From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Sep 13 2003 - 08:19:32 MDT
On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Kevin Freels wrote:
> It would be nice to have some data on the number of children that died of
> cancer 200 years ago as compared to now.
Kevin, I agree that it would be interesting data but I suspect
it would be a minor blip in the childhood death rates due to
the childhood diseases for which there were no vaccines and/or
malnutrition. For those reasons it might not be possible to
use the data productively. On top of that one has to consider the
environment -- are you talking industrial London (which was probably
much more polluted than modern cities -- remember coal was the primary
fuel back then) or non-industrial cities (say Bombay)?
Most (though perhaps not all) childhood cancers are due to defects
in the developmental process. They are the result of the random
errors in the process of replicating DNA -- or in some cases predisposing
errors that may have taken place in the production of gamete cells.
Perhaps the best example of a drug (not a pollutant) causing
problems in either gamete production or early development would
be thalidomide [1,2,3].
Robert
1. http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/thalinfo/default.htm
2. http://www.aegis.com/factshts/network/simple/thalid.html
3. http://www.celgene.com/thalomid/
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