US emerging as the world's largest cancer economy.

Is the US emerging as the world's largest cancer economy? Well, when I say a cancer economy what I mean is an economy sustained to a larger extent by the growing incidence of the killer disease. The more is the incidence of cancer, the more is the medical costs involved, and that adds on to the country's GDP. It's obviously a drain on the society but at the same time for the medical industry it provides an immense business opportunity. And some would say a profiteering medical industry will provide for more jobs !

In 2008, the US National Institute of Health (NIH) estimated the total annual cost that cancer was causing to the economy at $ 201.5 billion, which included $ 77.4 billion of health expenditures and $ 124 billion as the indirect mortality costs. After all, in a country where more than half a million people are expected to die of cancer this year, and that works out to 1,600 every day, nearly 75 per cent of the health care costs revolve around the cancer epidemic.

This startling analysis is presented in a blog Inspired Bites written by Robyn O' Brian (Link: http://blogs.prevention.com/inspired-bites/2013/11/18/how-the-cost-of-cancer-is-eating-our-economy/) that I came across yesterday. Quoting a report of the President's Cancer Panel she writes: " (The Panel) is urging all of us to do our part to reduce the burden of this disease.  Most notably, they encourage all Americans to reduce their exposures to contaminants like pesticides, insecticides and other chemicals now so pervasive in our food.  Why? Because 41 per cent of us are expected to get cancer in our lifetimes, 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women. It did not used to be this way.  And can we really eat to beat this disease as the President’s Cancer Panel suggests? It’s tough to do with a food supply so dependent on synthetic chemicals.  In the last fifteen years, new ingredients, synthetically engineered in laboratories to withstand increasing doses of toxic weedkillers, have quietly been inserted into our food.  And while correlation is not causation, the soaring use of these chemicals corresponds so directly with the soaring rates of certain cancers that at the very least, it merits an investigation."

Although, as she says, while correlation is not causation, there is a definitely a growth pattern that is clearly visible. Food contamination is certainly linked to the growing incidence of cancer. And if the Panel itself is suggesting to people to be watchful of pesticides, insecticides and other chemicals in food, the indications are loud and clear. I would have however expected more serious efforts visible in America to curb the use of chemicals, including pesticides and insecticides, based on the recommendations of this report. The failure to take the report seriously is not only disappointing but if I may be allowed to say so it is reflective of a criminal neglect. 

Especially at a time when US President Barack Obama has been trying to push for medicare, I thought the best way to prevent the disease from taking such a massive human toll in future would have been to go in for safe food. When Michelle Obama launch organic gardening in the White House complex, she obviously conveyed a powerful statement, but her husband failed to get the message right. As Charles Benbrook has conclusively shown that between 1996 and 2011, an era when GM crops proliferated in the US, the application of pesticides has risen by 404 million pounds. This data alone should have forced the US Department of Agriculture to come down heavily on the industrial farming systems. 

While the USDA continues to push for more of the same, the US President has been trying his best to push the harmful technologies to the developing world. His global food security initiative promotes the faulty and harmful technological approach as the mankind's saviour. This is where the US President fails, and fails miserably. In his desperation to find ways and means (even if these are harmful in the long run) to jack up the economy, he is trying to create conditions for the US health care industry to profit. He is aggressively using the g-20 to push his flawed economic approach. And that makes me wonder when will the world get a political leader who looks beyond the financial capital; who goes all out to build on the human capital.  

Till then, I can only pray for the well-being of Americans. If 1 in 2 men, and 1 in 3 women is expected to live with cancer in the years to come, God save America. But please don't pass on this deadly killer to the developing world. We already have enough problems at hand. 

First in mother's milk, now 21 different pesticides have been found in umbilical cord blood. The UN says there are safer agro-ecological alternatives available.

There is something going wrong. While I find every year more research tumbles out on the harmful effects of chemical pesticides, its usage continues to grow substantially. Its either that we don't care and give a damn to these research reports or perhaps we leave it to the policy makers to take a final call. Whatever be it, the facts remain that the concentration of pesticide residues in our bodies is reaching an appalling level. 

So far we knew about pesticide residues in mothers milk, and we have also been told that the damage is not only restricted to agriculturally farmed lands. Even in the Antarctic, researchers have detected pesticide residues in penguins. The reach of the deadly chemicals therefore is far and wide. 

The US-based Environment Working Group had recently reported: "Most babies today are born with persistent pesticides and other chemicals already in their bodies, passed from mother to child during fetal development. 21 different pesticides have been found in umbilical cord blood, suggesting tremendous potential damage at a critical developmental time. Since a baby's organs and systems are rapidly developing, they are often more vulnerable to damage from chemical exposure.  The immature, porous blood-brain barrier allows greater chemical exposures to the developing brain." I find this to be not only alarming but worrying. 

If you are still not moved, here are a few more startling facts that might give you a jolt. Thirty years after it was banned, DDT still exists in the cells of Americans. US consumers get upto 70 daily exposures of pesticide residues from persistent organic pollutants (POPs) through their diets. In a well-documented analysis, Organic Valley website (http://www.organicvalley.coop/why-organic/pesticides/) reports:

Many pesticides are known to pose significant, acknowledged health risks to people—including birth defects, damage to the nervous system; disruption of hormones and endocrine systems; respiratory disorders; skin and eye irritations; and various types of cancers.

• Exposure to persistent organic pollutants through diet has been linked to breast and other types of cancer, immune system suppression, nervous system disorders, reproductive damage, and disruption of hormonal systems.
• Male Reproductive Development: Hormone-disrupting chemicals in commercial pesticides have been linked to testicular cancer and low sperm counts in men, and to birth defects in baby boys.
• Public health costs associated with pesticide-related acute poisonings and cancer alone, add up to an estimated $1.1 billion dollars per year.
• Parkinson's disease has been linked to pesticide exposure.

This brings me to the issue whether we have alternatives to the deadly chemical pesticides. In an evaluation of the non-chemical alternatives to endosulfan, the latest among the chemicals whose production and use is being phased out, a working paper of the the United Nation's Environment Programme (UNEP)  has talked of ecosystem approach or agro-ecological approaches to crop production. It quotes the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Dr Olivier de Schutter, who in his report delivered to the 16th session of the UN Human Rights Council listed out various options that are being successfully tried.  

The UN report says: "De Schutter references a report by Pretty et al12 which found an average crop increase of 79% in 286 sustainable agriculture projects based on agroecology, in 57 countries covering 37 million hectares, rising to 116% for all African projects and 128% for East Africa. He also refers to a study commissioned by Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures, of 30 projects in 20 African countries, which found a an average 213% increase in yields with sustainable agro-ecological practices within 3-10 years. He concluded that scaling up agro-ecological practices can simultaneously increase farm productivity and food security, improve incomes and rural livelihoods, reverse the trend towards species loss and genetic erosion, and assist adaption to climate change."

Quoting Dr G V Ramanjaneyulu and Raghunath of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad, the UN report further says: "CMSA (Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture) has significantly reduced the costs of cultivation without significantly reducing productivity, resulting in a net increase in farmers’ income and significant health and ecological benefits. By 2009, over 300,000 farmers on 550,000 hectares of farmland in Andra Pradesh had adopted CMSA in four years. In 2011, those figures were reported to have grown to over 10 million farmers on over 10 million hectares." This is no small achievement. If pesticides-free agriculture can be successfully practiced in 10 million hectares, I see no reason why it can't be replicated in the rest of the country. 

It is therefore not correct to always quote the TINA (there is no alternative) factor when it comes to chemical pesticides. It is high time we, the average consumer, becomes aware of our own health as well as the safety of the environment we live in. The onus of safe and correct policy approaches actually lies on us and not the policy makers. It is just because you have kept mum all these years, and continue to suffer in silence, that the policy makers have promoted unsustainable options. Time you woke up.