AlL Hazardous to your health Best medicine for cancer prevention?—A new society

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Cancer prevention is not a medical or a personal problem. It is a political problem. The first and most important step we can all take to minimize our cancer risk is to organize and educate. At the same time, everyone should have the information necessary to make informed choices about diet and lifestyle.

Much has been written recently about the effect of diet on cancer risk. Evidence from both animal and human dietary studies indicates a much lower cancer rate for individuals on a low-fat, high-fiber diet. Whether fiber helps by moving fats through the intestines more quickly or has some direct protective effect is unclear.

The single most important lifestyle choice you can make is to never start smoking, or to stop if you already smoke. Lung cancer has long been the leading cause of cancer mortality in men. This year it has become the largest cause of cancer mortality for women as well.

Other "lifestyle" factors are less easy to control as an individual. How many of us can freely choose where we live and work, particularly when we have jobs and families?

Is someone who grew up in New Jersey, is raising a family, and has a job in a chemical plant there really free to give up that job and move? How useful to that person is the knowledge that New Jersey has the highest overall cancer mortality rate 2 SOCIALIST ACTION in the United States?

Similarly, the water we drink is a perso -nal lifestyle choice only in the most abstract sense. In New Orleans, the drink -ing water is contaminated by toxic wastes dumped into the Mississippi River by dozens of industries. The "choice" to drink it or buy bottled water is not available to lower-income families.

Although there are choices we can make that will lower our cancer risk, ultimately the problem is a social one. "We must be willing to accept the reality that a significant reduction in exposure to environmental carcinogens will result only from organized political action," according to Samuel Epstein, author of "The Politics of Cancer."

Hazards on the rise This point is underscored by recent Labor Department statistics showing a big increase in accidents and illnesses in the workforce. And this increase accompanies the Reagan administration's gutting of the Occupational Safety and Health Admin -istration (OSHA—the agency formed to protect workers from hazardous work con -ditions and substances) and the Environ -mental Protection Agency (EPA-the agency responsible for regulating environ -mental hazards).

A vigorous campaign for federal regu -lation of hazards, a campaign controlled by the workers themselves, at the workplace, is desperately needed.

DECEMBER 1985 Many unions have health and safety committees that can be useful areas of action. There is a growing awareness, as well, of the risks in non-industrial workplaces, and clerical workers' unions have begun to raise safety questions.

In high-tech offices there are a number of chemical hazards from solvents, asbestos, and even fumes from the furniture. Since most office workers are women, this is an Conservative think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation have been pushing the notion that a "risk-free" society is both impossible to attain and harmful to attempt. Without risk there is no growth or initiative, and stagnation results, they say.

The question to ask is, risk for whom? Loan guarantees for banks that took bad "risks" are OK. Handouts and bailouts for big business are OK. But we are expected to face an ever-increasing cancer risk to keep society running.

We need to create a society where the risk to peoples' lives is minimized, not the risk to private profit. We need a society where challenge comes from discovering a cure for cancer or improving children's education, and risk comes from mountain climbing or freely chosen sports instead of from environmental carcinogens. Working to change society is the best medicine.

SUCH ACCUSATIONS ARE INFLAMMATORY, ANDONLY SERVE TD CLOUD THE ISSUE I THANK YOU