.
There is a cancer in society that causes the cancer in our bodies! The biggest con game in Canadian history has been perpetrated. It is the most egrecious of evils. It is literally killing us. How many heavy metals, pesticides and other toxic chemicals are in our blood? Why are Canadians being treated like rats in a cage? Why are Canadians being treated like guinea pigs?
The pharmaceutical, food, pharmacy, fast food, beauty, plastic and garden industries have each contrived by looking the other way. Elected politicians, Health Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, and the Canadian Cancer Society have failed in their duty to protect the people. Each has acted in a horrific manner that allows dangerous chemicals into our consumer products. For industry stakeholders it is just the easiest way to make a buck. For Health Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, and the Canadian Cancer Society it is a malaise that must be extinguished. Prevention is the key.
We must reflect on:
Elected politians and Health Canada have not protected citizens from the carcinogens in the product supply. Food, cosmetics, garden, and cleaning products contain many cancerous ingredients. Why have they not been banned from the supply chain. Hundreds have already banned in Europe. Why have we not been protected? Canadians are loosing faith in the accountability and transparency of Health Canada as well as the entire health system. Has the cancer industry hijacked the agenda of our health system?
The Canadian Medical Association role as protector has been upsurped. Where is their voice? Why have we not heard from doctors, the Canadian Nurses Association, the Canadian Pharmacists Association and the Canadian Healthcare Association? How many Canadians will have to die before these medical professionals act?
The Canadian Cancer Society must revisit the allocation of their focus. In 2005, the CSC had revenues of $150,718,000. Expenditures included only $8,712,000 on prevention but $42,311,000 on research and $50,304,000 on support activities that include fundraising and management/general. Resources are spent on promoting ineffective drugs for terminal disease. Prevention was only 5.8% of total revenues. Cancer prevention programs be placed on an equal budgetary footing with all its other programs combined.
and industry stakeholders:
The pharmaceutical industry are driven by profits. The pipelines of cancer drugs are welcome. We need these companies and the research. But we should not have been placed in this cancer predicament in the first place. Other issues remain: First, the overprescription of medication by doctors is troublesome. Second, secondhand drugs (like second hand smoke) through our water supply must be addressed. Third, the carcinogenic risks of prescription drugs are not emphasized by healthcare professionals.
The food industry is killing us. Pesticides and toxins in our food supply should be eliminated. For example, retailers like Loblaws, Provigo, Metro, IGA etc must act! Manufacturers including McCain's, Kellogg, Nestlé and Kraft must act! The lobby group, the Food and Consumer Product Manufacturers of Canada must change their ways. Fortunately, the Canadian government has banned rBGH milk.
The beef, chicken and pork industry inject animals with growth hormones and antibiotics. The European Economic Community has banned hormone-raised meat because of questions of the dangers of meat that has been treated with synthetic sex hormones.
Already, more than 60% of the foods on our grocery store shelves contains genetically modified ingredients from infant formula to corn chips. None of these foods have been safety tested on humans, and none are labeled.
The pharmacy industry is killing us. Carcinogen chemicals and toxins should be eliminated in our cleaning products. For example, Pharmaprix, Uniprix, Jean Coutu, and Shoppers Drug Mart must act. The Canadian Pharmacists Association must revisit the product ingredients it peddals to the public.
The fast food industry is killing us. Obesity is an epidemic. But other issues remain. The fast food industry must make their product healthier. For example, acrylamide must be eliminated from french fries, patato chips and cereals etc.
The beauty industry is killing us. Carcinogens chemicals in our cosmetics and toileteries must be eliminated. The lobby group, the Cosmetics Toiletry and Fragrance Association must change their ways. In Europe, regulators have told the industry it can’t use some 400 chemicals - including suspected carcinogens. And they’re about to ban more. The U.S. and Canada ban only a handful. On the positive side, L'Oreal has discontinued use of questionable toxins. Why can not others follow?
The plastic industry must ban harmfull chemical in our plastics.
The escalating incidence of cancer cannot be explained away by smoking, but is due to avoidable exposures to a multiplicity of environmental carcinogens. While lung cancer rates have declined steadily, rates for a wide range of cancers unrelated to smoking have increased sharply. Nor can the escalating incidence of cancer can be explained away by the scientific proof argument, as industry lobbyist claim. The multitude of toxins and carcinogens, and the multitude of permutations and combinations of the interaction of these input, makes the latter argument virtually impossible to proove. The cumulative effect is real. The interaction effect is real. The multitude of carcinogen inputs in our consumer products, that invade our home environment and thus accumulate in our bodies, have increased cancer rates.
Elected politicians, Health Canada, the medical profession and the Canadian Cancer Society must refute the justifications by industry stakeholders. Health Canada, the medical profession, and the CSC must end its corrupting dependency on special interest soft-money financial contributions.
Real changes must occur:
Consumers have the basic right-to-know, through explicit labeling, of known chemicals in consumer products.
Patients have the basic right-to-be-informed by their health care professionals of the carcinogenic risks of prescription drugs.
Provincial and local governments must utilize public databases to inform local citizens about carcinogenic hazards posed by chemical industries in their communities.
Do the right thing:
Eliminate the use of toxic chemicals.
Make industry accountable for chemicals it produces.
Regulate chemicals in consumer products through the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Focus on reducing pollution in the Great Lakes basin.
The Canadian government must do the right thing: Eliminate the use of toxic chemicals and carcinogens. Cancer odds like 1 of 2 means either you or you're wife! It means one of your two children!
Be well.
Paul Malouf
PS: I am just a private citizen and belong to no organization. I have no conflict of interest.
Note: http://www.cbc.ca/consu...
Product Labelling And Banning Carcinogens
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I'm pretty sure that health class was put into elementary schools now. I'd suggest to move it to grade 8-9 where it might be taken seriously and let the kids know what's going on. Once they know, it's their right to choose. I've always chosen a balance, but I wont be able to if everything's banned.
Educate, don't regulate.
E.g. There are 200,000 chemicals in use today, but only less than 15,000 have been thoroughly researched for health effects. In most cases, govenments strapped for cash, are accepting industry research results. So does the public.
We happen to be "healthfood faddists", with my wife the expert. We grow much of our own foods, but still have to buy some. She's looking up the labels on every can she buys, because she noted that even long used, brand name products
will sometimes introduce certain chemicals.
Most people believe that when something is sold in the stores, it has been researched and proven harmless. We checked this out many times. For example, the sweetener Aspertame is a deadly poison, yet it is used in millions of diet pop cans every day and given to already sick diabetes, when the harmless, natural, Stevia is available all over.
Go to google and type in "Health effects of Aspertame", just for one. Also of "microwave ovens" that commpletely destroy all food values and even change the molecular structure of water.
Then there are the GM seeds and foods, completely unresearched, because "government research would infringe on the intellectual property rights of the companies". Look for "Arpad Pusztai on GM". He was a U of Edinborough scientist who dicovered some very harmful effects of GM potatoes. For thanks he was fired, vilified by the industry and even their paid off scientific organizations.
The fact that comes out of this article is the 50-60 years ago 2% of the population came down with cancers, now it is up to 50%. And it is not because we live 5-10 years longer. Just look at the statistics in children and young women.
But then we now live in the era of "rules based, competitive market economy", no politician, or government dares to question.
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.
Regardless, we still have a way better chance at educating our youth to make wise decisions than having the government do it for them. Creating a government body for research answerable only to parliament could definitely fix the problem of liability too, but if your numbers ae correct then there's little chance that they'd be able to check them all anyway.
Probably the best case scenario would be to simply give out a label on foods which have had all their chemicals tested and approved. If people want to take a chance then let them.
Study find pollutants in Canadian blood samples
Updated Wed. Nov. 9 2005 7:44 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Canadians are walking around with a cocktail of harmful toxic chemicals in their bodies, says a new report from an environmental watchdog group.
The report, entitled Toxic Nation: A Report on Pollution in Canadians finds that, no matter where Canadians live, how old they are or what they do for a living, they are contaminated with measurable levels of chemicals that can cause cancer, disrupt hormones, affect reproduction, cause respiratory problems or impair neurological development.
The study was commissioned by Environmental Defence. It examined blood and urine samples taken from 11 people from across the country to examine the range of pollutants found in Canadians' bodies.
Researchers looked for the presence of 88 chemicals, including heavy metals, PCBs, PBDEs (which are used as flame retardants), organochlorine pesticides, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
The tests found 60 of the 88 chemicals in the 11 volunteers, including 18 heavy metals, five PBDEs, 14 PCBs, one perfluorinated chemical, 10 organochlorine pesticides, five organophosphate insecticide metabolites and seven VOCs.
On average, 44 chemicals were detected in each volunteer.
"The message to Canadians is: it doesn't matter where you live, how old you are, it doesn't matter how clean living you are or if you eat organic food, or if you get a lot of exercise," Environmental Defence director Rick Smith tells CTV News.
"We are all polluted. We all carry inside of us hundreds of different pollutants and these things are accumulating inside our bodies every day."
Although the study examined only 11 volunteers, Environmental Defence says the 11 included men and women from a variety of geographic locations, ethnicities, ages and occupations and were selected to represent the diversity of the Canadian population.
"The fact we have so many chemicals in our volunteers, we would expect similar results in all Canadians," Smith says.
The volunteer who had the highest concentrations of chemicals in his blood was David Masty, chief of the Whapmagoostui First Nation, a Cree community in northern Quebec. Some 51 chemicals were found in him, as well as some of the highest levels of heavy metals.
The report speculates that residents in the North tend to eat more marine life than other Canadians, putting them at greater exposure to mercury and persistent organic pollutants. As well, many chemicals tend to accumulate in the North due to air and water currents and climatic conditions.
Environmental Defence says similar studies on chemical exposure have been conducted in the United States and Europe. But until now, information on pollution in Canadians has been limited. This study is therefore the first in Canada to test for a broad range of chemicals in average Canadians throughout the country.
Casting light on the issue
"We are frankly trying to ring an alarm bell with this report," Smith says, "and point out how bad the situation has become with pollution."
The Toxic Nation report says that in the last 50 years, the global production of man-made chemicals has increased substantially, with more than 80,000 new chemicals created.
"Information on the health and environmental effects of chemicals has not kept pace with their development and use," the report says. "As a result, many of the chemicals that people are exposed to every day have never been assessed for their impact on human health."
The watchdog says the majority of chemicals on the market have never been assessed by Canadian government officials for their potential effects on human health. They say that our government's approach to toxic chemical regulation has proven ineffective.
"I cannot underline enough what a miserable failure the pollution policies of the federal government are," says Smith. "The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) late last year released a report showing Canada ranks at the bottom of the barrel among industrialized nations for environmental performance and pollution prevention."
The one area of bright light the study did find is data that suggest that if certain chemicals are banned, younger generations benefit.
They point to the example of PCBs, which were banned in Canada in the 1970s. While the compounds were detected in all volunteers, including those born in the early 1980s, there were fewer of them in younger Canadians.
The study found between 12 and 14 PCBs in the samples from volunteers aged 60 and older, and only five PCBs in the samples from volunteers aged 25 and under.
"A decreased presence of PCBs in the younger volunteers in this study suggests that when governments take action to eliminate the use of toxic chemicals, people's toxic load will decrease, even if it does take several decades," the report says.
The watchdog would like the government to legislate the phase-out of PBDEs, perfluorinated chemicals and their precursors (PFOS), and phthalates (chemicals that make plastics soft.)
And they say that average Canadians can reduce their personal exposure to chemicals by buying organic foods, not using pesticides and using non-toxic cleaning products.
I saw the CBC show and felt it could have been a good full hour rather than a 1/2 hour program. It's too bad that it took Wendy getting breast cancer to actually investigate what is going on. It's to the point where I don't even want to donate to half of these big long standing charities anymore. There are no cures, there is no incentive to teach prevention because as the Dr. on her show stated there is no money in prevention.
It does seem easier to pick on the little guy by forcing us individual to say quit smoking yet no one is forcing corporatations to quit. NUTS. NUTS NUTS. Sometimes I think that the world can't get any crazier and then it does.
There was a report out in the last few days about being able to grow our own meat in a countertop meatmaker too. I made a comment to the G+M that the day these meatmakers hit the WalMart and Costco shelves, I'm eating monkshood and I'll see you on the other side. The world is becoming a place I may be glad to leave sooner than later.
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"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche