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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 13, 1975)
-opinion--\ War on cancer a medical Vietnam By NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN WASHINGTON (KFS)—The operations last fall on Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Rockefeller set off a mass media avalanche that must have been at once frigh tening and comforting to many women. Along with the worrisome adjurations to give one s self frequent breast examinations, women were repeatedly told that early detection almost certainly means that things will work out all right. Unhappily, the prospects for recovery aren't quite that good. Only 64 per cent of the women diagnosed as having breast cancer live five years longer. This is a four per cent improvement over the rate 15 years ago and is much better than cancer of the cervix or uteri, a disease for which expectations for survival have actually worsened in the same period of time. These figures are drawn from an analysis of cancer statistics and how they are presented to the public in the January-February issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. The author is Daniel S. Green berg, perhaps our finest science journalist, and the conclusion he comes to is that the war against cancer has turned into a medical Vietnam. Greenberg says that not only have there been none of the breakthroughs we re always being prom ised, but that there really has been little if any prog ress in cancer treatment since the mid-1950s. He (id find considerable improvement in the death rates between 1940 and 1955, attributable not to cancer cures, however, but to patients “surviving cancer operations that previously killed them.” Greenberg suggests that when the American Cancer Society announces that, “Cancer is one of V, the most curable diseases in this country." it's basing its assertion on suspect statistics which are then presented to the public in a context of misleading optimism. No doubt this helps keep the collection plate full, just as it probably encourages Congress to continue kicking in S600 million for cancer research every year. Nevertheless, the cupidity, bureaucracy and en trenched obtuseness of the cancer industry can't entirely explain how this branch of medicine goes on failing with such unquestioning public support. Greenberg isn't the first person to say the cancer effort has dead-ended, but the objections do no good. The tools of cancer therapy are weapon-like, and we believe in that also. Surgery, radiation, chem ical warfare, all aggressive, intrusive and powerful, just the stuff to knock out tough enemies like the Viet Cong or a cancer cell. It's comforting for us to believe we have the kind of firepower therapy that can intervene to smash our biological opponents. Or we beat them with technological superiority as with the latest cancer gimmick, immunotherapy, which, Greenberg reports, wiser medical minds place little hope in. What they do hold out hope for is cancer preven tion. The greatest promise lies not in curing the dis ease. but in making sure people don't get it. Instead of big X-ray guns we should be looking at cigaretes, drinking water, food additives, air and nutrition in general. According to Greenberg, the amount of money being spent on nutritional research is "close to nil." Part of the explanation is that people don t like to think about cancer and. when they do, they d just as soon think all those scientific folks in white smocks with retorts and pipettes know what they re doing. After all, if chemotherapy, radiation and surgery are statistically nearly indistinguishable from the fake cancer cures the quacks administer, where are we to place our hopes if the disease strikes us? Then, the style of the prevailing medical approach is one we Americans cotton to. The ' war on cancer, the "attack on cancer, or the phrases like mobilizing resources, massing scientific know-how to "beat cancer, suits our way of thinking We ve been taught to conceive of diseases, too, as foreign invaders, as enemies. The idea of preventive medicine is faintly un American. It means, first of all, recognizing the enemy is us, and that we have to give up the idea that we can abuse ourselves and expect the doctors to put us back together when we have. It also means a different sort of practice of medicine, one in which the physician doesn t play the role of hero. Finally, of course, preventive medicine isn’t gimmicky, aggres sive or lucrative to the hospital, drug and medical equipment industnes. The times still aren t ready for such ideas. Con gress is aching to pass a national health bill which will encourage yet more heroic cancer therapy. The Administration still thinks that clean water and air is a plot against the free enterpnse system and would rather put the dough in bombers. So. pray that Dr. Miraculous will find the cancer cure, and phone in your pledges to all medical tele thons. Copyright. 1975, The Washington Post-King Features Syndicate Waste disposal is nuclear power s biggest problem By JOHN MILLER Nuclear power, the glamour technology of the 40 s and 50s and the answer to our energy needs in the '60s, is now in the mid-1970s at the center of a nationwide controversy focusing on its safety, it need and its practi cality. Today, according to the newly established Nuclear Reg ulatory Commission (NRC), 53 commercial nuclear plants are licensed to operate, 54 are now being constructed (including the Trojan plant near Rainier, Oregon) and orders have been placed for an additional 109.(President Ford wants almost 150 more by T985.) The NRC es timates that by the year 2000 more than 1,000 nuclear fission plants will be operating, providing from 30 to 60 per cent of the nation s energy needs By com parison nuclear power provides about seven per cent of all electri cal energy in the U S. today. What all this adds up to is a strong push to make the U.S. dependent upon nuclear power by the turn of the century. Despite these optimistic fig ures. the future of nuclear power is clouded Within the last decade, in all parts of the nation supporters and opponents of nuclear power have been engaged in what could well be one of the most important debates in our nations history. (See article by McKinley Olson de tailing some of the current battles in Nation, Jan. 11, 1975.) To the critics of nuclear power the risks are too great. There is the nsk of theft of fissionable material, the potential of human error resulting in catastrophic accident and the unknown effects of long term ex posure to low level radiation which occurs with all nuclear plants. In addition, there is the question of whether we need all this "extra energy, and if we do, can we af ford it? (See the recent Ford Foundation study entitled, A Time To Choose: America s Energy Fu ture. If these dangers and questions weren't enough to change the minds of those pushing nuclear power as the answer to our energy problems, a recently released study by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) should The NRDC report focuses on the problem of nuclear waste dis posal and points out that millions of gallons of deadly radioactive wastes will be one result if the Un ited States pushes ahead with its planned large nuclear power program. Nuclear power plants, like the Trojan plant here in Oregon, use enriched uranium as fuel and pro duce as wast toxic plutonium. A very small amount of plutonium contains enough radioactivity to make an entire city uninhabitable. In addition to its potency as a kil ler, the radioactivity of plutonium just doesnt go away. In fact the nuclear wastes being produced by our nuclear plants today will re main dangerous for as long as 250,000 years. The NRC esti mates that within ten years plutonium waste could amount to about 50,000 pounds a year, and that by 1995 there could be about 750 tons of waste plutonium sit 'SIDOOWN, SCARPELLI! YOU CIA GUYS GET SO DAA' NERVOUS . . . ' P»«M» 4 ting around. Plutonium is also the ‘‘critical mass' ingredient for the A-bomb, thus the fear of theft. What is being done with the waste now? For the most part, the waste fuel is being stored by local utilities in‘temporary steel canis ters embedded in concrete con tainers. Until recently there hadn t been enough of the waste to worry the power companies. But now, according to the Wall Street Jour nal (Feb. 3, 1975), the local utiSties are running out of storage space. Also, it finally dawned on the nuclear power industry that these temporary concrete tombs would eventually have to be moved, creating risks of exposure and accident. The dangers in “temporary solutions to such long range problems as nuclear waste disposal should now be ob vious following the disclosure last year by the defunct Atomic Energy Commission that over 430,000 gallons of poisonous nuc lear waste had leaked into the soil around the government's own "temporary nuclear waste dis posal site at Hanford, Washing ton. Thus added to the problems of possible theft, safety and cost, we are now confronted with what may be the most dangerous compo nent of the nuclear fuel cycle, the disposal of the deadly plutonium waste The scope of the problem confronting the proponents of nuc lear power was recently sum marized by Alvin N. Weinberg, former director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory when he asked, “is mankind prepared to exert the eternal vigilance needed to ensure proper ana safe operation of its nuclear energy system? Weinberg wasn t kid ding when he said “eternal.” No government has lasted 10,000 years let alone the 250,000 years over which nuclear wastes will remain “hot. How sure can we be that there is such a place on earth where these wastes could be stored that will remain safe from floods, earth quakes and other natural disas ters over the coming quarter of a million years? The NRC is now looking, and with a little help from its nuclear power friends, it may find such a spot (See Wall Street Journal, March 5.1975) The ques tion is, do we want to take such a chance? The question of nuclear waste disposal may soon come to a head rf the NRC and/or Congress hold hearings on the plutonium issue If such heanngs are held, the key questions will center around the feasibility of storing and monitoring these dangerous wastes for what may well be eter nity. In any case the decisions being made now are going to set a pattern for many generations to come What can you do now7 If you are concerned about the problem of nuclear waste disposal. I urge you to write Mr. William Anders, Head of the NRC and your Con gressman or woman urging them to hold open public hearings on the waste disposal problem, not just in Washington D C., but around the nation. Closer to home, Sen. Ted Hallock, D-Portland, has introduced three bills (SB-120, 121, 127) which would refer to the people of Oregon a moratorium on nuclear power power plants construction If approved by the voters of Oregon, these bills would halt construction of all nuclear power plants in Oregon for five years I urge you to write to your state legislator expressing your support for such legislation Perhaps the best way to solve the nuclear power waste problem is to pull the plug on nuclear power Miller is a doctoral student in sociology
