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We need to answer such questions, given the growing importance of cancer for modern societies today.  We have to move beyond finding and treating cancer to coming up with ways to prevent it from happening altogether.  One way to jump-start the process of understanding and acting to address the avoidable causes of cancer is surprisingly simple.  Around the world today, medical centers like the one where I work are launching massive efforts to rid buildings and grounds of groups of proven and suspected toxic agents.  We are doing this not because we know it will reduce the incidence of cancer. 

Like Hackensack Medical University, Beth Israel Hospital, University of Texas Nursing School at Houston, Kaiser Permanente and others, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is moving our fifty-odd hospitals and clinics to use less toxic materials because we strongly believe, as professionals who have devoted our lives to fighting this disease, that doing so will reduce the chances that anyone’s brother will develop cancer.

We would never take all the drugs in our medicine cabinets at once.  Yet, our regulatory system today treats suspect cancer hazards, whether CT scans, aspartame, or a new adhesive, as trade secrets that can be examined like drugs one at a time, ignoring the simple fact that modern life is the ultimate mixture.  Concerned about the growing use of diagnostic radiation, when less dangerous forms such as MRI and ultrasound can often be used instead, the American College of Radiology recently advised that radiation should be used more sparingly in young children and the rest of us. 

Many of us in America today are living longer and better, in large part because we have benefited from the tremendous advances of modern society.   But, we are also seeing the growth in chronic diseases, like cancer and neurological problems, that can arise from various good and bad things that happen to us over our lifetime.  The question of the combined effects of radiation and small doses of chemicals on our health over the long term is generally not being asked by those in positions to set standards for such materials. 

A further complication in resolving how to advance our health today relates to the fact that information on the potential risks of many modern devices is often protected as confidential business information.   In fact, what are protected as today’s trade secrets may turn out to have cost my father his life.

To break the logjam of single-minded regulation, we need to create an open democratic and truly independent scientific forum--a Truth and Reconciliation Commission where producers of modern products, whether jet engines or computer chips, open their files to unflinching examination of health patterns from past exposures that can provide clues about how to prevent future harm.   If we want the world of the future to be healthier than that of the past, we can start with ending the protection of toxic trade secrets and taking more realistic looks at the combined impacts of modern agents on our lives.

--Dr. Devra Davis, September 2007

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