[ RadSafe ] What does it mean to say that something causes 16%of cancers?

Fri May 11 23:22:21 CDT 2012

Hello,

       Sound like if you get to be old  enough, Cancer will be in your body 
somewhat.
A heart attack may take a person's life first.

      Cancer sometimes has long latency times,  right????

      Some of this is food throughput also??? ---  if food preservatives, 
irritants, carcinogens, show up in
the body in quantity, perhaps due to bodily trapping mechanisms (bad  
circulation, artery/vein breaks,etc.)  
then these chemicals etc. can build up and possibly start some cancer  
startup process.
Eating too much can also cause buildup of carcinogens, etc.  Exercise  
probably helps the body clear
itself of unneeded chemicals, carcinogens etc.

      USGS had a news item also a while back of  some natural/environmental 
virus or micro-organism
causing brain cancers...

     Thanks for posting these email guys...

     Regards,    Joseph R. (Joe)  Preisig

PS   Maury and Dog, you need to take it easy only these larger  full Moon 
events --- the next one in 6 
        months could be our last,  according to the Mayans????  The email I 
posted on radsafe a while
        ago about some alien spaceship  approaching Earth was apparently 
based on some Alien
        Encounter show, which was some  fact and some high drama.  Funny, 
there were SETI people
        in the program and other real  physicists.????  One way to get 
funding, I guess.

In a message dated 5/11/2012 4:21:51 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
mohan.doss at fccc.edu writes:

I agree  with you that cancers are symptoms of an underlying condition.

A few  points to note:
1.  About 45% of the population is likely to be  diagnosed with cancer in 
their lifetime (ACS estimate, e.g.).  You  may think the remaining 55% of 
the population do not have cancer.   However, when autopsies are 
performed, you are likely to find cancer cells  in almost all of them (if 
they are well into their old age).
2. When  the immune system is suppressed, e.g. in AIDS patients or organ 
transplant  patients, the cancer risk goes up by a factor of about 2.4.  
Thus,  the 55% of population that you thought do not have cancer will 
have  cancer, if we suppress their immune system.  We can probably  
extrapolate this backwards and say that if you improved the immune  
system, you would decrease the cancer, and maybe eliminate the cancer  
altogether.  One method of boosting the immune system is regular  
moderate vigorous exercise.  This is known to reduce cancer incidence  
and mortality for many types of cancers.  Another method of boosting  the 
immune system is through low dose radiation.  Low dose radiation  is 
known to reduce cancers in controlled studies in animal models.   For 
humans, though reduction in cancers has been observed from low dose  
radiation in many retrospective studies, the potential confounding  
factors make it difficult to convince all scientists (or the general  
public) who are scared of the low dose radiation.  We need controlled  
clinical trials to determine conclusively the effectiveness of low dose  
radiation in preventing cancers.

Thus the underlying condition that  causes (most) clinical cancers is 
deficiency in the immune system (in my  opinion, based on the above 
points).  So long as we don't recognize  this factor, and deal with it, 
we are not likely to succeed in conquering  cancer.  Thus our current 
radiation safety system based on the LNT  model (which completely ignores 
the effect of low dose radiation on the  immune system) is a major 
failure of our current scientific society.   If what I have said here is 
shown to be true in the future, people are  going to refer to our present 
days as the Dark Ages with regard to  radiation, and wonder how we did 
not recognize the importance of the  immune system in preventing cancer 
for so long (~40 years).

With  best regards,

Mohan Doss, Ph.D., MCCPM
Medical Physicist, Diagnostic  Imaging,
Associate Professor,
Fox Chase Cancer Center, R427
333  Cottman Avenue,
Philadelphia, PA 19111-2497.
Phone: 215  214-1707
Fax:   215 728-4755
E-mail:   Mohan.Doss at fccc.edu

On 5/11/2012 2:28 PM, Brennan, Mike (DOH)  wrote:
> More and more I am coming to think "cancer" is like "fever", in  that it
> describes a symptom, rather than a disease.  I think we  are moving past
> being limited to treating the symptom to understanding  the various
> things that can cause it.
>
> A great irony is  that the population has been taught to fear radiation
> as the cause of  cancer, when it is actually an absolutely necessary to
> in  understanding and treating cancers.
>
> -----Original  Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
>  [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Clayton J
>  Bradt
> Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 11:10 AM
> To:  radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
> Cc: Cary.renquist at ezag.com
>  Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] What does it mean to say that something  causes
> 16%of cancers?
>
>
> Cary Renquist  wrote:
>
>         "Cancer is more like  poverty (caused by a number of events
>         throughout one's life, some inherited and some not) rather than
>   malaria
>        (caused by a  very specific infection delivered via mosquito)."
>
> Except that  sometimes cancer is like malaria:
>
> Certain strains of human  papilloma virus cause cervical cancer.
> Specific
> virus genes  have been identified which are found to be spliced into the
> tumor  cells DNA causing them to proliferate while evading immune defense
>  mechanisms.
>
> Other cancers have also been found to be caused by  viruses.
>
> Clayton J. Bradt
> Principal  Radiophysicist
> NYS Dept. of Health
> Biggs Laboratory, Room  D486A
> Empire State Plaza
> Albany, NY 12201-0509
>
>  518-474-1993
>

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