Cancer population, problems

We need scientific literate and informed people to make decisions about such things as major government projects in space exploration and medical science health problems, environmental and population problems, such as air and water pollution diseases such as cancer or tuberculosis and epidemics or the possible effects of chemical pesticides upon us and our environment. 

TABLE 13.7.1 Consensus Ranking of Environmental Problem Areas on the Basis of Population Cancer Risk... 

A substantial amount of indirect evidence supports the contention that the induction of apoptosis in tumor cells is critical to successful therapy. Cancer therapy might therefore be viewed as an attempt to induce apoptosis in a population of cells that have undergone selection for apoptotic defects. If correct, this hypothesis would suggest why cancer therapy is in many cases unsuccessful. However, recent studies indicate that this fundamental problem can be circumvented. Progress in the identification of molecules key to the cell death pathways has led to a growing understanding of how apoptosis occurs [3]. It has become clear that pathways to apoptosis are numerous and often interconnected. A solution to the clinical problem of therapeutic resistance, then, may lie in the fact that there appears to be multiple ways that a cell death program can be implemented. 

Better control of air pollutants is expected to result in fewer cases of chronic bronchitis, reduced hospitalizations for severe respiratory conditions and cardiovascular problems in adults and children, and fewer cancer cases.30 Populations residing near HWCs may benefit the most from implementation of these standards. 

There are many excellent texts on nutrition. This chapter, therefore, focuses not on nutrition per se but on how biochemistry helps us understand well established and less well established aspects of nutrition and how such knowledge fits in with other subjects discussed in this text. There is now considerable medical and lay interest in what is meant by healthy and unhealthy diets. Nutrition has become a major issue in the medical sciences and in clinical practice. It is also of concern to politicians, particularly in the link between nutrition and Western diseases such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer and neurological problems. In this chapter an attempt is made to provide a biochemical basis for discussion of nutrition and development of these conditions. To this end, biochemical explanations for nutritional advice and the recommendations from national bodies are provided. Similarly, explanations for the recommendations designed for different populations, different conditions and activities (physical and mental activity, the elderly, the young, during pregnancy and space flight) are discussed. Finally, the biochemistry of malnutrition, undemutrition and ovemutrition is discussed. 

Asbestos fibers have been linked to the high incidence of lung cancer and mesothelioma (an otherwise rare pleural cancer) in asbestos workers and are considered to pose a threat to the population at large. Some 5000 deaths per annum in the United States have been attributed to mineral fiber contacts. There is now evidence that the true asbestoses such as amosite or crocidolite have a much higher association with mesothelioma than does the chrysotile used in most commercial asbestos, but controversy continues regarding the health hazards of asbestoses. The problem is evidently a general one with dust particles and fibers of any kind that are small enough... 

In Bangladesh, 15-25% of the population is exposed to unsafe levels of arsenic in drinking water from aquifers in contact with arsenic-containing minerals. The analytical problem is to reliably and cheaply identify wells in which arsenic is above 50 parts per billion (ppb). Arsenic at this level causes vascular and skin diseases and cancer. 

Air pollution is one of the worst problems caused by industries, agriculture, power stations, aerosols and other chemicals, and coal and other fires. As a result we suffer from headaches, respiratory tract infections and ailments, asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, eye problems, and eventually a profound breakdown in health manifested by various cancers. Other environmental hazards include lead from gasoline — which causes hyperactivity and birth defects — acid rain, carbon monoxide poisoning, water pollution, and radiation. Clinical ecologists treat illnesses and disorders that they believe stem from an individual s reaction to these environmental factors. They practice what is known as environmental medicine, and they estimate that between 10 and 30% of the population suffers from some form of ecological disease (Thomas, 1997 and General References). 

---