|
By Peter
Montague
Lymphoma is cancer of the white blood cells, and half the
people who get it die within 5 years.
Those 5 years are likely to be a hellish combination of fear,
worry, pain, and sickness caused by standard medical therapies
-- radiation treatment, surgery (including bone marrow transplants
or stem cell transplants) and/or chemotherapy.
Side effects from therapies can include pain, nausea, vomiting,
persistent mouth sores, and secondary infections like colds
and flu after cancer therapies damage the immune system. Worse,
lymphoma can go into remission, then flare up without warning,
requiring all the therapies to be repeated.
This is a disease that gives its
victims a terrifying roller coaster ride through the valley
of death.
There are two main kinds of lymphoma -- Hodgkin's disease
and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or NHL.
NHL accounts for about 88% of all lymphoma. Some 287,000
people in the U.S. are living with NHL at any given time.
About 55,000 new cases of NHL will be diagnosed this year
in the U.S. and even more will be diagnosed next year because
lymphoma is the second-fastest-growing kind of cancer. Between
1975 and 1998, the incidence (occurrence) of lymphoma increased
at about 2.2% per year, though the rate of increase has slowed
during the past decade.[1]
No one knows what causes lymphoma, but we know that all cancers
are caused by multiple gene mutations (requiring probably
5 to 10 separate injuries) and/or by damage to the parts of
the immune system that normally destroy cancer cells.
In the past two decades medical researchers have come to
suspect that various combinations
of factors give rise to lymphoma -- a weakened
immune system, exposure to certain kinds of chemicals, and
perhaps exposure to one or more viruses. Studies seem to implicate
one particular class of chemicals -- chlorophenols.
Chlorophenols are chlorine-containing chemicals that include
dioxins, PCBs, DDT, and the so-called "phenoxy herbicides,"
including the weed killers 2,4,5-T, and 2,4-D. This last one
is the most popular crabgrass and dandelion killer in America,
sold as Weed-B-Gone, Weedone, Miracle, Demise, Lawn-Keep,
Raid Weed Killer, Plantgard, Hormotox, and Ded-Weed, among
other trademarked names.
Now the Lymphoma Foundation of America has pulled together
and summarized in a 49-page booklet all the available studies
of the relationship between lymphoma and pesticides.[2] It
is an impressive piece of work by Susan Osburn, who directed
the project, and a scientific review panel of 12 physicians
and lymphoma researchers. The booklet summarizes 99 studies
of humans and one study of pet dogs in relation to pesticide
exposures.
In anything as complicated as pesticide
exposures or even cigarette smoke, science can never prove
beyond every possible doubt that X causes Y.
There is always room for a researcher employed by Philip
Morris or the Crop Protection Association (the pesticide trade
group) to say, "Couldn't this disease be partly caused
by some factor that you haven't taken into consideration?
Maybe it's partly caused by some factor you haven't even thought
of." And the honest answer must always be, "Yes,
there's a slim chance that it could be."
Where chemicals and humans and ecosystems are concerned,
the complexity is enormous, the tools
of science are crude, and what is not known is
always much larger than what is known.
It's time we admitted to ourselves that science will never
provide definitive answers to some of the most important questions
that we face. Still, as individuals and, as a human society,
we DO need answers. We can read the hundred studies of lymphomas
and pesticides -- 75% of which tell us there's danger lurking
here -- and then we must decide:
-
- A. Do
we personally want to reduce our exposure to pesticides?;
and
B. Do we want to start asking,
where did pesticide corporations get the right to spread
their dangerous products into the soil, water, and air
that we all depend upon?
The Lymphoma Foundation's booklet lists 12 ways that most
of us are routinely exposed to pesticides in our daily lives
even if we use no pesticides in our homes: routine spraying
of apartments, condos, offices (and the associated lawns),
public buildings and public spaces (parks, green spaces alongside
highways, power line rights of way), and in motels, hotels,
and restaurants.
Pesticides can also be measured in most foods, much of the
water we drink, in the air, and even in rain water. We might
well ask, where did these corporations get permission to violate
our well-established human right to personal security? And
why do we allow these toxic trespasses into our bodies to
occur without our informed consent?[4]
In other words, we might begin to view pesticide exposures
not as a scientific question, but mainly as a question of
morals and ethics, a question of human rights. If we view
the problem in this light, then we can review the scientific
evidence without expecting it to provide "the answer"
to our questions, because science cannot answer questions
of morals and ethics and human rights.
Science can provide food for thought -- sometimes very compelling
food for thought -- but we must provide the thought. Whether
to use pesticides -- and whether we want to allow others to
expose us and our children to pesticides -- are ethical and
political questions. The answers lie within each of us and
not with some panel of scientific experts.
What does science give us for guidance?
This is where the Lymphoma Foundation's booklet is so useful:
1) The available evidence strongly indicates that people
exposed to pesticides in their work are more
likely than non-exposed or less-exposed people
to suffer an excess of lymphoma.
2) There are a few studies that tell us that parents who
use pesticides are more likely (than non-users) to raise
children with an excess of lymphoma. In other words, we
need to consider the possibility that, by using pesticides,
we are increasing not just our
own but also our children's chances of getting
this awful disease. (Just as pet dogs pick up pesticides
from lawns and track them into homes, so do children.)
3) We learn from the Lymphoma Foundation's booklet that
scientists employed by pesticide corporations are more likely
than independent researchers to find no connection between
pesticides and lymphoma. In other words, consciously or
not, a scientist's source of funding
often influences the outcome of the research.
Worse, there is evidence that some scientists employed
by chemical corporations conduct studies which could not
possibly reveal a relationship between pesticides and lymphoma
because they lack the "statistical power" to do
so; some of those scientists then falsely claim that their
studies provide positive evidence that pesticides are not
associated with lymphoma. Some corporations evidently require
scientists to check their ethical
principles at the door when they report for work.
4) We learn from the Lymphoma Foundation's study that not
only chlorophenol pesticides, but also atrazine and glyphosate
are statistically linked to lymphoma. Atrazine is used on
96% of the U.S. corn crop each year, is found in most drinking
water supplies in the midwest during the growing season,
and has been strongly linked to birth defects in the children
of midwestern farmers.
Glyphosate is sold as Roundup, Rodeo, Touchdown, Rattler,
Sting, and Pondmaster, among other trademarked names. Roundup
is the first reason Monsanto Corporation got into the business
of genetically engineering food crops.
Monsanto now sells "Roundup ready" seeds for corn,
soybeans, and cotton; wheat will be next. These are seeds
engineered to withstand a thorough dousing with Roundup, which
kills weeds without killing the Roundup-ready crops. To make
"Roundup ready" seeds legal, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) had to triple the amount of glyphosate
residues that it allows on crops. For
years, Roundup has been Monsanto's most profitable product,
and genetic engineering has allowed it to sell -- and to spread
into soil and water -- gobs more of it.
As we weigh whether we want to take action against those
who expose us and our children to pesticides, we are not limited
to thinking about lymphoma.
Pesticide exposures seem to give rise to Parkinson's -- a
horrible degenerative disease of the nervous system. Pesticide
exposures diminish children's memory, physical stamina, coordination,
and ability to carry out simple tasks like drawing a stick
figure of a human being.
Pesticide exposures seem to make
children more aggressive.
Pesticide exposures seem to contribute to the epidemic of
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that has swept
through U.S. children in recent years. And, as we saw above,
pesticides are strongly linked to birth defects.
If we decide to take up the cudgel against pesticide exposures,
we should consider carefully the basis of our strategy. For
30 years the environmental movement has fought science with
science, dueling to a draw. Pesticide use has steadily climbed,
despite all the scientific evidence of harm.
No, science will not solve this
problem for us.
Isn't it time to consider a human rights approach, an ethical
challenge to the poisoners? And time to find new allies --
perhaps the chemical workers exposed to these poisons? They
need good jobs, as we all do, but do they want to leave a
skull and crossbones as their legacy? Do they want their children
sick? Of course they don't. They
need our help, we need theirs.
The old science-based strategy has failed us. Perhaps a new,
precautionary path can get us where we need to go. The precautionary
principle says, "When an activity raises threats of harm
to human health or the environment, precautionary measures
should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships
are not fully established scientifically." It is a broad
ethical principle. It can guide us all -- workers and environmentalists
-- in a righteous fight against corporate greed.
Rachel's
Environment & Health News, June 07, 2001
Rachel's
Environment & Health News is a publication of the Environmental
Research Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403. Fax
(410) 263-8944; E-mail: erf@rachel.org.
| 