A lot is being said about cancer and radiation in my article I'm going to point out the research. One of the best-documented studies of the relationship of exposure to radiation and cancer incidence is being conducted in Japan. The Japanese haven been carefully studying those who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and exposed to the intense radiation of the atomic bombs set off over those cities that ended World War II in 1945. Those receiving the heaviest doses of radiation are eight times more likely to contract leukemia (cancer of the blood), with cancer generally occurring ten times more frequently. Even those Japanese exposed to a lesser degree of radiation have a higher incidence of cancer of the thyroid, uterus, and bone. In the early 1980's the young survivors of the atomic explosives will reach an age when the cancer incidence is expected to increase sharply. To what extent their previous exposure to excessive radiation will effect the cancer incidence in that group is a foreboding that remains to be seen.

A good deal of research is now going on to explore the relationship of viruses and cancer. A number of animal cancers have been identified as having been produced by viruses. There is suspicion that these microorganisms also lay a role in the development of some human cancers. To date, however, no specific virus has been identified as being cancer producing in man. The recent association of a herpes-types virus with Burkett's lymphoma (cancer of the lymph glands occurring primarily in African children), and the Baylor University researchers noting a herpes-type II virus present in 83 per cent of cervical cancer patients provide new tools for investigations along this line. The relationship of hormones to cancer has become suspect. There have been spontaneous recoveries from terminal cases or cancer which were attributed to changes in the hormonal environment.

The use of hormone treatment in cancer or the breast, uterus, or prostate is already well established. At the other end of the spectrum there is some belief that vaginal cancer in young women up to age 22 may be a direct result of the administration of estrogenic hormones to their mothers during pregnancy. Though cancer as a disease cannot be inherited with the exception retinoblastoma, it appears that a predisposition to some types of cancer may be. A physician's study of recent family history may give some clues as to preventive measures that one might take. Certainly, where a parent or grandparent has been claimed by lung cancer, one should view cigarette smoking with a jaundiced eye.

Various chemicals have been identified as being carcinogenic (cancer- producing) in nature. Coal tar colors that were used as color additives at one time have been identified as among these types of chemicals. Chimney sweeps in England, for instance, have-a higher incidence of skin cancer, which is related to their contact with soot. A high incidence of cancer of the bladder among dye workers has been traced to aniline dyes. Studies have also shown arsenic to be a cancer-producing agent, particularly cancer of the skin. Chronic irritations of types have also become suspect as possible producing factors. Even omissions in the diet been demonstrated to be related to the incidence cancer of the liver in communities of South Africa and Java, where vitamin B is lacking in the diet The incidence of leukemia is 20 times as frequent U( patients suffering from Down's syndrome (mongolism) as in the normal population. An abnormality of chromosome 21 appears in patient! With a certain type of leukemia, though it is not the same as found in Down's syndrome (mongolism) The relationship between this type of cancer it lit) this genetic abnormality remains unsolved. While the research scientists are looking for tin-specific causes of cancer, the epidemiologist can perform the function of identifying those factors that are responsible for triggering certain cancers. The identification of these factors and where they on HI in our environment can play a very significant role in the prevention of this disease.

As reported by the National Advisory Cancer council, it is believed that the core of the cancer problem is in the cell: on the one hand, for the conversion of a normal cell to a malignant change, or destruction of malignant cells without harm to normal cell to a malignant one; and on the other, for the reversal of the malignant change, or destruction of malignant cells without harm to normal ones. Further, many investigators believe that the malignant transformation has its origins in the genetic-protein synthesizing system of the cell; that is, in DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the master chemical which contains genetic information coded into its structure, and RNA (ribonucleic acid) which receives instructions from DNA and oversees the synthesis of proteins, including enzymes that catalyze, or govern the speed of specific biochemical reactions.

Damage to the genetic apparatus may be the key factor in the transformation of a normal cell to a cancer cell support of this concept comes from information that some of the chemical carcinogens are known to react with nucleic acids, that radiation can alter DNA, and that viruses are themselves composed of DNA or RNA. Furthermore, certain tumor- inducing viruses have recently been found to cause an increase in the enzymes of the cell concerned with the synthesis not only of the DNA of the virus progeny but also of the DNA of the cell itself.



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