Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019

Cancer is now the leading cause of death among middle-age people in wealthy and middle-income countries, according to a study published in The Lancet. After studying the lives of thousands of people from across 21 countries, the researchers, led by a team from Canada’s McMaster University, found that cancer now kills over twice as many people as heart disease. The study investigated causes of death among 160,000 people between 2005 and 2016. The people in the program from such countries as Sweden, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Poland and Turkey, had an average age of 50 at the start and were found 2.5 times more likely to die of cancer than cardiovascular disease. CNN’s Jacqueline Howard reported that, “…successful strategies to prevent and treat cancers, other than tobacco control, are yet to lead to large reductions in most cancers.”  Put another way, Dr. Helen Caldicott, in Nuclear Madness wrote, “If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced.”  —BBC, Reuters, and  CNN, Sept. 3, 2019