Gardening Against Cancer

One of my favorite sources for stories about cancer research developments is Ralph W. Moss at the Moss Reports. A longtime science writer and founding advisor to the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine (now the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine), Moss has been independently evaluating the claims of various conventional and alternative cancer therapies for more than 30 years. He's based in Lemont, Pa., near State College.


A member of the chrysanthemum family, feverfew has been found to be effective in destroying myeloid leukemia at the level of stem cells, as well as inhibiting the growth of other tumor types. (Photo by J.S. Peterson @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database.)

The latest edition of Moss's CancerDecisions newsletter features an interesting story titled "Cultivating the Anticancer Garden", in which Moss talks about his efforts to grow plants found to be effective in fighting cancer. They include berries, horseradish and feverfew. I know there are lots of folks in the Hometown area who plant summer vegetable gardens -- perhaps this year they'd like to include some of the plants Moss describes.

In Whose Backyard?

I received a comment from someone calling himself "Hamilton" in regard to last month's post on the recent protest in Coaldale against the dumping of fly ash and river dredge in old mines. I'd like to bring it to readers' attention:

Although I agree that the materials being disposed are horrible and dangerous to human, animal and plant health, what else are we supposed to do with it. The material exists and it must be put somewhere. It cannot be vapourized since that would put it in the air. If its not Hometown's backyard, who's backyard is better? All people would rather it go somewhere else. Its easy to say how something is not right without offering a viable solution that takes into account things like economics, the environment and the political pressure to please everyone.

Hamilton agrees the materials in question are "horrible," yet he's willing to have them dumped them into deep, unlined pits that drain directly into our groundwater -- and dumped in a sloppy manner that allows the dust from the waste to coat surrounding communities and people's lungs.

He asks, "If its [sic] not Hometown's backyard, who's [sic] backyard is better?"

How about the backyards of those who profit from its creation?

In the meantime, we as a society need to devote our brainpower to devising solutions to our pollution problems that don't require anyone to be dumped on and poisoned. Hamilton would probably think that's impractical. But I fail to see what's practical about current practices, which are destroying humanity's genetic legacy through the careless and short-sighted handling of mutagenic chemicals.

'Cancer Villages' Not Limited to China

Agence France Presse, an international news agency headquartered in Paris, distributed a report yesterday on China's so-called "cancer villages" -- communities where residents disproportionately suffer from deadly tumors due to industrial pollution.

Reports of "cancer villages" have become increasingly frequent across China, a brutal legacy of the environmental and health woes that have accompanied the nation's past 25 years of economic growth.

Of course, those of us from the "cancer village" of Hometown know all too well that environmental health disasters like this aren't found only in China.