Cancer and animals

Cancer relates to questions of animal ethics in two major ways:

1) Animal experimentation

2) Human nutrition and lifestyle.


Let’s start with animal experimentation. This broad field branches out into two main areas in association with cancer:

a) animal testing of carcinogenicity (cancer-inducing quality) of substances

b) cancer research on animals to find cures for humans.

Animal testing of carcinogenicity

Carcinogenicity studies on animals are used for all kinds of compounds, in particular synthetic substances, pesticides, food additives and all sorts of other chemicals. They, especially pesticides tests, have been largely instigated by the environmentalist movement, which has created, since Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring onwards, a public hysteria about a phantasmic connection between human cancer and man-made chemical substances in the environment.

The crude reality is that animal tests are a totally inadequate means of finding out whether a substance causes cancer in human subjects not just because of the important obstacle represented by species difference but also, more specifically, because of the extremely high dosages to which lab animals are subjected over a short period of time, as opposed to the low levels (mostly residues) to which humans are exposed over a long time.

Half of all the substances administered to animals at these near-toxic levels are carcinogenic in the test subjects, purely because of the local damage they cause in virtue of their massive amounts. Many of these chemicals are well-known for not causing cancer in humans at all.

What increases the risk of cancer in humans is something completely different, and we’ll get to that when we later discuss nutrition and lifestyle.

Of all the substances in our environment, one of the most seriously and lethally carcinogenic is asbestos, and here animal experiments have continuously misled researchers into believing that asbestos was safe simply because lab animals subjected to it did not develop the deadly form of cancer that we have known for decades to plague asbestos workers: mesothelioma. So, thanks to animal research, legislative measures to ban asbestos were delayed in the West by several decades, while workers and their families kept getting ill with asbestosis and tumors which could not be replicated in animals and therefore, so researchers thought, animal experiments had not “validated” the asbestos-mesothelioma causal connection.

Cancer research on animals

Cancer research on animals consists in taking healthy animals, mostly rodents, and trying to make them ill with cancer by various artificial means, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, in order to test on them possible treatments designed for humans. When researchers “luckily” succeed in making a healthy animal develop cancer, the tumor is not the same as the human one that it is supposed to model.

First of all, the aetiology of the disease is completely different. The causal mechanisms that induce cancer in humans are practically impossible to reproduce in a lab using animals. The most frequent causes of human cancer by far, as we shall see in more detail when we examine lifestyle, are smoking habits, bad nutrition choices, alcohol-drinking, lack of exercise, and all of these causal factors accumulate over a long period of time, often a lifetime, gradually and slowly. Lab animals, on the other hand, have to be made sick quickly, and they do not naturally indulge in all those cancer-risky lifestyle habits of which so many humans are so fond. So the means to induce cancer in them are necessarily artificial, different from the human causes, and designed to produce a rapid response.

Some common human cancers, like prostate, rectal and colon cancers, are rare in rats and mice, the cancer researchers’ favourite (most used) species. So experimenters have to labour particularly hard to inflict these tumours on rodents.

Regardless of the causes, moreover, cancer is not the same disease in different species of animals, human included. Cancer is not, strictly speaking, a disease, but an umbrella encompassing several ailments, according to the distribution of the various cancer sites. But animal tumours are not the same entities as human ones, even when they affect the same sites or are given, for reasons of convenience, the same name.

For instance, human bowel cancer affects a different part of the intestines (the colon or large bowel) from rats’ bowel cancer (the small bowel). And the mechanism of colon cancer in the two species is dissimilar: humans die because the cancer metastasizes, namely spreads to other parts of the body, whereas rats die because the colon is obstructed.

So, basically cancer researchers are studying something completely different when they use animals. The latter are not models of human cancer at all.

As a consequence, it should come as no surprise to learn that many of the various cancer treatments making the headlines, which have been tested on animals and found to be effective in them, turn out to be, when later administered to human subjects, ineffective or even harmful.

Human nutrition and lifestyle

We do not yet know how to cure cancer. Despite some improvement in therapy, this often fatal disease remains elusive to understand and refractory to cure. However, we know an awful lot about the risk factors that increase the probability of contracting cancer. Of all the areas of cancer research, the greatest progress has been made in cancer prevention. To stop cancer from developing in the first place remains the best option that we have.

And this, from many viewpoints (except perhaps if you consider laziness, addiction and force of habit), is extremely good news. Because all the major causes, or risk factors, of cancer are entirely under an individual’s control. They all pertain to a person’s lifestyle.

First comes tobacco, by far the major contributing factor to cancer incidence rates.

Then comes diet. We know very well what a cancer-preventing nutrition (and preventing other major diseases too) should be. Medical authorities and health experts advice is simple: avoid completely certain kinds of meat (namely, cured or processed meats like bacon and sausages), eat as little red meat as possible, reduce all types of meat and animal fats, replace them with proteins and fats of vegetable origin, and eat more fresh fruits, vegetables and grains.

And here we come to the other connection between cancer and animal ethics.

It looks like both our health and our morals point in the same direction. There is no real conflict of interests: what is good for us is also good for other animals, who could be spared the life-long torture of imprisonment in factory farms and the short but agonizing experience of the slaughterhouse.

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Carcinogenicity Studies on Animals

Thalidomide tragedy, side effects, history

What is Thalidomide

Thalidomide was one of the greatest cases in history of a drug disaster tragedy being caused by animal research.

First of all, Thalidomide had been tested on animals extensively prior to its marketing.

Even now, despite the clinical evidence to the contrary, British health authorities like the Medical Research Council maintain that the vast bulk of evidence from laboratory and animal tests is against thalidomide having any genetic effects.

The tragedy caused by Thalidomide in the 1960s was due to its teratogenic effects, ie effects on the foetus. Teratological effects of drugs were little known then. They were brought to public attention because of the Thalidomide tragedy on humans, therefore only after it. How on earth could animal researchers have thought of those effects before the disaster?

Even after the Thalidomide caused birth deformities in humans, researchers tried to reproduce the same effect in dozens of species of lab animals without success.

Take a look:

"As a consequence to the thalidomide tragedy there has been a marked upsurge in the number of animals used in testing of new drugs. Also drugs are now specifically tested on pregnant animals to supposedly safeguard against possible teratogenic effects on the human foetus. Vivisector's claim that if such tests were carried out prior to thalidomide's release, birth deformities in humans would have been discovered. This is of course sheer nonsense. 'In pregnant animals, differences in the physiological structure, function and biochemistry of the placenta aggravate the usual differences in metabolism, excretion, distribution and absorption that exist between species and make reliable predictions impossible.' (15) (Dr Robert Sharpe, former senior research chemist.)

"In fact when the link between human foetal abnormalities and thalidomide was established (through clinical observation), the world-wide explosion of animal testing, using a large range of species, proved very difficult to duplicate the abnormalities. (16) Writing in his book Drugs as Teratogens, J.L. Schardein observes: 'In approximately 10 strains of rats, 15 strains of mice, eleven breeds of rabbit, two breeds of dogs, three strains of hamsters, eight species of primates and in other such varied species as cats, armadillos, guinea pigs, swine and ferrets in which thalidomide has been tested teratogenic effects have been induced only occasionally.' (17) Eventually after administrating high doses of thalidomide to certain species of rabbit (New Zealand White) and primates could similar abnormalities be found. However researchers pointed out that malformations, like cancer, could occur when practically any substance, including sugar and salt, be given in excessive doses. (16)" [my emphasis]

Thalidomide's history in the USA

Some apologists of animal experimentation say that the reason why Thalidomide was never approved by the FDA (Food and Drugs Administration, the US agency responsible for drugs licensing) in the US is that the FDA reviewer had previous experience in animal research and had refused to clear the drug for sale until better documentation of its effects were provided.

The reality is that the FDA reviewer in question, Frances Oldham Kelsey, had doubts about Thalidomide's safety because of side effects shown in human clinical trials.

The FDA website is very clear on this. In Frances Oldham Kelsey: FDA Medical Reviewer Leaves Her Mark on History it says:

"In December of 1960, three months after Richardson-Merrell submitted its application, the British Medical Journal published a letter from a physician, Leslie Florence, who had prescribed thalidomide to his patients. Florence reported seeing cases of peripheral neuritis, a painful tingling of the arms and feet, in patients who had taken the drug over a long period of time." [emphases added]

And here is another biographical note on Frances Kelsey:

"Dr. Kelsey continued to resist, pointing out in February 1961 that a study in England had indicated the new product caused 'a serious side effect on the nervous systems of patients who took the drug repeatedly,' so she asked for assurances that such side effects wouldn't occur. By May she had developed a theory that if thalidomide caused paralysis of the peripheral nerves, the drug probably would cause greater damage to the developing embryo." [emphasis added]

Better control

The answer is: better control of the effects of medicines after they have been marketed.

"We need to encourage doctors and drug companies to watch for, report and take note of side effects in order to protect patients properly. If proper drug surveillance techniques had been available in the 1960s the thalidomide problem would have been picked up much earlier. We still don't have proper post marketing trials in place." (from the source above)

Testing on humans is going to happen anyway, because any new drug which is marketed is an unknown, due to the unreliability of previous animal testing.

Let me repeat: you cannot make an unreliable method reliable by counterexamples.

Even if you happen to encounter cases where animal tests results have not been refuted by their application to humans, this does not alter the unreliable status of the method.

There are cases where there is a correspondence between human and non-human animals. But how do we know that? Because we transferred the results of animal testing on humans. That is, for all practical purposes, we tested them on humans.

It is an unavoidable fact.

The greatest scientific event of the millennium

Never before have I had such a clear feeling that animal experimentation has its days counted, and that supporters of vivisection have started seeing the writing on the wall.

As important as penicillin, double helix and computers

The most prestigious scientific body in the world, which advises the US government on scientific issues, the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has released in June 2007 a report entitled “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy”.

The report was commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), another US federal body, responsible for thousands of safety (toxicity) tests on animals each year.

It is nothing short of revolutionary, and whoever knows the facts about animal experiments will realize its immense importance. Especially for people who know how much the American scientific establishment has historically been the most staunch supporter of animal research, this new report will be a blow.

The report’s authors convey very well its revolutionary meaning and the feeling that we have reached a turning point in biomedical research, in the very way they start it:

“Change often involves a pivotal event that builds on previous history and opens the door to a new era. Pivotal events in science include the discovery of penicillin, the elucidation of the DNA double helix, and the development of computers. All were marked by inauspicious beginnings followed by unheralded advances over a period of years but ultimately resulted in a pharmacopoeia of life-saving drugs, a map of the human genome, and a personal computer on almost every desk in today’s workplace.

“Toxicity testing is approaching such a scientific pivot point. It is poised to take advantage of the revolutions in biology and biotechnology.” [emphases added]

The report says:

“Advances in toxicogenomics, bioinformatics, systems biology, epigenetics, and computational toxicology could transform toxicity testing from a system based on whole-animal testing to one founded primarily on in vitro methods that evaluate changes in biologic processes using cells, cell lines, or cellular components, preferably of human origin.” [emphasis added]

Non-animal methods outperform animal tests

The superiority of non-animal methods of testing substances for toxicity to humans, compared to animal methods, is acknowledged by the report:

“The envisioned change is expected to generate more robust data on the potential risks to humans posed by exposure to environmental agents and to expand capabilities to test chemicals more efficiently. A stronger scientific foundation offers the prospect of improved risk-based regulatory decisions and possibly greater public confidence in and acceptance of the decisions.” [emphases added]

The report admits that the current animal method of testing has not been evaluated for its usefulness but rather used by inertia:

”The current system is the product of an approach that has addressed advances in science by incrementally expanding test protocols or by adding new tests without evaluating the testing system in light of overall risk-assessment and risk-management needs. That approach has led to a system that is somewhat cumbersome with respect to the cost of testing, the use of laboratory animals, and the time needed to generate and review data.” [emphases added]

There is acceptance in the report of the well-known problem that the extremely high levels of doses to which lab animals are subjected are a further element of unreliability and lack of predictive value of animal tests, given the huge discrepancy with the actual, much lower, doses of chemicals to which humans are exposed:

“Moreover, the vision will lead to a marked reduction in animal use and focus on doses that are more relevant to those experienced by human populations.” [emphasis added]

The report’s vision is that eventually non-animal strategies will completely replace animal-based toxicity tests and revolutionize safety testing.

The report recommends advanced non-animal methods using in vitro human cell lines in combination with computational methods and epidemiological studies. These new methods should also be employed in other areas of biomedical research currently using animals, and there is reason to hope that the new report may influence that development too.

The reference in the report to “paradigm shift” as the description for the new vision outlined there echoes Brute Science: Dilemmas of Animal Experimentation (Philosophical Issues in Science), a revolutionary book written by a philosopher and a biologist. The book uses science historian Thomas Kuhn’s concept of “paradigm” to explain the “sticky” nature of scientific enquiry, the prevailing scientific dogmatism which often makes change in normal scientific activity between “revolutions” so difficult. That echo seems to indicate that this report has taken on board criticisms made by the anti animal experimentation camp, to which the book generally belongs.

The future has already started

This milestone report comes at a crucial moment in the history of toxicity testing. The European Union has last year approved a new Regulation called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) which will require the largest mass animal testing programme in Europe’s history. It has just started and will see the testing of 30,000 chemicals on an estimated 10 to 50 millions animals.

This programme is closely watched by the US and the rest of the world as a pioneering enterprise. So it is the right moment for Europe to introduce the new methods and the new vision that this report so clearly recommends. Otherwise REACH could be an incalculable waste of money, time, resources without any benefit but possible harm to humans, and a totally pointless, immense source of animal suffering. Non-animal tests would provide more reliable data, produced more quickly and at an enormously lower cost than animal tests.

The “Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: a Vision and a Strategy” report, which has the purpose of guiding future research policy, has already had a momentous application: a Memorandum of Agreement was signed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program and the National Institutes of Health on 14th February 2008 aiming to end animal testing of chemicals and drugs.

Another cause for much happiness is that the hugely influential anti-visection Italian-Swiss author, the great Hans Ruesch, who wrote Naked Empress or, the Great Medical Fraud and many other books on animal experimentation, was able to see what appears like the beginning of the end for animal experimentation before he died on 27th August 2007, aged 94. He started me on this path when I was 17 years old and read his books.

This post is also a tribute to his memory. He can rightly be called the founder of the modern scientifically-based anti-vivisection movement. We will continue the fight that he began.

Carcinogens, food poisoning and meat

Cancer-causing substances

Meat contains a number of carcinogens. These include the nitrites used in meat processing, and residues of the many antibiotics routinely used in modern factory farming. Hardly surprising, then, that vegetarians have a 30% lower cancer rate than meat eaters, although carcinogens are not the only reason of this great difference in cancer incidence between the two groups.

Plant foods contain several substances which are believed to protect against cancer. Indoles, lignans, isoflavones, protease inhibitors and others have all been shown to be potent anti-carcinogens and may play an important role in the lower cancer incidence among vegetarians.

In contrast, cooked meat and fish contains carcinogens known as heterocyclic amines (HAs). These are present at high levels in the urine of people consuming cooked meats and have been shown to be metabolically active in humans. Evidence suggests meat-derived HAs may play a role in breast, colon and pancreatic cancer (Snyderwine 1994).

Food Poisoning

Studies have demonstrated that 53% of bovine carcasses and 83% of pig carcasses were contaminated with E coli. 18% of raw chicken from Britain and 64% of imported poultry contained salmonella. In a 1996 study, more than half of UK-bred chickens purchased from retail outlets contained campylobacter.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are more than 20,000 E. coli infections from meat every year in the United States.

Meat and milk account for most of the food poisoning in Britain, some of which lethal. Bacteria, which become resistant to the antibiotics that are continually pumped into farm animals, are passed on from livestock to human consumers, along with foecal contamination. Many cows in Britain's herds are infected with mastitis, the catarrh-like discharge which is not curbed by antibiotics. British milk is among Europe's worst: a diluted solution of hormones, antibiotics and pus.

Mesothelioma and asbestos

What is mesothelioma?

Mesothelioma is a form of malignant cancer affecting the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most internal organs of the body. The mesothelium has different names in different parts of body.

The disease’s most common forms are peritoneal mesothelioma and pleural mesothelioma. In the former, cancer cells develop in the peritoneum, the lining of the abdominal cavity.

In the latter, which is the most widespread form of mesothelioma, the affected site is the pleura, the membrane surrounding the lungs and lining the chest cavity.

Mesothelioma is a rare cancer, which in humans is almost invariably caused by exposure to asbestos, a material used in various sectors, in particular in the building industry. Most people (70-80 percent) who develop malignant mesothelioma have worked in jobs where they inhaled or were exposed to asbestos particles, asbestos fibres and dust.

As in all cancers, in both peritoneal mesothelioma and pleural mesothelioma cells multiply in excess and without control.

Mesothelioma prognosis is usually not good; it is a fatal disease, and death often occurs within twelve months after diagnosis.

Mesothelioma treatment exists, in the forms of surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, but it has not so far been successful. Mesothelioma is generally resistant to treatment.

Malignant mesothelioma and asbestos: what delayed recognizing the link?

The link between cancer and asbestos in humans became known on the basis of clinical studies in the early 20th century, so much so that the first lawsuits against asbestos manufacturers were in 1929.

Following this discovery, researchers extensively tried to induce cancer in laboratory animals by exposing them to asbestos. The results of animal experiments were disappointing, because the painful lesions which were produced in animals disappeared after asbestos was withdrawn, so in them, unlike in humans, the disease was not permanent.

The current prevailing paradigm of biomedical sciences is such that only tests on animals in laboratory conditions can confirm or disproof a hypothesis. This is what scientists have been trained to believe. So if, say, a correlation between a chemical substance and the development of a disease is observed in human subjects through clinical studies of patients or epidemiological studies (surveying large numbers of people), that is not considered scientific evidence until it is “validated” on some other animal species in the controlled conditions of a lab.

This reliance on animal research has had the effect that the biomedical establishment did not believe in the link between asbestos and human cancer for several decades.

In 1965 the Annals of the New York Academy of Science “reassuringly” wrote:

“…a large literature on experimental studies has failed to furnish any definitive evidence for induction of malignant tumours in animals exposed to various varieties and preparations of asbestos by inhalation or intratracheal injection”. [my emphasis]


But the human-based evidence continued to grow. Many epidemiological studies have over the years established an association between exposure to asbestos and the development of several conditions, including diffuse pleural thickening, lung cancer, carcinoma of the larynx, asbestosis, gastrointestinal tumours, peritoneal mesothelioma and pleural mesothelioma.

The link between asbestos and mesothelioma was finally accepted and led to legislation banning asbestos in many Western countries.

But it was only in the late 1970s and 1980s that this occurred. In 1989 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned all new uses of asbestos.

So animal tests delayed the introduction of these safety laws by several decades. This is a recurring pattern: something similar happened when animal experiments failed to confirm a connection between smoking and lung cancer in humans, and preventative measures in that area were delayed by many years.

Mesothelioma symptoms may appear as long as 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. This explains why, despite a ban on asbestos use in the West, the incidence of malignant mesothelioma is still increasing.

The half vegan monks who are the world's healthiest people

In Italy we have a saying which translates into English as “discovering hot water”, i.e. discovering the obvious.

The medical world has recently found, through a series of in-depth, comprehensive studies including a 10-year study, that one of the healthiest groups of people on earth eats fresh food, mostly vegetables, fruits, pulses and grains, in moderation, in a stress-free environment, within a close supportive community.

These lucky guys are the monks of Mount Athos, in Greece.

They are vegan for more than half of the year, and predominantly vegetarian the other half.

Despite their average venerable age, the 2,000 monks living in 20 ancient monasteries have virtually no heart disease, no cardiac arrests and no strokes, a zero-incidence of Alzheimer’s disease which astonished the researchers conducting the various studies, and unusually low rates of cancer, which in the case of prostate cancer is 4 times lower than the international average. The latter finding is even more remarkable when you know that the monks in that particular investigation were aged between 50 and 104. Their rates of lung, bowel and bladder cancer are zero.

Mount Athos monasteries, called by the British Guardian newspaper “a land without butter”, follow some simple rules.

Monks never eat meat, and only very sporadically eat fish. The bulk of their diet is rice, pasta, bread, pulses, fruits, vegetables, all entirely seasonal and home-grown in the monastery’s gardens.

More than 200 days of the year, including all Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and some religious periods like Lent and Advent, are called “abstention days” and strictly vegan, with only one meal per day.

The rest are non-fast days, on which dairy products, eggs, fish and home-brewed wine can be had. In moderation.

Each meal lasts 20 minutes, after which a bell rings and the monks have to leave the table.

Some of the monks’ favourite dishes are pasta with tomato sauce (who can blame them), rice with boiled greens and leeks, beans with oil, an aubergine, tomato and potato stew called "briam toulou", and chickpea patties.

Since 1994, scientists have regularly tested the monks for cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s, some of the West’s most feared diseases, and found astounding low or even zero rates of them.

According to scientists, the single most important factor in the monks’ low cancer incidence is their high intake of plant foods.

Professor Haris Aidonopoulos, urologist at the University of Thessaloniki in northern Greece, said that the key seems to be a diet with plenty of plant proteins, free from meat. It has been proven, he continued, that a dietary intake of protein from lentils and beans prevents the absorption of toxins.

Claire Williamson, nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, concurs: “Using pulses as a source of protein is something we could all learn from. We tend to rely more on meat, fish, eggs and dairy for protein. Pulses are great for variety, and they provide lots of fibre and iron.”

Pulses, like peas, beans, lentils, soya, chickpeas, are also a low-fat source of protein.

Michalis Hourdakis, a dietician with Athens University, added: “Meat has been associated with intestinal cancer, while fruit and vegetables help ward off prostate cancer.”

“The monks have perfected the typical Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruit, vegetables, olive oil, bread, cereals and legumes and low in meat” said Maria Hassapidou, Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at Thessaloniki in Greece. “On Mount Athos, they have gone one step further by forfeiting meat and only occasionally eating fish, which means they have a very low intake of saturated fats and a high intake of Omega-3 fatty acids, both of which help further to prevent the incidence of cardiovascular disease.”

Growth in animal farming increases disease risks for humans, says FAO

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has issued a serious warning against animal farming, especially intensive animal farming, for its risks to human health in a report entitled Industrial Livestock Production and Global Health Risks, published in September 2007 .

“The risk of disease transmission from animals to humans will increase in the future due to human and livestock population growth, dynamic changes in livestock production, the emergence of worldwide agro-food networks and a significant increase in the mobility of people and goods,” writes FAO in this policy brief [emphasis added].

Excessive concentration of animals in large scale industrial production units should be avoided, said Joachim Otte, FAO livestock policy expert.

The FAO stresses the reality of the enormous growth in both demand for meat and industrial animal rearing in recent years due to their expansion in Third World countries. In Asia, South America and parts of Africa, traditional animal farming methods are being replaced by intensive ones.

“These developments have potentially serious consequences for local and global disease risks, which, so far, have not been widely recognized by policy makers,” observed Joseph Domenech, FAO Chief Veterinary Officer.

Internationally, pig and poultry productions are the fastest growing and industrializing of all animal farming sectors, and industrial pig and poultry productions depend on a great movement of live animals. The movement of animals and the concentration of a high number of confined animals increases the likelihood of transfer of pathogens (disease-causing agents). In addition, confined animal houses produce a lot of waste, which may contain great quantities of pathogens and is disposed of on land without treatment, posing an infection risk for wild mammals and birds.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 virus is now a major international concern, but the ‘silent’ circulation of influenza A viruses (IAVs) in poultry and pigs should also be closely monitored globally, said FAO. Some IAVs are now widespread in commercial poultry and pigs and could lead to the emergence of a human influenza pandemic.

Although generally speaking this is in no way earth-shattering news in the sense that it’s what the animal rights movement has been saying for decades, it’s interesting to note that the body responsible for issuing these warnings is now a United Nations organization, with no concern for animal equality but purely for human health.

Eating bacon and sausages every day increases cancer risk by 20%, new authoritative report says

A comprehensive, authoritative, 517-page new study published this Wednesday by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research points to three major lifestyle factors contributing to a much greater danger of contracting cancer: obesity, alcohol and not least red meat, especially processed or cured meats.

The cancer risk from processed meats is now considered to be comparable to that from smoking as a long recognised risk for lung cancer.

Eating 50 grams of cured meat a day increases the risk of colorectal (bowel) cancer by 21%. Compare that to tobacco: smoking 20 cigarettes every day increases the risk of lung cancer 20 to 40 fold.

The study simply recommends to avoid all processed meats like bacon, ham, sausages, salami and similar meats. For them there is no safe level of consumption, says Martin Wiseman, project director of the report.

This report represents the most comprehensive review of the evidence on the subject, and is considered a landmark. It is the result of five years of work by nine teams of 21 scientists who are world experts on cancer, who reviewed 7,000 studies on diet, weight, exercise, and their links to cancer.

Several types of food carry a risk of tumour, but nothing is as dangerous as cured or processed meat, because the bad effect of red meat is enhanced by the curing process. Bacon, ham, sausages, salami are particularly harmful.

It’s nothing fundamentally new. In fact the conclusions of the study are in harmony with the dietary recommendations of the World Health Organization, medical bodies, health experts, governments health departments: eat lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains and reduce or avoid red meats, dairy products and fats if you wish to protect yourself against heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

But it’s something that most people still do not know well enough.

The American Institute for Cancer Research also published a survey of 1,000 American adults showing that the majority do not understand these risks. 71 per cent of the people interviewed still incorrectly think that pesticides are a major cancer risk, whereas in fact they are not even remotely the biggest culprit, given the infinitesimal amount in which they are normally ingested by human consumers. There is no evidence that pesticides are a risk factor in cancer.

But the “nice” foods that the general population of the West has grown up believing to be good for them are actually the worst killers, comparable to tobacco.

Of the people polled in the survey, just 38 per cent was aware of the link between cured meats and cancer, and only 49 per cent knew that diets poor in fruits and vegetables increased the risk of cancer.

"Americans are increasingly likely to attribute cancer to factors over which they have no control, and for which no proven links to the disease exist," the survey concludes. "This reflects an 'everything causes cancer' mindset".

It’s easy to see why: it’s harder to take control over one’s life, and make difficult choices and changes. This despite the fact that lifestyle causes of cancer are actually good news, because they mean that we can influence our future at least to a certain extent.

"We need to think about cancer as the product of many long term influences, not as something that 'just happens,'" said Dr Walter Willett, a nutrition expert at the Harvard School of Public Health in Massachusetts.

Incidentally, the new study on nutrition advises to avoid dietary supplements, which could represent a problem for vegans.

Human health & animal ethics: an introduction to this Category

Of all the major areas of animal exploitation, two of them, animal experimentation and farming, have two fundamental characteristics in common, which will make them, in my opinion, the real battleground on which the case for animal rights and equality will be fought.

What vivisection and farming have in common is: 1) they involve an enormous number of animals, far superior, at least in the case of farming, to other areas of animal abuse; 2) there is an appearance (I underline “appearance”) of genuine conflict between the liberation of animals from these two forms of abuse and human health, which in many people’s minds, unfortunately, justifies them on moral grounds.

For this reason I’ve created a special category in the current blog, Human health and animal ethics, to explore this assumed conflict between human and non-human animal interests. In animal testing, the conflict is purported to be in the fact that renouncing it would deprive medicine of an irreplaceable tool of immense value, or at least this is the claim. In animal farming, the conflict is said to derive from the fact that humans need to eat animal flesh products to stay healthy, believed by many people to be true despite the repeated assertions to the contrary by the most prestigious medical authorities and organizations in the world, who say that the opposite is true and vegetarianism is indeed a healthier option.

All other forms of animal exploitation do not involve any real, important human interest. Nobody can claim that they will die or become ill without a fur coat (not even Eskimos), if they don’t attend circuses, if they don’t visit zoos, don’t go fishing or hunting.

The lame excuses of some of these animal abusers, like hunters justifying torturing foxes to death because they are “pests”, are only seriously believed or appeared to be believed by themselves and their close supporters.

But with vivisection and animal farming, the belief that they are necessary for human health is widely held by a majority, so it needs to be addressed with empirical and logical instruments. I’ll do that in this category, which has the advantage of tackling both major areas of animal abuse with one common approach useful for both, and I will also explore the tricky question of whether veganism can really be suitable for human health: on this issue I have to say that I am not convinced myself. People wouldn’t need vitamin tablets to supplement a vegan diet if the latter were an appropriate, fully well-balanced diet. And if you look at it from a naturalistic viewpoint, the human species is not a herbivorous species: we use a similar argument against meat-eating when we say that humans are not a carnivorous species, so it seems to me that, if we are intellectually honest, we recognize that the argument cuts both ways.

Meat workers health problems

Meat is not just bad for the animals slaughtered, of course, and for the humans who consume it. It’s bad for the humans who work in the meat industry too.

Few people realize that, in a country like the USA, meatpacking is the most dangerous occupation.

In the year 2000, about 25 percent of all employees of American meatpacking plants had non-fatal occupational injuries or job-related illnesses: that is as many as 4 times the national average for all private industry sectors.

In addition, serious injuries and illnesses (measured by lost workdays) in the meatpacking sector are almost 5 times the national average in all private industry sectors (14.3 percent versus 3 percent).

The frequency of disorders associated with repeated traumas, mainly back problems and tendinitis, is an astonishing 30 times higher than the private-industry national average. This is the effect produced by the working pace of some modern slaughterhouses, which “process” as many as 400 cattle per hour, and in which some workers make up to 10,000 repetitive knife cuts every day.

So much for the idea that man is a “natural” meat-eater. Meat seems to be associated with diseases and unnatural lifestyles wherever it occurs.

Animal tests responsible for Elephant men drug disaster, UK official body says

The so-called “Elephant Man drug victims”, the 8 healthy volunteers affected by the TGN1412 drug trial disaster of last March in the UK, have just been told to expect early death. A medical assessment by immunologist Professor Richard Powell indicated that they face contracting cancer and other fatal diseases.

This is the umpteenth disaster caused by the bio-medical research establishment’s obstinate reliance on animal testing.

The drug in question, TGN1412, had indeed been tested on animals, as is unfortunately always the case, including non-human primates.
The company conducting them claims that these experiments showed the drug to be safe.

The result of the investigation into this incident by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK government official regulatory body, says:

“…this product showed a pharmacological effect in man which was not seen in preclinical tests in animals at much higher doses” (emphasis added).

In their report, the MHRA found no deficiencies in the drug’s animal, pre-clinical and clinical work: everything was in order, including dose measurement and administration. In short, the MHRA thought that the actions of the companies involved did not contribute to the serious adverse reactions.

Similarly, German Regulatory Authorities inspected the production, manufacture, testing, storage and distribution of the material, and found no deficiencies which could have contributed to the tragic adverse events.

The MHRA concluded that the most likely cause of the adverse effects in trial human subjects was an unpredicted biological action of the drug in humans.

When tested on animals, then, the drug had appeared to be safe in animal models, but researchers have observed that there are reasons why these may not be indicative of the response in humans. Other similar drugs, tested safe on animals, have previously shown side effects in human trials.

Even the British Medical Journal is starting to see the writing on the wall for animal research:

“Why were all eight volunteers given the drug at the same time? Several observers have asked whether minimal standards should include observing a single dose in a single carefully monitored individual, rather than relying solely on dose as a function of animal lethality.” (emphasis added)

And the BMJ goes on to say:

“Relative lack of severe toxicity in animal models should never be construed as a guarantee of safety in man, as the story of thalidomide taught us.” (emphasis added)

In Britain the Early Day Motion 2088, a new bill tabled by the Member of Parliament David Taylor, argues for more government funding for new technology advances, such as micro-dosing, which would make human testing far safer and accurate.

Fen-Phen drug combination: another case where animal studies misled research

Weight-loss drugs fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, used in the fen-phen combination, caused heart valve problems in patients. Cases of primary pulmonary hypertension stopped the use of the Fen-Phen drug combination as a weight-loss aid.

Some sources say that the combination had been tested on animals (specifically, dogs and cats) and it was safe for them, others say that the individual substances had been tested on animals but they had not been extensively tested on animals in combination.

Gina Kolata reported in the New York Times of September 16, 1997, on fen-phen:
"Why weren't these problems [heart valve abnormalities] noticed before? Dieters in Europe had used Dexfenfluramine for decades. Dr. Friedman [an FDA official] said he could only speculate. No one had initially thought to examine patients' hearts, he said, because animal studies had never revealed heart abnormalities and heart valve defects are not normally associated with drug use." (emphasis added)

Health benefits of vegetarian diet

There are many reasons to be vegetarian purely to improve your health and to diminish the risk of contracting the diseases that kill most people in the Western world.
Research shows that in many ways a vegetarian diet is healthier than that of a typical meat-eater.
The vegetarian diet falls closely into line with the recommendations issued in two UK government-commissioned reports by the National Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy.
And, for food poisoning and diseases spread from farm animals, should vegetarians be concerned about BSE? As far as we know, there are no cases of cow pus, blood or prions being observed in rice, oat or soya milk.

So, I've collected here some authoritative sources on the subject.


* British Medical Association: "A vegetarian diet confers a wide range of health benefits. Research has proven that vegetarians suffer less from many of the diseases linked to a modern Western diet: obesity, coronary heart disease, hypertension, type II diabetes, diet-related cancers, diverticular disease, constipation and gall stones."

* The American Dietetic Association: "Scientific data suggest positive relationships between a vegetarian diet and reduced risk for several chronic degenerative diseases and conditions, including obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and some types of cancer. Vegetarian diets, like all diets, need to be planned appropriately to be nutritionally adequate.
"POSITION STATEMENT
"It is the position of The American Dietetic Association (ADA) that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."

* A major report by the World Cancer Research Fund in association with the American Institute for Cancer Research published in 1997 provides the most comprehensive world-wide review of diet and cancer research, presenting dietary guidelines for prevention, public policy recommendations and a thorough review of the scientific evidence.
Here are the report's main findings:

• High intakes of animal protein might increase the risk of a number of colorectal, breast and endometrial cancers
  
• An increase in animal fat consumption may increase the risk of lung, colon, rectum, breast, endometrium and prostate cancers
  
• Diets high in milk and dairy products may increase the risk of prostate and kidney cancer
  
• Protein of plant origin from cereals and pulses is as good as protein of animal origin
  
• The typical Western-style diet was condemned with these words: "...within the last 50 years, the trend has been to invest in the very resource-intensive rearing of animals. The consumption of fatty meats and of meat, milk and other dairy products has also been promoted with the incorrect message that such foods are especially healthy. Increasing consumption of meat and fatty foods will lead to a massive increase in incidence of a large number of diseases that are expensive to treat. It reflects the impact of widespread perceptions of a cultural link between affluence and Western lifestyles. Traditional diets, when adequate and varied, are likely to be generally more healthy."
  

From "Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: a global perspective". World Cancer Research Fund, 105 Park St, London W1Y 3FB. Tel: +44 (0)20 7343 4200. American Institute for Cancer Research, 1759 R St NW, Washington, DC 20009. Tel 001 709 329 7744. Fax 001 202 328 7226


* From Encyclopædia Britannica:
"Medical and nutrition professionals around the world continued to examine the health benefits of low-fat, high-fibre diets. One style of eating that was receiving a major share of attention was the diet of the Mediterranean region, where the population had traditionally enjoyed low rates of heart disease and some cancers. In 1994 an international group of experts interested in traditional eating patterns developed the Mediterranean diet pyramid as a model for healthful eating. The Mediterranean pyramid called for a largely plant-based diet. Cheese, yogurt, and olive oil were included with fruits, vegetables, and grains as foods that could be eaten daily, while red meat was to be consumed only a few times a month... Meanwhile, in France investigators from the Lyon Heart Study demonstrated that a Mediterranean-style diet was effective in reducing the risk of further heart problems in individuals who had already experienced a heart attack. Some 300 patients were encouraged to increase their consumption of grains, fruits, and vegetables and to eat less red meat and more poultry. The butter in their diet was replaced by a spread rich in alpha-linolenic acid, which some experts believed to have cardioprotective effects. During a follow-up, which averaged 27 months, there were three coronary deaths and five nonfatal heart attacks among those on the diet, compared with corresponding figures of 16 and 17 in a similar group that received no dietary advice.
"The health benefits of a vegetarian diet were substantiated by the results of a 12-year survey conducted by nutritionists in London and Oxford, England. Comparing the fates of more than 5,000 British meat eaters with those of some 6,000 who were not meat eaters, the investigators reported a 40% lower rate of death from cancer among the vegetarians. Those who did not eat meat also had a markedly lower rate of atherosclerotic heart disease, though this was at least partly attributable to their much larger proportion of nonsmokers."

* From Baby and Child Care (1998 edition) by Benjamin Spock, M.D., considered the greatest authority on baby and child care:
“If a mother drinks cow’s milk, which I do not recommend, some of the cow’s proteins will actually pass into the breast milk and actually irritate the baby’s stomach. … The nursing mother’s daily diet should include the following nutrients: (1) plenty of vegetables, (2) fresh fruit, (3) beans, peas, and lentils, and (4) whole grains. Another good reason to get your nutrition from plant sources is that animals tend to concentrate pesticides and other chemicals in their meat and milk. … Traces of these chemicals can easily end up in a mother’s breast milk if she eats these products. Plant foods have much less contamination, even if they are not organically grown.” (pp. 113-114).

* Cornell University's nutritional biochemist Dr. T. Colin Campbell, director of the renowned "China Project" (a long-term study of the relationship between diet and health):
"The vast majority, perhaps 80 percent to 90 percent, of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet."
Dr. Campbell has also shown that excess animal protein actually promotes the growth of tumors; and most people on a meat-based diet consume 3 to 10 times more protein than their bodies need.

A vegetarian diet not only helps prevent heart disease, it can also reverse it without drugs and their side effects.

* A study of patients with advanced heart disease was published in the British Lancet, the most prestigious medical journal in the world, in 1990, by Dr. Dean Ornish, S.E. Brown, L.W. Scherwitz, et al., "Can Lifestyle Changes Reverse Coronary Heart Disease?".
Dr. Ornish put a group of patients on a completely vegetarian diet, which was less than 10 percent fat. They were also asked to begin a moderate exercise program, walking a half hour every day, and were taught relaxation techniques. Patients in this group found that their chest pain disappeared and their cholesterol levels dropped at a rate comparable to that of cholesterol-lowering drugs, without the side effects. Because the patients felt so much better, they were motivated to stick with this program. The plaques that had been growing in their hearts for decades actually started to dissolve within one year.

Prostate cancer has been strongly linked to meat consumption. In a study of nearly 48,000 men aged between 40 and 75, those eating red meat five or more times a week were 2.6 times more likely to suffer from prostate cancer than those who ate it once a week or less (Giovannucci, 1993b). Mills (1989b) also noted a link between meat consumption and prostate cancer risk.

Some of the world's leading sporting champions are vegetarian, so veggie food is certainly good for muscles. People who follow a varied, well-balanced vegetarian diet are eating in line with current nutritional recommendations for healthy eating, as most vegetarian meals tend to be low in fat and high in fibre.