Research confrms that more than one third of 7 million cancer deaths are caused by 9 avoidable risk factors. Policy implementation and public education are likely to offer more than high technology and drugs in strategies to prevent cancer.
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and a network of collaborators estimated mortality for 12 types of cancer linked to nine risk factors in seven World Bank regions for the year 2001. They found that of the seven million deaths worldwide that year from cancer, 35 percent were attributable to the nine well-known behavioral and environmental risk factors.
The researchers also looked at how the risks, and the cancers they cause, were distributed over the regions of the world. This is the first assessment of the role of health risks in cancer deaths globally and regionally. The findings appear in the November 19, 2005 issue of the journal The Lancet.
The researchers analyzed data from the Comparative Risk Assessment project and World Health Organization databases to determine the level of risk factors in different world regions, and separately for men and women; they also considered how hazardous each risk factor may be.
The analysis covered all high-income countries together, and separated low-income and middle-income countries into geographical regions: East Asia and Pacific, South Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The nine risk factors were overweight and obesity, low fruit and vegetable intake, physical inactivity, smoking, alcohol use, unsafe sex, urban air pollution, indoor smoke from household use of coal and contaminated injections in healthcare settings.
They found that more than one in every three of the seven million deaths from cancer worldwide were caused by these nine potentially modifiable risk factors (2.43 million), with alcohol and smoking playing large roles in all income levels and regions. Worldwide, the nine risk factors caused 1.6 million cancer deaths among men and 830,000 among women. Smoking alone is estimated to have caused 21 percent of deaths from cancer worldwide.
In high-income countries, these nine risks caused 760,000 cancer deaths; smoking, alcohol, and overweight and obesity were the most important causes of cancer in these nations.
In low- and middle-income regions the nine risks caused 1.67 million cancer deaths; and smoking, alcohol consumption and low fruit and vegetable intake were the leading risk factors for these deaths. Sexual transmission of human papillomavirus is the leading risk factor for cervical cancer in women in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where access to cervical screening is also limited.
Among low- and middle-income regions, Europe and Central Asia had the highest proportion of death from cancer from the nine risk factors studied; 39 percent of 825,000 cancer deaths in the low- and middle-income countries of Europe and Central Asia were caused by these risks. The effects were even larger among men; one half of cancer deaths among men in the low- and middle-income countries of Europe and Central Asia were caused by these nine risks.
Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study and assistant professor of international health at HSPH, commented, "These results clearly show that many globally important types of cancer are preventable by changes in lifestyle behaviors and environmental interventions." He continued, "To win the war against cancer, we must focus not just on advances in bio-medical technologies, but also on technologies and policies that change the behaviors and environments that cause those cancers."
The study, "Causes of cancer in the world: comparative risk assessment of nine behavioral and environmental risk factors," The Lancet, Vol. 366, November 19, 2005, was funded by the National Institute on Aging and by the Disease Control Priorities Project.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced that MBI Distributing, Inc. (MBI), also known as Molecular Biologics, an OTC drug manufacturer of eye drops and other products, has signed a consent decree that requires it to cease manufacturing and distributing drugs until it corrects manufacturing deficiencies and other violations at its Benicia, California facility.
Scan this post at least briefly to see if you have any of the cited products. If you do, follow the recommendations provided below.
MBI’s product line includes eye drops sold under the brand names Oxydrops, Bright Eyes, Bright Eyes II, Clarity Vision for Life, Visitein, and Can-C, as well as several OTC pain relieving drugs. These products are sold by retailers nationwide in the USA.
This action is a result of FDA having determined that the firm has been manufacturing eye drops in a manner that does not conform to FDA’s current good manufacturing practice requirements. The firm has not corrected violations noted during inspections, despite Agency efforts to have the company achieve compliance. Among other things, at FDA’s most recent inspection, the firm lacked manufacturing controls to ensure that its eye drops were sterile.
FDA has also determined that two of the firm’s eye drop brands, Visitein and Clarity Vision for Life, are unapproved drugs. In addition, three of the firm’s OTC pain relieving drugs, Biogesic, Bio-Ice, and Bio-Heat, do not provide adequate warnings for their safe use.
Under the terms of the consent decree, MBI is enjoined from producing and distributing drugs until the firm corrects the manufacturing violations for its eye drops and its violations of the marketing approval and labeling requirements of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
The firm’s poor manufacturing conditions have called into question the safety of its eye drops,and the lack of necessary warnings could undermine the ability of a consumer to safely use the firm’s pain relieving drugs listed above. FDA therefore recommends that consumers, health care providers, and caregivers dispose of the Oxydrops, Bright Eyes, Bright Eyes II, Clarity Vision for Life, Visitein, and Can-C brands of eye drops and the Biogesic, Bio-Ice, and Bio-Heat pain relieving drugs and report any adverse events related to these products to MedWatch, the FDA’s voluntary reporting program at 1-800-FDA-1088; by FAX at 1-800-FDA-0178; by mail to MedWatch, Food and Drug Administration, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD, 20857-9787; or online at www.fda.gov/medwatch/report.htm.
There is mounting evidence that general anesthesia (GA) is not the benign procedure that most anesthetists would have us believe. Several studies have shown that GA seriously suppresses the immune system and that people who have had GA are more likely to develop Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease later in life.
British and Belgian doctors now report that hypnotherapy may be a viable alternative to GA. It is about time. As a qualified hypnotherapist I have been very disappointed to see the reluctance within the medical profession generally to adopt practices that have been successfully used by some members for decades.
According to reports in New Scientist, August 6, 2005, pp. 34-37, anesthetists in Liege Hospital routinely use a procedure they call "hypnosedation". This involves combining hypnosis with local anesthesia and a small dose of painkiller. They have found hypnosedation to be an effective alternative to GA and so far, have used it in over 4800 major and minor surgical operations.
They have found hypnosedation is also associated with much shorter recovery times. The Liege team compared the recovery times for 20 patients undergoing thyroid surgery under hypnosedation with the same number of patients undergoing the same procedure using GA. Whereas the hypnosedation patients returned to work an average of 10 days after their surgery, it took the GA patients 36 days to fully recover.
Neuroscientists who have studied the effects of hypnosedation on the brain estimate that the technique would be effective in as many as 80% of surgical patients. I would estimate that it should be at least that number.
Many years ago, during professional hypnosis training, I saw an excellent film produced by Upjohn, in which a cesarian section was performed with hypnoanesthesia as the sole pain relief. The surgeon was also the hypnotherapist and he recounted the mutitude of benefits associated with the approach. I won’t list them all here; my point is simply that the many very real and substantial benefits offered by hypnoanesthesia over drug-based general anesthesia have been well known and thoroughly demonstrated for quite some time.
My wife vividly recalls being in a cardiothoracic operating room at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital assisting in an insertion of pacemaker procedure performed totally under hypnosis for pain relief. The important benefit here was that the patient was considered to be too ill for an anesthetic and would otherwise not have been offered the pacemaker. Hypnosis made this possible and it was in the late 1970s.
Yes, hypnotherapy is most definitely an effective alternative to general anesthesia. Unfortunately, I think you will still find very strong resistance to its use from both the wider medical profession and the drug companies.
Many people, possibly even most people by far, actually hold to several misunderstanding about health history. Indeed, modern medicine likes to promote these myths because they are good for marketing. They make modern medicine seem much more powerful, in the sense of being effective, than it actually is.
It isn’t just the average Joe or Jane who are fooled. I distinctly recall many undergraduate and postgraduate students of the health professions who were misled. Perhaps they even wanted to believe the myths were true.
The classic errors involve reduced incidence of many once-common diseases, markedly lower infant mortality and the control of many infectious diseases. We should add the generally increased lifespan enjoyed by much of the western world.
The common error is to attribute these outcomes to the development of modern medicine. Specifically to the development of assorted pharmaceutical drugs, and classically to antibiotics, and to the development and use of vaccines.
The truth is very different indeed. Consider just the following for example.
- When doctors learned to wash their hands with soap and water before examining pregnant women (around 1850), disease rates among newborn babies fell dramatically.
- The Black Death (bubonic plague), which killed nearly half the people of western Europe during the Middle Ages, was eradicated not with drugs or vaccines but by meticulously getting rid of rats, which carried infected fleas.
- In modern times, good nutrition, regular bathing, and improved sewage disposal have proven more beneficial than vaccination in warding off measles, rubella, and diphtheria in children.
The fact is that health has been dramatically improved on a vast scale, not by drugs or by vaccines. The real credit belongs to sound public health measures. It is personal and public hygiene practices along with improved nutrition and safe water supplies that should be credited.
The December 2005 edition of The Health Gazette Ezine or Newsletter will be published today, December 1st. Subscribers will receive a handy calorie calculator as a bonus with this month’s edition, just the thing to have heading into the festive season!
Note that we have decided not to publish a January edition. The next edition will therefore be on February 1st, 2006.
In this month’s edition Dr Jenny Tylee again offers two main articles.
The first article, titled Bed-Wetting in Children, talks about this often embarrasing and unmentionable subject. Several guidelines are presented for helping people deal with this situation in a quite positive way. This article continues the series relating to children.
The second article, titled Heart Disease Tragedy, starts a new series dealing with heart disease. Did you know that one person, in the United States alone, dies from cardiovascular disease every 34 seconds. This will prove to be a very helpful series and I encourage everyone to read it carefully.
Remember that only subscribers to the ezine version of The Health Gazette receive these articles. Subscription management is available via the Healthy-Vitamin-Choice, Herb-Health-Guide and HealthProductsSite links below. Subscription is free and you may easily unsubscribe at any time.